Haynes and Holmevik open
"Cyphertext MOOves" with a diagnosis: they name the tropological symptomatology
at work in Sven
Birkerts's Gutenberg Elegies, noting, for example, that the "crossroads"
metaphor on which Birkerts relies operates as a symptom of the unacknowledged
metaphysical craving driving the work itself. The trope of the "crossroads,"
H&H explain, restricts the possibilities of our encounter with information
systems to an either/or framework, to a Self's moral decision between the path
leading to the Go(o)d (the Book) or the path leading to "the cyborgian
devil" (electronic information technologies). H&Hbeing good deconstructive
theorists as well as good symptomatologistsrespond to Birkerts's restricted
economy not by flipping the privilege from one side (print publishing) to the
other (electronic publishing) but rather by busting the binary framework itself;
that is: by busting an/other kind of MOOve. -ddd |