paratext

The article reflects on how electronic literature and affiliated or related fields describe themselves paratextually. It focus on metatexts which address the e-lit field or genre as a whole, rather than individual works. 

The following discussion aims to reflect on how electronic literature and affiliated or related fields describe themselves paratextually. I will argue that the social construction of ‘electronic literature’ is dominated by its systemic self-description. The paratextual construction basically works with the ascription of the genre name ‘electronic literature’ and discursive descriptions or reflections to phenomena of artistic practice and has been institutionalized in no small part by the Electronic Literature Organization. The argument is developed by observing paratextual practices in founding narratives, archives and collections related to the ELO. This perspective is contextualized by looking at self-descriptions in the pre-history of e-lit within the artistic program of poietic experimentation.

With the book-based paratext theory Paratext: Thresholds of Interpretation (1987/1997), literary scholar Gérard Genette provides a tool that allows to examine how books ensure the text’s presence in the world, its “reception” and consumption (Genette 1).

It is through a publisher’s peritext that appears on the spine, front and back cover, and a book’s title pages that provide the book’s title, author name, publisher, and year of publication, that that we can identify and communicate a work. The book market highly relies on a publication’s peritext that forms a publications bibliographic data in post-processing; it is also of relevance in libraries. Obviously, in book culture, the publishing apparatus is well established. This is different in the field of electronic literature, due to the way the field evolved through its technological means of production and publication. Here, works are mostly self-published (Koskimaa, Eskelinen, di Rosario) on authors’ web sites and often re-published in multiple venues on the Web (such as online journals, or digital collections (Electronic Literature Collection I and II), and anthologies (ELMCIP Anthology of European Electronic Literature).

Considering e-lit’s particular publication situation and the various paratextual means the Web provides, the following questions emerge: how do e-lit authors make their works paratextually present? Is their practice of paratextual presentation indeed sufficient for post-processing?

This presentation builds on a study of nine works in which some of the following cases occurred in the examination of the work’s title pages: some works do not present the author’s name and title, in other cases, the year of publication is missing. To be sure, these omissions create problems for post-processing works for example in databases, libraries, scholarly communication, and also archiving. How can such bibliographic failures occur? The answer lies in what I call “paratextual integrity” that was often missing in my study-sample of works of electronic literature. As my study of the works’ title pages, along with the author’s home pages show, the reasons lie in the Web's architecture and how authors present their creative works both within their home page and within the self-published work.

By considering works of electronic literature through Genette’s book-based paratext theory I extend Genette’ss notions towards web-based publications and, based on the results of my study, make recommendations as to how an author's work can, based on proper use of the Web's architecture and paratext, indeed be “seen”, communicated, and captured in post-processing.

(Source: ELO 2015 Conference Catalog)

I would like to present a concept which I fully developed in my contribution to the book edited by Nadine Desrochers and Daniel Apollon, Examining Paratextual Theory and its Applications in Digital Culture. In the text I propose a major reconfiguration of the main tenets of Genette’s paratextual theory in order to fully grasp the specific nature of today’s media environm
ent, where modes of circulation often seem more important than the digital content itself. I argue
that while the concept of paratext still provides a valuable framework of analysis, it should be reframed within the propositions of non-representational theory and read not only (or primarily) as relating to the set of subtexts, “parasitic” texts, annotations and markers accompanying the “main” text, but first and foremost as a semiotic-technological apparatus enabling the circulation of digital content across different media platforms. Such a re-reading also calls for an updated understanding of digital media, with more prominence given to relational characterics of the objects, as well as to fluidity and dynamics of the processes of circulation, rather than to digital “objects” as such. Therefore, choosing Google Maps mashups as my main example, I propose a shift in focus: from analysis of the textual (digital) objects themselves, which treats them as a set of discrete entities, to thinking about them first in terms of the possibilities they offer for the circulation of the content.

(Source: Author's Abstract)

Based on the dual perspective of looking back and moving forward, this talk will explore the
underlying tensions in recent work on paratextual theory and on elements that may – or not – fall
under an evolving definition of what constitutes digital paratext.
Gérard Genette’s paratext theory, presented in this book Seuils (1987; translated and published as Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation in 1997), is rooted in print culture and both text- and book-centric – that much is undisputed. As the theory grew in popularity, other types of texts, such as scientific journal articles (namely through the work of Blaise Cronin; see for example Cronin & Franks, 2006) or bibliographic records (Andersen, 2002; Paling, 2002) were thrown into the paratextual ring. Applications of the framework for the analysis of film (Gray, 2010), games (e.g. Burk, 2009), and other cultural products are now well established. This high regard notwithstanding, the recent experience of co-editing the book Examining Paratextual Theory and its Applications in Digital Culture (with Daniel Apollon and due to be published in July 2014) has shown that scholars from various disciplines assess the value, potential uses, and adaptation of paratextual theory to digital culture quite differently. A mapping of the book’s content will illustrate how paratextual theory finds meaning, first, in studies that position and define digital paratextual elements lato sensu, using the digital shift as background and, one might say, explanation enough; and, second, in research where the stricto sensu definitions of digital paratext, epitext, and peritext are at the core of the debate as scholars explore the tension between the known and the new (often as the printed and the digital, but not always). Although no consensus was reached, the book, in itself, offers data on how scholars from various disciplines view, define, explore, and use the paradigms of paratextual theory in their study of digital culture – whether they perceive the latter as a context, a shift, an evolution, or a rupture. Given this landscape and context, some avenues for further research and collaborations across disciplines will be discussed.
Furthermore, by harnessing content from current research projects, the interest of using
paratextual theory in information science, and more specifically in the study of information
behaviour, will be presented. These projects pertain to the fields of cultural and scientific
production, broadly defined, and use conceptual frameworks drawn from Genette but also from
the works of Robert Darnton (1982) and Robert Bourdieu (1992; 1996). They concern three
major players of the cultural realm: writers (of both scholarly texts and fiction), readers (who now
produce what is at times controversially called user-generated paratexts and who testify openly to their reading experience), and information professionals (who act as facilitators between the two former groups, whether for reference or leisure purposes). The digital age has also made it very clear that these groups are extremely permeable. An overview of preliminary analyses from three different projects will be used to illustrate the relationship between the “content” and the “wrapping”: a group of writers’ views, collected through direct inquiry; the use of acknowledgements in the study of authorship in scholarly communication; and the analysis of
user-generated tags in the virtual cataloguing site Goodreads. The goal is not to create a coherent model at this point, but rather to show how each of these research angles can be supported by thinking “paratextually” about digital culture.

(Source: Author's Abstract)

In Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (1987; English translation, 1997), Gérard Genette provided scholars with the seminal concept of paratext: functional elements of the book (such as covers, title pages, illustrations, footnotes, etc.) that help to fulfill the text’s destiny (p. 408) by making it present for the reader (p. 1).

Today, the book often escapes the boundaries of the tangible object of Genette’s study, as is the case with The Unknown – The Original Great American Hypertext Novel. This born-digital collaborative work, so far from Genette’s perception and yet so suited to his views, is a goldmine of thresholds, namely through the source code, which the reader is invited to explore in parallel with the content and navigation provided in the published pages (Gillespie et al., 1999).

This paper combines outlooks from two disciplines, held together by a shared interest in the study of digital culture. The field of information studies provides a qualitative content analysis of the creators’ information-sharing practices and outlines issues of access and retrieval; the literary studies field offers a textual analysis, relating the paratext to the text in order to determine whether the former fulfills what Genette called its “literary function”.

Together, these perspectives reveal how measuring this work against Genette’s framework paves the way for an interdisciplinary study of digital culture. Here, as the concept of book hovers so near the edge it might yet fall over, the paratext may truly be the threshold we need to step inside its new, parallel, and virtual reality.

Source: Authors Abstract

The paper first analyses the role of memory and of the lapses of memory in the reading of a narrative hypermedia. It makes this by analyzing reactions of readers. One can note that two opposite mechanisms operate: the implication of reading as a sign in the work that mobilizes memory, and an hypertextual display of information that favorites the lapse of memory. These examples also show the importance of perception and cognition in interpretation. The paper proposes a semiotiquo-cognitive model of text, the model of “the linked text” in which what is considered as the “text” is subject to the mind archetypes that are used by the subject to understand and manipulate the system of the work, including its technological and cultural dimensions.

Source: Author's Abstract

The paper will present a percepto-cognitive theory of e-poetry. This theory uses a non-ontologic approach of literature in which the concept of "text" cannot be defined independendly from the mind representation for the system. This conception, named "theorie du texte lié à une profondeur" (theory of text linked to a deep) will be present. In this theory, the main concepts are the mind representation of the system, named the "profondeur de dispositif" (system-deep), and the set of elements which can be perceived as a classical text. This set is named the "texte-à-voir" (text-to-be-seen). The system-deep which seems to govern the real behaviour of the system in e-literature is named the procedural archetype. The paper will present the main caracteristic features of it, specially the particular position of the reader. The most important features relative to the reading are the "double reading" and the "aesthetics of frustration": to construct the sense of a work, the reader "has to read his reading", even if the work is non-interactive. This particularity is named "double reading". The aesthetics of frustration consist to use a classical archetype, uncompatible with the real behaviour of the system. It is a strategy of writing: The author supposes that the reader uses this classical archetype. Reading can fail, and this failure is a part of the work. This is why this strategy is named the aesthetics of frustration. In fact, reading does not fail when the reader uses the procedural system-deep. This strategy needs the double-reading to sublimate a failure of reading. Several examples by authors published in "alire" or "KAOS" will ilustrate these points.

Source: Author's Abstract

Twenty-six years after its original publication in French, I examine and propose to revisit a traditional literary theory bound to the book-as-object for the realm of literature in programmable media: paratext theory as envisioned by French narratologist Gérard Genette (translated into English by Jane E. Levin, 1997). To Genette, paratext is that which accompanies a text. He differentiates and distinguishes paratexts according to location of appearance and the sender of paratextual information. Two concepts are relavant: peri- and epitext. Genette speaks and identifies peritexts as those elements of the book dictated by a publisher devoted to the cover, typesetting, format etc. and epitexts which exist outside a book in the form of notes and interviews. Both elements merge into what Genette calls paratext theory, all of which carry out a functionality. Among others, Genette envisions paratexts to fulfill a “literary function“ which serve for guiding a readers reading; a claim under critical exploration in this presentation. Investigating the theme of this conference, I question how paratext theory may help to locate the literary in electronic literature. How do the paratextual elements, or, more specific in the here presented context: how do peritexts that surround and point to a texts existence in fact point to a work’s literary content? Given the very informational original nature and functionality of paratexts, it should be expected to locate a work’s text in these liminal devices that accompany works of electronic literature. Methodologically, I take into consideration, compare, and search for locating the literary in different peritexts to one and the same work. Among others, the Electronic Literature Directory (ELD) that presents readers with encyclopedic articles on creative works is of particular interest to this study. The paper examines selected article contributions from the ELD, as well as work descriptions in the Electronic Literature Collection and asks how these locate the literary of a work. Text in an peritext is located if substantial engagement with a texts literary content is identified. This is true if a description relates to the themes and a work‘s motifs, if it presents a work’s characters, time, space, and setting of the imaginative writing. Optionally, the literary may also be located in a presentation of how a work’s material strategy and behavior relates to the content of a work. The paper intends to make the e-lit community attentive to locate text in paratexts to creative works. This is relevant if a works technical obsolesence is considered. Despite of archival work, if a paratext is all that is available should a work no longer be accessible, one should wish for a paratext that formally is as extensible as possible and as comprehensible as possible when it comes to a work’s literary content that is no longer readable. Such a proposal conceives paratexts as cultural heritage. It relates to Philppe Bootz’s and Alexandra Saemmer’s writing on the theory put forward in the discussion of the “lability of the device“ and builds on Saemmer who in an article states “I [thus] consider the paratext as an ultimate defence against the lability of our digital creations, as well as a part of my work“ (90).

Source: Author's Abstract