Materialities of text

In this post I will focus primarily on a particular feature of literary works -- their physical character, whether audial or visible.

I shall be pointing out why these features are important in a literary point of view and also sketching certain practical means for elucidating these textual features. This last matter -- the central subject of this post -- is also the most difficult. The methodology I shall be discussing requires the scholar to learn to use a new set of scholarly tools.

One final introductory comment. My remarks here apply only to textual works that are instruments of scientific knowledge. The poet's view of text is necessarily very different. To the imagination the materialities of text (oral, written, printed, electronic) are incarnational not vehicular forms. But for the scientist and scholar, the media of expression are primarily conceptual utilities, means rather than ends; to the degree that an expressive form hinders the conceptual goal (whether it be theoretical or practical), to that extent one will seek to evade or supercede it -- perhaps even, in critical times, to develop new intellectual devices. But good poets do not really quarrel with their tools.

As William Morris famously observed, "You can't have art without resistance in the materials".

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

Network Culture

Among constituencies concerning hypertexts are theorists and researchers interested in the larger effects of network culture.

Of the very large number of studies that have appeared in recent years, I will mention two to illustrate the kinds of scholarship that should rightly fall within the domain of electronic literature. First is Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker's The Exploit, a work that builds on Gilles Deleuze's notion of the control society (Note 105) and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Empire and Multitude (Note 106) to argue that the materiality, rhetorical force, and structure of the network provide the basis for new kinds of political power and oppression while also opening possibilities for new modes of theoretical analysis and political resistance. (Note 107) Complementing their study is Rita Raley's Tactical Media, a brilliant analysis of a systemic shift from strategy to tactics in contemporary political resistance as enacted by a diverse group of artistic computer games, online art works, and art installations. Adrian Mackenzie's Cutting Code: Software as Sociality studies software as collaborative social practice and cultural process. (Note 108) Analyzing a range of technical practices from Unix operating systems to extreme programming, Cutting Code explores how social forms, subjectivities, materialities and power relations entwine in the creation, marketing, and use of software.

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Hypertextual academic humanists

Differences exist between today's hypertextual theories, but they all share several important things in common.

They are all works of academic humanists, who see in the development of electronic writing the realization and popularization of phenomena described in literary theory. They also represent the only serious attempts to date to apply ideas developed in academic circles to electronic publishing. However, the rapid evolution of new media since 1992 and 1993 raises a simple but important question: How well do they explain today's world?

More precisely, how does the technological and commercial development of the World Wide Web challenge hypertext theory? What do the experiences of electronic publishers reveal about the strengths and weaknesses of the literature? Finally, what are the most promising avenues of future research, and what scholarly tools and theories might be profitably applied in their exploration?

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See that post with different algorithms in metabole

See the journal French Metablog with today different posts

Hacking ideology

Access to computers – and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works – should be unlimited and total....

All information should be free... Mistrust authority – promote decentralization... Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position... You can create art and beauty on a computer...

Computers can change your life for the better... sometimes the worse.

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

See that post with different algorithms in metabole

See the journal French Metablog with today different posts