This page contains materials
intended to facilitate class discussion
(excerpts from readings, outlines of issues,
links to resources, etc.). The materials
are not necessarily the same as the instructor's
teaching notes and are not designed to represent
a full exposition or argument. This page
is subject to revision as the instructor
finalizes preparation. (Last revised
3/12/04
)
Preliminary Class
Business
Course evaluations
Reading Exam on Wednesday, March 17th,
12-12:50 (_)
Interested students can sign up with
instructor for Literature & Culture
of Information (LCI) specialization
mailing list. Info meeting for LCI to
be announced. (Info on LCI specialization:
http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/curriculum/lci/)
English Dept. undergrad research assistant
positions available: 140 total hours
of work in March and/or April for one
or more students (assessing and researching
student learning
resources for the Department site).
To apply: send Alan Liu an email describing:
your major and year, your intellectual
interests, any relevant skills (Web
authoring a plus, not a necessity).
(Continued from last
lecture)
In Califia, the
visible surface
of California is just the top layer in
a deep set of geological
layers. The story of Califianarrated
in different ways by the three main characters
(Augusta, Kaye, Calvin)is a pilgrimage
plot in which horizontal
motion
stands in for a vertical quest. In olden
pilgrimages, the quest was for transcendence
on high. In Califia, the quest
is to mine deep below the surface of California
for the real treasure: historical meaning
and the identities they bequeath.
What are the layers of meaning that the
characters mine as they follow their pilgrimage
across southern California in search of
treasure—the ultimate treasure being
their identities?
Layer 1: Califia
is about the history of building of California
(review
last lecture)
Layer 2: Califia
is about the history of media, and history
as media
(review
last lecture)
How Does One Read
Califia?
A typical initial pattern of reading:
Press on the "follow
me" or page number at
the lower right corner of
each screen to accept the
default, linear reading order
:
Journeys:
South
East
North
West
Paths
within each journey:
Augusta
Kaye
Calvin
But within each journey, a question of
strategy arises: stay with the linear
reading? or digress into the historical
media?
The reader experiences a build-up of tension
and frustration:
Either one follows discipline and
stays with the linear reading order,
therefore feeling the frustration of
passing by all those tempting links
to the historical backstory and historical
media
Or one strays into the historical
links and feels the frustration of not
"progressing" in the story
In both cases, the relation between
the "foreground" story line
and the "background" historical
media seems antithetical: the historical
media blocks or distracts one from the
story
Califia is representative of
the new media problem of "database
logic vs. narrative" (Lev Manovich;
cf., the "encyclopedic novel")—a
problem that each new media work must
solve in its own way
Califia's solution to this problem of
form is to bring the reader to a point
of recognition that one must reverse foreground
and background:
The "story line" related
to the three foreground characters (Augusta,
Kaye, Calvin) is actually the thinnest
and least interesting aspect of the
workat least as the characters
are developed in the early journeys.
The timing of the characterization and
plot is such that the characters do
not become really interesting until
later (e.g., Augusta's tears for her
dad and mourning for her mother; Calvin's
piercing discovery of his identity and
his mother; Kaye and Calvin's budding
love affair)
Because of the way the material is
timed in Califia (i.e., the timing
of our encounter with various materials),
the thick historical documentation is
actually more compelling earlier
In short, what Califia really
asks is that we surrender our hold on
the foreground or surface story line
and commit ourselves to the bottomless
depths of the historical documents.
This
is the quintessentially hypertextual
moment in the work when the work turns
its form to advantage. If hypertext
makes linear narrativity problematic,
then that problem can itself become
a solution, a way of expression. It
can lead away from print narrative and
its satisfactions to new kinds of satisfactions:
what has been called the "epiphany
of the documents" or "composite
epiphany":
Espen
J. Aarseth on "Aporia"
and "Epiphany,"
Cybertext: Perspectives
on Ergodic Literature,
pp. 91-21:
[On the "epiphany"
moment in hypertext fictions]This
is the sudden revelation
that replaces the aporia,
a seeming detail with
an unexpected, salvaging
effect: the link out.
The hypertext epiphany,
unlike James Joyce's "sudden
spiritual manifestation"
(Abrams 1981, 54), is
immanent: a planned construct
rather than an unplanned
contingency. Together,
this pair of master tropes
constitutes the dynamic
of hypertext discourse:
the dialectic between
searching and finding
typical of games in general.
The aporia-epiphany pair
is thus not a narrative
structure but constitutes
a more fundamental layer
of human experience, from
which narratives are spun.
Janet
H. Murray, Hamlet on
the Holodeck: The Future
of Narrative in Cyberspace
(pp. 161-62):
[referring to a student
hypertext story] The
act of navigating from
one consciousness to the
other reinforces the separateness
of the three fragile creatures
and reenacts the gesture
of connection. We are
in the apartment with
them; we see them with
the exterior clarity of
a film and the interiority
of a novel. Such
an expressive moment marks
the emergence of a new
narrative convention,
which we might call a
panoramic close-up (building
on film techniques) or
a composite epiphany (building
on short-story aesthetics).
By rotating our point
of view at a single moment
of dramatic illumination,
we capture both the shared
reality and the separate
experiences that compose
it. The
kaleidoscopic power of
the computer allows us
to tell stories that more
truly reflect our turn-of-the-century
sensibility. We no longer
believe in a single reality,
a single integrating view
of the world, or even
the reliability of a single
angle of perception. Yet
we retain the core human
desire to fix reality
on one canvas, to express
all of what we see in
an integrated and shapely
manner. The solution is
the kaleidoscopic canvas
that can capture the world
as it looks from many
perspectivescomplex
and perhaps ultimately
unknowable but still coherent.
Califia as
"Historical Novel" ("Database
Novel"): The Experience of History
in the Database of Documents
Narrowest view of history: as narrative
line with "gold" at the end
of it (e.g., Augusta's chronological
narrative)
Larger view: history as annals
(related to early literate cultures)
Larger view yet: history as myth
(related to oral cultures)
Largest view: no certainty of a narrative
line ("no gold"), and this
lack of certainty in the story line
of California is itself the truest mimesis
of the story of California. In Califia,
the story of California is the history
of instability:
The displacement of the Chumash
people (the "Diggers").
The migration of the "Seekers,"
"Players," and "Builders"
to California
The "floating" of property
boundaries, contracts, and other
great California scams
Underlying all the stories of
displacement and instability: the
"geological certainties"
of the land itself: earthquake,
fire, wind, water
The contemporary California of
the "drive-in"
History in Califia is about
the mobility of human desire ("Seeker")
and memory ("Keeper"). Between
them, desire and memory capture historical
experience in lived human experience
as uncertainty.
Putting It All Together:
From the Past Back to the Present
The pathos of Califia lies in
the way the full development of the characters
and stories of the three protagonists
(Augusta, Kaye, Calvin) does not occur
until we are well into understanding the
pathos of the history of California in
the background.
The measure of the novel's successone
that each reader must evaluate for him
or herselfis whether it can tap
into the great reserves of historical
pathos (like digging a gold mine or drilling
an oil field) in such a way as to bring
the past into the present, to infuse the
stories of the foreground characters with
the deep feeling of the background history.
In this regard, we must consider the role
of the one kind of history we have not
so far discussed: family history—
Augusta's mourning for her dad
and mother
Calvin's piercing discovery of his
identity and his mother
Kaye and Calvin's budding love affair
(the seeking goes on)
All of this conveyed in a narrative that
embraces the technology and principles
of information. Califia is the
"historical novel" redone as
"database."
The Muses of Califia
("Keepers")
(a poeticization of the database)
"We stand at the edge of the
ocean, no gold, but we are all Coronado's
Children." (a poeticization
of the seach engine)
Califia is an exploration of
the history of:
media
industrialism
identity
that points to the contemporary themes
of our course:
new media
postindustrialism
virtual identity
[Montage and Fadeout:]
"We
stand at the edge of the ocean,
no gold, but we are all Coronado's
Children."
Gibson's Case on the virtual
beach with Linda Lee (by the
false ocean), and then in
cyberspace (his real ocean)
Pynchon's Oedipa Maas looking
out from her tower in Kinneret-Among-the_Pines
by the Pacific.
What is the "sea"
imagined in all these works?
It is what we have "surfed"
over in our course: the sea
of information, and all our
quest has been to know how
to make that wild sea a habitable
fact of human culture: a place
where we can communicate,
work, and express our identities
together.
Example of Early "Annals"
Form of History Writing
Excerpt from the Anglo-Saxon era Annals
of Saint Gall:
709. Hard winter. Duke Gottfried died.
710. Hard year and deficient in crops.
711.
712. Flood everywhere.
713.
714. Pippin, mayor of the palace, died.
715. 716. 717.
718. Charles devastated the Saxon with great destruction.
719.
720. Charles fought against the Saxons.
721. Theudo drove the Saracens out of Aquitaine.
722. Great crops.
723.
724.
725. Saracens came for the first time.
726.
727.
728.
729.
730.
731. Blessed Bede, the presbyter, died.
732. Charles fought against the Saracens at Poitiers on Saturday.
733.
734.
(Source: Hayden White, The
Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse
and Historical Representation [Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1987], pp. 6-7)
"Myth"
Claude Lévi-Strauss, "The Structural
Study of Myth," Structural Anthropology,
trans. Claire Jacobson and Brooke Grundfest
Schoepf (New York: Basic Books, 1963),
pp. 206-31:
"The
[Oedipus] myth will be treated as an orchestra
score would be if it were unwittingly
considered as a unilinear series; our
task is to reestablish the correct arrangement.
Say, for instance, we were confronted
with a sequence of the type: 1, 2, 4,
7, 8, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 1, 4, 5, 7, 8, 1,
2, 5, 7, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 . . . ,
the assignment being to put all the 1's
together, all the 2's, the 3's, etc.;
the result is a chart:
1
2
4
7
8
2
3
4
6
8
1
4
5
7
8
1
2
5
7
3
4
5
6
8
We
shall attempt to perform the same kind
of operation on the Oedipus myth, trying
out several arrangments of the mythemes
until we find one which is in harmony
with the principlies enumerated above.
Let us supposed, for the sake of argument,
that the best arrangement is the following
(although it might certainly be improved
with the help of a specialist in Greek
mythology):
1
2
3
4
Cadmos
seeks his sister Europa, ravished
by Zeus
Cadmos
kills the dragon
The
Spartoi kill one another
Labdacos
(Laios' father) = lame(?)
Oedipus
kills his father, Laios
Laios
(Oedipus' father) = left-sided
(?)
Oedipus
kills the Sphinx
Oedipus
= swollen-foot (?)
Oedipus
marries his mother, Jocasta
Eteocles
kills his brother, Polynices
Antigone
buries her brother, Polynices, despite
prohibition
We
thus find ourselves confronted with four
vertical columns, each of which includes
several relations belonging to the same
bundle. Were we to tell the myth,
we would disregard the columns and read
the rows from left to right and from top
to bottom. But if we want to understand
the myth, then we will have to disregard
one half of the diachronic dimension (top
to bottom) and read from left to right,
column after column, each one being considered
as a unit.
All
the relations belonging to the same column
exhibit one common feature which it is
our task to discover. For instance, all
the events grouped in the first column
on the left have something to do with
blood relations which are overemphasized,
that is, are more intimate than they should
be. Let us say, then, that the first column
has as its common feature the overrating
of blood relations. It is obvious
that the second column expresses the same
thing, but inverted: underrating of
blood relations. The third column
refers to monsters being slain. As to
the fourth, a few words of clarification
are needed. The remarkable connotation
of the surnames in Oedipus father-line
has often been noticed. However, linguists
usually disregard it, since to them the
only way to define the meaning of a term
is to investigate all the contexts in
which it appears, and. personal names,
precisely because they are used as such,
are not accompanied by any context. With
the method we propose to follow the objection
disappears, since the myth itself provides
its own context. The significance is no
longer to be sought in the eventual meaning
of each name, but in the fact that all
the names 'have a common feature: All
the hypothetical meanings (which may well
remain hypothetical) refer to difficulties
in walking straight and standing upright.
What
then is the relationship between the two
columns on the right? Column three refers
to monsters. The dragon is a chthonian
being which has to be killed in order
that mankind be born from the Earth; the
Sphinx is a monster unwilling to permit
men to live. The last unit reproduces
the first one, which has to do with the
autochthonous origin, of mankind.
Since the monsters are overcome by men,
we may thus say that the common feature
of the third column is denial of the
autochthonous origin of man.
This
immediately helps us to understand the
meaning of the fourth column. In mythology
it is a universal characteristic of men
born from the Earth that at the moment
they emerge from the depth they either
cannot walk or they walk clumsily. This
is the case of the chthonian beings in
the mythology of the Pueblo: Muyingwu,
who leads the emergence, and the chthonian
Shumaikoli are lame ("bleeding-foot,"
"sore-foot"). The same happens to the
Koskimo of the Kwakiutl after they have
been swallowed by the chthonian monster,
Tsiakish: When they returned to the surface
of the earth "they limped forward or tripped
side ways." Thus the common feature of
the fourth column is the persistence
of the autochthonous origin of man.
It follows that column four is to column
three as column one is to column two.
The inability to connect two kinds of
relationships is overcome (or rather replaced)
by the assertion that contradictory relationships
are identical inasmuch as they are both
self-contradictory in a similar way. Although
this is still a provisional formulation
of the structure of mythical thought,
it is sufficient at this stage.
Turning
back to the Oedipus myth, we may now see
what it means. The myth has to do with
the inability, for a culture which holds
the belief that mankind is autochthonous
(see, for instance, Pausanias, VIII, xxix,
4: plants provide a model for humans),
to find a satisfactory transition between
this theory and the knowledge that human
beings are actually born from the union
of man and woman. Although the problem
obviously cannot be solved, the Oedipus
myth provides a kind of logical tool which
relates the original problemborn
from one or born from two?to the
derivative problem: born from different
or born from same? By a correlation of
this type, the overrating of blood relations
is to the underrating of blood relations
as the attempt to escape autochthony is
to the impossibility to succeed in it.
Although experience contradicts theory,
social life validates cosmology by its
similarity of structure. Hence cosmology
is true."