Untitled - witz cultural

55HYPERTEXT ANDCRITICAL THEORYhypertext further, one may also point to his recognition that such a montageliketextuality marks or foregrounds the writing process and therefore rejectsa deceptive transparency.Hypertext and I ntertextualityH)?ertext, which is a fundamentally intertextual system, hasthe capacity to emphasize intertextuality in a way that pageboundtext in books cannot. As we have already observed,scholarly articles and books offer an obvious example of explicit hypertextualityin nonelectronic form. Conversely, any work of literature-which for thesake of argument and economy I shall here confine in a most arbitrary wayto mean "high" literature of the sort we read and teach in universities-offersan instance of implicit hypertext in nonelectronic form. Again, take Joyce'sUlysses for an example. If one looks, say, at the Nausicaa section, in whichBloom watches Gerfy McDowell on the beach, one notes that foyce's text here"alludes" or "refers" (the terms we usually employ) to many other texts orphenomena that one can treat as texts, including the Nausicaa section of theOdyssey, the advertisements and articles in the women's magazines thatsuffuse and inform Gerty's thoughts, facts about contemporary Dublin andthe Catholic Church, and material that relates to other passages within thenovel. Again, a hypertext presentation ofthe novel links this section not onlyto the kinds of materials mentioned but also to other works in foyce's career,critical commentary and textual variants. H)?ertext here permits one to makeexplicit, though not necessarily intrusive, the linked materials that an educatedreader perceives surrounding it.Thais Morgan suggests that intertextuality, "as a structural analysis oftexts in relation to the larger system of signifying practices or uses of signs inculture," shifts attention from the triad constituted by author/work/traditionto another constituted by text/discourse/cu1rure. In so doing, "intertextualityreplaces the evolutionary model of literary history with a structural or synchronicmodel of literature as a sign system. The most salient effect of thisstrategic change is to free the literary text from psychological, sociological,and historical determinisms, opening it up to an apparently infinite play ofrelationships" (l-21. Morgan well describes a ma1'or implication of hypertext(and hypermedia) intertextuality: such opening up, such freeing one to createand perceive interconnections, obviously occurs. Nonetheless, althoughhypertext intertextuality would seem to devalue any historic or other reductionism,it in no way prevents those interested in reading in terms of authorand tradition from doing so. Scholarship and criticism in hypertext from Intermediaand HyperCard to Weblogs demonstrates that hypertext does not