Time and Narrative in Beiguelman’s “The Book After The Book”
by Hilary Morgan
In her hypertext “The Book After the Book,” Giselle Beiguelman describes the Internet as one giant text – a conception that significantly problematizes more traditional understandings of textuality. Conventional definitions tend to be organized around the text as a singular, self-contained entity. Even definitions specific to usage in computing generally fail to envision Beiguelman’s conception. Sources often refer to “data in textual form, ...as stored, processed, or displayed in a word processor...” (Thompson 944). In contrast, Beiguelman offers a glimpse of multiplicity – an environment formed by the interconnections between a seemingly endless web of texts, and where text itself, is ultimately revealed as image on the screen.
Yet despite this interconnectedness, I believe that texts on the Internet can still be loosely sorted into two groups. The first group contains texts that essentially reproduce traditional works and features of print. The second, in contrast, includes texts developed on, and for the Internet itself. This group exhibits a willingness to depart from the conventions of print, making electronic texts fodder for contemporary literary theory. Some theorists claim that hypertext will shatter the richness of traditional literature, and spark its ultimate demise. This is in stark contrast to theorists like Marshall McLuhan: “The printed book had encouraged artists to reduce all forms of expression as much as possible to the single descriptive and narrative plane of the printed word. The advent of electric media released art from this straitjacket at once...” (178).
This paper stresses two aspects in particular – the new textual enterprises that have come to characterize electronic writing, and the fundamental change in perception that these innovations have elicited. More specifically, this discussion centres on the intersection of hypertext with the orthodox understanding of time as a linear entity. I propose that the transition from the print to hypertext is characterized by a radical reformulation of the temporal dimension, in a direction opposed to linearity. How exactly does time function in the electronic text? And how might this be construed as a reconfiguration of the time implicit in print-based narrative?
This paper is divided into three sections, the first containing a brief discussion of the concept of time. The second part provides background information on print and hypertext. The third section explores time and narrative in a hypertext assigned for this course. For this purpose, I have selected Beiguelman’s “The Book After The Book”, and “the Codex series,” a compilation linked to the main work.
In a discussion of this nature, it is necessary to make explicit the complexity of writing and/or speaking of time without encountering serious linguistic biases. Of his essay “A New Refutation of Time,” Jorge Luis Borges writes, “...[O]ur language is so saturated and animated by time that it is quite possible there is not one statement in these pages which in some way does not demand or invoke the idea of time” (218). The organization of language has its basis in the idea of succession. For this reason, it is a constant challenge to avoid privileging a linear conception of time. This predicament must be considered over the course of this paper.
While linear time first emerged in the writing of the Hebrews, both Islam and Christianity later adopted similar notions of linearity, seeing human experience as “...a one-way journey from Genesis to Judgment...” (“Time”). Later, time fell into the domain of metaphysics, and by the nineteenth-century linear time dominated the sciences as well (“Time”). Scientifically, linearity was supported by the study of various natural reactions. The unidirectional, irreversible nature of many of the world’s processes seemed to indicate that time also shared these same characteristics. In Western thought, the linear formulation is linked to the tenets of rationalism – a fact that may suggest why the non-linearity of hypertext is often met with skepticism. “ ‘Rational,’ of course, has for the West long meant ‘uniform and continuous and sequential...’ Thus in the electric age man seems to the conventional West to become irrational” (McLuhan 157). “...[W]e continue to think in the old, fragmented space and time patterns of the pre-electric age” (McLuhan 149).
According to Berkeley’s idealism, time is merely the succession of ideas in the mind: “That neither our thoughts, nor our passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what everybody will allow...[T]he various sensations imprinted on the sense, however blended or combined together...cannot exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving them...” (Borges 219). But if the perception of time is a construction of the mind, then what makes one moment any different from the next? What would be the result if the notion of succession were to be abandoned – if the past and future were to eclipse into a kind of eternal present?
More recently, these kinds of questions have come to the forefront. From its religious and philosophical origins, questions of time and space are now the mainstay of theoretical physicists and mathematicians (Macey 251). These researchers are reexamining the precedent of linear time. The February 1, 2000 edition of the Globe and Mail contains an article entitled “Multiverse: Bigger than the Big Bang”. Here, Dan Falk describes how physicists are exploring the possibility that the inflationary growth following the Big Bang may actually have resulted in branching universes and corresponding space-times. If this hypothesis were true, it would seem to invalidate our understating of time as a singular, linear phenomenon. The intersection of print and hypertext provides us with an interesting opportunity to observe the reformulation of time in a non-linear manner.
Printed texts originated in the Gutenberg era, with the year 1501 marking the start of the book, as we have come to know it (Murray). Like the words contained in its pages, the book too is based on the idea of succession. Not surprisingly, narrative conventions also developed in a linear fashion. On these grounds, some theorists have laid claim to a strict demarcation between print and hypertext – the end of the linear tradition and the birth of non-sequential textual practices. For instance, in his article “Toward a Post-Critical Theory of Hypertext,” John McEneaney suggests that usage unnatural to the print medium is easily incorporated by hypertext, due primarily to its non-linear nature.
Other theorists feel that the tendency to push the boundaries of linearity actually began within the print medium (Murray). This group is reluctant about the existence of a distinct boundary between print, as a strictly linear form, and hypertext as wholly abandoning this linearity. Their argument is as follows: although the majority of printed texts do adhere to the formula for linear narrative, there have been departures from its prescriptions. In her book Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, Janet Murray posits that the multiform story acts as a catalyst in the movement of literature away from the constraints of linearity. She describes a situation of “...linear narratives straining against the boundary of predigital media like a two-dimensional picture trying to burst out of its frame” (29). Murray’s multiform story is “...a written or dramatic narrative that presents a single situation or plotline in multiple versions...” (30). In addition, I would suggest that departures from linear narrative are more generally characterized by the same reformulation of time discussed in the preceding paragraphs. Here, the emphasis is on the tendency towards pullulation: the invocation of multiple, simultaneous realities usually perceived as mutually exclusive.
Ted Nelson introduced the term hypertext in the 1960’s. Nelson “...called for the transformation of computers into ‘literary machines’ to link together all of human writing...” (Murray 91). He proposed taking predominantly linear, print-based texts, and forging non-linear interconnections between them. This associational organization makes a departure from linearity, privileging instead web-like textual networks. To Nelson, the labyrinth-like organization of hypertext represented the complexity of the human mind. Seen in this light, the temporal conventions of hypertext may not be all that foreign.
The final section of this paper examines “The Book After The Book” in light of the previous discussion on time and narrative. I propose the following secondary hypothesis: Texts configured expressly for use in electronic environments tend to depart from temporal linearity. Time is not at a standstill: rather, it exists in a kind of ephemeral present. To match this new temporality, narrative also changes, having two branches. The first is the author’s narrative, which exists within the single screen. The second is created by the reader, and is formed by movement through multiple lexia via hyperlink. Because the reader comes in contact with only one screen at a time, there is little sense of the flow typical of print-based text. Each screen is a separate entity, and the reader’s narrative is an accumulation of present moments. These cannot be arranged in a linear fashion because they are independent segments. Since it is the subjective movement between hyperlinks that forms the reader’s narrative, it is beyond the scope of this analysis. Instead, I will focus on Beiguelman’s narrative, built into each lexia.
Beiguelman traces the historical path of the printed book, clearly labeling her hypertext as ‘post-print’. On entering the text, the reader encounters a screen consisting of layers of script, containing both text and symbols. Deciphered, it reads: “At the intersection of words and symbols we begin to redesign our boundaries” (Beiguelman). This statement highlights the relationship between the image that appears on the screen, and the code that produces it. Hypertext’s departure from print conventions is affected by the synthesis of these two languages. Beiguelman alludes to hypertext as reestablishing the limits on text itself, as well as our most fundamental perceptions. The layering in which this message is relayed underlines the impermanence of the medium: the capacity of the computer to repeatedly create and recreate its content.
This text is part art, part essay and part ‘bookshelf’. In each section there is evidence of departure from linear narrativity. By the term art, I am referring to those screens, like the one discussed in the preceding paragraph, which combine text, symbol and image. There is a narrative, or story contained in these screens, but it amounts to a technique invoked repeatedly with the aim of disrupting the perceived normalcy of the conventions of print. These lexia problematize the very act of reading, forcing the reader to develop new skills to decipher meaning in a multifaceted environment. This involves deriving meaning from both text and image, including an assessment of their interrelationship on each screen.
In Beiguelman’s artistic installations, linear time is confused. Rather than insisting on a sequential reading, these pieces force reading to occur in a circling motion, stimulating a re-viewing. Time appears to stand still – there is no linear progression, only an unending process of interpretation, a sensation intensified by the author’s use of looping textual messages. Beiguelman writes: “Short animations intercept the reading of other artists works playing with the textual condition of the on line image and, at the same time, with the imagetic condition of the screen text.”
In the second part of this hypertext, the essay, Beiguelman reasserts and fleshes out the arguments conveyed in her artistic installations. These essays are accessed under the ‘scroll’ heading on each screen’s navigation bar. Here, Beiguelman elaborates on the purpose of her post-print text. Obviously, these sections of text do maintain the conventions of linear time, but they also affect a continuation of the critique initiated by the artwork. Perhaps these essays can be understood as intermediaries in the movement away from mandatory narrative linearity. Given the novelty of her ideas, it is not surprising that Beiguelman might include additional support, in the form of rhetorical essays, in order to secure the acceptance of her hypertext as a valid form of textuality. In these essays we continue the act of re-reading in the sense that many paragraphs refer directly back to messages contained in the artistic portions of the hypertext.
Finally, the bookshelves establish links to outside texts. These shelves are organized by association. When exploring these linked texts, the reader is not bound by traditional constraints. Instead, he may explore the works in any manner that suits him. Beiguelman’s inclusion of these shelves is comparable to Nelson’s project of linking literary texts. However, instead of connecting all of humanity’s print-based texts, Beiguelman forges links with other texts created expressly for an electronic environment. Once again, the common theme of re-reading is invoked: the texts contained in the bookshelves tend to reassert the fundamental arguments that support hypertext’s departure from typical linear conventions. Each externally linked text has been included with the understanding that it demonstrates hypertext’s non-linearity.
“The Codex series – narrative exploration beyond the book” is one text contained, via hyperlink, within Beiguelman’s bookshelves. I am mentioning this work in particular, because I feel that it demonstrates the way that hypertext re-imagines conventional narrative. In the following passage, Beiguelman describes pieces like “the Codex series” as a “redefinition of the text”:
Sites that provide programming language a literary appraisal, without relapsing into the mystification of technique or into the dangerous celebration of the machine’s beauty. Creations that confer a narrative character to poems without flirting with the Epics. Works that resort to videographic procedures in literary construction and play on the passivity and participation of the spectator and the reader. Non-linear narratives, which reconfigure the literature/book relationship starting from the very notion of a volume.
On linking to the “the Codex series” site, the reader is given the option to purchase the series CD-Rom and to move through a selection of works included in it. Each piece in this anthology problematizes traditional narrative by synthesizing the disparate elements of text, image and symbol. Even ideas about what constitutes text versus image are confused by the inclusion of scientific diagrams and mathematical formulations. The reader’s contact with the text is primarily exploratory. Each work stands alone. The reader is responsible for composing an internal narrative of his journey through the lexia. A new present moment is established within each installation – again, heightening the reader’s sense of exploration.
In conclusion, the changes associated with the introduction of hypertext have been many. This paper highlights how the transition between print and hypertext is characterized by a radical reformulation of time. The linear conception of time initially established in philosophy, and later incorporated by science has gradually become problematized. While art has undergone great changes over time, print conventions have remained more stable. The arrival of the electronic environment may prove to be a turning point, with hypertext being capable of supporting innovative literary work.
The preceding analysis of “The Book After The Book,” demonstrates how texts built for an electronic environment make a marked departure from the conventions that dominated writing for so long. Yet having said this, I do not support the idea that print and hypertext are distinctly separate entities. While a quick glance may seem to highlight the differences between them, a more thoughtful treatment will surely bring to the forefront the extent to which they are, in fact, similar. Marshall McLuhan notes: “These media, being extensions of ourselves, also depend upon us for their interplay and their evolution” (174). McLuhan stresses those properties shared by media in general, and reminds us to look beyond superficial differences between the paper and computer displays. Similarly, Murray speaks of “...the twisting web rather than the clear-cut trail...” (91). She sees hypertext as “...an emblem of the inexhaustibility of the human mind: an endless proliferation of the thought looping through vast humming networks whether of neurons or electrons” (Murray 91). In short, the arrival of hypertext need not be construed as the end of print, but rather as a beginning – the opening of writing to an entirely new set of possibilities.
(Mississauga, Ontario, February, 2004)
Works Cited
Beiguelman, Giselle. “The Book After The Book.” Online. Internet. Available: www: http://www.desvirtual.com/giselle 13 Jan. 2004.
Borges, Jorge Luis. Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings. Ed. Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby. New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1964.
“Codex series.” Online. Internet. Available: www: http://www.codexseries.com 13 Jan. 2004.
Falk, Dan. “Multiverse: Bigger than the Big Bang.” The Globe and Mail 16 Feb. 2000.
Macey, David. The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory. London: Penguin Books, 2001.
McEneaney, John E. “Toward a Post-Critical Theory of Hypertext.” National Reading Conference (1997): 21 pp. Online. Internet. Available: www: http://www.acs.oakland.edu/~mceneane/nrc/conf97/nrc97ht5.pdf 12 Dec. 2003.
McLuhan, Marshall. “Understanding Media.” Essential McLuhan. Ed. Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone. Toronto: Anansi, 1995. 149-79.
Murray, Janet. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Toronto: The Free Press, 1997.
Thompson, Della, ed. The Pocket Oxford Dictionary of Current English. 8th ed. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992.
“Time.” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Online. Internet. Available: www: http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/t/time.htm 1 Dec. 2003.