Derrida and Deconstructionism Within Hypertext
Hypertext facilitates the communications foundational to the construction
of World Sustainability, or so we contend here. Since the migration,
if not the evolution, from the Anthropocene to the Noosphere exceeds
technical solutions to technical aspects of unsustainability, Deconstructionism
opens up a path to the cultural transformation required for authentic
and global (cross-cultural) sustainability. Consider:
"This is the most important point to grasp about deconstruction.
There is no language so vigilant and self-aware that it cannot effectively
escape the conditions placed upon thought by its own pre-history
and ruling metaphysic" (Norris, 21-22).
"Our knowledge of the world is inextricably shaped and conditioned
by the language that serves to represent it. . . . Meanings are bound
up in a system of relationship and difference that effectively determines
our habits of thought and perception" (Saussure 5).
The Hypertext format of this site needs to be examined through the thought
of Jacques
Derrida and Deconstructionism. Deconstruction
is actually quite friendly to Hypertext but less so to more fixed and hierarchical
formats
of delivery of text. Since World Sustainability must remain congenial to
change and promote open transparency and democratic forms, it welcomes Hypertext
(Landow). Indeed, the notion of the Noosphere, developed in the site, shifts
the ground
of sustainability from technical aspects of, say, energy systems to a broad
and dynamic process of network society (Castells).
Aspects of Deconstructionism within Hypertext include:
- "There is nothing outside the text." This
is perhaps the foundational mantra of Deconstructionism. Derrida insists
on a strong boundary within
the text so that what is not explicit is simply not there. How can this
be otherwise? Do we guess at intentionality? This can self-correct for
the rampant reductionism that contradicts World Sustainability itself.
- Text is internally dynamic and self-referencing. What
is contained within the text points to itself to form an ensemble or
a system. To deconstruct a text is to discover what is actually within
the text. While this may subtract from what we like to drag into the
text, this exercise reinforces the architecture, if any, of the text
itself. Hypertext provides a grammar or internal structure that stresses
the form of the text. A Hypertext author must specifically attend to
the structure of the text more than the author of, say, an essay.
- The boundaries of Hypertext can expand through external
links. Thus, the reader and the author can build into the Hypertext its
own pre-history and acknowledge its presuppositions.
Derrida's Deconstructionism specifies the latent, typically hidden, presumptions
typical of text. Hypertext certainly may also fail to recognize such
limits, but Hypertext possesses the potential to bring these hidden assumptions
to light. If the author does not, the technology of Hypertext, the Internet
delivery system, enables the reader to independently discover such limits.
- A Lexia is a chunk or building block of text, either
a paragraph or a group of related paragraphs typically bounded by a heading.
Hypertext authors consciously chunk,
or build fragments of text within the confines of html tags that reinforce
the boundaries of the specific Lexia. The linking of Lexia builds the
site architecture, which can be made more coherent and flexible in Hypertext.
- Hypertext is potentially non-linear, much harder to
achieve with orthodox
text, print or electronic. Internal links and site architecture provide
this potential --- which does not imply that all Hypertext achieves this
potential. While all readings can be fresh, Hypertext maximizes the potential
for the new and fresh reading.
- Hypertext is a readerly text, meaning that the reader,
not the author, determines the pathway through the Hypertext.
This de-centers the construction of the text and erodes the authority
of the author, which Deconstructionism regards as a good thing.
- Hypertext need not be terminally fixed but can evolve, adding to the
desirable quality of dynamism, both for the reader and
for the author. Through the capacity of the readers to participate in
the construction of the Hypertext through such tools as a wiki and social
networking sites. This potentially democratizes the
construction of meaning within Hypertext but cannot be accomplished in
traditional formats of text.
- The flow of communication enabled by Hypertext permits the willing
author to gather and digest feedback from the readers, thus empowering the reader
to actually change the text within a process that the author cannot fully
control.
- The Internet delivers Hypertext, which is thus easy and inexpensive to
publish and does not destroy trees for pulp for paper. While some may
be excluded thorough the Digital Divide, books, for example, cost money,
chew up resources, and remain difficult to track or obtain. The sheer
number of readers and participants through Hypertext expands the circulation
of this format.