Earliest written reflection on digital texts

This is the first written reflection on digital textuality that I can find. It's from my Eduspaces blog used for the Introduction to Digital Environments for Learning module (University of Edinburgh MSc in E-learning) taken in Semester 1 and posted on 3 December 2007.

Back to the 80s: Derrida on texts and iterability

As ever, I find Sian a good person to think with (and sometimes against ). Here's the most recent theme she's got me thinking about.

Sian writes:

I think that digitisation represented quite a radical de-stabilising of text in particular, and that when that text became networked, it entered an even more volatile state in which it became increasingly problematic to talk about textual 'stability' and association notions of truth/knowledge. (Bayne 2007)

I take issue with Sian's view of digitisation in a couple of ways:

1) I think it's inaccurate to homogenise all digital texts. Here's Joensuu (2005):

... it is not fair to treat the existing digital literature as one “lump”. Electronic literature is divided in different categories. Digitalization of (already) printed literature – conserving classic literature and making it electronically available – is very different from genuinely digital texts, new literature published as a digital file (to be read from computer screen or hand-computer) or texts that take full advantage of digital opportunities, such as interactivity, linking, updating, programming, multimedia, or internet. These sorts of “originally digital” texts base their logic of functioning and textual dynamics on digital technology – thus being impossible to print.

2) I'd claim that arguments about the destabilisation of the text have been applied for many decades to printed (pre-digital) texts. For example, Jacques Derrida has argued consistently that what we communicate textually cannot be interpreted in a stable or predictable way that assumes authorial intention has been sucessfully 'transmitted'. Derrida characterises text as inherently “iterable … able to break with every given context, and engender infinitely new contexts in an absolutely unsaturable fashion” (Derrida, 1982, p.320).

References

Bayne, S. 03 December 2007. Re: Are we making too much fuss about the perceived digital/pre-digital divide? Introduction to Digital Environments for Learning discussion board week 11. [online]

Derrida, J. (1982) 'Signature, Event. Context.' Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: Chicago UP.

Joensuu, J. (Jun. 2005) "Intimate Technology?: Literature, Reading and the Argumentation Defending Book and Print," M/C Journal, 8(2). Retrieved 03 Dec. 2007 from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/02-joensuu.php>.

Keywords: IDELautumn07

Posted by Anthony McNeill | Edit | Delete

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Comments

1. As ever, Tony, you are a great source of interesting reading, links and ideas! I enjoyed Joensuu, though it struck me that 'intimist' discourses are increasingly applied in describing relations with the digital - particularly to mobile objects like laptops and pdas. The old fetishising anti-digital catchprase 'you can't take it to bed with you' seems increasingly irrelevant these days. Anyway, more in WebCT....

   Sian Bayne on Tuesday, 04 December 2007, 13:11 CET # | Delete

2. btw, I really think you'd enjoy Mark Poster on this, if you haven't already read him. 'What's the matter with the internet?' (2001) is excellent. He also has a new one out - 'Information please: culture and politics in the age of digital machines' (2006), which I haven't yet read.

   Sian Bayne on Tuesday, 04 December 2007, 13:15 CET # | Delete