Leah Henrickson
Leah Henrickson is a recent graduate of the MA programme in the History of the Book at the Institute of English Studies, University of London. Prior to the MA programme, she earned an undergraduate degree in Book & Media Studies from the University of Toronto, where her research focused on the visuality and accessibility of late medieval manuscripts. Leah’s current research interests focus on the visuality of modern printed books, and how (counter)cultural circumstances influence and are influenced by interplay between word and image.
Leah Henrickson is a recent graduate of the MA programme in the History of the Book at the Institute of English Studies, University of London. Prior to the MA programme, she earned an undergraduate degree in Book & Media Studies from the University of Toronto, where her research focused on the visuality and accessibility of late medieval manuscripts. Leah’s current research interests focus on the visuality of modern printed books, and how (counter)cultural circumstances influence and are influenced by interplay between word and image.
Scenarios of the Revolution: Inventory Books as Sites of Countercultural Representation
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a series of visually extraordinary books was published in America: ‘inventory books’. Prolific thinkers such as Marshall McLuhan, R. Buckminster Fuller, Herman Kahn, and Jerry Rubin are only a few of the series’ authors; McLuhan’s The Medium is the Massage (1967) remains a staple of media studies curricula. Inventory books used unconventional visual formats and timely visual references to present nonfiction texts of implicitly and explicitly countercultural ideas, and were mass-produced as affordable mass-market paperbacks. As of yet, they have hardly been subject to comprehensive academic study. They themselves are countercultural, unknown by many, and are becoming more so as time renders their visual references increasingly obscure.
Inventory books did not represent the words of their authors in any definitive form, but instead afforded myriad potential interpretations through their visualities. Readers were responsible for negotiating the jarring, confrontational presentation of content in light of that which was held in their own inner libraries. Readers’ interpretations of these visualities would have been informed by the shared cultural consciousness of the day, and by the individual readers’ understandings of their places within the greater cultural context.
This paper explores how inventory books' visualities reflected the continually shifting cultural and countercultural identities of 1960s/70s America. It argues that, through personalised readings informed by larger cultural narratives, inventory books called social conventions into question, while at the same time affirming the identities and beliefs of those sympathetic to countercultural movements. Indeed, inventory books visually represented the disjointedness of 1960s/70s American culture, and the readers were responsible for imposing new semblances of order upon what they were seeing.
Inventory books did not represent the words of their authors in any definitive form, but instead afforded myriad potential interpretations through their visualities. Readers were responsible for negotiating the jarring, confrontational presentation of content in light of that which was held in their own inner libraries. Readers’ interpretations of these visualities would have been informed by the shared cultural consciousness of the day, and by the individual readers’ understandings of their places within the greater cultural context.
This paper explores how inventory books' visualities reflected the continually shifting cultural and countercultural identities of 1960s/70s America. It argues that, through personalised readings informed by larger cultural narratives, inventory books called social conventions into question, while at the same time affirming the identities and beliefs of those sympathetic to countercultural movements. Indeed, inventory books visually represented the disjointedness of 1960s/70s American culture, and the readers were responsible for imposing new semblances of order upon what they were seeing.