Hi Luiz,
Great points.
One underlying theme we seem to be grappling with is the question of
whether and how much computers really change the basic issues of culture in
general and literature in particular. The essential educational challenge
behind Carol's article is the development of ways to learn and teach
literature across cultures. Her article is about how a new generation of
computer-based learning tools is beginning to open possibilities for
teachers to produce their own illustrated, annotated and hyper-linked
versions of literature to facilitate culturally responsive approaches in
the classroom to the study of "canonical texts." How are these new tools,
and computers in general, changing our understanding of what literature
really is? Do they change the essential dynamic of literature?
As you emphasize, digital technology brings many possibilities to new
heights, such as the ability to create copies that are immediately
identical to one another, and the ability to create text, images and sounds
in the digital media itself. But hasn't this been a characteristic of
industrial mass production all along? In particular, the mass publication
of literature - barely 500 years old, since the invention of the printing
press - has always had an aspect of these peculiar features. Just as is
the case in digital communication technology, virtually identical copies
can be made in large quantities, and the medium of reproduction itself
(print galleys, etc.) can be used for composition. Mass literature is born
as a reproduction. And now, in the digital age, this capacity has leaped
to new levels.
Which gets back to those complex questions: just where is the
"original"? (And what is a "reproduction"?) As you point out, scholars
are sometimes needed to sort out confusion over origination, and when they
can, of course they go to the original manuscripts - which themselves can
have multiple versions! But is the question of the original really just a
technical question of identifying a particular artifact?
I am inclined to think in Bakhtinian terms at this point. Is there really
such a thing at all as an "original'? Is there such a thing as an
"original" if it is not "reproduced"? Is it literature in any sense at all
if it is not reproduced? Can a work of literature really be such without
readers, without interpreters, without people who themselves mediate the
message and transform the text into real experience, real dialogue, and in
doing so, real social relations? In this line of thinking, all
"reproductions" become versions not just of some "original" but also the
living process of people interacting with the work.
The hard copy, according to this line of argument, is just one part of the
real process of reproduction, which occurs only when people are
intersecting and interpenetrating with it. The "authenticity" of the
reproduction of the "original" - its degree of being mediated with
abridgments, illustrations, annotations, etc., the version it turns out to
be - plays a role, but perhaps not the essential role. Whether the
original was on screen and the reproduction was in a book, or the original
was in a book and the reproduction was on screen, is interesting, but
again, not essential. Perhaps the essential issue is how the readers are
actually and culturally interacting with whatever version they are dealing
with. Versions change over time, forms vary, but readers and the ways they
interpret the things they read change even more, and here is where we can
really locate the dynamics of the origin and reproduction of literature.
Your point is well taken that there are important differences between the
mode of the mass-published printed page, and the mode of computer
technology (which often winds up, as you ironically point out, on more
printed pages!). And certainly, these differences in modes of reproduction
have opened our minds to more flexible notions as to what counts as
"literature".
But perhaps as the industrial age has developed and we have learned to
reproduce more and more things in more and more ways, we are learning more
about what the essence of cultural events is really all about. If our
notions of what counts as literature are changing, perhaps it is because we
are getting a better idea of what literature really is. Printing presses
and computers can modify the forms of literature and provide different ways
that these artifacts of text can be looked at, and if the literature is
interesting to enough people, over time, more and more versions seem to
proliferate. But no matter what the form literature takes, and no matter
what technology is used to make copies of it, it is people that supply its
content and really reproduce it.
Thoughts?
- Steve
At 03:34 PM 11/14/03 +0000, you wrote:
>Hi Steve,
>
>Lots of interesting points in your message. I'll follow some threads.
>
>«the absolute similarity of copies does not negate the obvious fact that
>even a digital copy is not the same thing as the original performance,
>image, or whatever it is a recording of.»
>
>I agree. But then there is a qualitative difference between digital and
>analogic representation, and it's the fact that whenever we create/produce
>something in digital mode (say, a software, a video game, a piece of
>"techno" music) the "copies" of this work are undistinguishable from the
>"original". There is no loss of quality or information, and the very notions
>of "original" and "copy" become problematic, to say the least.
>
>
>«Just where do we locate a literary "original"? Is it the author's original
>manuscript? Perhaps the serialization of their writing in a newspaper (as
>many of Charles Dickens' books were)? The first edition of the first book
>the text appeared in? The highest quality edition ever published? The
>current edition in print? The best e-book version available?»
>
>Tricky questions indeed. But I think that as regards literature, there is
>already a well-established tradition of scholarship and interpretation which
>employs procedures to identify "authoritative" versions of literary works
>(not that this identification is always without argument; the contrary seems
>to be the case, but at least there is a common basis for discussion).
>
>
>«And then, just to reverse the order of events, how about literary writing
>that originates on the internet? Suppose the next great Portuguese novel is
>originally published on the web - and subsequently printed in book form.
>Wouldn't the production of this work in book form then be a "layer of
>mediation"?»
>
>Of course it would. For instance, a book published on the Web has a
>different structure than in print. Think about hypertext links, the absence
>of page numbers, the different division of sections, etc. Besides that, if a
>text is too long we'd rather print it, because the screen is not as good as
>paper to read. All this is to say that a printed book can "have" more layers
>of mediation than a computer, no problem with that.
>
>
>«Why can't literature be just as real on screens as it is in beautifully
>bound books? Does the screen format really add another layer of mediation
>that is fundamentally different from the layer of editing that is involved
>in creating a new edition of a book? Perhaps rather than another layer, we
>just have the possibility of many versions.»
>
>I disagree. The production of a new edition of a printed book is very
>different from the adaptation of this same book to the Web. The media are
>different. This is not to say that the notion of "literature" doesn't apply
>to texts on the screen. Rather, what we have here is a change in our notion
>of what counts as "literature" - a change brought about by our uses of a new
>technology.
>
>Rgrds,
>
>Luiz Carlos Baptista
>lucabaptista@sapo.pt
>lucabaptista@hotmail.com
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