In 'Two words for Joyce', Derrida suggests that Joyce's text is already more powerful in its hypertextual capacities (he doesn't use the term, but that's what it's about) than any super-computer.
I guess he means that there's what he elsewhere calls a 'super-compossibility of meaning'. In that sense, a (real) hypertext is a sort of image of textuality rather than a realisation of it.
What might be more interesting in relation to Derrida's work would be other features of electronic communication: its instantaneity, for example, but also the question of publicity, encryption, viruses and so on. Something about e-mail, for example, makes me write more freely and incautiously than I would in other circumstances (something very noticeable in discussion groups like the Derrida list -- it came as a shock to me to learn that everything posted to the list is printed out and archived at UC Irvine): obviously this is double edged. And maybe you could tell me some things in this context about what it means to publish an electronic journal (presumably more than that it isn't printed on paper).
There's a double logic here we might want to explore, whereby the (in principle democratic) increase in 'communicability' made possible by electronic communication leads to a commensurate increase in 'contaminability' of all sorts, so that advances in communication seem not to lead in any straightforward way to transparency or clarity, still less to equality, but quite possibly to the opposite.
Perhaps something about information technology made it possible for Derrida to formulate things about communication and contamination that turn out to have been around since Plato, and that in a sense philosophy exists to control. These are topics it would be interesting to explore (from G.Bennington).
I guess he means that there's what he elsewhere calls a 'super-compossibility of meaning'. In that sense, a (real) hypertext is a sort of image of textuality rather than a realisation of it.
What might be more interesting in relation to Derrida's work would be other features of electronic communication: its instantaneity, for example, but also the question of publicity, encryption, viruses and so on. Something about e-mail, for example, makes me write more freely and incautiously than I would in other circumstances (something very noticeable in discussion groups like the Derrida list -- it came as a shock to me to learn that everything posted to the list is printed out and archived at UC Irvine): obviously this is double edged. And maybe you could tell me some things in this context about what it means to publish an electronic journal (presumably more than that it isn't printed on paper).
There's a double logic here we might want to explore, whereby the (in principle democratic) increase in 'communicability' made possible by electronic communication leads to a commensurate increase in 'contaminability' of all sorts, so that advances in communication seem not to lead in any straightforward way to transparency or clarity, still less to equality, but quite possibly to the opposite.
Perhaps something about information technology made it possible for Derrida to formulate things about communication and contamination that turn out to have been around since Plato, and that in a sense philosophy exists to control. These are topics it would be interesting to explore (from G.Bennington).
Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/
See that post with different algorithms in metabole
See the journal French Metablog with today different posts
