Examining Paratextual Theory and Its Applications in Digital Culture
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Examining Paratextual Theory and its Applications in Digital Culture Nadine Desrochers Université de Montréal, Canada Daniel Apollon University of Bergen, Norway A volume in the Advances in Human and Social Aspects of Technology (AHSAT) Book Series Managing Director: Lindsay Johnston Production Editor: Christina Henning Development Editor: Austin DeMarco Acquisitions Editor: Kayla Wolfe Cover Design: Jason Mull Published in the United States of America by Information Science Reference (an imprint of IGI Global) 701 E. Chocolate Avenue Hershey PA 17033 Tel: 717-533-8845 Fax: 717-533-8661 E-mail: [email protected] Web site: http://www.igi-global.com Copyright © 2014 by IGI Global. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without written permission from the publisher. Product or company names used in this set are for identification purposes only. Inclusion of the names of the products or companies does not indicate a claim of ownership by IGI Global of the trademark or registered trademark. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Examining paratextual theory and its applications in digital culture / Nadine Desrochers and Daniel Apollon, editors. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4666-6002-1 (hardcover) -- ISBN 978-1-4666-6003-8 (ebook) -- ISBN 978-1-4666-6005-2 (print & per- petual access) 1. Content analysis (Communication) 2. Digital media. 3. Paratext. 4. Authorship. 5. Genette, Gérard, 1930---Influence. I. Desrochers, Nadine, 1971- editor of compilation. II. Apollon, Daniel, 1951- editor of compilation. P93.E93 2014 401’.4--dc23 2014007795 This book is published in the IGI Global book series Advances in Human and Social Aspects of Technology (AHSAT) (ISSN: 2328-1316; eISSN: 2328-1324) British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. All work contributed to this book is new, previously-unpublished material. The views expressed in this book are those of the authors, but not necessarily of the publisher. For electronic access to this publication, please contact: [email protected]. 128 Chapter 7 Get Out of My Sandbox: Web Publication, Authority, and Originality Barbara Bordalejo KU Leuven, Belgium ABSTRACT This chapter considers how one may use Genette’s concepts of paratext and hypertext within transmedia narratives and born-digital texts and explores how Web publication problematizes standard ideas of authorship and copyright. This challenges our concepts of originality and our understanding of what constitutes the text and what stands outside it. This chapter explores Nick Montfort’s “Taroko Gorge,” a born-digital poem, and Jasper Fforde’s “The Eyre Affair,” analyzed as a transmedia narrative, within the framework of Genette’s theories of “paratext” and “hypertext.” This chapter highlights the difficulty of reconciling the intellectual and political necessity of a world in which data is freely shared with the practical concern of how the producers of creative work can make a living. INTRODUCTION tual” features, which influence our reading to the degree that there is no clear distinction between Transmedia narratives1 and born-digital texts ex- text and outside-text, but rather (in his formula- ist within structures that are different from those tion) a series of “thresholds,” shading into one relating to print books. They force us to revise our another (1997a, pp. 1–3). As McCracken (2013) ideas of authority and originality, and to reconsider points out, while the advent of digital literature the paratextual elements of a particular work. In has multiplied these thresholds and their relations this chapter, I explore how Web publication of with each other, Genette’s observations remain transmedia narratives and born-digital texts prob- useful and I build on them in my analysis.2 I show lematize commonly held notions of authorship and that some authors have come to terms with these copyright, thus challenging the Romantic idea of shifts in our understanding of authorship and originality and our notions of what constitutes the originality, while others resist them, or struggle text and what stands outside it. Genette’s seminal to accommodate them, and I illustrate this with work has shown that the distinction between text one author in each category: Nick Montfort for the and what is outside it is complicated by “paratex- first, Jasper Fforde for the second. Furthermore, DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-6002-1.ch007 Copyright © 2014, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. Get Out of My Sandbox literature from the pre-romantic period has a that generates the poem. Montfort acknowledges much more open attitude towards authorship and these as derivatives of his work, and lists them in originality, which may serve as a signpost to us. his curriculum vitae. But what is “Taroko Gorge”? Is it the words as they appear on the computer screen in a particular NICK MONTFORT: CODE sequence, at a particular time? Is it the code that AS PARATEXT generates those words? Is it a combination of both of those? Matthew Kirschenbaum (2009) Nick Montfort may stand as an example of an offers some insights into these questions at the author who embraces the recreation of his own beginning of the article “Hello Worlds,” where work as well as its republication. “Taroko Gorge” he describes the questions raised when someone first appeared on the Web on January 8, 2009. learning programming writes Hello World. He When one goes to his Taroko Gorge website at states that: http://nickm.com/poems/taroko_gorge.html, at first one sees what seems a conventional poem, The act of writing and then running Hello World though one that appears line by line as you look at can raise some intriguing questions: Who, or what, the screen. Thus, at midday on October 30, 2013, exactly, is saying hello to the world? The original here is what first appeared, one line a fraction of author of the program? The neophyte who just a second after another, in my browser: transcribed it on a computer? The computer itself? All of these somehow together? Whose “world” is Stone sweeps the coves. being greeted? The world around us, or the virtual Coves dream. world inside the machine? Is anyone (or anything) Mists command the flows. expected to return the salutation? Hello World, whose syntax varies from one computer language The impression one gets is that the poem is to another, is a postmodern cultural artifact, and actually being written as it is being read. Indeed, to me such questions are irresistible. (para. 1) that is precisely what is happening. What appears on screen is being generated by JavaScript com- The questions posed by Kirschenbaum are puter code, operating on sets of words defined relevant when we consider “Taroko Gorge.” And by Montfort. Since its first publication, both the if we could give concrete answers to the ques- poem and its code have been available for every- tions above, and suddenly we could fully define one to read (Montfort, 2009). The poem had been and classify Nick Montfort’s poem, then how do originally written in Python while the author was we view those other poems that use the “Taroko at the Taroko Gorge National Park in Taiwan and Gorge” code and that allude to it with their titles: was later ported to JavaScript (Montfort, 2011) “Tokyo Garage,” “Gorge,” “Toy Garbage,” “Yoko before being published online. On July 26, 2011, Engorged,” “Takei, George,” “Alone Engaged,” Montfort (2011) remarked that the code from his “Fred and George,” “Argot Ogre, OK!,” “Tasty poem, “Taroko Gorge,” had been appropriated Gougère,” “Tacoma Grunge,” “Taroko Gary”?3 and altered five times by other people to create The answer to this question would help us answer different poetry generators. To this date, there are how paratexts work in the digital age, since by twenty-two poetry generators that use the JavaS- understanding the essence of this poem we could cript from “Taroko Gorge” to generate different start defining its surrounding paratextual elements. versions of the text, creating a new kind of textual Multiple reincarnations are not an isolated tradition where the text in common is the code phenomenon. They are part of a larger trend 129 Get Out of My Sandbox developing on the Web where individuals publish once a line scrolls past visibility it is gone: you creative work inspired by others. Although the cannot scroll up or down. Live the moment in this Web changed the way in which we exchanged poem for as long as it lasts, until you reach the information, Web 2.0 has made us question some end or realize what’s going on...whichever comes concepts that many scholars had taken for granted. first. (para. 1) In “The Machine is Us/ing Us,” Michael Wesch states that these changes should lead us to reflect Flores’s description of “Taroko Gorge” uni- and reassess ideas that we have assumed to be fies what others might understand as different uncontestable: aspects of this work: its language, its movement and its code (the latter referred to in a different We’ll need to rethink a few things... paragraph of the same entry). Flores is correct ...copyright in understanding “Taroko Gorge” as one work ...authorship composed of many parts, some clearly visible ...identity and some invisible (until called upon) though ...ethics functional. It is its nature as electronic literature ...aesthetics to fulfill those characteristics. However, the poem ...rhetorics presents us with other problems, particularly ...governance regarding the nature of its structure and what is ...privacy essential to its existence. ...commerce When we consider the poems derived from ...love “Taroko Gorge,” we are forced to reassess our ...family understanding of exactly what is text and what ...ourselves.