As Lorraine Piroux notes in her essay “The Encyclopedist and the Peruvian Princess,” print technologies emerging between 1660 and 1780 rendered smaller and smaller books, including the “sextodecimo,” in which each sheet of the printer's paper is folded sixteen times. In addition, technologies such as standardized type and the inventions of the dash and indentation gave rise to an increasing uniformity and legibility of texts.

Neither the legible nor the illegible text mimics the world. But the enigmas that are not suppressed by legibility return the visual to the visceral, a way of looking back, at, and of, rather than through. For instance, the Mayan Codices consist of large sheets of deerskin or fig paper folded like a screen. Each fold is divided into grids of interrelated glyphs, astrological charts, and color-coded illustrations. The earliest instances of writing are indistinguishable from painting and mathematics.