Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing.

If we are to dissolve the identity of the Disentangler or if he is to dissolve his own identity in creating a work, are we then not denying, at least in part, the essence of the work itself?  If reading is a purely responsive undertaking, does it make sense to dissolve the identity (the composite entity) that responds to this ongoing database of language and rhetoric; part of the composition of a work is the individual response to said database.  Ignoring the individual ignores the response, ignores the point of writing.

You (Ishumake and Alex Glass) are right about the notion of the critic and reader being one, and perhaps I wrote my initial blog too hastily.  I mostly wanted to point out the hypocrisy of Barthes’ work.  1) He is an Author glorifying (though this may be too strong a word) his way of approaching a text.  This seems hypocritical as the essay itself is bent over not adhering to any convention in ‘criticizing’ a work.  2)  He is a critic, so he is actively dissolving the work he has written and his livelihood by ascribing the role to anyone that can read a ‘toothpaste ad’, but perhaps this is what he intends.  3) Though not overbearingly so, the work itself is jargony and in writing this way Barthes has assumed the archetypal role of the critic, adhering to more convention and tightening the categorical identity of the work.  This in itself seems hypocritical in the context of the work.  4) The argument seems empty because hierarchal categorization of things (including books) is human nature and is reinforced by the ‘critic’, either literary or common (this may also be too strong a word).  And while demystifying the author may be ideal, his tex is partly contradictory as he fills it with various other Authors to identify theories/processes relatively parallel to his own, or ones that lead him to his thinking.

If he feels the way he does, perhaps he should have published this anonymously, or not at all.  Then we could have just guessed what he is thinking by reflecting on the place/role of the Author as it applies to our own lives and how we as individuals approach a text.  I think that what he says is reasonable to a degree, but it looks like even he cannot wholly adhere to what he is preaching.

Critical Response to Satellite and Cyber Visualities: Analyzing Digital Earth

Digital Earth is unlike anything I have ever seen before. It sounds like a great way for people to learn about different parts of the world. It allows you to view a variety of information about any and every country and it’s all in one place instead of having to research the information separately. Digital Earth makes it easy to study and compare countries side-by-side. With a traditional globe there would be no way to encompass all the information that the digital representation allows. A globe physically shows you the location of different places in the world and the routes to get places, but that is the extent of it. Digital Earth would make an excellent study tool for children since the information and location of each country are available to them with the ease of a click.

On page 280 the author presents her argument that instead of the Digital Earth being looked at by the user as “having the world at his/her fingertips,” as it is now, she thinks that it should be “refashioned as an interdisciplinary ‘contact zone’ that will not only extend public access to satellite and computer technologies, but help to erode the science/culture divide” (Parks, 280). I completely agree with that argument; I think that Digital Earth should be viewed as a tool with multiple uses that can act as a crucial aid for research and the learning process for example: it may be a helpful political tool, aid in response to natural disasters, means of educating people, and much more. It could serve as a method to solve problems worldwide by helping to find viable solutions. Regarding it as a tool for a single use, access to satellite information, severely limits its potential as a valuable source that could be used for so much more.

I kept thinking about the conversation we had in class about Roland Barthes’ “The Death of the Author” and why what he purports in his article is hard to digest, for me.  For one, I believe his argument is partly one of semantics, preferring the term “writing” to “literature” or likening the “author” of a text to one that “disentangles” the “tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.”  Either way we are still left with things to read, things that have been assembled by an individual with a certain artistic or aesthetic insight.  And to dismiss the individual that assembles a given work seems unfair to say the least, because if anyone could do it anyone would do it.  So merit is due to the individuals with said artistic skill-set.

However, I agree with the notion that the ‘author’ sits a-top a pedestal in contemporary society, but this is partly due to the workings of literary critics (like Barthes as he barrages his reader with countless authors he feels speaks to his ideals) and the need to distinguish good works from lesser works.  Yet to deny hierarchical categorization would be to deny human nature, so canonization of literary ‘genius’ still remains just as the New York Times will continue to publish a “best-sellers” list on a weekly basis.

Barthes also seems to ascribe the role of the critic to the everyday reader, which I also believe is unfair.  Readers outside the small selective circle of literary criticism read for entertainment, pleasure, or out of curiosity, not necessarily to acquire a secret, worldly and universal understanding or “ultimate meaning” from a text.  But I also agree that no “ultimate meaning” should be divulged or sought after in reading/writing in the first place.  Reading is responsive, and what you get is what you get.

I think I understand what Barthes is getting at, but I also think that what he purports is too idealistic.   A balance between a reader’s interaction with a text and authorial intent can be achieved, but is up to the reader to recognize his/her role in approaching a text that has been amassed and transcribed by another.  Mutual respect on both sides of the author/reader equation is essential.

Stephen Mamber’s “narrative mapping” coincides with Manovich’s concepts presented in “The Database.”  Both articles detail how a database can support a narrative, and Mamber’s article builds on these ideas to discuss that mapping a narrative basically constructs an underlying database that is visually represented.  Manovich’s article provided the foundational understanding of databases and narrative, which was useful when reading Mamber’s article.  However, Mamber’s is much easier to read, and the order of information for his discussion flows logically, which helped me link his concepts of narrative mapping to Manovich’s concepts and definitions for databases and narrative. Mamber presents examples of narrative mapping after he explains what narrative mapping is, the purposes, and the most popular types. He discusses examples at the end of the article, which enables the reader to better understand how each example fits with a certain purpose and type of narrative mapping. For instance, the narrative maps in Franco Moretti’s Atlas of the European Novel: 1800 – 1900 are both geographic and thematic representations. Many of Moretti’s maps are representations of simple cities indicating places where the narrative actions occur, but some maps are representations of class and character profession.

These examples were helpful in understanding how narrative mapping would be a useful tool to employ while playing an interactive fiction, such as The Baron. The player can map the narrative on a piece of paper in order to keep track of his/her movements, and to explicitly see the connections implied in the narrative. In doing this, the player creates a database for the narrative; he/she deconstructs the narrative into individual places/pieces—a record for that part of the story, and is able to add to the map as he/she encounters each scene during game play.  Therefore, the map represents the sequence and logic that the player must follow to come to the end of the story.

As I read Mamber’s article, I began to think about the game Mario Party as a narrative map.  Below is a picture of a map from one of the Mario Party games.

This type of game presents a reversal to the Interactive Fiction games that we have been playing. In Interactive Fiction, the player has to visualize the map in his/her mind unless he/she draws it on a piece of paper; in Mario Party, the map is explicit and the player can easily see his/her choices to create the narrative. The Mario Party maps are geographic representations of the location for game play, Western Land or Horror Land for example, and each map has a thematic storyline and cast of characters. The maps also function as databases, showing the links between the board game options, player movement, and minigames. Mario Party makes use of “three-dimensional modeling, information graphics, and what has been called multimedia cartography,” (157) and can thus be seen as a good example of how digital environments greatly enhance the potential for narrative mapping.

While reading Barthe’s essay, I found it a bit bizzare that, for an essay intent on dismantling the cult of personality surrounding the author in all forms of criticism, Barthes tends to mention authors a lot in his essay. It does offer context to his ideas (the Balzac line tieing everything together helpfully), but for an essay suggesting something as extreme as the replacement of the author, Barthes is still dependent on their existence to write his essay. The wordiness (and rapid-fire name-dropping of authors I’m mostly unfamiliar with) didn’t help matters either, and made the essay more difficult to understand for me beyond its surface.

Hyperbole aside, the issue of the fetishization of the author is one that basically anyone who’s taken a high school English class (or even a college-level one) can empathize with. The established set of meanings as intended by the author are the ones that you are restricted to, and often times critical reading becomes less of an analytical exploration (if that makes sense at all) and more of a ‘deep meanings’ treasure hunt, with pre-set clues and prizes to dig up. Though one would certain be more unskilled in high school than in college to truly form a non-spoon-fed opinion, the fact remains that the author is consistently put on the pedestal in academia and criticism, with the reader taking the side role of ‘putting the puzzle together’.

Nearly 50 years later, the decreasing importance of authorship can be seen in a fairly different form. Much of today’s internet content is inherently anonymous: few people look at a username on Reddit, Youtube, or any other meme-machine website to examine who wrote what today, or who originally created what viral piece of media. Much of it is also derivative, using pre-established structures, designs, or pictures to portray a new idea without the weight of authorial intent. Though much of it may be purely for light amusement and entertainment, in the user-generated content of the internet era, authorship is truly becoming less and less relevant.

From the world-wide database, the user searches for and retrieves data. The data then forms a “tissue of signs” that will find its ultimate cohesiveness in its destination: The user (Barthes 147-148). The user is experiencing the world in a different way, as Manovich argues in his chapter, “The Database” (219). Meaning is created in the experience of the user and “born simultaneously with the text” or I would suggest, as the text is experienced (Barthes 145). There is no end to the data at hand. The data is being constantly added to and renewed, a shifting-changing dynamic as fluid as the ocean and as deep. Everything is accessible, but nothing wholly is organized except in the sequential decisions of the user.

Whatever the motivation is of the user, that motivation will dictate a certain path they will take them through the data. It will decide how the data is searched for, retrieved, and then ordered in the mind of the user. The path becomes Barthes’ syntagmatic or explicit sequence; a sequence which materializes linearly because the user is experiencing time and the series of choices in a linear progression. The linear progression can be viewed as individual pieces of data which are formed into waves, like light’s wave-particle duality. As the elements are linked and move through the time-space trajectory, they unfold into a narrative wave-length which can be viewed as real.

There are no limits for the database, as its information packets can be increased inexhaustibly. The limits are created by the user, as well as the meaning. One can contend that how the user experiences the information is dictated by the interface and that is a construct of the creator. But as Barthes argues, if the voice can lose its origin, and nobody can take “ownership” of the data, then the emphasis is returned to the reader or the user, and their navigation will then affect the spectrum of what is perceived. If data represents the paradigmatic dimension, as Manovich maintains, and the user’s path is a the syntagmatic trajectory, then new media will never be entirely without narrative, and interestingly, the visible results will vary based on the media it passes through as well as the receptors of the user.

In “The Death of the Author,” Roland Barthes argues that we should remove ideas about the author from our interpretation of a work.  He claims that by acknowledging a text’s author, we limit the text; and I think he’s right.  If I were to read a text knowing it was written by a politician I abhor, I would naturally come at it with a negative predisposition.  Alternatively, if I thought it had been written by a politician I admire, I would be likely to try to find ways to agree with the text. 

I’ve often found an author I enjoy and read all of her books.  Perhaps the third and fourth books weren’t as engaging as the first and second, but I’d persist because I believe in the author’s ability to write engaging work.  I might even go so far as to convince myself that something I wouldn’t otherwise enjoy is brilliant simply because it was written by a favorite author.  For example, I love most of J.D. Salinger’s work.  His short story, “Hapworth 16, 1924,” which appeared in The New Yorker on 19 June 1965, is, I admit reluctantly, an exception.  It rambles, defies logic, and is generally smug and pretentious.  I don’t want to believe that, but I do.  And the reason I don’t want to believe it?  I love J.D. Salinger in all his reclusive, brooding, perpetual adolescence.  He feels like an old friend, and I don’t want to dislike my friend’s story.

With that in mind, yes, I agree with Barthes.  By associating good old J.D. with his work, I make it difficult for myself to even know that I dislike it.  But unlike Barthes, I’m not sure that my presence in or ownership of a work is precludes the author’s.  I think there is room for a reader and an author, and there must be!  Because so often it is impossible to separate the text from its author; and in those cases the reader must simply be self-aware and keep her biases in mind as she reads.

Three emotions came to me while reading “The Death of the Author” from Image-Music-Text by Roland Barthes. The first emotion was critical. I get a little defensive when I read that “writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away,” or shortly after, “the novel ends when writing at last becomes possible.” I suppose I felt this way because I’d like to think writing has that special place in the world where the subject becomes all the more enlightened with words. That comment on the novel also seems a bit harsh (and I’m not even that big of a novel fan).

Barthes does start making points that are less harsh and by the last page, I understand. “The Author, when believed in, is always conceived of as the past of his own book” makes sense, while still relatively depressing. Barthes uses the metaphor of the relationship between a father and his son. The Author is thought to nourish the book, which is to say that he exists before it, think, suffers, and lives for it. Or at least, that’s how it was. I wish Barthes made more of an indication that this parental relationship belongs in the past before introducing the idea that the modern scriptor is born simultaneously with the text.

I’m somewhat skeptical to this original idea, but mostly agree that writing can no longer designate an operation of recording. Instead, it’s more of a “performative,” a rare verbal form. Along with the skepticism, I again become critical when Barthes again attacks the writer. For example, Barthes claims that “the modern scriptor can thus no longer believe, as according to the pathetic view of his predecessors.” Really now Barthes, pathetic? Later, Barthes states that “we’re no longer fooled by the arrogant antiphrastical recrimination of good society.” If Barthes were to tone down the adjectives, maybe the reader’s response would be less critical and more understanding.

Despite the harsh adjectives used by Barthes, I still praise the author for pointing out what we’ve been oh so ignorant to. I can now see how expression is a thing translated from a ready-formed dictionary, how the author only has the power to mix writings, and how life never does more than imitate the book, that the book itself is only a tissue of signs, and that writing is to be disentangled and cannot be deciphered.

I feel like I’ve made progress until the last sentence which causes my last emotion: confusion. A texts unity lies in its destination, in the reader, instead of the origin and therefore the author. Here I thought Barthes was emphasizing the importance of the reader. The the last sentence says, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author. I thought Barthes was pushing for the death of the author…

Lev Manovich’s “The Database” was interesting, but a little confusing as well; particularly when the work touches on database and narrative. To elaborate, Manovich states that “database and narrative are natural enemies.” I don’t see how these two are enemies, but what it comes down to is what is considered a database?

If you still have an old-school Playstation, and memory card, then this will sound familiar–hopefully, your save files from decades ago survived. When you boot up a first gen Playstation, putting a memory card in the respective slot displays the memory card icon, in which you can select and peruse through various save files of your games, just as you would a CD-ROM, flash drive, etc. The files will show various data, including: the last date that particular game was played; a particular characters name, usually the member of the party that was used at the save point; the last in-game location where the player saved last (i.e., “The Dragon’s Cave). This is useful information, primary because If I choose to not play a specific game for a certain duration of time, I can look at the data on my memory card and remember where at what I was doing in the game. So, the question is: how are they enemies?

Manovich states that “database and narrative are natural enemies.”  What does this mean? For instance, drawing back to the memory card example, the narrative–or game can only progress when I hit the power button, press start and go to “load game,” however, the option to quit playing is there. I can come back to the narrative when I desire, and that is all thanks to my memory cards, which could technically serve as a database; glancing at the save file–time, date, last location–I can recall where it was I last left off. So, I can’t see how narrative and database are enemies, if anything, they are working together.

Gilles  Deleuze identifies in his essay “Postscript on the Societies of Control” his vision of the evolution of Foucault’s “disciplinary societies”, defined as the family, the school, the factory, the hospital, and the prison, and particularly focused on the factory. He purports to identify a crisis, in particular as the nebulous and shadowy (though never quite defined) “administrations in charge” demand reforms, and claims we are moving toward “societies of control”. He then proceeds to engage in fairly standard decrying of technological and social advancement, with particular attention being given to capitalism and the old workhorse, the corporation. It would be easier to take his arguments as being less politically motivated and more a matter of serious and immediate concern where it not for two issues: his historical treatment of capitalism and his clearly biased approach to labor unions.

When approaching capitalism, he offers the barest fig leaf of suggesting that capitalism conquers “sometimes by specialization…sometimes by lowering the costs of production”, but more significantly focuses on “nineteenth- century capitalism is a capitalism of concentration, for production and for property… the capitalist being the owner of the means of production but also, progressively, the owner of other spaces conceived through analogy (the worker’s familial house, the school)”. He then goes on to define the new capitalism as a mutation, and the corporation as the embodiment of that mutation, one that is dispersive, wherein “[t]he family, the school, the army, the factory are no longer the distinct analogical spaces that converge towards an  owner-state  or private power-but coded  figures- deformable and  transformable-of a single corporation that now has only stockholders” and “[c]orruption thereby gains a new power”.

Contrasting this is his treatment of unions, “their history of struggle against the disciplines or within the spaces of enclosure, will they be able to adapt themselves or will they give way to new forms of resistance against the societies of control? Can we already grasp the rough outlines of these coming forms, capable of threatening the joys of marketing?” This assumption that unions, which can be argued to be a form of control equivalent to any corporation of their own, as the path to resistance against societal control in the form of corporations, is counter-intuitive. It is also deterministic, which seems to defy the very essence of defying resisting “societies of control”.

Given the decidedly mixed history of unions over the course of labor relations both in the US and abroad, as well as the mixed benefits and tragedies that corporations have brought, it is far from given that capitalism, or corporations, are completely bad, or that unions are unvarnished good. To craft a narrative that casts either in such an absolute light makes it difficult to give anything else he has to say in his article any amount of credibility.