At the outset of my thesis research this year, my exposure to Linda Hutcheon's concept of historiographic metafiction really made me feel as though I would never ever come across a more shamelessly coined term of absolute emptiness. I know, I know, this column has already, in its title, implicated Linda Hutcheon as a scholar who, despite her efforts and subsequent fame, fell short in fully developing a concept of the Canadian postmodern, but really, a whole new flashy term just for metafiction that just happens to contain historical events in its plot? Isn't all metafiction, or writing in general, in being art that uses language and rests upon the cultural framework of the author and their subsequent cultural biases, historiographic? Totally lame! However, to sidestep this repetitive post-pomo student finger-wag at Linda Hutcheon, I actually found something absolutely and wholeheartedly worse in its shameless toting of pretentious intellectual validity without actually possessing, in my opinion, any theoretical substance: Epsen J. Aarseth's concept of ergodic literature.
After a close friend of mine tossed me the manuscript for his first novel, citing Mark Z. Danielewski's American cult classic House of Leaves as an influence, I set out to read some criticism and articles on the book before delving in. The term ergodic literature came up a few times with reference to Danielweski, and after looking over ergodic theorems in math and getting a general idea that the primary term referred to non-linear dynamism in numbers, I guess I sort of had a general idea that it referred to, I dunno, dynamic texts? This all seemed very convoluted to me, and as I set out to get to know Espen J. Aarseth a little better to wrestle this thing down, I quickly realized that it truly, truly was.
Espen J. Aarseth is a Norwegian video-game scholar (yes, they do exist) and a scholar of (purists, please look away) electronic literature. When I originally read his bio I was totally stoked to read what he was all about, considering the field of tech-based or tech-augmented art and lit is totally interesting. The only problem is that the dissertation in which he coins this term - Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature - totally bashes Literary Studies and repeatedly asserts that the application of traditional literary theory to cybertexts is "imperialistic" and idiotic. Ah!
With this in mind, I'm sure you all understand why I was so absolutely confused. I'm no stranger to literary figures attacking what they perceive to be the literary establishment - it's good for growth and discussion, a little bit of intellectual tension ain't gonna hurt nobody - but to coin a literary term and then turn around and say that literary studies - the body of academic study that obviously bore him - has nothing to contribute to the study of technologically augmented literature? Absolutely ridiculous!
Even more ridiculous: the assertion that ergodic literature is a whole new category of literature. The technical definition of ergodic lit is that it requires nontrivial effort to be accessed and traversed. What the hell does that mean? As if the process of reading any literature wasn't already inherently active. If one can read something passively, do we even call that literature, or art? It's entirely unclear what exactly this trivial effort is, but it seems to me that he draws the line in media, where the turning of a page is rendered trivial in opposition to new ways of accessing narratives, i.e. gaming and digital technology. This bold assertion really made me scoff - a book and a screen are really just different platforms for accessing a text, and I simply cannot believe that anyone could ever suggest that new technologies have made readers more active in their access of literature.
Aarseth set out, in his ballsy dissertation, to "describe any text according to their mode of traversal" (62), a very literal application of McLuhan's musings on media, which explains his odd disconnect with the aspects of imagination that transcend media, that can live in story outside of the text, or game itself. This kind of jazz makes me a little sad, because it's dudes like Aarseth that are working far too hard to antagonize Literary Studies, and in turn, are serving to make the Literary community feel, well, antagonized by academics who are interested in these types of study. Also, as an aspiring academic who is definitely interested in the study of electronic literature and digital poetics, this kind of stuff makes me especially angry, considering I feel as though literary studies and the study of burgeoning new technological media really could work together to create some damn good work. The last fifth of my thesis is entirely devoted to looking forward to work that is being done in the Canadian post-pomo landscape with technology and traditional forms of literature working hand-in-hand. Am I just a hippy or something?
So what's with all the coining? Is it contemporary, postmodern or now, ergodic? Is it that metafiction historiographic? What the hell do any of these things mean? As a post-millennium student this really all seems very silly to me. Though I love theory, it really loses its weight when it's taken so far from the ground, and much like the Hutchmeister, Aarseth seems to be coining not in cyberspace, but in outer space.
5 Comments
B-Rad says:
You raise some very good questions concerning the post-pomo era we are in. I must admit that I have come across the same phenomena of academics simply coining new (meaningless and empty) terms for, well..the sake of creating them! Cultural Studies in general is a hotspot for this, where people who have a loose (mis)understanding of Deleuze, Foucault and Derrida strive to coin new and complex terms that usually doesn't..er..address anything at all. You're not alone, Karen, as an aspiring academic myself, this makes me angry too.
What's worse is that you get these rather annoying academics who bash their field for the sake of..bashing. In the case of Aarseth, the antagonism he wants to set up between Literally Studies and..Media studies is premature and immature. Although, I suppose every field has their hate on for others (i.e. philosophy versus the rest of the world...). In terms of the next stage of literature, media studies should join forces with Literally Studies, rather than trying to fight them (for the sake of fighting them..).
It's craziness. Oh, by the way, if you want to do a piece specifically on the coining on new, meaningless terms in our post pomo era, I'd be down to collaborate with you on it. Let em know!
fruitlet | home of karen correia da silva says:
[...] that post-pomo variety show fruitlet home of karen correia da silva 08.16.2009 Electronic Lit Scholars, Joel Plaskett, Lloyd Kaufman, Taste of the Danforth and More! Categories: Musings [...] Aarseth set out, in his ballsy dissertation, to “describe any text according to their mode of traversal” (62), a very literal application of McLuhan’s musings on media, which explains his odd disconnect with the aspects of imagination that transcend media, that can live in story outside of the text, or game itself. This kind of jazz makes me a little sad, because it’s dudes like Aarseth that are working far too hard to antagonize Literary Studies, and in turn, are serving to make the Literary community feel, well, antagonized by academics who are interested in these types of study. Also, as an aspiring academic who is definitely interested in the study of electronic literature and digital poetics, this kind of stuff makes me especially angry, considering I feel as though literary studies and the study of burgeoning new technological media really could work together to create some damn good work. The last fifth of my thesis is entirely devoted to looking forward to work that is being done in the Canadian post-pomo landscape with technology and traditional forms of literature working hand-in-hand. Am I just a hippy or something? [read the full article] [...]
Tim Pozzi says:
Hey Karen,
This is a really well-written article, and I'm glad to see you engaging with the issue of lit theory snobbishness-- how many of these new phrases do we need before they become meaningless? Even though I do not delve even close to as deep as you, (and kudos to you for your ever-expanding knowledge), there's a point where all of this over explanation just gets in the way of enjoying great ideas. I think you and your contemporaries have a mighty responsibility in this post-pomo literary landscape to contribute new and exciting ideas without becoming redundant, meaningless or entirely self-serving. It's a tight rope to walk, but I'm sure you're up to the challenge.
burzum says:
you reviewed the book 12 years after it was published, and obviously did look back into the other debates that took place at the time of this book's publication. by not taking into account the original context in which the argument made sense you paint a distorted picture of this book's contribution: surely somebody trying to stop a windmill looks stupid especially if the windmill has been removed from the picture.
Karen Correia Da Silva says:
Hi Burzum.
I don't think Aarseth looks "stupid" at all, I just disagree with him. What exactly in the context of this publication did I leave out? My research project at the time was precisely oriented around his context, and I couldn't help but notice how the explosion of literary terminology in the late nineties through many "post-disciplines" was bolstered through the forceful rejection and attempted negation of the base of literary studies, upon which such disciplines are built. Linda Hutcheon's A Poetics of Postmodernism was written twenty-two years ago, and I still take issue with the way it's taught in Canadian literature classes. Ergodic literature (coined a decade later) is no different. Couldn't "ergodic literature" be better described as a form of hypermediated ekphrasis?
You can't blame me for being wary of new terms that seem to describe old practices. Maybe I'm just of the camp that electronic literature is not so different from print, and when it is, formally, it looks to me like hypermediated ekphrasis. I love hypertext art and literature -- I make so much of it myself -- but I have yet to find something on the internet so radically different from the page. We do still call them "web-pages" after all, and hypermediated 3D environments have yet to offer the possibility of transcending that paradigm.
Aside from navigation, interactivity, and multimedia content, I haven't really been convinced that the experience of electronic literature is phenomenologically different from the act of reading print -- which is also technology -- at all. Even the non-linear aspect is not exclusive to electronic literature.
Disagreement is healthy. I wrote this almost two years ago, and I still disagree with Aarseth. You disagree with me, which is great too! I'm just unclear as to what exactly you're disagreeing with...