Back t0:

One of the first prominent critics of digital textuality, Landow's seminal Hypertext and its amplified update Hypertext 2.0 forge thought-provoking connections between critical and literary theory and electronic writing and computer technology. Specifically, Landow identifies the intersections between major postmodern theoretical conceptions and theoretical and practical components of computer textuality. He pays particular attention to the relationship between postmodern theories “usual suspects” (Barthes, Bahktin, Baudrillard, Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari) and the founding fathers of hypertext theory (Vannevar Bush, Theodor Nelson, Douglas Englebert, Andries van Dam, and many others). He believes that hypertext’s ability to link “lexia” (a Barthian term for text) in a boundless, open-ended, and multivocal environment provides us with a means to realize the postmodern writerly text (Barthes) / assemblage (Derrida) / rhizomatic line of flight (Deleuze and Guattari), thereby providing us with a way of testing the possibility of postmodern theoretical aspirations.

What is hypertext?

Hypertext as perpetually unfinished

Nonlinearlity and hypertext fiction

Collage

 

This essay focuses on providing a useable definition and description of hypertext and its relationship to collage and montage. Particularly useful to the rookie is his discussion of the eight primary characteristics of the digital world. Perhaps not surprising given the nature of the volume in which it appears (see annotation on Lunenfeld and Heim), Landow relies far less on postmodern theory in this essay than one might expect. The essay’s technological rather than postmodern accent might explain why Landow seems more interested in discussing hypertext in terms of “collage” (and to a lesser degree montage) rather than openness (the dominant theme of his seminal Hypertext 2.0). The connection to Derrida and Deleuze remains strong, however, since he understands “collage” as a techno-practical application of the postmodern notion of assemblage.

A “revised, amplified” update of his earlier work Hypertext, this work remains one of the most important in hypertext’s early history. As the title states, Landow identifies the intersections between major postmodern theoretical conceptions and theoretical and practical components of computer textuality. He pays particular attention to the relationship between postmodern theories “usual suspects” (Barthes, Bahktin, Baudrillard, Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari) and the founding fathers of hypertext theory (Vannevar Bush, Theodor Nelson, Douglas Englebert, Andries van Dam, and many others). He believes that hypertext’s ability to link “lexia” (a Barthian term for text) in a boundless, open-ended, and multivocal environment provides us with a means to realize the postmodern wreaderly text / assemblage / rhizomatic line of flight, thereby providing us with a way of testing the possibility of postmodern theoretical democratic aspirations.