Nostalgic Angels: Rearticulating Hypertext Writing

Abstract

Hypertext, a relatively new method for structuring online text, has become integrated into nearly every aspect of computer use, from functional documentation to literature and literary criticism. As composition scholars and students increasingly work online--for invention, planning, research, writing, revising, publishing--hypertext becomes more deeply ingrained into the fabric of our activities. But critical thinking about hypertext has been largely absent. Many scholars and students work with the technology as if it were a neutral tool that can be taken up in conscious ways without any unforeseen implications. This dissertation begins constructing a critical literacy of hypertext that situates the technology not merely as an isolated technological object, but as a condensation or construction of social and political forces in and across particular situations. I cover hypertext use in three areas that are key points in the work of a compositionist: functional documentation (with which scholars, teachers, and students learn to use computers and applications), online research (increasingly used as an adjunct to library research), and writing/reading in general (including fiction, essays, and collaborative work). My work attempts to illustrate the ways in which technology use, in particular hypertext, are not innocent, neutral applications of technology to solve problems, but political acts bound up in a complex, shifting web of cultural forces. My analyses of hypertext development and use in three of these areas attempts to point out not only the ways in which the technology constructs very different ideas of what it means to think, write, and read but also to indicate ways in which users can deconstruct and reconstruct technology use in a productive way. The dissertation views hypertext as a cultural construction, something that is given meaning not merely by the discrete mechanics of the technology but also by a complex, interconnected set of social forces. My critique is constructed from interpretive perspectives designed to analyze ideological constructions as they shift from discourse to discourse and over time. The primary works influencing my critique of hypertext are drawn from three, overlapping cultural perspectives: linguistic contact zones, border pedagogy, and articulation theory. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

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