Pre-print Arab scholars saw written meaning as inherently unstable, not mechanically transparent.

Evidence

It seems to me that before the introduction of printing no Arab writer found these assumptions similarly unproblematic. Writing was not the mechanical representation of an author’s meaning, and in this sense there was no simple ‘presence’ of an author in a text. Authorship, and authority, were far more problematic concerns. Because writing could never unambiguously represent an author’s unambiguous meaning, it follows, no proper Arab scholar would have been interested in the power of the printing press. The problem of the author’s presence in writing, furthermore, corresponded to a problem in the presence of political authority in society. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 472

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to McLuhan/Innis arguments about how communication technology shapes thought and political order, and to Ong on oral vs. literate cultures.
• QUESTION: Is the claim ‘no Arab scholar would have been interested in printing’ historically substantiated, or rhetorical? Worth chasing whether actual Arab reactions to print corroborate this.