Candida Moss (University of Birmingham)
Recent scholarship on writing and literacy in the Roman world has attended to the role of enslaved literate workers in the production of texts (Winsbury, Habinek). Ancient book culture, like much of ancient society, was made possible by the exploited labor of enslaved workers whose voices and contributions are actively erased and silenced (Howley). Much ancient writing involved dictating to secretarial workers who would record what was spoken in shorthand before subsequently expanding the text into a longform draft (Blake). Not only does the compression and expansion of language that takes place as part shorthand dictation create ambiguities in the production of longform texts (Milne), but this process made the low-status scribe a collaborator in the production of textual meaning. Moreover, tachygraphy was non-paideutic form of literacy that was difficult to acquire and culturally coded as servile. Not only did this process create opportunities for creativity, expression and resistance, but the translation of spoken words into shorthand rendered the transcript of the author’s words illegible to those schooled only in paideia. Tachygraphy afforded the scribe some agency and the process of expansion created the possibility for the insertion of “fragments” of resistance into the text (Peralta). The technology of shorthand writing thus creates a parallel system of literacy that undergirds the production of knowledge but is inaccessible to elites.