Textual Closure (Formal)

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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 the deeply naturalized qualities of the printed book.

530: Roman Legal Administration

Image 1

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

Vismann

Work: Legal codex - Distinguish from scroll Roman Emperor Justinian I Emergent writ of law Figure of father, murdering  'mother literature' Implicit truth of codex-codified protocol

1800: German Bildungsroman

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Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship"

Kittler

Work: Bildungsroman novel - distinguish from law, which is literal? Goethe Emergent unity of fiction novel Figure of erotic, primal mother - and indulgent child Serial medium: the book Unity of subjective experience realized in imagination

2000: Computational Sociality

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Editing History of Wikipedia's "Evolution" article

N. Katherine Hayles

Work: Clustering dynamic texts Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia Emergent materiality of digital text - as social process? Computation as fluid, but with infinite memory Heterogenous unity? Universal motherboard "of us all"

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.