Kathy --

"Composition as composure": a fine phrase, a good opening: I keep going back and forth on the purpose of texts (well, yeah), which of course then affects how I think about the reader/writer relation and ties in directly to the purposes of composition (which these days I think of in much much much much wider terms than getting words into some kind of shape on a page).

So one possible conception to the reader/writer relationship: (and please bear with me here, longly)

I have a background in painting/experimental film, where everyone spoke of art as expression, as making one's self present -- still an act of communication, but not meant to be as back-and-forth as I believe your sense of reading would like to have? So, in this 'art' conception, what I make -- painting, web composition -- is meant to convey *me* or what is worth-considering-to-me to someone else.

Adding to that sense of 'making one's self present,' however, I think here of positions like that of Haraway, where learning to see is about learning to recognize that we are all positioned and see from positions and therefore that we see partially -- and so that (if I carry her thinking out into composition/writing/extended definition as above) composition is about making one's position present. (Include here all the provisos about us always having multiple positions.) For Haraway, making one's position(s) present and visible is a matter of responsibility: the attempt to do that shows how positions are always partial, and is also the only way we can have any sense of how to work with each other, the only way we can be fair to each other and respect that we are not alone in the world to make whatever decisions we want, etc., etc.

So under this conception of responsible composition, a composition cannot be about making something where I intend somebody else to construct whatever they want to out of what I write. I have to work to make myself/ves -- and what matters to me -- visible. My responsibility as a 'writer' is to help someone else see who/why/how/where I am on some matter -- in spite of how difficult that is, how constrained that is by how un-transparent communication always is.

The phrase 'composition as composure" you made in response to what I wrote about the 'old' process of composing for paper, where the possibilities for making one's self present really were (I think) about making one's *self* present: when there are black words on white paper in even lines, one has to contort one's selves to fit into there, one makes one's selves look (literally) like everyone else: one size fits all, so make yourself fit it, become a self. Cut off an arm a leg a song a breath -- but fit into that page and those colors and words. (And, of course, there are many other processes at work besides that of the shape of words on a page that ask/require me to fit into a singular shape).

And it may be general resentment about having to lop off parts of ourselves to fit that make me & others resent texts that don't seem to allow more.... (Think here of Cixous, Kristeva, Anzaldua, etc.)

But what does appeal to me about writing on the computer (and how the process reflects back onto paper, to show to us just how much more is possible on paper) is that there are many more shapes, many more strategies for making one's self (and now, more easily, selves) visible (and audible) on screen. (And when I do this, I make myself visible to myself as well as to others...). There is much more room for play here -- although still, I acknowledge, the play is constrained by just what is possible on screens (so that, for example, those who cannot see are not let into the playroom as readily as the sighted...).

That is one perspective on composition from the perspective of writing/making. I *do* here produce a thing, a product -- but in the process I take on some shape that can be considered, recognized, critiqued.

And what about reading, then?

... a reader's responsibility under this conception is a matter of making (some) sense of the position-made-visible by the writer, is being generous/respectful towards a piece of writing (and hence towards whoever took the time to make it) as a position. It is a re-composing, a desire to see what someone else is willing to put out there...

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And I think what I am doing here is shifting where interpellation happens. When I read your last response, Kathy, and read about how you don't like texts that restrain you from independent motion, that sounds like you feel the text is physically constraining you (correct me, though, if necessary, please), making you become some one who isn't supposed to think independently or have other perspectives than those offered by the text.

But if I read a text as something that makes a position visible, then my reading is a process of trying to figure out the position, and thinking that I am seeing *someone else's* restrictions and constraints....

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The better perspective on this is probably some overlapping of both these positions (if I have told your position in some way that sounds right to you): a better perspective would recognize more thoroughly the interprellations&freedoms of both reading&writing... help?

Thanks, Anne

PS - Can you say more about "A framed hypertext that intentionally generated a resistance that would itself become part of the text wouldn't make me quite as unwilling to behave (literately and actively)" -- how do you recognize such purpose in a text?

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Anne Frances Wysocki
Humanities Department
Michigan Technological University
http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~awysocki