Multimedia
Derrida describes western civilization as logocentric. Man is a rational being capable of discovering universal truth. That concern with truth is linked with a privilege of presence. That is why phone, the utterance, the speech, is privileged over writing as a revealer of truth. "In our logocentric world, speech is privileged over writing for its sense of proximity to the source of utterance; when I speak, the seal between my words and the meaning I intend by them remains intact, secured by my physical presence" (Electronic Labyrinth, writing). Heidi Figueroa argues that the privilege of speech is reflected on "the valorization of a syllabic and alphabetic (phonetic) writing as a superior model of writing in western culture" (translation is mine p.2). “Good” writing is that which is clear and direct. The book is, therefore, a physical object supposed to bring author's presence to the reader. It intends to embody author's "true" meaning and make it available -by an act presence- to the reader. The author is the active agent of the process, while the reader remains a passive entity whose role is to consume an already meant text.
The book, even without taking its content into account, still remain not neutral; it has a historicity and ideological forces. That is why Derrida links "the civilization of the book" with his critique of eurocentrism, phalocentrism, and logocentrism. Even the physical structure of the book can be thought in those terms: it provides a beginning (the cover), and an end (back-cover), that follow the linear structure of a number of pages, fixed to a common center, that -in our culture- have the force of an already determined directionality ( left-right, top-down). Its physical structure makes the book a teleological device by knowing before hand that it have an end.
The book presupposes the author. One of the main assumptions in which the discourse of the book is rooted is in that of the author: if there is a book there is an author. He/she is the legitimate bearer of his/her text's meaning. The author, the owner of his/her own words and discourse, is then considered a centered and unified subject, subject-author. The author holds the author-ity over his/her own text. That author-ity puts the author in a hierarchical position over the reader. The reader’s interpretation or understanding of a text will be subjected in the last instance to that of the author.
Hypertext provides for a way of writing that questions the "civilization of the book" and the ideas about the author and the reader discussed previously. In hypertext there are neither pages nor covers, but nodes that are interconnected to each other through different links. Hypertext breach the linear structure of the book. The importance of the multiple reading paths offered by hypertextuality lies on the redefinition of the author’s role on the process of writing. Since Barthes’ “The Death of Author” the idea of an author, his/her originality, the correspondence of his/her interpretation with the meaning of his/her text, and the notion of being master of his/her own narrative have been put into question. “[T]he writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original. His only power is to mix writings [...] in such a way as never to rest on any one of them” (Roland Barthes cited on Christopher Keep, et al; Electronic Labyrinth). Thus the author creation is a collage-like creature with pieces that have been already given. Literary or narrative creation is closer to the process of cut and paste, than to creating anew.
There is an evident relation between hypertext and "cut and paste". One of the central elements that constitute hypertextuality is the link. The link is a kind of cut. It cuts the reading of the text and move the “reader” to other text. The author’s work in hypertext is not limited to writing the content of each node, he/she also has to work in the creation of linkages between those nodes and by doing that he/she is writing. But in hypertext the author writes a text filled with possibilities, by providing different reading paths and, therefore, different texts.
This leads to consider what role does the reader play in this non-linear technology of writing. The reader finds him/her-self in front of a node which offers him/her some links as possible reading paths. The reader finds him/her-self in a position that requires him/her to act as an agent. He/She faces a moment of decision in which he/she is required to act guided by his/her own desire. It is a breakthrough with the civilization of the book. The reader becomes also a writer. He/She is an agent in the construction of the text.
The process of writing cease to be a process in which the author frame a fixed meaning in a lineal and teleological structure. In hypertext the possible meanings of the text are never limited to those intended by the author. “[M]eaning in a hypertext accrues not in the word, but between words; a text’s meaning lies less in what the author intended than in the ways it is read and, in being read, is re-written” (Keep, et al; “Writing”). Thus, it can be said that in hypertext there is not a "true meaning." There are as many meanings as readers-writers. Meaning is never “there” it emerges as a function of a combination of nodes, links and paths. Hypertext can be thought in terms of the blurring of the differentiation between reader and writer.
It is the materialization of Barthes idea of the writerly text, which he oppose to the readerly or classic text: “the goal of literary work (of literature as work) is to make the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text” (S/Z, 4). It is a technique that embodies Derrida’s ideas about “the end of the book and the beginning of writing.”
Other important characteristics of Hypertext are:
Hypertext and Post-Structuralism