Textual domain for Ebooks

A significant feature of hypertext environments is their capacity for inclusion, their construction of a vast and necessarily unfinished collage of documents striving to represent the knowledge (and the agon) of a discipline.

As yet, no boundless writing space exists, so I have had to try to create my own simulacrum of a textual domain. I have tried to exploit hypertext's capaciousness by offering extended passages from some of authors I cite. The current state of copyright law, however, precludes posting works in their entirety (and frankly, scanning or typing that much stuff would have been too tedious and time-consuming anyway). I have, therefore, included less than 10% of any given work to comply with the "fair use" provisions of the law.

Sometimes, all you will want is a standard bibliographical reference -- just enough to enable you can to get the book or article and read it in its entirety, without my noisome interjections, distracting comments, and distorting editorial decisions. Simple references to page numbers will occur in the text and the full bibliographic information will occur on the list of works cited (a link should take you directly from an author's name to the bibliography). An extended passage from the cited work is available whenever a citation is associated with this symbol -- .

There are approximately 11658 nodes and 180.000 links in this hypertext essay.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/ - See that post with different algorithms in metabole - See the journal French Metablog with today different posts -
PHONEREADER Library - - Jean-Philippe Pastor

Sign and referent

Semiology establishes some basic tenets: the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, the system of differences that gives the sign its value, and the conventional codes that operate as prompts for signification, sometimes making it seem rather culture bound.

What is it that frees language from cultural specificity? The arbitrariness of the sign and its repeatability: ah, bold and italics, must be important.

Remember this: a sign does not simply refer to its referent (on the model of re-presentation). A sign is coded according to its system and that’s how it comes to have its particular meanings.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/
See that post with different algorithms in metabole
See the journal French Metablog with today different posts

Extrinsic criticism

Criticism should start looking outside the text to the extra-textual world of real references.

George Orwell’s Animal Farm is a parodic critique of the communist revolution (and by association, all such revolutions). Shakespeare’s King Lear is a not so subtle warning to King James (it was first played to him and his small court) not to lose his throne. What we have come to understand as historicism develops as a way of extending the reach of our literary knowledge so that we can talk about its relation to historical events and processes. This is what we might call extrinsic criticism. The text now has its meaning located outside itself.

What fundamentally we are left with is a defining distinction—that is not itself fully explicable—between fiction or, more generally, rhetoric and reality.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/

See that post with different algorithms in metabole

See the journal French Metablog with today different posts

Intended meaning

Inevitable clash of metaphors in all writing shows too well that language may subvert or exceed an author's intended meaning.

Paul de Man saw language as an endless chain of words, which cannot be closed off to a definitive meaning or reference. The literal and figurative meaning of a text is not easily separated, and the realities posited by language are largely those accepted by the dominant ideology as truthful representations of the world.

Download ebooks on http://www.frenchtheory.com/
See that post with different algorithms in metabole
See the journal French Metablog with today different posts

Primary sources

Hypertext is fundamental to the practice of weblogging.

When bloggers refer to material that exists online, they invariably link to it. Hypertext allows writers to summarize and contextualize complex stories with links out to numerous primary sources.

Most importantly, the link provides a transparency that is impossible with paper. The link allows writers to directly reference any online resource, enabling readers to determine for themselves whether the writer has accurately represented or even understood the referenced piece. Bloggers who reference but do not link material that might, in its entirety, undermine their conclusions, are intellectually dishonest.

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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