| |
|||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||
George Landow’s 1992 book, Hypertext: the Convergence of
Contemporary Critical Theory & Technology, makes an argument for seeing
hypermedia as the fulfilment of the explicit and implicit ethical demands of
contemporary theory. As such, then, hypertext is seen as avant-garde by its
very nature as it radically transforms the reading process: because of its
multilinearity, “once one leaves the shadowy bounds of any text unit, new
rules and new experience apply.”
Hypertext, in Landow’s view, is characterized by the
following elements:
1.
multilinearity
2.
intertextuality
3.
multivocality
4.
decenteredness
5.
montage construction
6.
nonhierarchical writer/reader distinction
7.
choice and chance
8.
associative indexing (links) and webs
9.
digitality and virtual text
10.
democratization
These
elements are what make hypertext the fulfilment of the theories of Derrida,
Barthes, Bakhtin, Baudrillard, and Foucault. It appears modernist in that it
“foregrounds the writing process and therefore rejects a deceptive
transparency.” And it appears avant-garde in that it promises a
restructuration of social relations along hypertextual lines.