UCLA

Collecting Contingency argues that the means of samizdat production during the classic Soviet samizdat period (1950s-1980s) introduced a different ontological understanding of print, publication, and the book than did official forms of printing in the same era. This alternative ontology resulted in a return to the ambiguous status of print in the early European print era and established forms of authorization, printing, and publication based in collaborative circulation and creative piracy. However, the standards that organize libraries and archives are built on the values of the official printing industry and cannot adequately contextualize the fugitive samizdat text. Due to this shortcoming, samizdat texts are delegitimized and misrepresented by current Western library and archival standards of authorization, description, provenance, and fixity. Failing to adapt standards to take fugitivity into account does not just reify narrow, hegemonic standards of print and knowledge organization, but also risks significant cultural loss.