Untitled - witz cultural

333THE POLITICS OFHYPERTEXTson's exclusions, I suggest, therefore have little to do with Marxism. Instead,they exemplify the humanist's common technophobia, which derives fromthat "venerable tradition of proud ignorance of matters material, mechanical,or commercial" Elizabeth Eisenstein observes in students of literature andhistory (706).Such resistance to the history of technology does not appear only in Marxists,though in them, as I have suggested, the exclusion strikes one as particularlyodd. While reading Annette Lavers's biography of Roland Barthes, Iencountered another typical instance of the humanist's curious, if characteristic,reticence to grant any importance to technology, however defined, as ifso doing would remove status and power: "The contemponry expansion oflinguistics into cybernetics, computers, and machine translation," she tellsus, "probably played its part in Barthes's evolution on this subject; but thetrue reason is no doubt to be found in the metaphysical change in outlookwhich resulted in his new literary doctrine" (138). After pointing to Barthes'sobvious intellectual participation in some of the leading currents of his ownculture (or strands that weave his own cultural context), she next takes backwhat she has granted. Although her first clause announces that computingand associated technologies "probably" played a part in "Barthes's evolutionon this subfect," she immediately takes back that "probably" by stating unequivocallythat "the true reason"-the other factors were apparently falsereasons, now properly marginalized-"withouta doubt" lies in Barthes's"metaphysical changel' One might have expected to encounter a phrase like"the most important reason," but Lavers instead suddenly changes directionand brings up matters of tmth and falsity and of doubt and certainty.Two things about Lavers's discomfort deserve mention. First, when confrontedwith the possibility that technolory may play a contributing role insome aspect of culture, Lavers, like fameson and so many other humanists,resorts to devices of mystification, which suggests that such matters intrudein some crucial way upon matters of power and status. Second, her mystificationconsists of reducing complexity to simplicity, multivocality to univocality.Her original statement proposes that several possible contributingfactors shaped Barthes's "evolution," but once we traverse the semicolon,the possibilities, or rather probabilities, that she herself has just proposedinstantly vanish into error, and a "metaphysical change in outline" in all itsvagueness becomes the sole causation.One wonders why critical theorists thus marginalize technology, which,like poetry and political action, is a production of society and individual imag-