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i4E H)rperteld,r - Hur,Er+avt on,lCritical Theofy5 HypertextualDerrida,P5dtstructuralistNelson?I B The Definition ofHypertext and ItsFlisloryasa ConceptttEl Other ConvergencesiIntertextualitv]Multivocality, andDe-centeredhessEl Vannevar Bush andthe Memex1 G) Virtual Text, VirtualAuthors, and Uterarya^--"+i--3El The Nonlinear Modelof the NetworkinCurrent CriticalTheory1l El Cause orConvergence,InfluencE orConfluence?Analogues to theGutenberg Revo1Gl ftedictionsleEf Rec0nfiguring theTextiE ReconfiUuring thel: Ionuerqenre - fullteHlHype rte xt ual Derrida, Po sl slructuralist Nelso n? 1pp.2-31When designere of compuier soflware examine lhe pages of Glaar L7tCftmmatolottlhsy encounter a di8italized, hypertertual Derida; and whenIitenry theorists examine lilenty A'facltlnes they encounter a deconsiruclionislor postslruclunlist Nelson, Thce shqks of recognition can occurbecause overthe past sevenl decades litenrylheory and computer h;lperlext, apparentlyunconnecled areas ofinquiry, have increasingly converged. Stalements bytheorirls concem€d with litenture, Iike those by theoristr concemed wilhcomputin& show a remarkable convergence. Working often, but nol alwalp, inignonnce of each other, writeF in these areas offerevidence ihal prcvides us away inlo lhe conlemponry episteman the midst of major changes. A pandignshift, I suggest, has begun to take place in the wrilin8s oflacques Derida andB The Johns HopkinsGuide to LiteraryTheory and CriticismGl M. M. BakhtinEl Roland BarthesCD DeconstructionE Tacques DerridaContextualizinguerrloaEl DiscourseE PoststructuralistFeminismsEl Materialist FeminismstD Michel FoucaultEl Claude L5vi-StraussUnderstanding and Misunderstanding Jacques DerridaJean-Michel RebateThe difficulty of intrcducing a major contemponry philosopher such as|acques Derida @. 1930) in a reference work pre*nlinE centnl issues oflitenry criticism is double, and this dan8er, this heritation on ihethreshold, has alreadybeen slFtematically thematized in the writing ofthe philosopher himself. FiFt, there is ihe dan8erof ovenimplifying ofpigeonholinp of reducing of defining artificialboundaries, when facinga movemenl of thoutloi that ronstantly evolves so as delibentely todefeat and baffle all preordained categories, Then, therc iE lhe danger ofbeing merely mimetir, of just rpeatint slnteties and Bestures thathave been identified with a sitnature, wilh an author (and may wellhave been ahticipated by other writer), snd that tend lobe singular,unrepealable,yet endowed with univesal validity. However, thepossibility ofbypassing such an initial aporia exists, and it consists inconsidering the fundamentallyrffimative nature of D€rida's thoutbland writintntherthan in rtressintthe "playhrl" or "negative" elementofhis texlual Fn(lices.Figure 14. The Dynamic Table of Contents in Electronic Book Technologies' DynaText. This system, which combines the featuresof an electronic book with hypertext linking, automatically generates a reconfigurable, linked table of contents from the SGMLcodes used to mark elements of a text, such as chapter and section titles. In this example from Hypertert in Hvpefiert, mousingdown on the plus signs to the left of items in the table ofcontents immediately displays titles ofsubsections. Clicking on the subsectiontitle immediately brings up the relevant section in the right-hand panel. The table of contents also reinforced DynaText,sfull-text retrieval functions: in this case, after a reader has typed in "derrida" (the search tool is not case-sensitive), DynaText bothhighfights all occurrences ofthe word throughout the text (iop cente4 and lists the number ofoccurrences next to each chapterand section heading (leJt). Having observed that uDerrida" appears five times in the book's opening section, the reader has movedthat section into view; noticing that "Derridan appears in red ink, the sign ofa link, the reader has then clicked once on that linkand oPened a second DynaText ubook" at fean-Michel Rabat6's "Understanding and Misunderstanding Derrida" fromTheJohnsHopkins Guide to Literary Theory ond Criticism.