Paratextology

Abstract

The emergence and cultivation of a programmatic research interest in what has been traditionally marginalized in Western intellectual practices (a marginalization based on race, gender, religion, class and socio-economic standing and so on) finds a textual correlative in paratextual theory. Simply put, paratextual investigation is concerned with the multitude of elements that surround the purportedly ontologically superior ‘main text.’ To be sure, one could draw an analogy between the notion of the ‘human’ placed at the center of the universe, as Pico della Mirandola tells us in the Oration on the Dignity of Man, and the traditional import given to the main text from which the pertinent signifying matters are to emerge. Paratextual research, as Gerard Genette conceives of it in works such as Palimpsests and Paratexts, contributes to the deconstruction of the hierarchy that privileges the body of the text over its prosthetic components. In essence, paratextual research deals with the pragmatics of transmission, in that in the category of the paratext we find elements such as the title, the subtitle, the preface, the book cover, the dedication, the table of contents, reproduced figures, images, engravings, along with foot- and endnotes, indices, and so on.