In his book "Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature", Espen Aarseth ponders whether the rapid growth of digital literature means that the narrative mode of discourse, that is, novels and films etc. are no longer able to maintain their dominant status within our culture. Aarseth uses the terms 'cybertext' and 'ergodic' in his work and any further study requires an understanding of their meanings.
Aarseth (1997) was interested to discover in what way hypertexts are actually texts. He postulated that even though hypertexts are verbal structures that are similar to other literary phenomena, they are in fact different. The further paraverbal dimension however, has been difficult for literary theorists to define, as they claimed that, despite the divergent nature of hypertext, when it is read, all text becomes linear. For Aarseth though, cybertexts can leave the reader with a feeling of paths not taken, of decisions made that reveal certain parts of the narrative but leave others inaccessible. The reader may never know what has been missed. Aarseth is quick to point out that this aspect of cybertext is different from an ambiguity in a linear narrative. Rather he regards it as an aporia[1] or an absence of possibility.
The reader of a narrative has no power with which to direct the way in which that tale will unfold, therefore, that reader is no more than a voyeur taking secure pleasure in observing, but remaining impotent. However, the reader of the cybertext is not so secure and Aarseth argues, in that case is not simply a reader. Aarseth wrote;
"The cybertext puts its would-be reader at risk: the risk of rejection. The effort and energy demanded by the cybertext of its reader raise the stakes of interpretation to those of intervention. Trying to know a cybertext is an investment of personal improvisation that can result in either intimacy or failure. The tensions at work in a cybertext, while not incompatible with those of narrative desire, are also something more: a struggle not merely for interpretative insight but also for narrative control: "I want this text to tell my story; the story that could not be without me." In some cases this is literally true. In other cases, perhaps most, the sense of individual outcome is illusory, but nevertheless the aspect of coercion and manipulation is real.[2]
For Aarseth then, the readers of cybertexts are players in world-games in which it has become possible to explore, discover hidden paths or meanings and to possibly become lost simply because of the topographical structure of the textual machinery. [construction note]
Aarseth regards writing as a spatial activity and postulates that therefore, ergodic textuality has been in practice since linear writing first came into being. Aarseth cites the example of wall inscriptions in Egypt from ancient times which were often connected from wall to wall or from room to room. Thus the inscriptions were ergodic as the 'work' followed a 'path'. The wall inscriptions however were where they were and remained as such. The development of digital databases meant that, for the first time, narratives could be broken down into two independent levels; the user interface and the storage medium. For the first time "on a physical level, the surface of reading was divorced from the stored information."[3]
Aarseth questions the supposition that the fragmented and discontinuous nature that hypertexts demands of the reader could be a form of tmesis [4]. For Roland Barthes (1990), a reader's unhindered omitting and skimming of passages is a tmesis and that is a condition totally beyond the control of any author. Aarseth contends that a hypertext can be likened to a labyrinth which the reader needs to explore in order to proceed. As in any labyrinthian puzzle, readers tend to be careful of where they place their next step. They scrutinize the possible links and possible locations so that they will avoid encountering the same sections again and again. Aarseth's contention then is that;
"Only a linear text sequence (with intransient temporality) can be read in a free tmesis manner, as the reader is free to skip passages defined entirely by him. Contradistinctively, tmesis in hypertext will always be limited by the topological constraints laid down by the author. We might say that hypertext punishes tmesis by controlling the text's fragmentation and pathways and by forcing the reader to pay attention to the strategic links."[5]
Aarseth coins the term 'ergodic aporia' to describe the bewildered interchange that occurs when a reader is attempting to navigate the hypertextual labyrinth and he contends that this may be mistaken with tmesis. But, for Aarseth, this is not the 'textual bliss' of which Barthes wrote. Instead it is the textual claustrophobia of readers as they scan the various nodes.
Aarseth realizes that books have a dynamic function and because of this he sees that the, "new media do not appear in opposition to the old but as emulators of features and functions that are already invented."[fn] he contrasts cybertexts with hypertexts when he makes the distinction between 'linear' and 'ergodic' texts by locating 'ordinary hypertexts' as being characteristically linear. Cybertexts, according to Aarseth, are ergodic because of their dynamic user functionability. These functions are beyond the purely interpretive of ordinary texts. Beyond this purely interpretive function, the user of a cybertext may encounter;
"the explorative function, in which the user must decide which path to take, and the configurative function, in which scriptons are in part chosen or created by the user. If textons or traversal functions can be (permanently) added to the text, the user function is textonic."[6]
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[1] aporia
- \A*po"ri*a\, n.; pl. Aporias. [L., doubt, Gr. ?, fr. ? without passage,
at a loss; 'a priv. + ? passage.] (Rhet.) A figure in which the speaker professes
to be at a loss what course to pursue, where to begin to end, what to say,
etc.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
back
[2] In Aarseth, E. 1997, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore p 4. back
[3] Ibid., p 10. back
[4] tmesis
(TMEE-sis), plural tmeses, noun: in grammar and rhetoric, the separation of
the parts of a compound word, now generally done for humorous effect; for
example, what place soever instead of whatsoever place, or abso-bloody-lutely.
Tmesis comes from the Greek word for an "act of cutting". back
Source: Dictionary.com
Word of the Day
[5] In Aarseth, E. 1997, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore p 78. back
[6] Ibid., p 64. back
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References:
Aarseth, E. 1997, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
Barthes, R. 1990, The Pleasure of the Text, Miller, R. (trans), Basil Blackwell, Oxford.