HyperCritTexticism
Or, how
I learned to start
writing in the rhizome
by
Drew Davidson
Or, in other words, why have I written the primary node hypertextually?
And why do I consider a textual, linear version to be a
secondary artifact of the first? The answer to these questions
can be found, implicitly, through the experience of this
hypertextual node. It is in between all the pages. It is
the hypertextual, rhizomatic linkings that weave these
pages together in a diversity of layers and simultaneously
open it up to the almost infinite world wide web, where
there is no there there. It is in the dynamic reading/writing
experience, where readers have more overt control to "read" as
they choose. And the writer can continually, and performatively,
update the document. It is a living document in which the
process allows the content to grow and change as long as
it is attended to. It never has to be completed as long
as the author (and others) continue to add to it.
So, I could have attempted to write this as a
more standard text. But it would most certainly not be the
same critique, and it may even be lesser for the difference.
Hypertext criticism can be one of two things: a discursive
text critiquing some hypertext, or a hypertext itself, in
the form of the object critiqued. This node is an argument
for the latter through example.
"What is a critic to do? The answer, finally,
must be write in hypertext itself" (Landow, 36). "The
border-violating collage-writing of [hypertext] offers a
form of academic discourse capable of emphasizing imagination,
discovery, and unexpected crossovers" (39).
Textual discourse is a fine standard and I am
not arguing for its end, but for the expansion of critical
discourse into hypertext. Hypertext combines some of the
characteristics of text and peformance into a new and unique
experience. Like text, hypertext is a document that can be
referenced and reviewed time and again. Like performance,
it is dynamic and ephemeral, allowing the user to literally
experience something anew each and every time. And it also
exists within its own limits. You are currently confined
to experience a hypertextual web page while sitting in front
of your computer. Granted, there are wireless applications
and other exceptions, but for the time being, if you are
reading this, you are more than likely sitting at your computer.
I have chosen to create this the primary node
hypertextually. I then mapped the hypertext node to a secondary,
textual node. It is my belief that the text is a more static
artifact of the dynamic hypertext. In the secondary version,
ideas and web pages that are hypertextually linked and just
a click away from each other become distanced from each other
through the linear form of the text. Like text and performance,
I believe that hypertext is enabling new and unique modes
of exploration and knowledge for critics to struggle within
and benefit from. So, while the content of my node is important,
I truly believe that the form of it is important as well.
This node is a minute illustration of what hypertext may
be able to add to our knowledge.
The rhizome of hypertext enables unique explorations
and new modes of critiquing, communicating, teaching and
learning. Deleuze and Guattari note the rhizome, "has
multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight," and
it, "connects any point to any other point, and its
traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature;
it brings into play very different regimes of signs, and
even nonsign states. The rhizome is reducible neither to
the One nor the multiple... It is composed not of units but
of dimensions, or rather directions in motion" (21).
The textual version is an artifact mapped from the hypertext node.
In looking at them together, I think the textual version
is the lesser of the two versions. I believe that this
has to do with the fact I was engaging in a different type
of writing that does not translate well into linear, textual
discourse. The secondary version becomes a textual exquisite
corpse, pieced together from a variety of perspectives
and ins and outs from the rhizome of the web. The hypertextual
ideas become more severed and separated from each other.
"Hypertheory is characterized by spatial
metaphors" (Schmundt, 314). "If you truly believe
in hypertext then you must be prepared for those who believe
that we have not arrived at hypertext until we begin forming
individual thoughts that are hypertext, thoughts that cannot
be expressed in any other way" (314).
This is a rhizomatic node. A lot of the meaning comes in between
and around. The associative linkings from words and phrases
move rhetorically and performatively between pages and
out into the web at large. There are meaningful and relevant
logics and strategies involved with the interface and the
links. There is an associative and metonymic reasoning
occuring between each and every page. Every link was chosen
so the word is not only relevant to the page it is on,
but also to the page to which it links.
Notice the color of the links. If your browser
is set to its default settings, a link to a page that has
been visited will be purple. A blue link will take you to
a new page (this assumes viewings in one browser on one computer).
This gives you some sense of where you have been and where
you are going.
Hypertext allows for nodes that can be played
with by reader and writer (even simultaneously) in new and
exciting ways. It can be exploratory and constructive all
at once. Meaning can be interactively, and performatively,
created by all involved. To engage a hypertextual node is
to play with the rhizome, to explore outside of normal standards
and hierarchies. The web allows for a living document.
I have come to think of this new hypertextual
process of knowledge as "ludic academe." Hypertext
has the capability to fundamentally expand and enhance our
critical endeavors. I see it as a process that will add its
own unique stamp to what and how we know. It is a rigorous
and playful critical process that rhizomatically problematizes
the balance of authority and allows readers and writers together
in the same space at once, even if they are in different
places within the conversation. For I still believe readers
and writers occupy different places. They are now just doing
so in a new space and in different ways - ways that we are
just beginning to explore and use and play with.
There is also a temporal difference for writers
in different the mediums. Text is mostly a solitary pursuit
in which authors complete and publish the work. This is where
authors let go of their active part of the narrative, and
the rest is in the hands of the readers. In the case of a
CD-ROM, hypertext also has a ending point, where the product
is released to the public. But with the internet, the ending
point blurs. The "final" is more ephemeral. Authors
can continue to change the work, even as readers are engaging
the story. In fact, with the advent of XML (Extensible Markup
Language), ASP (Active Server Pages), Java and other technologies
on the web, dynamic interactivity in webpages can be automatic
and determined by the readers themeselves. So, this node
could be automatically and dynamically (re)arranged anew
everytime someone "reads" it. This can be done
both individually and collectively, as the website (and the
arguments therein) respond to the readers. A hypermedia document
on the internet is an organic and rhizomatic experience for
both readers and writers.
Writing "criticism and theory within a hypertext
environment" incorporates "the medium's characteristic
multivocality, open-endedness, multilinear organization,
greater inclusion of nontextual information, and fundamental
reconfiguration of authorship . . . and of status relations
in the text" (Landow, 36).
Hypertext makes manifest a post-structural theory
of reading in which the reader is just as active a creator
in the meaning of the text as the author. As a reader of
hypertext, you get to choose which way you want to go in
the node, but those choices are constrained and determined
by the author. So, it is not limitless interactivity with
no structure whatsoever.
A fair question to ask of this manifestation
of a theory is this: Is it better or worse that we can now
do and experience what the post-structural theory describes
as a reading process? Or in other words, what's the point
of realizing a theory? The point is less about whether it
is better or worse, and more about how to better utilize
the medium of hypertext.
It is an issue of the quality of the content.
The goal should be to keep exploring how to better the content
and critique of this new medium so that one day we will have
a masterpiece of hypertext comparable to those in literature
and art, and a hypertextual critique full of ideas and insights
that can only be expressed hypertextuall
cites
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari.
A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987.
Landow, George P. "What's
a Critic to Do? Critical Theory in the Age of Hypertext." Hyper/Text/Theory.
ed. George P. Landow. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1994.
Schmundt, Hilmar. "Hyperfiction:
the romanticism of the information revolution." Southern
Humanities Review. v29, n4, Fall 1995: 309-319.
sites
http://www.aspin.com/
http://www.duke.edu/~mshumate/hyperfic.html
http://www.e-merl.com
http://www.google.com
http://www.hypertextkitchen.com
http://java.sun.com/
http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/
http://www.plumbdesign.com/thesaurus/
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0011/cubist_site.shtml
http://www.w3.org/
https://waxebb.com/diz
https://waxebb.com/main/hypertext/hyper.html
http://xml.org/