Beth: Hypertext as Conduit

In my opening remarks I very briefly raised the idea of hypertext as conduit, and the possible interpretations of hypertext that see it not as a liberating discourse but, rather, as that which constrains voice, a dynamic I find compelling in light of feminist theory. It's possible to see the session as modeling such a pattern. Whether you consider a hypertext like the one I wrote, a largely contentless piece that primarily serves to link other pieces together, or you reflect on the audience's reading experience of the whole, a process that didn't allow individual authors' ideas and voices to come through thoroughly, you can see a version of hypertext as either purposefully or accidentally muffling a voice.

When I use the phrase "hypertext as conduit" I am trying to evoke a notion of a discourse that primarily links ideas and only secondarily interjects "new" information. Creating links among other texts as the "Short Course on Orality and Literacy" does is certainly one way to construct an argument, one way to assert a reading perspective. Creating those kind of connections among others' texts is in some ways an aggressive act, a seizing of interpretive control. But there is also the way the genre of hypertext can facilitate a self- or other-imposed silencing of personal voice. Different motivations can fuel the same impulse to create largely via others' voices, but I think this particular authoring strategy is worth a bit of attention.

The session itself was a very different manifestation of the conduit dynamic than my particular contribution to the hypertext, but it was instructive nonetheless. As the audience navigated the text and the panel members' level of frustration increased, we witnessed "our" words becoming the conduit for the ideas "others" were forming, the connections they were building among "our" ideas. In some ways we were simply witnessing firsthand the intricacies of interpretation. That is, what occurred in that room in Phoenix was not fundamentally any different than a private reading and interpretive experience (c.f. the authorial claim of misinterpretation), but it did model in a public and synchronous manner the raw power a reader can exert over a text. A question arises, then, as to whether writing a hypertext that takes as its primary goal the linking of others' ideas or scripting an elaborate and content-rich hypertext shares more commonalities than differences once the reader seizes hold of the artifact.