The Map and the Labyrinth

by adrian mihalache

One can better realize the specificity of the cyber cultural hypertext when one compares it to the remarkable examples of the past: the The Bible and the Encyclopédie. The multiple hyperlinks provided by the footnotes of the first suggests innumerable anticipations and confirmations that connect the various discourses belonging to old prophets and 'new' evangelists. The biblical hyperlinks act as the wielding points of a solid structure, unlike the postmodern 'disconnecting' ones that are responsible for the effect of 'unweaving'; that is, the fragmentation of the discursive structure into mutually inconsistent and quasi-independent stories. It is not only that the Old and the New Covenants permanently refer to each other, rather the unified hyper-structure of the Book points to the absolute and incontestable presence pervading both the inside and the outside of the Book: God, the Lord.

A hypertext fights another. The Encyclopédie was to replace the Bible as modernity's livre de chevet. This new hypertext was bound to ascertain the order and connections among different domains of human knowledge. On the other hand, it focused upon the individual features of each field. Thus, establishing a double dialectical relation between the particular and the general, the Encyclopédie presented a system of knowledge that provided more information than does the sum of its parts (Moscovici, Claudia, Perusals into (Post) Modern Thought. University Press of America, R Inc., Lanham, New York, Oxford, 2000, pp 27-28.)

D'Alembert used the map (mappemonde) as an explanatory metaphor for the giant enterprise: “It is a kind of World Map that should show the main countries. Their position and their interdependency, the straight path that connects them--a path which is often cut by a thousand obstacles; that is known in each country only by its inhabitants and travelers, and that is only illustrated by very detailed maps. These specific maps would be the very different articles of the Encyclopédie, and the tree or represented system would be the World Map” (D'Alembert, Discours préliminaire, quoted in Moscovici, op. cit., pp. 29-30.) This orderly, raisonné approach is typical for the modernist attempt at exhaustivity, based on the method reliability. One cannot find, no matter how far one explores the hyper textual trails of the Encyclopédie, any postmodern trace or hint. However, Diderot, a subtler mind, realized that such metaphors as the picture or the map oversimplify the encyclopedic complexity, reducing its web to a series of lines. Less teleological than D'Alembert, Diderot is suspicious of the latter's pyramidal approach, which situated the philosopher in a privileged position wherefrom the whole map of knowledge is perfectly visible.

In the article "Encyclopedia," Diderot takes up again the images of the scheme, the map that, in the framework of D'Alembert's approach, reduces the encyclopedic complexity (the dispersion of the articles) to the commonplace of a straight line. However, Diderot does not share his collaborator's teleological position. To D'Alembert's pyramid-like approach, an ideal one for the philosopher who attempts to make the world of knowledge turn around his viewpoint, Diderot opposes the multi-centered universe which does not fail to remind one of Leibniz (Saint-Amand, Pierre, Diderot: Le labyrinthe de la relation. Paris, Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1984, p. 71.).

Diderot favors the metaphor of the labyrinth which, compared to the map, suggests chaotic complexity, fractal images and the confusion one gets into when trying to explore the universe. This metaphor is even more appealing for describing the fractal complexity of the postmodern Web, wherein each fragment mirrors the whole in slightly distorted ways. Until the Web, postmodern theory did not find a proper environment for growing its seeds into plants. Postmodern authors like Barthelme, Coover, Robbe-Grillet and tutti-quanti found it hard to subvert the authority of the narrative rules. The book in its traditional form is a body that connects to ours in the act of reading, together forming a closed space of intimacy. The body of the book has as a similar counterpart the body of knowledge the book harbors, which is expected to be finite and self-sufficient. The fragmentation, the loosely connected episodes, the lack of proper endings of the postmodern narratives are difficult to conciliate with the expectations a book entails. As Currie reasonably points out, endings are ways of projecting values onto events (Currie, Mark, Postmodern Narrative Theory. St. Martin Press, New York, 1998, p. 67.) For instance, the fact that the secret of Stendhal's hero in Armance (impotence) is not revealed in the novel itself, but in a note from Stendhal's diary is just as disappointing as not disclosing the identity of the murderer within a thriller, while informing the readers afterward, upon request, in a follow-up mail. Both procedures show good postmodern taste, but are far more adequate for Web-based stories than for properly “bound” books.

The separation of the hypertext from its former paper medium set postmodern writing in full swing. Some may argue that the center of interactive media is moving now to a post-HTML environment, a world way past a Web-dominated page, beyond streamed audio and video, and fast into a land of push-pull, active objects, virtual space, and ambient broadcasting (Kelly, Kevin, Wolf, Gary, “We Interrupt This Magazine for a Special Bulletin – PUSH!” In Wired, Mar. 1997, pp 12-13.)

However, instead of focusing on predictions, it is preferable to look at what is now on (the Web). The disdain for Web-posted stories as literary trash, which was fashionable until very recently, has been outdated by the apparition and diffusion of highly readable and often innovative cyber-prose. Together with the relaxation of the narrative patterns, the Web-based hypertext broke with the assumption that the written page is the best ordering of words the author has been capable of after multiple trials and errors. The writer accepts variability and is more inclined to view his work as merely a temporary version. The Flaubertian tyranny of le mot juste is eclipsed, and with it, gradually, the idea of the author as a sovereign maker.

Copyright © 2000 Adrian Mihalache All Rights Reserved

Adrian lives in Bucharest, Romania. He's a regular contributor to *spark-online.