Hypertext

HYPERTEXT AND CRITICAL THEORY

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Landow G., (1992) “Hypertext 2.0” Johns Hopkins University Press. USA

Main Idea: Hypertext has the capacity to emphasize intertextuality. The readertakes an active role, he can go forwards or backwards the text to get the meaning of it.

In contrast to Barthes, who emphasizes the writerly text and its non linearity, Derrida emphasizes textualopenness, intertextuality and the distinction between inside and outside of a particular text.
He describes hypertext system in which the active reader can connect words to cognates, derivations andopposites.
Derrida’s “methodology of decomposition” is an attempt to open the text to several meanings and interpretation.
Hypertext does not permit a univocal voice. The point of focus of ahypertext depends upon the reader, who becomes an active reader.
Hypertext is composed by linked texts. It has not center and the reader makes his own interest of investigation. Derrida called it de-centred.Deleuze and Guattari compare hypertext with a rhizome. A rhizome connects any point to other point.
Through hypertext we can find the four meanings of network:
1- Network refers to one kind ofelectronically linked electronic equivalent to a printed text.
2- The gathering of lexias is called a web.
3- Network refers to an electronic system involving additional computers as well as cables orwire connections that permit to share information.
4- Here the word refers to the entirety of all those terms for which there is no term and for which other terms stand until something better comesalong.
To refers to non linear thoughts Barthes employs the terms link, network web and path. Derrida uses the terms link, web, network, matrix and interweaving associated with hypertextuality andBakhtim employs links, linkage, interconnectedness and interwoven. Foulcault conceives of text in terms of the network and according to him a network in the phenomenon “that is able to link together”....