Digital Literature, Networked Fiction, and a Static Web

This year, I was rather excited to take a special topic on digital literature. The course outline seemed interesting and the topic seemed imbued with "newness." Yet, my hopes were quickly dashed. The entire paper was predicated on the concept of a static web. Although there was some emphasis on the phenomenon that we all read a networked fiction differently because our path through the fiction is not dictated by the author but is up to us to select. Indeed, we may read a very different text each time we read the work of fiction. This leads me to the view that the process of selection we carry out is, in one sense, also a process of writing the text; the way we read the fiction writes the text we read. Yet, this was not a view the course accounted for. Indeed, the focus was still very much on the "author" as the sole creator of the text. This view is not only so incredibly flawed but also rather difficult to pin down. Instead of going into great depth, I shall simply move on swiftly.

The course was also predicated on narrative theory. Although there were nods at other modes of theorising, mostly a facile explanation of feminist theory, the dominant rationale was to view the course through a narratological lens. Although this project may have value - and I fully acknowledge that such projects seem rather pointless - it seemed like a weak tool to help us read fictions which are, by their very nature, non-linear. Indeed, the theoretical frame did not account for the new way we use the web - where readers are no longer solely readers and the lines between both are so blurred as to no longer function as worthwhile categories.

Viewing the "author" as sole creator, interpreter, and all-powerful-God of the text, is also at odds with the way we use the web. This view is predicated on a static text - although such staticness is an illusion for digital texts - which remains fixed in perpetuity. How are we to reconcile this static text with the notion that the reader's path through a network fiction is anything but fixed? The two projects seem diametrically opposed to each other. This is one of the sink-holes in the field. And, unfortunately, it seemed the course's rationale was simply to deny the tensions exist. For, if we deny a tension then the burden of intellectual rigour is also reduced.