Exploring Hypertext’s New Reader: Some Theoretical Approaches
by Hilary Morgan
Consider a generation for whom ‘words that yield’ are a regular occurrence, not a discursive anomaly. Consider readers and writers for whom jumps out of the system are commonplace, and who regularly articulate both hypertextual and hypotextual structures. Though this generation would still be undeniably linked by tradition and cultural continuity to our own, would they not have a fundamentally different understanding of texts and textual enterprises?
– Stuart Moulthrop, “No War Machine”
For nearly 500 years, a single technology held a monopoly over the written word (Murray). Print conventions became incredibly stable and all pervasive. But the arrival of hypertext has raised groundbreaking discussions of textuality – both from the point of view of literary theory, and on a sociocultural level as well. In the years to come, readers and writers will be increasingly educated in both print and digital environments. This change necessitates a corresponding adjustment to theories of textuality.
In traditional theoretical circles there are a number of individuals committed to fighting the degradation of print by digital media. Unfortunately, major theorists often refrain from more specific analysis. Yet the sidelines are populated by a number of less visible but no less committed theorists, who are developing updated theories of reading and writing. Much of this work presupposes that “hypertext is a new set of textual conventions and not [necessarily] a new textual form” (Allen). Jay David Bolter notes, “the computer is simply the technology by which literacy will be carried into a new age” (Moulthrop, “No War Machine” 272). In this light, theorizing about hypertext is merely a continuation of previous literary endeavors.
The epigraph by Stuart Moulthrop, informs the position adopted in this analysis. Moulthrop advocates a two-part model for developing rhetoric suited to the electronic environment. This model is “based on integration with existing conventions of writing and on innovation as a way of opening up new avenues for discourse” (Moulthrop, “Beyond the Electric Book” 292). Moulthrop adopts a somewhat rare position in this debate – he emphasizes the importance of continuity with the past, in the movement towards theoretical innovation. While hypertext does challenge conceptions of reading based solely on the print tradition, it does not abandon them altogether. Instead, it forces a reconsideration of the role of the reader, informed by past and present reading experiences.
In the body of this paper I explore three key points crucial to transforming theories of reading: ‘death of the author’, indeterminacy of meaning, and fragmentation of text. In keeping with the theme of theoretical continuity, I describe how each trend has its basis in print-based literary theory. These points were selected based on their potential for continued relevance among current theorists of hypertext. Preceding the body of this paper is a brief description of the status of literary theory prior to the ‘death of the author’.
I
Originally, literary theory stressed a substantial divide between writing and reading – the author and his audience. Heightened interest in the reader and his activities was born as a response to New Criticism, whose proponents advocated a relatively extreme focus on textual rhetoric (Con Davis and Schleifer). This new group referred to themselves as reader-response or reception theorists, choosing to emphasize the crucial role of the reader in developing meaning. This position was associated with a decrease in the importance of the author and the control that he possessed over the text. With the introduction of hypertext years later, we are finding the distance between writing and reading is once again seriously reduced – only this time, the process of writing and reading nearly overlap. Michael Allen terms this new agent the ‘wreader’ – both the producer and consumer of textual, or hypertextual practices.
In 1968, Roland Barthes penned his revolutionary text “The Death of the Author.” This initiated the sudden implosion of the author/audience hierarchy: “ we know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author” (Barthes 172). In the past, it was understood that the text was the intellectual property of the author. However, from this point forward, the author’s text ceased to exist – except in the process of being read:
Thus is revealed the total existence of writing: a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not, as was hitherto said, the author. (Barthes 171)
Bringing the reader into contact with the text breathes life into it, starting at the moment of reading (Douglas).
In hypertext, the reader’s choices very clearly influence, or maybe even determine the shape of the text. The author’s death is solidified through a number of factors, one being the immateriality of the text in the electronic environment. The hypertext author may in fact be the owner of nothing. Once placed on-line, these works are committed to the public domain. They are opened to all possible readings by a near infinite number of readers. Hypertext facilitates experience of textual events as if they belonged to the reader, rather than the author. Barthes notes,
...the modern scriptor is born simultaneously with the text, is in no way equipped with a being preceding or exceeding the writing, is not the subject with the book as predicate; there is no other time than that of the enunciation and every text is eternally written here and now. (170)
As the reader moves between hyperlinks, he becomes what Barthes refers to as the ‘scriptor’. This is akin to Allen’s ‘wreader’ – an individual who, in the process of reading, actually participates in the writing, or re-writing of the text.
J. Yellowlees Douglas explains this phenomenon by reiterating Jean-Paul Sartre’s belief that, “[r]eading is directed creation... .” (“Understanding the Act of Reading”). While the hypertext’s primary author offers his readers a multiplicity of potential textual opportunities, it is the reader who is ultimately responsible for creating the text he engages with. Depending on the circumstance, readers may have the opportunity to make additions or alterations to the text, or to forge links to any number of different documents, thus furthering the extent of their creation. In this sense, the text “that is infinitely alterable and infinitely linked has no one authorizer but many collaborators who build the text for the reader, who also builds the text through linking and choosing reading content and sequence” (Allen).
While the experience of direct engagement with a text is one of the primary conditions for immersion, it is not the only factor helping to explain the attraction of hypertext environments. In the second portion of this paper I discuss the implications of indeterminacy of meaning on the reading process.
II
Traditional literary theorists feel that the author is responsible for establishing meaning within his text. This position lends itself to literary criticism because it presupposes the existence of a single correct reading of every text (Bathes). According to this theory, the reader is a passive agent waiting to receive the author’s intention. In his 1969 “Phenomenology of Reading,” Georges Poulet stresses the disappearance of the book as an object, thus placing the focus on the subjective experience of the reader. In developing an updated theory of the reader, this text has the potential to play a substantial role.
The subjectivity of literary theory was informed by Continental philosophy’s phenomenological tradition (Detweiler). This lineage suggests that the only valid focus of philosophical inquiry is consciousness and not, as was previously assumed, objects in the world. Initially, the reader was external to the text while meaning resided within it. In contrast, Poulet describes the relationship between the reader and text in this way: “You are inside it; it is inside you; there is no longer either outside or inside” (54). Meaning is created at the point of fusion between reader and writing – meaning is indeterminate in the sense that it is due to the subjective experience of the individual reader and not, as previously thought, the original intentions of the author. “...[W]hat ‘happens to, and with the participation of, the reader’ is in fact ‘the meaning’ of a text” (Stanley Fish in “Reader-Response Theory and Criticism”).
Coupled with this focus on subjective experience, the disappearance of the book as ‘object’ very significantly reorganizes understandings of meaning. This is particularly relevant in the case of hypertext, since the book’s disappearance runs parallel to those sensations of immateriality prevalent in digital media. In stating that the meaning of hypertext is indeterminate, I am taking into consideration two distinct occurrences. The first is along the lines of Poulet: with an infinite number of readers, each of whom possesses his own subjective experience, there ceases to be any single determinate reading. Secondly, consider what happens when it becomes possible to make choices from among a multitude of reading paths. As readers navigate screens they make seemingly arbitrary selections between many possible hyperlinks. Each of these two factors is responsible for hypertextual indeterminacy in a different way – the first, through reader subjectivity, and the second through the act of navigation. The movement of the reader through hypertext is of primary concern in the final section of this paper, which examines textual fragmentation.
III
In his article “This is Not a Hypertext, But...”, Allen discusses Jerome McGann’s ‘radial reader’. Considered in a digital environment, McGann’s radial reader challenges the text to provide a number of paths for each reader, in each reading performed (Allen). “The radial reader finds a lexia and then tracks it back through the text and into others to find different paths of reading, to test the resistance of a text to a new centre” (Allen). In a hypertext environment, skilled readers understand and seek out open-ended reading experiences. There is an implicit recognition on the part of the reader, of the indeterminacy of meaning discussed in the preceding section of this paper. Readers may actively pursue paths that challenge their cognitive capabilities in a way that is far more complex than in traditional print-based texts.
In print, convention stipulates linearity as the most desirable form of textual organization. Texts are oriented sequentially, mimicking the nature of language itself. Yet many of the first attempts at distorting this convention are also found in printed texts (Murray). Clearly, writers reached a point when a strict adherence to linear form could no longer encapsulate their ideas. Theorists also began searching for concepts that departed from linearity. In the digital environment, organization is no longer sequential but associational. Texts appear fragmented in comparison, characterized by non-sequential or generic lexia connected via hyperlink. The issue of reading the fragmented text has become very important – in order to secure the acceptance of traditional theorists, but also in the real practice of navigation.
In 1972, Wolfgang Iser composed “The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach”. Here, Iser proposes that texts contain gaps having the effect of generating engagement on the part of the reader. These gaps make texts fragmented, instead of linear as one might believe. Gaps make readers dynamic – they encourage the reader to impose some consistency within the fragments of text provided. Iser writes, “This virtual dimension is not the text itself, nor is it the imagination of the reader: it is the coming together of text and imagination” (Iser 215).
...[T]he written text imposes certain limits on its unwritten implications in order to prevent these from becoming too blurred and hazy, but at the same time these implications, worked out by the reader’s imagination, set the given situation against a background which endows it with far greater significance than it might have seemed to possess on its own. (Iser 213)
In hypertext, the link is the most visible incarnation of Iser’s gap. Without the hyperlink, interactive narratives would return to a format similar to traditional linear texts. The selective act of linking is what makes hypertext essentially fragmented, and places theoretical emphasis on the process of navigation.
Contemporary theorists of hypertext generally agree about the importance of navigation, but they disagree about the extent to which it is necessary for authors to heighten efficiency by consciously molding their readers’ experience. In “Toward a Post-Critical Theory of Hypertext,” John McEneaney reminds us that management of digital environments is a veritable balancing act. Higher levels of structure certainly have the tendency to seem over-directive to readers – a situation worsened by what McEneaney calls ‘text as author’. Here he refers to the coded nature of digital environments, noting that they entail a degree of intent that is entirely external to the reader’s choices. Yet, while McEneaney believes that reading without structure instills freedom, it comes at the risk of disorientation for all but the most skilled readers: “Empowering readers is a good idea, but it is clear that, not only are there diminishing returns, there comes a point where the freedom celebrated by critical theory becomes a liability” (13).
This echoes George Landow, who makes very specific prescriptions for reader orientation and efficiency. Landow sets out a number of rules for authors with the intention of assisting reader navigation in fragmented environments. One of his focuses is on establishing relevant hyperlinks. Landow believes that readers require two things to facilitate reading: information on departure from a link, and information on arrival at a new document. “The very existence of links in hypermedia conditions the reader to expect purposeful, important relationships between linked materials” (Landow 83). On reconsidering Iser’s gaps, it is clear that the time elapsed during the linking of two documents stimulates the cognitive capacities of the reader with respect to both anticipation and retrospection. Establishing relevant hyperlinks decreases the randomness of the fragmented text.
On a final note, I would like to lay stress on the position of Douglas. She claims that reader satisfaction is the ultimate goal of reading in a digital environment. In opposition to both McEneaney and Landow, Douglas places importance on the reader’s contentment with his interpretation of the text. This factor is valuable, independent of the efficiency with which the reader navigates, or perhaps even the degree to which the reader feels well oriented. Douglas writes, “The experience of reading interactive fiction...seems to me like a cross between writing, translating, and reading Robbe-Grillet” (“Understanding the Act of Reading”). Douglas empowers readers to be confident in their abilities of interpretation, and of the personal relevance of that interpretation. After all, “there is not story at all; there are only readings. ...[T]he story is the sum of all its readings. Each reading is a different turning within a universe of paths set up by the author” (Bolter in Douglas, “What Hypertexts Can Do That Print Narratives Cannot” 12).
With the introduction of hypertext, it has become increasingly clear that we must alter many aspects of traditional literary theory. Yet as this analysis has demonstrated, print-based theory continues to be relevant. It is necessary to develop further conventions and theories that take into account reading in a digital environment. While this work is bound to be innovative, it must also strive to maintain continuity with the past. This is the best way to ensure that theoretical focus is directed towards the practical experience of reading and writing hypertext, and not towards deepening the rift between electronic and traditional print.
Copyright 2004, Hilary Morgan
Works Cited
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