Call the Question

Could there be modes of writing philosophy in hypertext that call the assumption of possession and the subject-position of control into question in particularly effective ways? I think there could be. I have talked about more than performed in those modes. Perhaps this is not surprising; we have to invent them. (There may be modes carried over from experimental writing in other media, but hypertext should enable us to invent modes we can't preconceive and don't borrow.)

We should distinguish the general edgelessness of hypertext, and its ability to mix genres, from what might be possible through new figures of linkage and the resultant new modes of reading. If hypertext can do something different that linear prose it will be in the linkages and the way the reader co-constitutes of the text. There are ways of using hypertext that emphasize that, and other ways (indeed the predominant ways, if one were to count all those informational data bases) that do not. The same would be true of philosophical hypertext. All modes are fair uses of hypertext, though some may be more useful than others for these issues.


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