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Tuesday, April 8
Reading Response & Discussion
| Visitors please note: The reading responses on this page were compiled from an in-class workshop. They are impromptu contributions to this section of our syllaweb -- a work in progress (HLU). |
"Every written text occupies physical space and at the same time generates a conceptual space in the minds of writers and readers" (Bolter, Writing Space 85).
Part II of Writing Space is all about the not-so-innocent interface between physical and conceptual writing spaces. In Bolter's terms, that interface has to do with control, both in the sense of exploring ways of being in control of our own thought and meaning (as opposed to so chaotic as to be meaningless) that provide alternatives to rigid categories and hierarchies; and ways of exerting control over someone else's thought through the medium of symbolic representation. Below, I've listed some topoi in Bolter's argument, and I ask that you choose one (or two, or however many you have time for during this exercise) to respond to, taking into consideration the printed texts I've brought to class and the online resources I've provided links to.
"Electronic writing therefore breaks down the familiar distinctions between the book and such larger forms as the encyclopedia and the library" (88).
Here are three online examples of a hypertext novel (a book?), an online encyclopedia, and a digital library.
"In the electronic writing space all texts are like dramas or musical scores. . . . In this way electronic writing defines a new level of creativity, indeed a myriad of new levels that fall between the apparent originality of the Romantic artist and apparent passivity of the traditional reader" (158-59).
In both print and electronic texts, the reader performs the text although in different ways and to a different degree depending on the medium and the individual text. This phrase also suggests how electronic text allow for greater reader agency, or at least a different kind of agency, than with print text. For example, with hypertext, the reader chooses her/his paths, making decisions at almost every juncture. The reader's performance in electronic text focuses on the making of choices. S/he chooses where to go and when to go, at the click of a button. While some hypertexts allow readers to choose only the paths, others permit readers still greater agency--letting them revise not only the paths but, as Stuart Moulthrope suggests, the "ground" as well. These kinds of texts allow readers not only to transform the order of screens and the variation of links, but also the texts itself, creating an interactive environment. Yet this is not to say that the reader does not perform the text where print media is concerned. In fact, the performance of print allows for a different kind of agency. For instance, the reader of a book can skip to the end to find out how the narrative ends. With hypertext, such a move is impossible because there is no such definitive "ending." Moreover, with print text, the reader can go back and reread whereas with some hypertexts, there is not "return" button in this sense that will enable the reader to go back to the previous window. (Is this true? I'm not entirely sure about this.) (Andrea)
"In each writing technology and in each text, the question is: how and to what extent does the writer control the reader's experience of reading? To what extent does the reader actively participate in choosing his or her path through the text?" (109).
I'm wondering about this control thing and the canon. Bolter writes that "the key [for Plato] is rather the question of control in the new space that writing creates" (111). Later, when he talks about e-text and decon, he seems to fall into a rather uncritical elabloration of electronic forms as embodying deconstructive principles because of their physical nature (bits and bolts) as opposed to poststructural theories of textuality that argue that we need to denaturalize our conceptions of the work, of writing, and thus of "truth." This control part and this anti-canonizing feature of e-text for Bolter is nagging at me and I probably need to spend more time working through it, but I begin at Barthes' ideal of text (which Bolter cites) and ask, isn't Bolter missing something in terms of what DECON is trying to get at? [at least some forms] Namely, that control itself is part of the naturalizing discourses of reader/author/work, and that discourse is central to theorizing what happens when individuals approach a text? In other words, when Bolter makes statements like"in addition to lessening the shock of unstable text, electronic writing offers a new simplicity" (165) isn't he missing the political, social, historical agendas of many deconstructionist/poststructural critics?? Is there a different way to theorize e-text, because I agree with Bolter that e-text needs theoretical explication that engages with the specificity of its digital medium? What about the economies of production, access, technical skill, training, etc. involved in writing digital texts? What about literacies, I guess? (Maureen)
Well, as a novice user, and particularly as a novice user sitting in a Mac lab for almost the first time (being thoroughly habituated to IBM), I can say that from my perspective, the machine is in control, or more accurately, the programs on the machine. I note with interest (and some concern) that I feel very uncomfortable when asked to do something that I don't understand--or, even more unnerving, when I don't even understand WHY I am attempting to do it. My discomfort feels sort of like frustration, but it isn't the same as being frustrated that the thing you want to do is impossible or difficult. In that case, you know what you want; it's factors beyond your control that are getting in the way. This, in contrast, is an impotent frustration, borne of lack of understanding, lack of agency. If understanding and agency are forms of "control," then my frustration is indeed relevant to this discussion--especially since the vast majority of people on this earth are still newbies, if not complete computer virgins.
So let's think about the question, "Who is in control?" from the perspective of the newbie. Every time I learn a new program, I feel, during the initial wave of learning, like the program is in control, and not only in control, but in capricious, even despotic control. Then, when I know a few things, I feel as if I am in control--I am using the program to do things, and the program is subordinate to me. (Paula)
-what is implied in bolter is that one author produces one text-multivoiced yes, but ultimately there is one author in control of the text. though he mentions that the electronic space is a changing and ever evolving medium, he fails to recognise colloborative authorship. anybody can contribute to ongoing dialogue on cyberspace...anybody can now, 'cut', 'paste' ,'take control' (copyright rules are after all only a question, or am I wrong) of texts.
in bolter, there is a suggestion that play between voices and dabbling with intertextuality is 'play'. that seems to me politically naive...as louie suggested, how does 'account' for hate groups. (Shobana).
"The computer permits many structures to coexist in the same electronic text: tree structures, circles, and lines can cross and recross without obstructing one another" (95).
In terms of degree of control, it would seem that the author is most in control of the line, less in control of the tree, and least in control of the circle (or geodetic structure.) The reader's alternatives on the line are to stop or start, move slowly or quickly, move back or forward. In a hierarchy, the reader can choose from among forking linear options, but is otherwise limited in the same way as s/he is by the linear text, and is also working in the branches of the tree planted by the author. In a circle (I prefer sphere) the reader is most in control of navigation, but unless the sphere is the world, and unauthored(?), the control of whose ball it is anyway is still an issue. (Susan)
"A written text is a structure in space that implies a structure in time: writing turns time into space" (107).
"Since there were very few visual cues [in the papyrus roll], the author had to build all textual structure into the words themselves. . . . Gradually the structure became externalized through the development of the paged book, marginal notes, use of various scripts, and other techniques culminating in modern printed typography. . . . [All such externalize structure is] available to the author to delimit the reader's experience of the text. Yet that same structure makes it possible for the reader to exert some control. There is no convenient way for the author to prevent the reader from skipping over one chapter or turning to the back and reading the last page first" (154).
"An antibook like Glas would no longer be an antibook in an electronic edition, because it would work with rather than against the grain of its medium" (117).
Reading hypertext is like trying to "envision a four-dimensional object by looking at several projections in three dimensions. Each projection is a snapshot, and the snapshots much be synthesized to win a sense of the whole" (127).
"[A]n important part of education is learning to read, and the highest purpose of reading is to be in the company of great souls" (William Bennet, qtd in Bolter 150).
"The purpose of humanistic study is to learn what it has meant to be human in other times and places, what it means now, and to speculate about what it ought to mean and what it might mean in the human future. The best texts for this purpose should be determined locally, by local conditions, limited and facilitated by local wisdom" (Rober Scholes, qtd. in Bolter 151).
It seems clear that Bolter has based his book and his theories on the purpose of reading on a wholesale endorsement of recent types of critical theory that reject the value of a canon as well as authorial authority. He appears to confuse acknowledgement of value with deification as when he writes ``The more the Romanitics and their contmeporary followers like Bennett emphasize the greatness and uniqueness of the authors of the canon, the less accessible these authors become. Critical reading becomes more difficult, citicism necessarily muted. The conversation becomes a kind of worship" (Bolter 151). (Bonnie)
I suppose I'm wondering just how far the electronic book will really take us in subverting the authority of a text. Certainly the role of the reader becomes more important, but to what degree is the reader performing a creative or even interpretive act other than that which occurs with a print text? The texts Bolter uses as examples of the new medium all seem to direct the reader in at least a limited number of decisions; although the (Jeff)
Bolter's writing contains a sub-text, no?--in support of the impermanance of things, of the impossibility of defining "reality," perhaps questioning if there is a stable reality at all. He even admits his writing suppports "what the deconstructionists have been saying all along" (130). But Bolter claims "electronic writing will take the sting out of deconstruction as it resorts to theoretical innocnece to the making of literary texts." ????? What exactly is this innocence? I'm all for a more positive literary theory, but Bolter implies over and over that there's a problem hypertext because of its instability. But, what's wrong, anyway with a mutable and malleable medium? (Some nice alliteration here--ha ha.) I don't understand why a text has to be considered so unstable. There's always the "Save As" feature. Instead of replacing texts, they can be expanded. (Vicki)
For more topoi gathered from the chapters in part II of Writing Space, follow these links:
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April 13, 1997