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 * Lee Carleton**
 * Media, Art & Text**
 * Virginia Commonwealth University**


 * A Rich Fabric: Intertextuality and Understanding**


 * Fabric. The word, separated like this, looks unfamiliar, almost vulnerable. Yet, it is a word of broad application that describes the woven materials we wear on our bodies as well as the totality of experience we call the “fabric of reality.” The OED notes that “fabric” derives from //faber// or worker and is also related to //fabrication//, both connections emphasizing the active engagement with materials for the purpose of shaping them. As we engage with words and ideas about text, let us weave together a fabric of understanding that helps to clarify the practical value and the relevance of intertextual perspective, particularly in the digital age. In //Hypertext 3.0// [|George Landow] advocates deliberate development of "hypertextual thinking."**


 * As Landow and others have noted, digital technologies change the nature of authorship, and as billions of texts are uploaded or written and linked on the Web, poststructuralist theory seems to unfold in cyberspace with the loss of the “unitary text” and the instantiation of a “dispersed text” (94-103). Recent explorations in feminist epistemology have focused on the observation that knowledge is communally constructed and Landow sees hypertext in this regard, claiming that “it destroys one of the most basic characteristics of the printed text - its separation and univocality. Whenever one places a text within a network of other texts, one forces it to exist as part of a complex dialogue” (177). In a social sense, each of us is a complex text (life story) situated in relationship to others with whom we weave the fabric of our reality.**
 * We can continue etymological exploration by noting how connections between text, textile and context can provide a fruitful space for the discussion of intertextuality and the potential insight to be gained in focused metaphorical reflections on weaving. This ancient human activity has been practiced from as far back as 8000 BCE, before writing, but inextricably intertwined with it. In the fecundity of the Fertile Crescent, weaving and writing came together (were woven?) in the vigorous trade of textiles and the cuneiform accounting of these transactions. While we certainly cannot exhaust the metaphoric possibilities of this synchronicity, perhaps we can gain some insight into the phenomenon of intertextuality.**


 * In //[|Semiotics for Beginners],// Chandler discusses Kristeva’s concept of intertextuality noting that she “referred to texts in terms of two axes: a horizontal axis connecting the author and reader of a text, and a vertical axis, which connects the text to other texts.” Kristeva’s axis metaphor can roughly parallel the geometry of weaving where one axis is the “warp” of threads stretched tightly across a frame and the other axis is the “woof” (or “weft”) that is shuttled back and forth across the warp. We might even extend the comparison a bit further to suggest that, in the world of texts, the “warp” are those Authoritative Texts, fixed & framed, taut & parallel, through which we as readers and writers must shuttle in our weaving of meaning.**


 * In America, our particular Authoritative Texts are the standard of an objectivity that claims no bias but which is, as Nancy Tuana argues, largely constructed by “privileged males, namely, White, propertied, Christian, heterosexual, and able-bodied.”(4) Embodiment is naturally a central concern for feminist epistemologies, as women’s bodies have been locations of great contest, particularly in terms of authority and autonomy. Fear of the body’s chthonic chaos has evoked a strong response from official power throughout history as smouldering witches connote.**
 * Certainly our idea of authority also goes back to the Jewish tradition of Moses and the Decalogue inscribed unchangeably in stone. And notably, the Decalogue is a monologue - there is no dialog or communal creation of truth. Our sense of authorial power is also influenced by Romanticism and the idea of the independent genius, inspired apart from and above the common man. The point here is that traditionally, we have ignored the social aspect of knowledge making and the weavings that make up our context. Rather than simply accept authorized claims of objectivity, Tuana proposes that we acknowledge “the complex interactions between individuals, the environment, and the social contexts of knowledge acquisition.”(10) In terms of the weave of intertextuality, this means that the Authoritative Text (variously manifest) need not be accepted as the only objective and final voice it claims to be, but that any Authoritative Text can be interrogated and expanded by the web of other texts upon which it is built and with which it interacts.**


 * Although the socially constructed nature of language, categories and disciplinary divisions has been suspected as far back as Isocrates in the 4th Century BCE, contemporary professionalized academics still fight jealously over disciplinary boundaries and scholarly territory. Such scholastic squabbles are ultimately territorial, epistemological battles of hierarchy and authority about who has the right to say what, whose voice is approved and whose is not. The problem with this outdated and contentious approach is that important ideas, unique perspectives and necessary insights often get filtered out in a sieve of rigidly structured expectations of disciplinary convention, voice, delivery and referential authority, what McLuhan has referred to as “umbilical discourse.” The concept of knowledge as a social construct has more recently been explored by Berger and Luckman in their 1966 work __The Social Construction of Reality__ just as feminism was beginning to reexamine the concepts of identity, objectivity, knowledge and power. Tuana’s feminist epistemology, an outgrowth of this reexamination, is constructed by the participation of “situated knowers” - individuals in specifically acknowledged contexts. Rather than depend on an illusory and problematic “objective” authority, our understanding of reality and of texts can only be enhanced by our awareness of the multiplicity of their contexts and connections. As Chandler says, “each text exists within a vast 'society of texts' in various genres and media: no text is an island entire of itself.”**


 * Our human longing for the authoritative, fixed, unitary and univocal text is pervasive as Barthes notes: “in every society various techniques are developed intended to //fix// the floating chain of signifieds in such a way as to counter the terror of uncertain signs…” (“Rhetoric” 156) To uncritically or dogmatically insist on a single frame, a narrowly disciplined perspective is to choose a kind of intellectual blinders that necessarily limit and distort our perception. Just as blinders were used on horses to keep them from being frightened by the multiplicity of sensory data from the street, so some scholars insist on the necessity of intellectual blinders perhaps in a fear of the rapid, non-linear, undisciplined swirl of information that is our digital age. Our natural discomfort with ubiquitous change is understandable, but dependency on the warping of Authoritative Text cannot absolve us of our responsibility for navigating the polysemic woof. Barthes discusses textual polysemy in “From Work to Text,” noting the text’s unfinished nature, and its inability to be contained due to “the stereographic plurality of its weave of signifiers.” However, Barthes’ description of the “floating chain of signifieds” comes from his essay “Rhetoric of the Image” where he discusses their polysemic nature. Many meanings are latent in words and images, especially when woven together. This woven multiplicity of signification and meaning is beautifully manifest in the poetry prints of William Blake, whose life and art were devoted to resisting the chains of the Authoritative Text for the freeing of creative inspiration.**


 * From his early support of the French Revolution to, his reversal of Swedenborg’s teachings, to his resistance of industrial uniformity, Blake forged his own truths from the floating chain of signifiers. His art was a conversation with his context and its Authoritative Texts religious and secular, historical and literary, written and imaged. In Blake’s mysterious mythology, Urizen represents a misguided reason that disparages embodiment and spreads the lies of impurity, separation and sin. The authority of tradition, institution and law are Urizen’s method of binding creative expression and joy as portrayed in “Africa” in //The Song of Los// where in plate 4 we read “the Churches: Hospitals: Castles: Palaces:/Like nets & gins & traps to catch the joys of Eternity.”**


 * The inviting ambiguity of Blake’s thickly woven fabric of textual and imagic signifiers can be seen in this plate in the image of a woman and a man, who appear to be escaping something, their bodies intertwined uncertainly revealing no clear boundary between them. Is this Har and Heva mentioned in the poem? Is it Los and Enitharmon? Where do Rousseau and Voltaire fit in? The deceased Gods of Asia? One idea is clear: the idea that embodiment was considered inferior to the intellect, a base and restraining thing until Blake’s “philosophy of the Five Senses was complete.”**


 * In “The Book of Los” Blake features a kind of luciferian savior whose “raging, furious…flames of desire” are the creative energy he uses to forge the new and redeem the body. In section IV, we see Urizen’s backbone “writhing” and “hurtling” chaotically “Like a serpent! like an iron chain/Whirling about in the Deep,” and this image initially evokes Barthe’s “floating chain,” but Urizen’s chain of signifiers is fixed by reason making it a limitation until blacksmith Los beats the iron links into “an immense Orb of fire,” “the glowing illusion,” “a Human Illusion.” Rather than being anti-sensual, Blake simply reminds us that the body is not distinct from the soul but “is a portion of Soul discerned by the five Senses” as described in the //Marriage// plate 4, titled “The Voice of the Devil.” Blake here contributes to the Romantic tradition that seeks to rescue the body from traditional religious and academic disparagement in order to elevate it as a manifestation and perception of the Soul. The traditionally accepted Cartesian split between mind and body continues to mislead us today as is evident in our industrialized approach to education. However, a moment’s reflection reveals that a brain without a body would empty of content, impotent to perceive what it encountered. Though usually dismissed, disciplined or repressed, the body is an essential participant in learning.**


 * For Blake, as with feminist epistemology, individual embodiment is also an essential aspect of knowledge and power. In his rejection and attempts to control the body with a particular compass, hyper-rational Urizen does not note the encircling limitations of his own inscribed entrapment as Blake so vividly portrays in the “Ancient of Days” plate from //Europe: A Prophecy//. This mirrors another point made by Tuana and others in the development of feminist epistemologies: the problem is that the dominant Authorized Text is not aware of its own blindness as it aggressively marks out limits for the rest of us with its myopic and incomplete vision, proclaiming this vision objective and complete.**
 * Blake identified more with Los than Urizen and this is evident in the creative cornucopia of images, voices and potential readings of his plates. The thickening weave of meaning in Blake’s poetic prints is evident in the array of different religious, political and cultural references to his context as well as the depth of visual and linguistic suggestion woven into each plate. As with today’s feminist epistemology, Blake was aware of the human voices left out of the social conversation in his day, and in plates like “The Chimney Sweeper” and “The Little Black Boy” he gives these others some voice. Though he does not leave us a clearly defined epistemological statement, we might guess that Blake would support a standpoint-oriented epistemology over a single, authoritative view of knowledge and truth. The inspiration he took from his life-long visionary experiences would seem to indicate this as well.**


 * Blake’s thinking and work seem to reject the monologic and instead exhibit a pervasive hybridity that can be seen in his combination of history and mythology in word and image on etched and engraved copper plates. That Blake’s astonishing body of work should be among our first academic hypertexts, suggests the power potential in hybrid forms as noticed by McLuhan in //Understanding Media// where he devotes an entire chapter to the hybrid, emphasizing its threatening power with the title: “Hybrid Energy: Les Liaisons Dangereuses.” According to McLuhan, hybrid forms “release great new force and energy” and he notes how hybridity moves beyond the material to include practice: “the hybrid principle [is] a technique of creative discovery” (73,80).**


 * Certainly, the intertextual (and intratextual) nature of Blake’s work has been observed well before Kristeva and Barthes’ articulations of the concept, but it is the enhancement of digital recording and presentation that allow us to encounter this for ourselves. George Landow may celebrate the hypertextual freedom we have as readers to move beyond Blake’s plates to other texts and to read these in any order we choose, but perhaps the first and greatest digital advantages are the preservation and collection of their images in one accessible place. In the digital age, Blake’s plates are now available to a much wider audience at a much lower cost, thus inviting more people to read them and join in the ongoing conversation about their meaning via tools of search and comparison not previously available.**


 * Digitality may never be able to reproduce the scent of Blake’s prints, the texture of their surface or the sound of moving the paper, but the transcriptions, notes, side-by-side comparison and magnification available on //The William Blake Archive// can vastly expand the potential audience of engaged readers. Digitally bypassing established academic critics, and knowing little or nothing about many of Blake’s allusions, modern readers can experience them in fresh ways, generating new significance rather than mechanically reinscribing the old.**


 * Today, an important aspect of digital technology to keep mind is the increasing rapidity with which it changes. “Moore’s Law,” coined in 1965 by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, says that “transistor density on integrated circuits doubles every two years” naturally increasing the speed and ability of digital tools at that rate (Dubash). Though Moore admits that this law cannot continue indefinitely, he suggests it will be 10-20 years before it has reached its limit. As digital technologies also speed up the pace of our lives, the attention of modern man is focused forward so that past associations begin to fade and new ones must be made. Only a multivalent, richly woven fabric of text and image, allusion and illusion, philosophy, history and myth, can rise to the challenge of continuing to attract interest and yield significance.**


 * If Blake had bound his plates to a single, traditionally authoritative perspective, there would be little for his vastly increased, modern digital readership to do, little place for us in the conversation - just a rehashing of the monolithic, monovocal Law. And quite obviously, this patriarchal path is petering out. Fortunately for us, Blake burned with a different vision and left it open for us to take on the role of Los, forging our own links, in conversation with others, reading and linking our own texts, as we create a new more objective world of positively embodied knowers in the immaterial realms of cyberspace.**


 * Resources:**


 * Alcoff, Linda Martín. “On Judging Epistemic Credibility: Is Social Identity Relevant?”**
 * __Engendering Rationalities__. Nancy Tuana and Sandra Morgan eds. Albany: SUNY Press, 2001. 53-80**


 * Barthes, Roland. “From Work to Text” online (1977) 10/15/06 http://homepage.newschool.edu/~quigleyt/vcs/barthes-wt.html**


 * Barthes, Roland. “Rhetoric of the Image.” __Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World: A Critical__ __Sourcebook__. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. 152-163**


 * Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann. __The Social Construction of Reality:__**
 * __A Tretise in the Sociology of Knowledge__. New York: Doubleday, 1966.**


 * Blake, William. //The William Blake Archive//. 3/31/06 Ed. Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick,**
 * and Joseph Viscomi. 10/15/06 .**


 * Chandler, Daniel. //Semiotics for Beginners//. 4/10/03. University of Wales, Aberystwyth. 10/14/06.http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem09.html#Top**


 * Dubash, Manek. “Moore’s Law is Dead, says Gordon Moore.” //Techworld,// 4/13/05**
 * [] **
 * (12/23/09).**


 * Harding, Sandra. “Is Science Multicultural? Challenges, Resources, Opportunities, Uncertainties.” __Configurations__ 2.2 (1994) 301-330**


 * Johnson, Mary Lynn and John E. Grant, eds. __Blake’s Poetry and Designs__.**
 * New York: Norton & Co. 1979.**


 * Landow, George P. __Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era__**
 * __Of Globalization__. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. 2006.**


 * McLuhan, Marshall. //Understanding Media: the extensions of man.// (1964)**
 * Gingko Press, 2003**


 * McLuhan, Marshall. //The Medium is the Massage// (audio collage)**
 * Columbia Records, 1968.**


 * Scheman, Naomi. “Epistemology Resuscitated.” __Engendering Rationalities__. Nancy Tuana and Sandra Morgan eds. Albany: SUNY Press, 2001. 23-52**


 * Tuana, Nancy. “Introduction.” __Engendering Rationalities__. Nancy Tuana and Sandra**
 * Morgan eds. Albany: SUNY Press, 2001. 1-20**

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
 * Wylly, Susan C. //The Art and History of Weaving//. 2001. Georgia College and State U. **
 * [|10/15/06. http://www.faculty.de.gcsu.edu/~dvess/ids/fap/weav.html] **