A READING OF DIGITAL NARRATIVES

It is inarguable that electronic literature is a descendant of the bound text and has

adopted much from its printed predecessor. Recognizing their debt to print culture,

e-literature can be seen as emphasizing the form’s connection with the theories that

Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Roland Barthes have propagated about printed

literature. We can understand the ideas of Foucault, Barthes and Derrida about authorship

and the multiplicity of texts in terms of e-literature. Barthes’s writing about the writerly

text and its non-linear nature, and Derrida’s argument about intertextuality and textual

openness can be emphasized here. For all these authors, the self takes the form of a

de-centred or centreless network of codes that, on another level, also serves as a node

within another centreless network. Radical changes in textuality produce radical changes

in the author figure derived from that textuality. Lack of textual autonomy, like lack of

textual centredness, immediately reverberates through conceptions of authorship.

Similarly, the unboundedness of the new textuality disperses the author as well.

Instead of the modernist quest for meaning in a chaotic world, the

postmodern eschews the possibility of meanings, in the context of transcendental

subjectivity. The postmodern writers often celebrate chance over craft and employ,

metafiction to undermine the author’s univocal control. Metafiction makes the fictionality

of fiction apparent to the reader. It employs unexpected narrative shifts, to advance a

story in a unique way for bringing emotional distance.

 With the emergence of electronic literature, readers are inundated with

information. Technology has become a central focus. Our understanding of the real is

mediated. E-literature can be rapidly duplicated, transmitted and assembled into new

knowledge structures. The magnitude of change here is enormous. This may mark the

first step towards realization of Lyotard’s “game of perfect information” where all have

equal access to the world of data, and where “given equal competence (no longer in the

acquisition of knowledge, but in its production), what extra performativity depends on, in

the final analysis of ‘imagination’, which allows one either to make a new move or to

change the rules of the game” (The Postmodern Condition, 52). This is the utopia of

information-in-process.

In electronic literature, the functions of reader and writer become more deeply

entwined with each other than ever before. One clear sign of such transference of

authorial power appears in the reader's abilities to choose his or her way through the

metatext, to annotate text written by others, and to create links between documents

written by others.

E-literature creates exciting opportunities for enthusiasts of both hypertext and

print texts to work together and see each of their brands of literature anew. The future of

electronic literature is still an unknown world, and those who immerse themselves in it

can revel in the possibilities.