Jennifer Sheppard
Rhetoric of a Print/Digital Culture
Notes on articles from The Future of the Book, edited by Geoffrey Nunberg, (1996), University of California Press.
Includes visual representations drawn by class members during discussion and presentation.
Section 1
This first part of the chapter seems to be saying that the material form of the book itself, the quality of its paper and cover, the weight and shape of volumes is a motivating force for writers and one which makes the book more like a holy object than a "common utensil or everyday object" (140).
Section 2
Debray seems to offer a definition of sorts about how he sees the material form of the book and how it a symbolic object around which our culture is centered: it is a "technology of literal meaning: the codex as symbolic matrix, the affective and mental schematization in whose dependence we bind ourselves more or less unconsciously to the world of meaning" (141).
As a result of Christianity's dependence on and growth because of the printed book, "the container [the physical object of the book] benefited over the long run from the contents' sacredness, such that 'to believe in the Book' and to believe in God gradually became synonymous" (141).
Section 3
Seems to be an attempt to show how even in the shift from sacred to secular texts, the codex still maintained a residual legitimacy: "And it is perhaps also because the text could take the rigid form of an architectural enclosure, be . . . spatially delimited that the order of books was able for so long to provide so much emotional security. . . . Fusing material firmness and symbolic value, the book linked persons together through its virtues as a concrete thing" (144).
Section 4
Debray begins to examine here the shift from printed codex to digitization of "texts". "In the figural rhetoric of the world of substances, the numerized cybernetic transmission of texts suggests a change of element from earth to water. Note the guiding metaphors in the New World of computer screens: navigation, flow, tide or influx, flood, immersion, slippage" (144).
"With data systems for user interactivity and geometrically variable hypertext, the reader is no longer simply spectator, one who looks at meaning through the page's window, but co-author of what he reads, a second writer and active partner. . . . Once monologue, the text becomes dialogue" (145).
Text "is no longer a static invariant. . . rather it is a moving mosaic (text, image, sound) an unpredictable sequence of bifurcations, a nonheirarchical, unpredetermined crossroads where each reader can invent his own course along a network of communication nodes" (145).
Section 5
Debray argues that the computerized text "makes possible not only the delocalization of access and plasticity of uses, but the evaporation of the originating locale of inscription, . . . and its permanence" (147).
As a result of this change in the "spatiality" of the page and the physical "rigidity" of the book, he claims that "a comforting landmark disappears, and a new era opens up that is also an area of volatility and instantaneousness" (147).
Section 6
His conclusion is a kind of lament for the fading of the material form of the book, calling it the "postmodern navigator's dual loss of moorings- political and symbolic". Because "a network approached from so many directions with no permanent still point for its turning" is "a decentered space,. . . in a shoreless sea of signs,"
Debray argues that the emancipation claimed by many technologists will simply cause a retrenchment of inequities based on texts that already occur in our culture (149).
Two Critiques of Debray
First, the freedom and power that hypertext can offer readers isn't often quite as dramatic as the account he offers. While some hyperdocuments give readers more control or agency over the text, many others also constrain the possibilities and the connections users can make. (145)
Second, Debray also brushes aside the issue of unequal distribution of and access to computer hardware, network connections, and education about how to use this technology. (145)
Visual Representation of Debray's article
Introduction and Thesis
"The book doubtlessly still has a bright future before it," but at the same time it is beginning to be "overshadowed by a metatextuality that extends progressively to the whole complex of modes of representing the world, to all the different media" (153).
Our dependence on books per se, as physical transmitters of education, politics and culture, is shifting from a reliance on books as objects to a focus on the process of reading in a polytextual environment that makes use of a metareading practice (153-154).
Section 1- From Incunabula to Multimedia
Advancing technology, including programming, photography, film, and graphics, have converged toward a multimedia polyphony that is ever expanding our notions of what constitutes "text" and how people come to know (155).
Section 2- A Library in Mutation
New forms of "texts," new ways of "reading" and a glut of informational material now being produced is creating problems of both space and organization within libraries. People want access to this material and to use them in ways contrary to classical library models (especially in terms of categorizing knowledge) that are contrary to classical library models, so librarians will increasingly need to become "mediators of knowledge" (156-157).
Section 3- New Reading Machines
New technology functions to transform immediately the reading process into the writing process through users' annotations, interests and creativity (157).
Libraries will have to provide ways for users to navigate and make sense of a polytextual stream of information for this transformation to occur (158).
Section 4- The Order of the Book
The printed book attempts to represent truth and reality through its linearity and fixed nature. In contrast, digitized "texts" defy these boundaries in that their spatial order and temporal context are disrupted, the separation between author and reader fades and the growing inability to separate text from image becomes more common (159-160).
Section 5- Exploding the Text
New electronic technologies for working with texts "favor an extensive reading, the comparison of diverse texts and viewpoints, multidisciplanary transversality, the 'conversation' between readers" (161).
"Genuine hypertextuality has the effect of subverting what could be called . . . the 'modularity' of document-based information spaces in favor of the 'connectionist' model" (161).
However, several problems ensue from this new mode of metareading and hypertextuality (all from page 162):
Section 6- A Dynamic Textuality
Hypertext and multimedia capabilities are bringing about changes for readers (in their abilities to do things like annotate texts), authors (in the ways they can move beyond linearity), and the shape/form of actual texts (in the multiple versions that hypertext linking makes possible) (163).
Section 7- The 'Neowriting' of Images
Though the combining of text and images is not new, multimedia offers a more dramatic and fundamental integration of the two. "Cutting text and image from the same digital cloth, it achieves a qualitative leap and transforms what was until now only a text-image complementarity into a true hybridization" (165).
Section 8- For a Politics of the Text
New technologies of the "text" mean that libraries will become more important than just conservatories, and instead will have to "become sites of education and training, so as to avoid a widening of the gap between those who master the refinements of metareading and the others" (166).
Visual Representation of Bazin's Article
Section 1- Background "Noise" Past and Present
Despite claims by researchers that there is a strong interdependence between a message and its medium, Toschi argues that many in the literary field, especially publishers, maintain that a literary text remains substantially the same no matter what physical form it is given (169).
A quick example of the author Vittorio Alfieri's work shows that despite his insistence on the importance of his critical texts being included with and placed before his literary texts, many editions have not been published in this manner, thereby destroying the integrity of the original work (169).
Another way in which this kind of paratextual material is affecting literary texts is the increasing phenomenon of "noise" or hype given to a work before or during its release to the public (172). This phenomenon has lead to an increase in all kinds of commentary and alternate readings of texts.
Authors have also increased their efforts to address readers in additional ways through means such as forewords, personal material, and private letters which has created an additional paratextual environment, one in which "new and very powerful secondary text[s]' . . . often overwhelm the original text" (173).
All of this paratext isn't necessarily new to the literary world, but what is, is that it now has at "its disposition instruments [technologies] which are enormously more efficient and far reaching than in the past" (174).
Section 2- An Illustrated Edition of The Betrothed? No, Just The Betrothed
This section examines in detail how Italian author Alessandro Manzoni attempted to rewrite his work, The Betrothed, so as to include hundreds of illustrations. The purpose of this seems to be to offer a parallel between how many of the same considerations Manzoni faced in integrating multiple media into his project and how this can now be seen today in the work of hypertext and multimedia projects.
While Manzoni's attempts were in part to help his work to be more accessible to illiterate audiences, "the combination of the text and illustrations in fact set up a tight interweaving of word and picture" (177). Manzoni was even willing "to modify the written text in order to accommodate the demands of the placing of the pictures" (177). Thus for Manzoni, "pictoral language was felt to be an integral part of the alphabetic language" (177).
Many of the specific examples that Toschi uses show that the illustrations provided far more than a mere supplement to the words of the text. "For the sum of these two functions brings into being something which spans the specific characteristics and features of these two languages [print and visual] and gives rise to a completely new form of expression" (179).
Because the union of word and image produces a new kind of way for understanding an event or character in the narration, "there is an enormously more powerful possibility of reading a text from different perspectives" (181).
Differing perspectives between words and images of the same scene can set up a "narrative stereography which would otherwise be impossible" (185).
Through the integration of author-approved and author-determined images, Manzoni created a new typology of storytelling (186). This had the effect of "increasing the traditional narrative sequentiality, supplying it with a thick web of references, anticipations, reminders, suggestions, evocatons, and sometimes hallucinations" (186).
Near the end of this section, Toschi makes the leap that the technology of hypertext could offer a way to reproduce the text as Manzoni intended it. More importantly, it also offers an opportunity to follow the interpretive thread of testing out why Manzoni chose to illustrate some passages over others (190-191).
Section 3- Aiming for the Third Dimension: The Electronic Text
Thanks to the binary digitization of information, "a writer is now in the position of being able to "write" a text on one platform which can make use contemporaneously of three of the traditional artistic languages [text, image, and sound]" (194).
However, as this new age of computer use increases, Toschi argues that in order to avoid the mistakes of past generations and their naive uses of new technologies, it is vital that electronic writing develops "sound critical and philological knowledge, a knowledge of rhetoric, of aesthetics, and the history of writing in all its different forms" (195).
This history of writing may be constructed out of studies of authors' lives and personal histories and of the multiple drafts and revisions of their work, as well as materials used in composing a text (197-198). It may also be done through a higher valuing of the importance of all paratextual material (198).
Hypertextual linking seems an especially useful means for such historical reconstruction of the "making of a literary work" (199-201). It offers not only the possibility of "different readings of a text, but also . . . the possibility of being able to grasp the progressive coming into being of a text" (202).
"The possibility of taking apart and putting back together again a text according to whatever point of view you wish to use; this is what hypertextuality is all about" (203).
"The electronic text, far from signaling the end of sequentiality, as many people seem to think or fear, rather represents the possibility of creating numerous sequentialities, according to multiple associations" (203).
Conclusion
"Moving from paper-based virtuality to hypertext means taking critical experimentation to new and as yet untried levels with the consequent possibility of being able to make apparent and understandable much more than what paper-based language has so far allowed us to do" (203).
Three Visual Representations of Toschi's Article
Section 1- Already There
Landow's main claim in this section is that many people fear that moving "beyond the book" will necessarily entail leaving behind what is "most precious about our intellectual culture," but in fact this is a faulty assumption based on some utopian ideal of what the book is, and we have actually already moved beyond it in numerous ways (209-210).
Landow argues that our real task in figuring out what this shift means is to undertake a kind of ethnographic approach to literacy practices: "In ascertaining the present and future position of the book in our culture, one must recognize the way most students today actually encounter the printed book as object" (210-211). Most of these books turn out to be cheaply made, ill-designed copies or even non-book Xeroxed anthologies put together by instructors (211).
Using the example of the German U-Bahn system, Landow shows that while poor quality displays are currently a weakness for digitization, this is outweighed by its capabilities for interactivity and ease of use (212). He concludes this example by saying, that in cases where matters of speed, ease of use and adaptability are crucial factors, digital resources will displace printed materials (214).
He concludes this section saying, "We must recognize the changes that take place, both because they remind us more fully what is included in the notions of 'book' (and moving 'beyond' it), and because they suggest the extent to which people will increasingly turn to nonbooklike objects for their textual information" (214).
Section 2- Printed Books are Technology, Too
In this section, Landow argues that, "Digital technologies may be new, but if we hope to discern the ways in which we might move beyond the book, we must not treat all previous information technologies of language, rhetoric, writing, and printing as nontechnological" and we have to realize that these media have had "unnatural" effects on our culture also (215).
Section 3- From Physical Mark to Code
In this section, Landow argues that, "new digital information technologies involve fundamental changes in the way we read and write, and these radical differences, in turn, derive from . . . the shift from the physical to the virtual" (216). "Earlier kinds of texts required physical marks on physical surfaces", which "provided a technology of cultural memory" (216).
Landow argues that, "Each form of physically recording a text has its peculiar qualities which can have profound effects on culture. In the case of printing, we encountered its abilities both to fix words and text and to multiply their distribution (217).
Based on this notion of print's effects, Landow asks, "What are crucial, defining qualities, then, of the new digital technologies of cultural memory? (218). Among the answers he comes up with are:
Section 4- Moving Text
This section looks at the possibilities of using digital technologies, especially multiple media, to manipulate and adapt the word in new ways and to create new "writing" genres (220-222).
Section 5- Simulation, Visualization and Text
This section looks at the possibilities of combining digital technologies, specifically simulation and visualization capabilities with alphanumeric text (222).
Landow argues that software that allows students to do things like reconfiguring the variables in graphic representations of equations, or "visualizing the hidden surfaces of various three-dimensional objects show that the major value of such technology lies in developing skills or conveying information that the printed book cannot" (222-225).
Section 6- Linking Texts
In this section, Landow looks at the how the non-linear nature of hypertextual linking allows the reader to take some control of decisions previously made by authors. As many other theorists argue, Landow claims that hypertext can fundamentally change what it means to read and write, as well as potentially radically reconceiving our "conceptions of text, author, intellectual property, and a host of other issues" (225).
Section 7- Linking Text on the Internet: The World Wide Web
After offering a brief synopsis of how the internet and WWW work, Landow argues that, "in an amazingly short time, the Web has prompted the development of new forms of intellectual and cultural interchange" (230).
Section 8- Hypertext Fiction, or Patching Together Narrative
This section looks at a piece of hypertextual fiction, Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl. Landow concludes that this developing genre offers readers a rich new way of experiencing a text, saying that, "Making their ways through this fascinating Web, readers encounter a rich assemblage of stories, discussions of narrative, notions of gender, and the identities of ourselves and others" (231). He claims that this shift in reading and writing does not "in anyway represent the death of fiction" (232).
Section 9- Inside the Text- Cyberspace and Virtual Reality
This section argues that "Virtual Reality (or VR), which relies on nonverbal text, represents a far more radical movement away from the written word and hence a far greater challenge to the culture of the book than do the other forms of digital information" so far discussed (232).
The defining feature of VR, its ability to let the user be "inside the data rather than standing apart from it and looking at it on a page or screen,"(232) represents what some theorists like Benedickt suggests is an "age-old capacity and need to dwell in fiction" (233).
Conclusion
Landow warns readers that shifts in technologies of representations have risks, especially in the sense that any "representation necessarily omits something, and that which is omitted always bears the mark of someone's conception of reality- someone else's ideology" (234).
Visual Representation of Landow's Article