Title | : | Writing Machines |
Author | : | |
Rating | : | |
ISBN | : | 0262582155 |
ISBN-10 | : | 9780262582155 |
Language | : | English |
Format Type | : | Paperback |
Number of Pages | : | 144 |
Publication | : | First published November 8, 2002 |
Awards | : | Susanne K. Langer Award Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Symbolic Form (2003) |
Tracing a journey from the 1950s through the 1990s, N. Katherine Hayles uses the autobiographical persona of Kaye to explore how literature has transformed itself from inscriptions rendered as the flat durable marks of print to the dynamic images of CRT screens, from verbal texts to the diverse sensory modalities of multimedia works, from books to technotexts.
Weaving together Kaye's pseudo-autobiographical narrative with a theorization of contemporary literature in media-specific terms, Hayles examines the ways in which literary texts in every genre and period mutate as they are reconceived and rewritten for electronic formats. As electronic documents become more pervasive, print appears not as the sea in which we swim, transparent because we are so accustomed to its conventions, but rather as a medium with its own assumptions, specificities, and inscription practices. Hayles explores works that focus on the very inscription technologies that produce them, examining three writing machines in depth: Talan Memmott's groundbreaking electronic work Lexia to Perplexia, Mark Z. Danielewski's cult postprint novel House of Leaves, and Tom Phillips's artist's book A Humument. Hayles concludes by speculating on how technotexts affect the development of contemporary subjectivity.
Writing Machines is the second volume in the Mediawork Pamphlets series.
Writing Machines Reviews
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Hayles frames Writing Machines as “an experiment in forging a vocabulary and set of critical practices responsive to the full spectrum of signifying components in print and electronic texts by grounding them in the materiality of the literary artifact” (6). Moving back and forth between [1] (auto)biographical excurses documenting the experiences of a “Kaye” who is not quite Hayles and [2] more theoretical chapters (the two eventually merge), Hayles argues that academics in literature must practice “media-specific analysis” attendant to the materiality of electronic and print texts--that is, “the material apparatus producing the literary work as physical artifact” (29). Hayles performs such analyses of Talan Memmott’s electronic work Lexia to Perplexia, Tom Phillips artist’s book A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel, and Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves. She includes the third to make clear that “materialist strategies are also intimately involved in a best-selling novel” (110). Writing Machines also calls attention to its own materiality, featuring a variety of typefaces, layered images from the texts Hayles analyzes, shifting margins, and other touches by designer Anne Burdick. In addition to foregrounding materiality, Hayles challenges early advocates of hypertext as exaggerating hypertext’s affordances. She instead forwards the concept of “technotexts,” a category comprising any literary work that “interrogates the inscription technology that produces it” and that thus includes even such print works as Danielewski’s (25). She also explores the ways such texts challenge and undermine traditional conceptions of subjectivity. House of Leaves, for instance, “suggests that the appropriate model for subjectivity is a communication circuit rather than discrete individualism, for narration remediation rather than representation, and for reading and writing inscription technology fused with consciousness rather than a mind conveying its thoughts directly to the reader” (130).
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This is a fascinating book, all about how the materiality of the written word makes a difference for the reader, and about the importance of materiality as well as text. Needless to say, right up my alley. The author doesn't just write these points, she also worked with a designer to make the book feel more like an experience than a "regular" book and to emphasize her points. At times I felt that Hayles thought her ideas were more original than they were (though there were a few acknowledgments of the work of bibliographers and book historians), but she writes well and engagingly about her topic.
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Difficult reading but definitely worth it. She brings together the two worlds of literature and computer programming. The topics she discusses relate more to "how" we read, than to actually reading on a computer, although that is in there too. She also discusses "House of Leaves" which I have yet to get my hands on and read, but sounds fascinating.
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In Writing Machines (2002), Katherine Hayles argues for understanding materiality as a way to discuss representation and simulation and to explore what texts enable and constrain (6). Hayles argues that materiality can no longer be a subset of literary studies and needs to be central (19), for to change the material aspects of a text is to change how it is read (23).
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N. Katherine Hayles rocks as usual in this book!
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Wish it had been longer. Critical concepts: technotexts and media-specific analysis. An enjoyable short exploration with some fascinating examples.
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"Rather than trying to eradicate noise, literary scholars have a vested interest in preserving it."
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Read for exams. For an examination of materiality, spends a lot of time thinking about surface features, esp typography. Design elements of the book are pretty cool.
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Fun little book, 5/5
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Devoured this in 24 hours because I unwittingly got behind on it for a class. I would recommend taking more time with it—there are a lot of dense ideas and unintuitive verbiage. It is a fascinating read about the limits of traditional literature in the current form in which it is discussed critically, and the changing media landscape, or as Hayles would say, Media Ecology. Reading this is a bit of a mind-bender, but raises some fascinating issues while also forging on with a crusade to instantiate a lot of inventive theory. (Not all of it completely original.) It also discusses a few different things in particular of which I am a fan already, including House Of Leaves. And Wow. I must say that Hayles made me see this book—not just the story, but the physical artifact—so much differently. I think that I—and I suspect many others out there—missed a lot of the point of House Of Leaves in terms of its experimental nature, and what the overall point of it was (artist’s intentions, and so on). Hayles sheds light on what is going on in that book, and in others like it, in a thoughtful, critical, and thorough way. I’d take out a notepad when reading—I found it useful to record notes to keep track of terminology, and other things as well of course.
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Not my critical cup of tea. I appreciate the author's enthusiasm for the subject matter at hand, and the way she weaves a personal narrative alongside the criticism. I personally find the critical focus on textuality and materialailty within post modernism and its discourse to be kinda bland. And the techno babble to be irritating. Maybe I'm just a modernist at heart... art, literature, and its criticism should focus (imo) on spiritual aspiration and the inescapable conditions of the human experience. Ie the work should speak to the infinite emotive wellspring of the soul. The post human critical lense leaves me feeling alienated and deeply concerned with the intellectual trajectory of our species. Thats why I think I'm so attracted to Russian and eastern European fiction as opposed to the American post moderns. As post humanism seems to be caught up within problematic capitalist and technofurtist ideologies and assumptions. Again maybe I'm just an idiot.
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I wish I could give this three-and-a-half stars, because I am fond of it. It's sincere. I think it's the nature of this series, but it didn't quite scratch many of my intellectual itches pertaining to literature and materiality. I feel like everything I got out of it, I could have gotten out of a 15-page journal article by Hayles. I loved Burdick's design and her designer notes at the end. It's all very nice.
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an interesting theoretical exploration into the materiality of digital texts.