Jesse's+CAP


 * Aarseth, Espen. "Introduction: Ergodic Literature." //Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature//. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. **


 * Critical Article Presentation **


 * Jesse Ulmer **


 * Overview **

The introductory chapter of this full-length book seeks to promote and develop a new discourse to frame the study of "cybertexts." Aarseth argues that literary criticism lacks the critical language necessary to fully understand and accurately account for new forms of textual media as well as older precursors to this field. Therefore, a new discourse must be constructed, and defining the theoretical contours of this approach occupies most of Aarseth's efforts in this chapter.

Aarseth introduces two nascent terms to initiate the construction of a new discourse: "cybertext" and "ergodic." A "cybertext" is defined as "a machine for the production of variety of expression" (3). "Ergodic," a word borrowed from physics whose Greek etymology combines "work" and "path," is defined as "a non-trivial effort required to allow the reader to traverse the text" (1). Aarseth argues that reading a cybertext is fundamentally different from reading most traditional print texts. However, literary critics consistently countered that hypertexts and related forms of texts were not significantly different from many forms of print literature. A large part of the confusion in this debate resulted from a difference in the definition of a text. How does a cybertext differ from a non-cybertext? "When you read from a cybertext," Aarseth observes, "you are constantly reminded of inaccessible strategies and paths not taken, voices not heard. Each decision will make some parts of the text more, and other less, accessible, and you may never know the exact results of your choices; that is, exactly what you missed" (3). In other words, navigating a cybertext opens some possibilities and closes others in a very literal rather than merely metaphorical way as a non-cybertext does.

The difference between a cybertext and a non-cyber text is concretely illustrated by introducing an analogy. The reader engaging a non-cybertext is like a fan at a soccer match: "he may speculate, conjecture, extrapolate, even shout abuse, but he is not a player" (4). A reader of a non-cybertext cannot influence the outcome of the narrative. They can interpret the narrative in many ways, but they cannot alter its essential structure, or as Aarseth says, "he cannot have the player's pleasure of influence" (4). A cybertext reader, on the other hand, "is not safe, and therefore, it can be argued, she is not a reader" (4). A reader thus becomes a user whose experience is not merely about interpreting a narrative and turning pages, but is about actual "intervention," or the ergodic "working" of the "path" of the narrative itself (4). The tension of a cybertext is located within the "a struggle not merely for interpretive insight but also for narrative control: 'I want to tell this text to tell //my// story; the story that //could not be// without me'" (4).

Another source of confusion persistently arose between Aarseth and literary critics in the application of the term "labyrinth." Literary critics, Aarseth remarks, are caught in a "spatiodynamic fallacy" when they (mis)apply the idea of a labyrinth to a traditional print text. A historical study of labyrinths in the classical world and Middle Ages by Penelope Dood distinguishes between two main types of labyrinths: "the unicursal, where there is only one path, winding and turning, usually toward a center; and the multicursal, where the maze wanderer faces a series of critical choices, or bivia" (6). After the Reniassance, the unicrusal model of the labyrinth became the dominant metaphor for critics to describe literary texts. The problem with this is that a cybertext is primarily a multicursal rather than unicrusal labyrinth. The unicursal labyrinth is the metaphor that literary critics have primarily in mind when they think about a text that features Borgesian "forking paths." This blind spot in the rhetoric of literary critics precludes the possibility of recognizing "the existence of multicursal literary structures and to the possibility that the concept of labyrinth . . . might have more analytic accuracy in connection with texts that functions as game-worlds or labyrinths in a literal sense" (8). The emergence of new forms of textual media provoke a rigorous re-examination of existing critical discourse and reveals major flaws when using it to understand both digital and codex cybertexts.


 * Commentary **

I appreciate the way Aarseth adroitly avoids a variety of common dialectical pitfalls in debates surrounding new textual media. For example, Aarseth suggests a re-examination of existing discourse that accurately accounts for cybertextuality; however, he avoids "the reverse but related problem" of the "tendency to describe the new text media as radically different from the old, with attributes solely determined by the material technology of the medium" (14). Aarseth carefully charts a course between the Scylla of not recognizig the essential qualities of difference between cyber and non-cyber texts and the Charybdis of the rhetoric of technological determinism associated with digital media. Cybertext, then, is a //perspective// rather than a //technology//, and it tends to focus on analyzing the //function// rather than the //medium// of a text. Aarseth manages to rise above many of the common debates that often stymy the progress of literary understanding by realizing that "emerging new media technologies are not important in themselves, nor as alternatives to older media, but should be studied for what they can tell us about the principles and evolution of human communication" (17). Aarseth also manages to not get caught in the dichotomy between electronic and paper-based texts by situating cybertexts as "not a new or revolutionary form of text, with capabilities only made possible through the invention of the digital computer. Neither is it a radical break with old-fashioned textuality . . . Cybertext is a //perspective// on all forms of textuality, a way to expand the scope of literary studies to include phenomena that today are perceived as outside of, or marginalized by, the field of literature" (18). Assuming this broad perspective allows Aarseth to locate common as well as uncommon ground between old and new media without getting sucked into unproductive ideological debates on either side. He thus creates a new and helpful synthesis, or rather, a new premise, in the dialectic of literary studies.

**For Discussion**

What is your response to Aarseth's definition of both "cybertext" and "ergodic" literature? Are these helpful terms for us? If so, in what ways?

Aarseth develops a "function-oriented" perspective "in which the rhetoric of media chauvinism will have minimal effect on the analysis" (19). Is Aarseth's "function-oriented" perspective of what defines a text successful and/or fruitful? Or does it underestimate the role of material or technological difference between codex and digital computer?

What is your response to Aarseth's method of correspondence analysis in Chapter three? How does it compare to more traditional methods of literary analysis? Is this a methodology we should embrace in literary studies?