Book History and ideological hierarchies

Abstract

The evolving field of Book History has had difficulty in integrating the experiences of immigrant culture. In explaining the origins of print culture in North America, Book History has a tendency to associate lowbrow with immigrants and their struggles to establish a foothold in a new land. Book History therefore symbolically defines immigrant culture as other, institutionalizing a hierarchy so that highbrow or learned culture is privileged. Drawing upon the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Homi Bhabha, this paper suggests that this cultural distinction is not only a contingent classificatory choice that sends a fraught ideological message, but one that should be replaced by the idea of hybridity.