FoolsCap

Here I am, right, reading inncocently along in Johnson-Eilola’s essay, annotating furiously, when I come upon this:

p. 202: Articulation theory provides a way for thinking about how meaning is constructed contingently, from pieces of other meanings and social forces that tend to prioritize one meaning over another.  Because articulation conceices meaning as a contingent play of existing forces rather than a traditional "creation" and "reception," the persepctive can be useful in helping us understand writing as a process of arrangement and connection rather than simply one of isolated creative utterance.

AWESOME!!  Something that gives a clear picture of my idea about teaching reading and writing "hypertextually" rather than "intertextually", where connectivity is enabled from the moment of composition rather than just as a byproduct of the reader/viewer/consumer.  This articulation jazz also fits in with my questions about the construction of the subject, whether we exist outside of discourse (a sort of Benhabibian essentialism) or only through the discourses we appropriate/are appropriated by (Butlerian. . .um. . .non-essentialism?). . .So cool, right? 

Wait a minute. . .formed from other meanings. . .prioritized. . .no, that can’t be right. . .that sounds like. . . .

Derrida.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo  :::gasp for breath::  ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ::more breath:: ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

::labored breathing::

So. . .intertextuality/hypertextuality (at least as I’ve interpellated/appropriated them) are fundamentally Derridean, aren’t they?  Texts exist in relationship to other texts. . .meaning comes not from authorial intent (although I have some conflicting ideas about that) but from the interplay of other texts in the reading subject’s discursive fields. . .meaning is contingent on conext and readers. . .this can’t be.  My sketchy little ideas about pedagogy can’t be Derridean. . .I hate Derrida. . .everyone knows that!

Oh, man.

Johnson-Eilola on blogs:

p. 215: [. . . T]hey are so easy to produce and modify as to seem nearly disposable (but never really disappearing, with old text being archived to create a searchspace of shadow information).

I’ve developed a minor level obsession with the notion of shadow information.  I don’t fully know what to do with this idea. . .It sort of points me to a question that might be something like this: How does what we don’t know inform what we do know?  I’m thinking here sort of in terms of Derrida (at least as Berlin reads Derrida) in which words have meaning in relation to absences/opposites.  I don’t know what the answer to the above question would be. . .it sort of leads to one of those Rumsfeldian moments: there are things we know we don’t know, there are things we don’t know we don’t know, there are things we don’t know we know. . .I think there’s more to the question than just saying that not having all the "necessary" info leads to misreading, because a) who determines what info is necessary, and b) I think the idea of misreading implies a certain authorial intentionality that seems at odds with the larger scope of deconstruction/intertext/hypertext.

p. 222: Is error 404–or a search engine–merely a derivative work?  Only in the sense that it is composed of pieces of other texts.  But that is true of any text–work on intertextuality has taught us that all texts are composed of numerous other texts.  Are these sorts of texts merely functional?  Only in the sense that the text must be operated or started and run by someone.  But that is also true of any text–work on reader response, cultural studies, usability studies, and a whole host of theoretical and practical fields has taught us that meaning does inhere in a static text.

I’m reminded here of Borges’ story about "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote:

He did not want to compose another Quixote–which is easy–but the Quixote itself.  Needless to say, he never contemplated a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it.  His admirable intention was to produce a few pages which would coincide–word for word and line for line–with those of Miguel de Cervantes.

and further

Menard (perhaps without wanting to) has enriched, by means of a new technique, the halting and rudimentary art of reading: this new technique is that of the deliberate anachronism and the erroneous attribution.  This technique, whose applications are infinite, prompts us to go through the Odyssey as if it were posterior to the Aeneid and the book Le jardin du Centaure of Madame Henri Bachelier as if it were by Madame Henri Bachelier.  This technique fills the most placid works with adventure.  To attribute the Imatatio Christi to Louis Ferdinand Celine or to James Joyce, is this not a sufficient renovation of its tenuous spiritual indications?

In true Johnson-Eilolian fashion, I’m just going to leave these three excerpts alone without commentary and ask what relationship others see between them.  (Also, I don’t have any ready commentary–I think these three excerpts are connected but I’m not really sure I know yet what they’re asking each other.)