Performativity
Been banging heads on how to get my dissertation framed around performativity for awhile now. Now that I went back and started rewriting my print chapter, this task is all the more urgent. As it turns out,
performativity (along with materiality) is the key to combine my Second Life chapters with my print chapter. So here is what I came up with (mind you, this is not your usual bed time reading and, more importantly, it is not edited yet):
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The locus of query of this chapter, then, is to investigate
the performativity of works and their relationship to the performances of their
readers. Taking Anna Gunder’s model of text
and work as my starting point, in
which she argues that performing the work allows the formation of its texts, I
will investigate the performativity of metafictional narratives and relate how
their readers (whether they are real or fictional) participate in the forming
of the text. I
will argue, (not just in this chapter, but rather throughout the entire dissertation)
that the performativity of a work is contingent upon the materiality of that
particular work which arises from its physical characteristics and how they are
mobilized.
While performativity and the performance the work elicits
may be medium-specific, as print texts embody a different type of
performativity than their electronic counterparts, works that are created
within the same platform may require their readers/users to perform a wide
array of different activities to form its texts. The nature of these acts
depends on how the materiality of the medium in which the work is produced emerges
as its physical characteristics are mobilized in quest of a meaning. While the
materiality of the work indeed affects its performativity and the
performativity of the electronic work is nothing like its print counterpart
(due to the fundamental differences between platforms), in this chapter, I trace
continuity between the performative ways in which we form these two very different
types of textualities. As W. B. Worthen states in Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance, “Neither the
ideologies—of print culture, of digital culture—nor the practices are immanent
in the technology: they arise in the ways we understand and use them” (23).
Having stated this, he contends that these ideologies and practices arise in
the sphere of the performative.
My goal in focusing on the continuity between the two types
of textualities in this chapter is not to argue that their materiality, and
thus, performativity are similar in kind and force, but, once again, to
overcome the misleading duality set forth by early new media critics who
defined electronic textualities as a brand new revolutionary way of reading and
writing. The secondary goal in this chapter, then, is to demonstrate that some
of the tendencies that are attributed primarily to electronic texts as defining
characteristics, such as blurring the lines between author and reader, production
and consumption, the malleability that enables the presentation of text in
different forms, including in the form of linguistic and bibliographical codes,
and the ability to respond to reader input, is not completely alien to print
culture and has been in existence for the last five centuries in one form or
another. In this respect, the ideologies and the practices that emerged within
print culture anticipate those that came about through digital technologies. Starting
a study which primarily focuses on electronic textualities by partially demystifying
the aura created around electronic media, is most appropriate for the
convergence era in which media are in a state of transition. While new media
provide different perspectives through which to view older media, critical
approaches that emerge within older media inform our assessment and appropriation
of newer technologies. I would like to position my discussion of materiality
and performativity of the printed work within this framework.
In order to explore the issues stated above, this chapter
comprises four sections. The first section will provide a theoretical framework
for the entire chapter by defining key terms such as work and text, and foreground
the importance of distinguishing between physicality
and materiality, and how different
types of materiality embodies different performativity. In the next section, I
will use early examples of the novel, in particular Cervantes’s Don Quixote and Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, to demonstrate the
print work as an embodied entity and investigate the different types of
performative activities that each novel elicits. The third section will analyze
Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire and Douglas
Rushkoff’s Exit Strategy within the
context of hypertext theory. Nabokov’s novel subverts the idea of converging on
an authoritative text by undermining the editorial processes that are inherent
in print culture. Pale Fire is the
story of a madman who produces a critical edition to a poem, “Pale Fire,” by
introducing editorial comments that relate incredible storylines unrelated to
the primary text. Rushkoff’s novel, on the other hand, actualizes the reader
participation in the production process by publishing the text online and
allowing the readers to add comments on the text. Calling it an open-source
novel, Rushkoff’s published work comprises two narratives: one written by the
author himself; the other, a hilarious metanarrative formulated around the main
text. As such, the writing of Exit
Strategy becomes a collaborative process that includes its readers, very
much like the one fictionalized in Don
Quixote.
