Hayles: Summaries

N. Kathleen Hayles, “Speech, Writing, Code: Three World Views,” My Mother was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts, Chicago + London, University of Chicago Press, 2005. (a copy has been left in my mailbox,please copy and return)

A more theoretical than interpretive examination of informatics, Hayles is concerned with the conceptual and aesthetic values of different modes of linguistic expression. The text reviews key aspects of Saussure and Derrida’s linguistic theories so to consider similarities, differences and intersections between analog and digital forms of communication (hierarchical vs. spatial models of signification; aesthetic and interpretive value placed on presence vs. absence, arbitrariness vs. exactness…) Level of difficulty: high.




N. Kathleen Hayles,
“Narrating Bits: Encounters Between Humans and Intelligent Machines,” Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular, (2005)

Here Hayles seeks to understand the exact nature of the relationship between traditional and new media story forms. The author addresses problems with Lev Manovich’s opposition of database and narrative form so to develop more nuanced understanding of digital storytelling. The essay explores ‘assumptions’ about subjectivity that are embedded in narrative theory (human p.o.v. is understood as meeting place of concept and form) and argues for revision to accommodate “database” forms of storytelling with machine intelligence. The paper analyzes a range of hypermedia/hypertext fictional works (some available on-line via linking) and elaborates a set of relations generated by such works in appendix form. Level of difficulty: low.





N. Kathleen Hayles, "Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers" October 66 (Fall 1993) available via Concordia e-journal choose JSTOR

Hayles discusses the material and conceptual effects of digital modes of communication on processes/practices of signification and interpretation; and describes shift in conceptual logic of presence/absence underpinning analogue forms of representation to a logic of pattern and randomness in computer messaging. Her stated thesis: “The contemporary pressure toward dematerialization, understood as an epistemic shift toward pattern/randomness and away from presence/absence, affects human and textual bodies on two levels at once, as a change in the body…and a change in the message… [the discussion] weave[s] back and forth between the represented world of contemporary fictions, models of signification implicit in word processing and information technologies, and the technologies themselves (76).” Level of difficulty. medium.



C Theory Interview with K. Hayles

During the hour-long, video-conference interview with Arthur Kroker, Hayles discusses themes and issues addressed in her various publications: the aesthetics of electronic textuality, concepts of intermediation, the complexity of digital subjectivity (or the post-human subject) and the impact of the ‘regime of computation’ on the cultural era succeeding postmodernity. Level of difficulty: medium.