Difference between revisions of "Textual Closure (Formal)"

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[[Image: Justinian's Corpus.jpg|thumb|right|Justinian I's "Corpus Juris Civilis" ("Body of Civil Law")]]
 
[[Image: Justinian's Corpus.jpg|thumb|right|Justinian I's "Corpus Juris Civilis" ("Body of Civil Law")]]
  
===Cornelia Vismann===
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===Cornelia Vismann, ''Files: Law and Media Technology''===
  
 
1 Textual genre: Legal codex - Distinguish from scroll
 
1 Textual genre: Legal codex - Distinguish from scroll
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[[Image:Goethe.jpg|thumb|right|Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship"]]
 
[[Image:Goethe.jpg|thumb|right|Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship"]]
  
===Friedrich Kittler===
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===Friedrich Kittler, ''Discourse Networks, 1800/1900''===
  
 
1 Textual genre: Bildungsroman novel - distinguish from law, which is literal?
 
1 Textual genre: Bildungsroman novel - distinguish from law, which is literal?
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[[Image:wiki.jpg|thumb|right|Editing History of Wikipedia's "Evolution" article]]
 
[[Image:wiki.jpg|thumb|right|Editing History of Wikipedia's "Evolution" article]]
  
===N. Katherine Hayles===
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===N. Katherine Hayles, ''My Mother Was A Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts''===
  
 
1 Textual genre: Clustering, dynamic digital texts
 
1 Textual genre: Clustering, dynamic digital texts

Revision as of 15:18, 3 May 2010

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The semiotic marker of textual closure present in a folio of Shakespeare's works from the early 1600s.

Formal closure is a property the printed text exhibited, at different pre-modern moments, by the text as a complete and unified whole, bound in the format of the printed book. The contemporary spread of the computer's digital text has opened texts to change and modification, which has profound consequences for the textual work as an aesthetic entity. Comparisons with the digital text are instructive, as the digital text brings to light technological qualities which compose the printed book but have been rendered invisible by over 500 years of circulation.


530: Roman Legal Administration

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Justinian I's "Corpus Juris Civilis" ("Body of Civil Law")

Cornelia Vismann, Files: Law and Media Technology

1 Textual genre: Legal codex - Distinguish from scroll

2 Representative figure: Roman Emperor Justinian I

3 Figure: Father, murderer 'mother literature'

4 Emergent whole: writ and force of law

5 Medium and function: the codex. Compilation, indexical (digital); as compared with the radically serial (analog) scroll

6 Literacy: functional protocol as social norm

7 Closure (Opening?): Implicit truth of codex-codified protocol

8 Agency structure: Legal administrators hold agency through codified, unified law; subjects are compelled to conform

9 Dynamic:



1800: the German Bildungsroman

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Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship"

Friedrich Kittler, Discourse Networks, 1800/1900

1 Textual genre: Bildungsroman novel - distinguish from law, which is literal?

2 Representative figure: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

3 Figure: erotic, primal mother - and indulgent child

4 Emergent whole: unity of fiction novel

5 Medium and function: the bildungsroman novel, the scientific treatise. The (invisibly technological) serial aesthetic, or scientific whole. As compared with 'random' aspects of compilation codex.

6 Literacy: Alphebetization through education

7 Closure / Opening: Unity of subjective experience realized in imagination

8 Agency structure: Authors hold agency through 'works'; yet subjects are enabled to 'hallucinate' these in imagination in any way, and to derive pleasure from this experience

9 Dynamic:



2000: Computational Sociality

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Editing History of Wikipedia's "Evolution" article

N. Katherine Hayles, My Mother Was A Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts

1 Textual genre: Clustering, dynamic digital texts

2 Representative figure: Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia

3 Figure: "Universal motherboard ... of us all" (Hayles)

4 Emergent whole: Materiality of digital text - a heterogenous clustering unity?

5 Medium and function: the digital text. A dynamic, inherently coded whole. As compared with the uncanny fixity of the printed word.

6 Literacy: 'Alphebetization' Youth co-option of common consumer technology

7 Opening (Closure?): Computation as fluid, but with infinite memory

8 Agency structure: Author loses control over works; subjects gain ability to manipulate texts technically

9 Dynamic:



References

Barthes, Roland, [1971]. “From Work to Text,” from Hale, Dorothy (ed) The Novel: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory, 1900-2000. Wiley-Blackwell. Print.

Genette, Gerard. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK. 1997. Print.

Hayles, N. Katherine (2005) "My Mother Was A Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts." The University of Chicago Press: Chicago. Print.

Hesse, Carla (1996), "Books in Time," pp. 21-36. From Nunberg, Geoffrey (ed) The Future of the Book. University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles. 1996. Print.

Kittler, Friedrich. (1990) Discourse Networks, 1800/1900. Stanford University Press: Stanford. Print.

Miah, Andy, (2003). “(e)Text: Error… 404 Not Found! Or The Disappearance of History,” Culture Machine, Vol. 5. Text available at: http://www.culturemachine.net.

Thompson, John B (1981). “Editor’s Introduction,” pp. 1-26. From Paul Ricoeur: Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Print.

Vismann, Cornelia. Files: Law and Media Technology. Stanford University Press: Stanford. 2008. Print.