Sometimes when this problem of using hypertext in philosophy is discussed, there is a tendency to think that hypertext is useful when there is a sort of deconstruction of the linear form. What is your opinion about this relation about hypertext and deconstruction?David Kolb - It is a complex issue. You could summarise by saying that in many ways hypertext shows that the things which deconstructive literary theorists and philosophers have been saying about texts are true. It is shows that texts are open, that they cannot be completely closed, that they cannot be completely dominated by the author, that meaning has a certain contingent way of arising, so that it is not totally under the control of anyone, reader or author; those things hypertext demonstrates very rapidly. But it is also true that hypertext stands somewhat opposed to some of the things that are said by deconstructive writers because, in fact, a hypertext is a network, a finite set of relationships; it is something made, it is an artefact. I think many of the authors who sing the praises of hypertext as somehow "the native language of deconstruction" are making a confusion. They are forgetting that there is no pure text, that any kind of presentation, any kind of writing, brings the sort of general textuality they are taking about down to a concrete mode of presentation. There is a dream, after all, of total freedom. There is a dream of a permanent avant-garde situation in writing, but I think the flag of hypertext seems like something that might lead you in the direction of that dream. But only in the direction: the dream is impossible by itself.
Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts-
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