[Linganth] Endangered Alphabets on the blog today

[Ilana Gershon]

Dear Colleagues
Tim Brookes answers Erik Shonstrom’s question on the blog today.  His new
book is called Writing Beyond Writing: Lessons from Endangered Alphabets.

https://campanthropology.org/


Best,

Ilana

Press blurb: In the nineteenth century, when an explorer returned to London
or New York from distant lands, the tradition was to invite them to speak
at the Royal Geographical Society or the Explorers Club, to report on their
findings.

Tim Brookes has spent 13 years discovering the world’s fascinating
indigenous and minority scripts and their cultures of origin.

He found scripts that have been banned and burned, script creators who have
been assassinated, scripts consisting of geometrical patterns in sand,
scripts used for divination and magic, scripts whose scribes abstained from
sex before embarking on acts of writing or copying, and, perhaps most
remarkable of all, a sacred Indian alphabet that is recited aloud as a
religious ritual.

This book is the equivalent of his talk to the Explorers Club, and also the
response to an imagined question from the imaginary audience: “What can we
learn from your journey about writing itself?”

In response, he offers not only new perspectives but even new definitions
of writing—and a new way of thinking about how our own beliefs about
writing have affected the world, and not necessarily for the better.
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