These perspectives provide a practical explanation of how criticism can help hypertext studies. A body of criticism can provide various readings of the texts that will help new readers. It can explicate the ways that meanings are produced within a hypertext, lay bare the inter-relations of codes. It can construct a systematic organization of hypertext literature that may illuminate the ways these texts inter-relate with one another. Finally, a body of hypertext criticism may at least alert readers to the texts worthy of attention--to cut through the deluge of writings. Yet, each of these views relies upon the assumption that hypertexts themselves are worthy of study, that there is something unique in the experience of reading hypertexts that indicates such texts should be preserved.
So, the question rests before us: is there anything unique to hypertext performances that is not better sought in other types of performance? Many hypertext scholars (from Coover (1992) to Bolter (1991) to Landow (1997) to Douglas (2000), to Joyce (1995), and others) have indicated that there is. The next question we need to ask, then, is whether there is value in these types of experiences. If so, what is it?
Hypertext provides us with unique types of texts that, unlike most other types of texts, readers must actively decide when to end. They are texts in which readers must actively construct envisionments [1] within often shifting contexts. In addition, they are texts that present readers with uncertainty, even about their completeness. In short, these are texts that challenge readers not with the illusion of a coherent, complete and entirely knowable world, but with a world that is continually in process. The sense that we make of these texts is the sense of our current perspective at our current time and our current place with the current information that we have gathered. They are texts that remind us that objectivity is, itself, an illusion; the best we can ever hope for is to be aware of multiple perspectives.
Thus, the nature of hypertext challenges many underlying assumptions for traditional literary critics. Literary critics frequently like to think that they have objectively looked at the lexias of the work, thoughtfully considered them, and constructed a solid interpretation or analysis of the work based on those lexia. Hypertext, however, presents the possibility that two critics who are reading the same work may have differing sets of lexia from which to work. Thus, even if critics objectively consider the lexia before them, they cannot free themselves from the subjectivity of the reading performance that made those lexia (and not others) appear. This raises the concern that, if hypertext critics can only present subjective views of the text, there may be little or no benefit to reading or writing those critiques.
Why should we write criticisms of hypertext works? The answer is simply that by doing so we will be sharing our readings and helping other readers to understand another perspective. The more perspectives we come in contact with, the more we will understand the multiplicity that exists, not within the text, but within ourselves.
Coover, R. (1992) "The End of Books". New York Times Book Review, 21 June, pp. 1+ (CD-ROM. UMI-Proquest. 1997)
Douglas, J. Y. (2000) The End of Books - or Books without End? Reading Interactive Narratives (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press)
Joyce, Michael (1995) Of Two Minds: Hypertext Pedagogy and Poetics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press)
Landow, G. P. (1997) Hypertext 2.0: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press)
Langer, J. A. (1995) Envisioning Literature: Literary Understanding and Literary Instruction (New York: Teachers College Press)