Print capitalism shifted literary authority away from artisanate and peasantry toward elites

Evidence

With the arrival of the printing presses, however, ‘literary’ has come to mean that which we see in printed form, and because of this privileging of print in a predominantly non-literate society, the social weight in the very process of literary production has shifted towards the leisured class and the professional petty bourgeoisie, away from the alternative modes of preservation and transmission which do not involve print and are then involved also in modes of evaluation rather different from those of the print culture. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 502

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Benedict Anderson’s print-capitalism thesis and the broader debate on how print built nations and classes. — connects to: Elites denied creative status to most people’s cultural production under capitalism — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 437; Print capitalism shifted literary production from artisan-peasant life to the leisured classes — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 1127

Related

• Print capitalism shifted literary production from artisan-peasant life to the leisured classes (similarity 0.94)
• Print alone is not revolutionary; capitalism is the decisive factor. (similarity 0.79)
• Elites denied creative status to most people’s cultural production under capitalism (similarity 0.79)