Being summary abstracts constructed by the participants in "HyperLiterature/HyperTheory," a graduate course in the English department at Virginia Tech, spring semester, 1995: Jason Booth, Robert Brown, Anna Carter, Chris Couples (lurker), Joe Dietz, Billy Finley, Amy Freed, Jan Greer, Stefan Hall, Chris Lenart, Rania Lisas (lurker), Tom Martin, John Priestley (lurker), Kim Richards, Heather Sims, Hyoejin Yoon
Davis,et. al. "Towards An Integrated Information Management Environment With Open Hypermedia Systems." University of Southhampton, 1992.
The University of Southhampton has created a system (in process since 1989) called Microcosm. The development of Microcosm arose as a result of a question which asked if hypermedia is so effective for linking together and navigating through information, why isn't this process used in more data systems? The researchers found that the cost of upgrading a system to handle hypermedia properties often exceeds its benefits. Rather than allow hypermedia to remain as a software package, the next generation of hypermedia should exist as an operating system, with the on-line capacity to add links and navigation tools as desired; furthermore, this system needs to be user-friendly in terms of intervention and functionality. This system has been adapted through ASCII so that it may be utilized in the Dynamic Data Exchange environment of Windows, the Apple events of Macintosh, and the sockets of Unix.
Microcosm concerns itself more with the larger aspects of hypermedia over hypertext. The user interacts with the Microcosm environment through a viewer; a viewer may be any application for the manipulation of data. Actions with the data are sent through the viewer to a simple chain structure of filters which comprise the Filter Management System. These filters can block the data, pass the data, or change the data. By creating the Microcosm environment in a system of modules, it is easy for any mid-level programmer to create new filters. After the filtering process, the data arrives at the Link Dispatcher, a type of central station where any available actions are brought to the user's attention. The user can follow links, make links, or compute dynamic links. The researchers discuss how a similar system (Sun's Link Service) exhibited conflicts with an awareness of applications for the viewer environment. In order to avoid some of these problems, Microcosm couples its links with three types of viewers: fully aware (a large group of ten viewers which integrate with text, bitmaps, video, audio, Windows Meta files, and rich text), partially aware (external source applications -such as Microsoft Word/Word for Windows - which have been outfitted with an ASCII patch to the Microcosm operating environment), and unaware (in which Microcosm monitors the clipboard environment for data).
The system creates non-intrusive links. The repository of information about these links are stored in linkbases, or linked databases. Although Microcosm can be structured for any variety of links, the three most common are specific (from a certain object source to a destination), local (from any object source to a destination), and generic (from any object source to any destination). Although some of these links have static destinations, other open types of links are possible, such as text retrieval, relevance, manually created, computed, history, and mimics. The researchers of Microcosm have discovered that users, even when given heavily linked documents or richly buttoned toolbars, still significantly use a directory structure for data access. By creating a Virtual Notebook System, document browsing is made more effecient.
Microcosm seeks to go beyond the limits of closed hypersystems, such as StorySpace or Digital Chisel, by creating an underlying, rhizomatic substructure which joins disparate applications. By structuring the data in these ways, Microcosm incorporates more of a cosmological viewpoint, using the microverse of the escalating computer environment to imitate the interconnectedness of the macroverse.
The HTML document this abstract was adapted from was written in an outline/directory structure with hotlinks to the pre- and proceeding sections. Additionally, the footnotes were also linked to source listings.
Stefan Hall
gopher://english.hss.cmu.edu/0F-2%3A998%3AIdentity%2C Privacy
The most exacting form of identity on the internet is your email address which is composed of your login name followed by the complete address. When email is sent, the receiver can trace the route toward its destination that the message passed through. Infrequently the route can be altered but it is less infrequent for an individual to just change the beginning point. Changing the beginning point would then simultaneously change all of the points in between making it virtually impossible to trace the message. Identity is important because it is linked with privacy and security. The very nature of the internet could allow others to ruin someone's reputation through either hoaxes or forgery. There is a lot of potential for abuse.
On the other hand, the loss of identity could remove prejudices that exist outside of the internet. Putting its users on an equal footing with each other. This could be a very appealing feature. Identity is extremely important in global economies, especially in government programs and law enforcement. Decisions that are made now about identity on the internet will be far-reaching.
One's email address itself holds certain potential information. There are suffixes in an email address that could tell about the individual. The system administrator could provide information on an individual. Programs themselves, such as 'finger sites' could help find out information.
This information could then be used for a number of economical, social, and political reasons.
But it is very hard to keep track of users that could have multiple accounts and change their frequency among accounts. Also the email address does not always correspond with the user. Anyone with that accounts information could send email from that address. People tend to change their addresses as they move to new areas. The standards on email found in RFC-822 are still at an early stage of development.
The future of identification on the internet could be through facial images and voice. Although at present this is not very feasible. 'Digital signatures' might also evolve as new cryptographic techniques. As new ways of maintaining identity are being developed, new ways of maintaining anonymity are also being developed.
The essay is organized topographically.
Joe Dietz
Krueger, Myron. "Arti Reality" Artificial Reality II. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1991.
Myron W. Krueger's Artificial Reality II is an overview of artificial reality - "the ultimate form of interaction between humans and machine"(p.vii) from the early 1960's until the present day. Mostly the book is a detailed analysis and explanation of the many different artificial and virtual reality projects that have happened over the past thirty years. Although the text seems to mostly concentrate on these projects and people's reactions to them, Krueger does not completely focus on them.
The text is also a study of the interaction between technology and art, which Krueger refers to as "Expanding Art". He links the relatively new notion of interactive computer art to the Dada movement of the early twentieth century, where traditional assumptions of what art were challenged. When artists rejected the traditional elements of art, new ideas began to appear. "Most important is a feeling among artists that they need not be creators of objects," writes Krueger. "They are no longer judged exclusively by their willingness to forego control that constitutes a contribution"(p.6). The artist surrenders control and allows the participant or viewer - to take an active part in the creation of art.
As I said before, most of the work deals with the actual technology - the development and creation of early virtual reality projects such as "Glowflow", "Metaplay" and "Videoplace" - the first interactive virtual reality programs. Later the text discusses the new virtual reality technology that is being developed today. These include the Data gloves, goggles and body suits worn by a participant. Krueger also deals with other elements, such as the new medium and its implications, as well as seemingly insignificant points like "What to Wear in an Artificial Reality."
The study of the combination of art and technology lies in the chapter "Art and Technology Today" where Krueger explores how technology has changed our lifestyle today, and how we might expect art to transform as well:
"We are living in an age in which technology has transformed many human activities. We might expect that, during such a period, the arts would have changed as much as any other field. Instead, the established arts can be regarded as holdouts against technological change."(p.210)Krueger goes onto explain how the Futurist were the first to integrate art and technology, and how virtual reality that fuses science and art is being developed today. He tells of computer programs that "become the artist" and draw for the viewer, as well as programs that piece words together to form poetry. Other examples include theater performed in a virtual reality environment where the viewer has the choice of either watching the staged dancers, or the "real" show, which can be seen through his or her goggles. He also notes cybernetic sculptures built in the late 1960's that responded to the viewer. This new perception of art is unique in the way the authority of the artist is diminished. What is important is the interaction the viewer or participant feels in the work.
In the chapter "Implications of the Art Form" Krueger writes on these interactions, and the consequences of them. "The static image is dead!"(p.84) he writes. This new interactive art must slip past the passive viewer and actively involve him or her. Here he explores the new relationships developed between the artist and the viewer. Questions pertaining to interactive are asked: "Is the interactive exhibit art, or is it just a passing social statement - an aesthetic one-liner?"(p.91) This new form of art, Krueger holds, "opens a new dimension for the arts just at the moment when the power of existing forms seems to be on the decline"(p.99).
Krueger's artificial reality is a reality that may someday reach the point where "artificial reality and physical reality blurs"(p.264). The interactive medium being developed now is only the beginning. This new reality will affect not only those who work in a completely technological and scientifically oriented field, but also those of us who wish to pursue our passion elsewhere.
Billy Finley
Landow, George. "Changing Texts, Changing Readers: Hypertext in Literary Education, Criticism, and Scholarship." Reorientations. Ed. Bruce Henricksen and Thais Morgan Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990.
George Landow's essay "Changing Texts, Changing Readers: Hypertext in Literary Education, Criticism, and Scholarship" is part of the collection Reorientations edited by Bruce Henricksen and Thais Morgan. Seeking those educators who have been "engaged in trying out new directions for understanding cultural texts," the editors have compiled a collection of essays that point towards new directions in pedagogical practices for the 1990s and beyond. An innovator in the application of electronic technology in education, Landow discusses the pedagogical effects of introducing a hypertext system into undergraduate course work. He bases his analysis on his experience with the hypertext software project Context32 developed by the Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship of Brown University. Context32transformed English 32, a literature survey class, into a pilot course for the new system. Replacing the books traditionally used in the class, Context32 presented the primary texts and supplemental information within an interlinked, spatially arranged, hypertext format. Suddenly, students had easy access to a wealth of information that before was the cache of the well-seasoned scholar.
Landow advocates the pedagogical application of hypertext technology chiefly on his assertion that reading in the hyper milieu promotes the activities of critical thinking. Critical thinking, as he defines it, is the process of contextualization--situating a given phenomenon within a larger framework of reference. Context32 , by presenting all information within a matrix, allows students to view authors, texts, and literary traditions as part of greater cultural movements. As students enter the software program for a reading, they encounter overview diagrams, spatial maps (similar to the tree diagram perspective of Story Space) that position loci of information within the larger informational network. Referencing these information maps, readers can orchestrate their own interpretive searches through the material.
As to the results of the pilot program, Landow cites data collected by the Office of Program Analysis, a group that closely monitored the project throughout its classroom application. He reports that the greatest benefit of the hypertext learning environment showed in the 300 percent increase in student participation. The nature of the commentary changed as well; students tended to include more biographical references to the authors and historical references relevant to the time period. Student writing for final exam essays displayed a level intellectual sophistication not widely attained before the advent of the hypertext system.
Landow then proceeds to broaden his examination of hypertext to include assessment of its potential to realize aspects of contemporary critical theory. Hypertext enables readers to implement Derridian processes of decentering and reinstating new centers of reference. The overview diagrams of Context32 allow students to pursue an author-centered examination or a text-based examination while at any moment following a tangent to another location in the web of cultural context. Instantly the diagram alters to relocate the tangent as the new center of investigation. The ease of traveling in and out of individual texts possible with hypertext technology facilitates the implementation of intertextual study. Consequently, the notion of text as fixed entity reinforced in print culture begins to break down, as does the clear delineation between reader and writer. If we accept Bolter's definition of writing as a matter of organizing topics, as does Landow, then a student's purposeful navigation through a hypertext becomes an act of writing.
Landow offers a purely positive evaluation of hypertext as an educational instrument. Believing the best form of education to be learning that is student-initiated, Landow finds that students placed in the hypertext environment can more readily assume the role of scholar actively associating the text at hand with a larger base of reference without. Seeing Context32 as only the first step in educational applications possible in the future, Landow reports that he has already begun to enlarge the current hypertext system to include information used in other English courses, and he urges for its cross over into other disciplines in order to create a corpus of cultural information relevant to a variety of studies.
Robert Brown
Lateiner, Joshua S. "Of Man, Mind and Machine: Meme-Based Models of Mind and the Possibility for Consciousness in Alternate Media." http://www.dataspace.com. Lateiner Dataspace: Visualization, Simulation, Dataspace, 1992.
"Of Man, Mind and Machine: Meme-Based Models of Mind and the Possibility for Consciousness in Alternate Media" is an essay dealing with the theory that information is an autonomous entity with needs to reproduce and multiply like a living organism. In his essay, Joshua S. Lateiner argues that information is embodied by "the concept of memes, ideas capable of replicating" (Introduction). From this premise, Lateiner not only begins an epistemological but an ontological and cosmological discussion of existence in terms of the infosphere.
Lateiner argues that memes have driven human evolution as a means to gain a physical presence in the world. He points out that humans are weak when compared to other animals when examined from a purely physical aspect, but the human capacity for programming, which he refers to as "virtual wiring," surpasses all other known organisms. From this premise, he proposes that memes have evolved humans to be physical manifestations of the infosphere. He then reasons that cyberspace is the next evolutionary advance for meme habitat. Working with their current physical forms, Lateiner concludes that the memes seek a better extension of the infosphere through the cyberspace concept. In his words, " cyberspace is any electronic, physical manifestation of the infosphere, the ethereal realm of all information" (Memes and the Infosphere). For him, cyberspace will eventually represent the sum of human knowledge. He points to the current success of computer networks as evidence of this evolution.
Having made these observations, Lateiner begins an epistemological discussion of the thought process. He envisions "that all thought processes are composed of cycles of queries, and responses" (Virtual Wiring). He then postulates that a brain not completely isolated will begin to execute these thought processes outside of its own biological realm. When this realm beyond the biological becomes the realm of the computer and computer networks, Lateiner considers that it is no longer possible to center the focus of thought in the brain, since the electronic realm is capable of caring out thought processes like the human brain.
Given this concept of memes and humans being no more than physical manifestations of the infosphere, Lateiner concludes that humans are no more than information. Further, he conjectures if it is possible for information to move from the biological to the electronic realm, then it is possible to comprehend that the human conscious is not tied to the biological brain. Thus he finds that it is possible for the human mind to exist in alternate media.
Jason Booth
The three authors attempt to break apart various issues surrounding the hypertext realm, such as its educational uses, its creation, and its evolution. They break these issues down into separate chapters and further subdivide the chapters into different topics, designating what page each different topic within a particular chapter starts on. In this way their layout is very linear and quite the opposite of their subject matter, a hypertextual document. Yet, the authors have integrated into their linear book epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter, which is one way that a paged book can utilize the linked concept behind a hypertext. The authors have also made an attempt to link ideas by including references within the text to similar concepts elsewhere in the book. In this way the reader can use the presented references in a hypertextual way to access further information concerning a subject.
Within the section that I analyzed "How Did We Get Here", the authors introduce linearly what they mean by the term hypertext, what a hypertext is, why a hypertext might be important, and set hypertext into a historical perspective by highlighting where it got its beginnings.
The authors begin this section by presenting their stance on the hypertext environment. They point out that it is not their intention to analyze when the hypertext will replace the traditional book, but rather to investigate which form is best to present the information, the paged book or the hypertext document. It is their desire that the form of presentation of information suit the information that is being presented. In this way the authors avoid getting into philosophical debates about the future of hypertext but rather center their discussions toward a more individual and practical perspective which considers the purpose of hypertext as a tool which enables people to gain information in order to complete a given task. From this perspective then, the authors find the primary concern about hypertext is that it should be used only when it is the best medium for effectively and efficiently gathering information that will lead to the completion of a task.
The authors then move on to a definition of a hypertext. They define a hypertext as a system which consists of "nodes (or chunks) of information and links between them" (p2) which are controlled by a machine. They point out that there are no rules the govern what gets linked to what, and that this inability on the readers part to determine when there will be a link is one dilemma that is not a part of a standard paged book.
The authors point out that the major contribution of the hypertext is that, due to the way it organizes and accesses information, it has the potential to reshape society since it will change the way that society develops and distributes information. They point out that hypertext will ultimately "alter the way in which we read, write and organise [sic.] information" (p.6). The authors, in their discussion of how hypertext will change society, question the assumption by Beeman et al. (1987) and others that the hypertext will create a generation that will think non-linearly due to the way that information is presented, through a hypertext. The authors' questioning of this stance seems to emerge from their previously stated position that paged books, as a way of gathering information, will exist for generations to come.
The authors conclude this section with a historical overview of the hypertext. They point out that the concept of, as well as research about, hypertext systems has been around since the 1960's, but that it is merely modern technology, and particularly the computer, that has enabled the implementation of the hypertext environment. Thus one should not consider hypertext a particularly new idea. They enumerate the history of the hypertext by citing Vannevar Bush's article "As We May Think" as the piece that gave birth to the hypertext concept. Within his essay, Bush devised the concept of a 'memex' device which would store information in such a way as to link related information together upon retrieval. The machine allowed for 'associative indexing', one of the primary components of the hypertext, but the authors also point out that Bush saw this form of indexing as the most natural way to organize since that is how he saw the mind as organizing information. The authors attribute the term "hypertext" to Ted Nelson who coined the name over 25 years ago. The authors also enumerate Nelson's Xanadu project in which the hypertext becomes a way to store and access interconnected information that is contained on one giant system. With Nelson's system all subject matter would be interconnected within one vast web. The authors also cite Doug Engelbart as having an impact upon the ideas behind the hypertext. They point out that since the 1960's Engelbart has seen the hypertext as a way of "amplifying human intellect" (p.9), in that one could achieve more through the use of hypertext than could otherwise be gained without it. The authors point out that their goal in highlighting the beginning ideas behind hypertext, as well as how those ideas diverged, is to show that a hypertext does not have one distinct definition but actually holds many different definitions that lead to many different purposes for the hypertext. This point is one which is important to the authors because it reveals that since there are so many different viewpoints behind a hypertext that there will inevitably be different types of hypertexts all serving different goals.
Heather Sims
Miller describes the novel as a chain of displacements, in which actual or "real" events and people are displaced into the fictitious constructions of narrator, characters and the narrative itself. Miller cites the effect of this displacement to be that works of fiction have traditionally been viewed as using or creating an alternate form of language and representation, separate from the language used to describe non-fiction events or "real" experience.
Miller then explores the authorial view that in order to suppress this displacement, the novel may be structured in several "realistic" forms: as a collection of letters, as memoirs, as manuscripts, as autobiography, as journalism, or, most importantly, as a form of history. Such counter-displacement creates a sense of verisimilitude in the writing that is usually associated with non-fiction forms of writing and thereby, in masking its status as fiction, "liberates" it (457).
Miller cites Henry James' view that a novel "can only be taken seriously by its readers if it pretends to be what it is not" (457). Miller then extends James' assertion, and questions that if fiction is assumed to depend on an historical basis for legitimacy, then what happens to the novel when that historical basis is removed? It is exactly that historical basis that lends a linear structure and a unifying purpose or sense of individuality to a novel; without the assumption of an historical basis, the traditional form of the novel collapses. James' view of the novel demonstrates that the notion of "organic form in the novel" is connected to Western culture's views of and assumptions about history. Such assumptions about history might be described as concerning the notions of origin and end, of unity, of reason, or selfhood or consciousness, of homogeneity and linearity, and of representation and truth.
Putting into question any of the stated assumptions about history puts into question all of them as well as the form of the novel itself. Miller notes that the novel serves to deconstruct assumptions about "realism" in fiction as well as naive notions about history and the writing of history. Miller declares that "to call attention to this self-defeating turning back of the novel to undermine its own ground is the chief point of this paper" (462), and, therefore, he spends most of the remaining space of the essay discussing George Eliot's Middlemarch in order to accomplish this. His close reading of Middlemarch not only reveals the assumptions about history he had previously identified but also shows the effect of dismantling the traditional, metaphysical system used to understand both the novel and history. This metaphysical system is replaced by new notions; for example, linearity is replaced by repetition, difference, discontinuity, and openness; form is shown to be inorganic, acentered, and discontinuous; and meaning is generated through juxtaposition of plots.
Amy Freed
Nelson argues that, in today's technological/information age, eventually "computers [will] become articles as casual as fashion watches" (43). When this occurs, as Nelson adamantly believes it will, literature and literary studies will undergo a paradigm shift away from traditional print media. (The word 'paradigm', as used by Thomas Kuhn, indicates an idea so ingrained in the way people think that they are not aware of its influence over them.) This paradigm shift has its basis in Nelson's concept of 'hypertext', a term he sees as indicating extension and generality. The new paradigm that Nelson foresees is based on his assertion that "THE PURPOSE OF COMPUTERS IS HUMAN FREEDOM" (44). Nelson predicts that all information will be gathered in a common, unified pool from which anyone can access anything with no red tape. Such a huge construct needs some sort of a viable economic basis in order to operate, and Nelson proposes that 'automatic royalty' will fulfill that need. (However, he never explains in detail how this 'automatic royalty' could operate.) Access is the key here. Nelson says that universal access to a unified pool of information will "make the world safe for smart children, so that all children are safe to be smart" (51). Such a huge information pool reflects the way in which Nelson believes that thinking and writing operate.
According to Nelson, writing consists of a "structured complex of thought" (45), which he calls a 'structangle, that the writer wishes to communicate. A structangle is a web-like interconnection of ideas and associations that lacks any definitive sequence. For conventional publishing, the structangle must be broken into sequential blocks with a clear beginning and end, a process unlike the way in which Nelson believes thought works. Nelson believes that this kind of sequencing is a conspiracy on the part of editors and publishers and in no way reflects how people actually read, which is generally in a nonsequential fashion.
The big step that Nelson's proposed information pool takes beyond his idea of hypertext is the presence of 'intercomparison tools' used to compare complex structures in depth, whether these structures are sequential or not. Intercomparison tools allow a reader to see how each structure relates to others and to find alternatives in the organization of material. Such tools can enable readers to perform deeper analysis of texts by comparing several different versions of a writer's piece at the same time, and can help writers by showing them the various stages that a given piece has undergone. Hypertext is itself a simple form of intercomparison tool, as are most advanced word processors. Nelson mentions 'zippered lists' as a possible form of intercomparison tool, but he never specifies what a 'zippered list' is.
The main difficulty that impedes the growth of the universal information pool is a paradigm problem - people still, as far as Nelson is concerned, have a deep misunderstanding of hypertext and simply cannot yet grasp the magnitude of his proposed InfoPool (my term, not Nelson's). Another problem lies in the question of how to merge individual hypertexts and hypermedia constructs into a unified literature. In other words, how do we take documents from different places, made with different software, using different graphics and organize them all into something that anyone can access from different places and using different machines. Nelson never mentions the problem of people using different languages, but this difficulty is probably very real as well. The third main problem that Nelson sees involves essentially doing away with editors. In a universal access InfoPool, all participants should be able to 'publish' whatever they please without fear of anyone denying them on the basis of someone's perceived ideal of what constitutes good and bad contributions.
Nelson's proposed InfoPool is based on his definitions of 'document' and 'literature'. A document is an information package created by someone at a given time. This definition assumes that a document has a creator, an owner, and a date of creation. Literature is a connected system of documents. The InfoPool that Nelson sees would consist of all literature, hence he terms the pool 'the docuverse'. The docuverse bears great similarity to literature as it is typically viewed now - a system of studying and storing individual documents and following interconnections. In critical papers, scholars cite each other as well as the literary sources that they discuss. So, such interconnections already exist, but the difference between this traditional definition of literature and the docuverse of hypertext lies in accessibility. Everyone will be able to see anything in the docuverse, whereas only select people really have access to very much in our current well of information. Certainly, no one has complete access.
Nelson has termed his quest for the docuverse 'The Xanadu Project'. The central idea of Xanadu involves 'transclusion.' Nelson describes 'transclusion' as keeping the integrity of an original document while allowing freedom of usage/citation via hypertextual links. In other words, any user is free to arrange the document to fit his/her purposes, but the original remains the same. This original can be copied, and the copy can be altered by anyone. Here is where ownership enters the picture. According to Nelson, only the "original owner has a right to the original name and author-name unmodified, the stranger must find another designation" (56). So, some of our current ideas of authority and copyright will remain in the docuverse. Nelson remains silent on how exactly such rules could be enforced and upheld.
In review, the purpose of computers is human freedom; the purpose of hypertext is overview and understanding; the objective of Xanadu is "to make a new world" (56-7). Nelson is ambitious and optimistic in his vision of the docuverse. He refers to this as his '2020 vision' (2020 is the year by which he believes the docuverse will be reality), but remains vague on some important concerns - notably the implementation of unrestricted access, law enforcement in the docuverse, and how exactly automatic royalty operates.
Marc Petersen
Riddel begins by identifying the problems of defining an American literature because the goal is nearly impossible. In order to define itself, American literature attempts to make itself new and different. However, when we consider current theoretical assumptions about "newness" we realize that creating a new idea is not possible and even so impossible it is silly. Riddel also stresses that striving for any newness assumes that we can also create something that is whole or complete. Riddel continues to analyze Olsen, Pound, Fenollosa, and Eliot's works in order to explain the complex nature of literature. He concludes the project of American literature is to build up ideas so that they can be deconstructed, shifted and changed. The goal is not the final answer or product, but it is the process of shifting and redefining.
Riddel cites how poetic movements are all connected and related to the ones before from Emerson to Imagism to Cubism. He calls these transitions decenterings because we cannot trace line from Emerson to any other later movement, but we can attempt to describe the shifting of theoretical ideas. He also cites Olsen often, describing his assumptions and foundations in the work _Call Me Ishmael_, one that he spends several pages summarizing in light of his thesis, the assumption that the beginning of the world was not a set notion, but chaos. This site of origin is not static and universal. This chaotic image then creates a metaphor for how we should theorize as well. Riddel returns to Olsen later in the essay and focuses on Olsen's location of "breath" as an important element of poetry. Breath indicates that poetry is oral and presentational. But Riddel also sees breath as a spacing and likens this spacing to Derrida: "Spacing for Derrida is an irruptive function of writing of marks or grammatic indications which signify the displacement of the sign by a following sign" (353). All of these ideas are then linked to playing and differance , a serious of many "decentered repetitions" (354).
Riddel also cites the work "The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry" by Ernest Fenollosa. The essay is important because it recognizes a duality of meaning for characters, translating into a duality for all language and signs. According to Riddel, Fenollosa describes the complexity of Chinese and asserts that the abstract nature of Western language and writing constructs a frame of object-oriented rationale, a frame that permeates all of our theories. Riddel counters some of Fenollosa's assumptions that lead Fenollosa to say that Western language pales while the Chinese is more natural.
Riddel explains the importance of the "presentational" according to Pound and Fenollosa. An idea that is "presentational" is not a privileged reading, but an interpretation. Echoing Derrida and others, he emphasizes differences that "like a transistor an electrical circuit, it signifies the order of a discontinuous repetition" (336). Riddel explains that Pounds images are not fixed, but ones that are constantly in transition. This transition displaces the reader from the familiar conventions of writing:
The praxis of the moving image puts in question the idea of the unified or autotelic text, or the thought of poetic closure. It also resists the possibility of a text commanded by any one of its elements: a controlling theme, a privileged point of view, authorial intentionality, image cluster, or central symbol. (345)This moving image or repetitions and constant decentering forces us to create a different framework.
Overall, this essay employed theory and literature from many different author including Pound, Eliot and Derrida. It is relevant to our study and my final project because it asks the reader to construct or consider a different set of assumptions for ordering the world. I hope to somehow create this framework, or some moving image of one and apply it to Renaissance poems in a hypertext space. I want to do more than present old information in a new medium that is based on a different set of assumptions, but I also want to actually apply the theories to my field of interest.
Jan Greer
In the chapter Suture, Silverman examines the ways the notion of suture, initially a psychoanalytic term, is adopted into the discourse of film theoreticians as a means of analyzing cinematic constructions of subject positions. This chapter draws together the theories of Benveniste, Lacan, Freud and Althusser in order to explore the ideological underpinnings and potential for resistance inherent in moments of suture.
The term suture was initially coined by Jacques Alain Miller, a student of Lacans, to describe the moment the subject enters into language. According to Miller, in a typically Lacanian move, the realm of discourse - - the symbolic order - - constantly poses a lack or a gap which the subject must fill at the expense of having access to its Being. Specifically, as soon as the subject identifies itself with a given signifier - - a name, the pronouns I and You - - the subject enters into language through this identification, but because language mediates the subjects construction of self, the subject no longer has unmediated access to its Being. (In Lacanian terms, Being describes the realm of the needs and the drives, a sense of primordial and endless desire for the plenitude of the Other that can never be attained).
For Lacan, subjectivity only exists in and through language. Silverman draws a parallel between this notion of subjectivity and that of Emile Benveniste. Benveniste asserts that there is no such thing as subjectivity outside of specific discursive moments. He points out that the terms I and You have no referents except contextually and discursively. The difference Silverman highlights between Benvenistes and Lacans ideas is that for Lacan subjectivity, however mediated, exists outside of particular discursive moments; for Benveniste the subject is perpetually reconstructed moment to moment based on discursive situations. Silverman deems this perpetual movement and change in subjectivity, and the potential it opens for occupying multiple subject positions simultaneously, a means of possibly creating new kinds of subjectivities. This in turn allows for moments of agency because it challenges a construction of the patriarchal symbolic order as monolithic.
Mapping the appropriations of the term suture into cinematic theories, Silverman points to theorists who explore the complex relationship between castration anxiety, the Other, and the subject positions created for the viewers of a film. The work of cinematic enunciation (the technological means of producing a film) is to organize the viewing subject around a threatened lack (for example, the absence of what the camera does not image at a given time, the absence created by the shot/reverse- shot formations, the absence intimated each time one shot cuts to the next), and through this lack, to interrupt the illusory feelings of plenitude, wholeness, and mastery, thus creating a desire for this plenitude. Because of the way it promotes this desire to cover over or disavow lack ( a lack which is equated with castration anxiety), cinematic shots, fields, and formations become a way of suturing meaning to hide or heal the wound of the castrating lack intimated by the absences which give rise to cinematic signification. Narrative provides another means of both creating and covering over lack. As soon as the viewing subject identifies with the point of a view of a character in the fiction, or with the perspective of the omniscient camera, the suture has been successful and, as when the subject enters language, the subject participates in meaning discursively at the expense of itself. This castrating coherence, this definition of a discursive position for the viewing subject which necessitates not only the loss of being, but the repudiation of alternative discourses, is one of the chief aims of the system of suture(206).
Silverman finds the psychoanalytic underpinnings of theories of suture which echo Freud and Lacan potentially too totalizing in that both theorists construct the symbolic order, or culture, as monolithic and hence universally oppressive. To counter this totalizing, futile view of the ideological structure of subjectivity, Silverman draws on the ideas of Althusser. Althusser defines the way ideology defines subject positions for subjects as a hailing, an interpellation. This does not foreclose on the notion of multiple and even contradictory hailings/interpellations, which in turn allows for a diffused notion of subjectivity conducive to agency. Having drawn together these ideas in this way, Silverman opens a space for thinking about female subjectivity, and the close of her chapter focuses on how feminist film theorists have shown that whether suture is taken in its most specialized or its broadest sense it always implies a sexual differentiation . . . [and] it is precisely at the point where suture joins with female subjectivity that it is most vulnerable to subversion(236).
Kim Richards
Smith, Catherine F. "Reconceiving Hypertext." Evolving Perspectives on Computers and Composition Studies. Eds. Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe. Urbana: NCTE, 1991. (224-252).
Smith finds contemporary theory of hypertext lacking in the consideration of social and cultural context of cognition. She calls for a more speculative and exploratory theory to supplement existing theory, which she sees as hampered by its being narrowly objective. She notes that most theorists' and technicians' conception of connectivity deals with the physical connection of computers on a network and not with the discursive situation of the user.
She explores the gendered implications of virtual culture by interfacing contemporaries Vannevar Bush and Virginia Woolf, Mary Daly and Ted Nelson. She throws in architect Christopher Alexander's observation that "irregularities are the functional origins of form. . . ." (232), suggesting that, since design must always take context into consideration, and contexts are rarely ideal, rational systems, computer system design should take the social context heterogeneity of its users as an operative basis, rather than as so many anomalous obstacles to be ignored or circumvented.
Smith joins Lanham in citing "knowledge work/play" as the new paradigm offered by hypertext. She asks some helpfully basic questions: is knowledge conscious? is knowledge individual? is knowledge direct? Knowledge work/play clearly lends itself to the discovery of knowledges that are unrecognized, collective, and incidental.
In her concluding remarks, she calls for an approach to hypertext that enables the user to initiate a relationship of co-evolution with the system. "As new knowledge emerges, the user reconfigures the system to go from there" (243).
John Priestley