Patrick Grady O’Malley

Considering the “Text” as a “process of demonstration” and not a “reduction of reading to a consumption” transcends how many people likely think of the reading process. With our recent discussions on audiobooks, I wonder how Barthes would react to this form of media as being consumed or if he would be open to the idea of an audiobook as something to be experienced.

To comprehend a work is to do more than merely interact with the words of that text but to be part of the “biological conceptions of the living being.” This largely paves the way for Barthes to make his argument of a text as a “network,” something to be lived and interpreted. However, it is also this reason that makes his statement “the Text is not to be thought of as an object that can be computed,” confusing. Networks are always computed, and he seems to be countering his own argument by saying the text is one but cannot be the other. What’s more is that if a text is a “process of demonstration,” than again why can it not be computed? Computation and demonstration go hand in hand with one another, and the work that Digital Humanists do with text mining and more, demonstrate more about a text than most comparative studies or close readings do, all through computation. There is a generational delay or two from when this article was written to the advent of Computational Linguistics and Digital Humanities, but by the 1970’s computers were already changing the way that so much work was being done, if Barthes, so profound, prophetic and wise, were really on top of his game, I don’t think he would ever make the statement that text not ever be computed.

I do appreciate Barthes’ distinction of “work” as a “general sign” and a “Text” as “the signified.” I say this because I like thinking of work and text as two different entities (even though as I argue below, they are a bit closer to one another than Barthes suggests), work is the sign that represents all that went into its production, and perhaps also its appeal to a reader, whereas text as signified works on a deeper level as something that is to be interacted amongst/with, or as Barthes puts it: “the Text is radically symbolic: a work conceived, perceived and received in its integrally symbolic nature is a text.” This element supports my first statement saying Barthes’ perspective could shift the way people perceive the act of reading and writing.

But my only question is if a “Text” is an “object,” what of a work? Is that also an object or is it always going to be a “general sign?” Can a work never achieve what a text does, and does a text automatically fulfill the requirements of a work? The “interdisciplinarity” of research leads me to think that the two work in tandem a bit more than Barthes would like for us to believe. Or at least perceive as we ponder over his writings. If we could attest literary texts as always being products of “linguistics, anthropology, Marxism and psychoanalysis” then I don’t see the harm in thinking of them as “works” at the same time.

Written in 1971, Roland Barthes’ “Work to Text” is an argument presented in the era of the material book. Computers, up to that point, were merely giant number crunchers, albeit highly useful for calculating trajectories of rockets or missiles. In that print-centric context, the hard distinction between the titular terms is easy to see as he explains his first proposition: “the Text is not to be thought of as an object that can be computed.” He clarifies further still: “The difference is this: the work is a fragment of substance, occupying a part of the space of books (in a library for example), the Text is a methodological field.” Simple. The work is the product of the author, and the Text is what we make of it, academically, culturally, and personally—how it resonates with other readers, other texts, and in other times.

Barthes goes on to propose five more characteristics of the Text. It has no bounds (neither physical nor hierarchical nor taxonomical). It has a unique relation to the sign, mutating beyond the original signified as it moves in space and time. It is plural, nay infinite, in its forms and meaning. It is an object of play. And it gives us self-replicating pleasure that lasts far beyond the act of consuming the work. Barthes’ Text seems a radiant cosmic force, or perhaps a democratic one: of all, by all, and for all, expert and novice alike.

However, it’s hard to tell how pure his vision of the work is. Barthes seems to delineate it quite clearly as whatever the author originally offered as the finished work. He goes so far as to say, “It is not that the Author may not ‘come back’ in the Text, in his text, but he then does so as a ‘guest’.” Are choices made by editors, publishers, and book sellers the end of the work or the start of the Text? If an author provides explanatory notes—an introduction, footnotes, an afterword, or edits in another edition—has she changed the work or contributed to the Text?

His distinctions get hazier still when it comes to annotation. Certainly, scribbled marginalia fit the bill for Text—unlimited, interpretive, filtered through unique lenses, playful in their interactivity, and, for most of us, quite pleasurable. Similarly, in the digital world Barthes could not have imagined, exercises like ours on hypothes.is seem to be Text as well—an organic conversation of us all comparing our experience with the oued of his theory.

But annotation as scholarly commentary seems to buck some of these criteria, especially when codified the way Matthias Bauer and Angelika Zirker propose to do. Barthes lauds the expansive nature of the Text: “The Text, on the contrary, practises [sic] the infinite deferment of the signified, is dilatory.” Bauer and Zirker seek to constrict it, to narrow it with the aim of making it useful, seeing a “risk of the loss of information through the overabundance of information.”

Bauer and Zirker propose a brilliantly practical scheme: to identify categories or fields of scholarly annotation and to leverage the infinite space and hyperlinked nature of the digital realm to offer it at three different levels. Barthes may find that their linguistic, formal, intratexual, and interpretive fields are part of the work’s Text, springing, as they all do from the work itself and part of the response to it. But he might consider the contextual and intertextual fields too close to what he calls the “myth of filiation.” In fact, he may reject them altogether, noting that “the citations which go to make up a text are anonymous, untraceable, and yet already read: they are quotations without inverted commas.”

Bauer and Zirker might argue back, claiming that their codification is intended to be heuristic—part of the seemingly open and democratic nature of the Text, allowing more to contribute to its plurality. They might also argue that scholarly annotation is one way to stimulate the vitality of the Text, to keep it alive, as they explain, ““[These levels] manage the amount of information presented, encourage plausible interpretation, and show the dynamic aspect of annotation. This aspect is seen in the digital format in particular: a digital annotated edition may become an ongoing working platform.”

With the elapsing of 44 years of technological development on their side, Bauer and Zirker are certainly able to counter Barthes’ first proposition, at least in part. By categorizing and leveling scholarly annotation on a digital platform, that segment of the Text can be computed. They offer, “The quantitative levels are not exclusively reader-oriented; they are also text-oriented, showing us, at the same time, a text that virtually speaks for itself (with just a little help from us) and that is situated in a network of many linguistic, cultural, and historical interactions.” In fact, computing the Text is growing easier and easier, from quantifiable, geo-mapped “likes” and hashtagged Twitter feeds.* But, while he may take issue with the idea that a text requires help to speak for itself, paradoxically Barthes may find that such computing, is actually part of the Text itself. In other words, while we weave the tapestry of the text, we can stand back to analyze or admire the patterns therein, which may guide where and how we place our next weft.

*I’ve recently been stunned by page-by-page analytics available to lay users on digital publishing platforms like issuu. Below is its reporting on how many readers headed to page 7 in a collection of poetry my students wrote over the summer.

Given this was my first real encounter with Rolan Barthes, I was not sure what to expect. I had heard the name before with mixed opinions, but boy oh boy was I not anticipating this. Barthes is essentially a conservative if there were such a thing as “textual conservatives” (hey, maybe there is). He’s clearly a strong believer that the text is meant to remain a physical text and that we are not to trifle with its state of being. His whole essay almost felt biblical. I would go as far to say that Barthes thought very highly of himself and may have considered himself to be up there with the big man. However, by using this method of writing and expressing these “scriptures” on texts as a concept I almost hesitate to take him seriously. I am not sure if that is a result of us being in 2018 and the fact that he wrote this in 1971, but either way, there were clearly “heretics” that pushed him to write this essay. He even went and referenced Mark 5:9 writing “My name is Legion: for we are many” in order to prove his point, which I personally found preposterous considering this is an academic essay regarding the treatment of texts?

Aside from Barthe’s large ego, I feel as though his arguments resonate in those academics who refuse to accept digital humanities as an emerging field. At my undergraduate institution, my professor (who introduced me to DH and is the reason I am here blogging this today) was hired to create a digital humanities department at the school while being a member of the English department faculty. However, there was a faculty member in the English department who totally slandered her work in a department meeting, and the institution refused to fund her digital humanities lab. This gentleman made claims that using digital tools to alter texts was an offense to those who studied literature even went as far as to say that DH caused ADHD in young students (this flabbergasted me as well). For some reason (note my sarcasm) I think Barthes would support this notion. I mentioned in an annotation that Barthes speaks like someone who regards novels such as Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain to be some of the highest forms of literature known to man and will never be knocked out of the literary canon. Barthes states in his first point that “The Text is not to be thought of as an object that can be computed” (Barthes), he then proceeds to go on about how simply having the ability to hold the text and engage with it was an experience with language only attainable this way. Again, I know it’s extremely early on in the history of computation, but c’mon. Barthes isn’t even entertaining the possibility that maybe there’s more beyond these physical pages.

As a digital humanist, there is nothing more frustrating than reading that. Things such as text mining exist so that we can engage with these same texts he’s reading on an even deeper scale! When he states “…reading, in the sense of consuming, is far from playing with the text” (Barthes) I had to turn away. I feel as though even basic literary analysis that anybody who studies English does can be considered some level of “playing” with the text.

All in all, I am basing this opinion on how I interpreted this “From Work to Text.” Maybe his other works sounded entirely different, and maybe with current technology, he would have been more open to computational engagement with texts. That’s where the flaw lies with many theorists studied in academia, how much can we engage with their work when we don’t know what they would think of ours?

As we chew on the Bauer/Zirker piece on how to theorize and enact social annotation, I thought a few examples might be worthwhile, prior to our attempts to create our own texts. First, you might look at Bauer/Zirker’s own platform: here’s the beta version in which students have annotated Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper (obviously this is their test case in their article). Bauer/Zirker also mention the “social edition of the Devonshire Manuscript” on wikibooks, David Bevington’s editions of several of Shakespeare’s plays, and Whitman’s works at the Walt Whitman archive. Also see the Annotated Books Online and Digital Thoreau sites mentioned by Schacht: the latter was produced using CommentPress (see below). The Bevington and the Bauer/Zirker are the closest examples for what we might do: both add gloss to aspects of texts that might be opaque or challenging to students or  nonspecialized “lay readers.”

In terms of platforms, in addition to hypothes.is, we might consider:

• CommentPress: a theme for WordPress that the MLA Commons uses for the Bauer/Zirker piece and that has been used by high profile DHers like Wardrip-Fruin and Fitzpatrick to circulate prepublication drafts of texts for public comment.
• Medium: a proprietary platform (I’m sure you know it) that features bloggy presentation of a primary text and the capacity for readers to comment, like, etc., with a strong emphasis on social media promotion (and earning money). Here’s how to post on it.
• Manifold Scholarship: powerful tool for rethinking scholarly publishing. I’ve not used it myself so am not sure of the learning curve, but our program’s own Matt Gold is one of the founders of the project, so there are local resources to help. Perhaps prohibitively complex for this project, but very doable for a final project.
• Genius.com: like Medium, a proprietary platform that convenes a group of users around texts in which users can comment on the texts.
• Ed.: example of “minimal computing,” a movement that seeks to create maximally accessible texts by dispensing with bandwidth-heavy dynamic modes of presentation characteristic of Web 2.0 (including WordPress) and embracing more minimalist, static presentation of texts. This would be somewhat challenging from a technical standpoint (one must first install Jekyll using the UNIX “command line” and then install the Ed. template, before editing the text there), but would be by far the most interesting path in many ways.

This is perhaps my fourth time working with “Benito Cereno” – for some reason, I keep on having Melvillians as professors – and thus perhaps my third time confronting the issue of how to discuss “Benito Cereno” with a group. As with any work that involves mysteries and twists, it is risky to discuss elements of the plot less one accidentally exposes a reveal to a first time reader and thus ‘spoils’ the story (because, obviously, a story becomes unpalatable once its entire plot is known). In effect, one must create a bifurcated discussion: that which discusses the novella in progress and that which discusses the novella in total. Or, it may be better to remark that our consumption of the novella exposes us to multiple aspects of “the Text” (Barthes), those myriad avenues of interpretation and signification that are invoked by a work’s integration into the world of signs, that become revealed as our consumption reaches conclusion. Of course this begs the question: what was “the Text” up to the point of our completion? Can one see only a partial element of “the Text” obfuscated by ignorance (consider the parable of the three blind men and their encounter with an elephant) or is this encounter with “the Text” as legitimate as that for the one who rereads – an aspect of the “irreducible…plural” (Barthes)?

I ask these questions because, such as I perceive, “Benito Cereno” is among those works that can only be read upon rereading; the novella was written for those who had already read it and are aware of what has/does/will occur. We can not complete the first page before we are (re)introduced to “Captain Delano’s…singularly undistrustful good-nature…Whether, in view of what humanity is capable, such a trait implies, along with a benevolent heart, more than ordinary quickness and accuracy of intellectual perception, may be left to the wise to determine.” (Melville) Knowing that this “good-nature” will/has risk(ed) Delano’s life and plunge(d) him naively into a bloody rebellion, it is hard to read such a quip as less than jest. Where an initial reader may have seen particularly heavy-handed foreshadowing, the returning reader now understands that the narrative was/is accompanied by a game, one including only those who know the plot before it unfolds. We realize that that work itself and its foreshadowing was a “Gordian knot” much like that the “old knotter” offered to Delano. We were suppose to ‘untie’ the work. Yet, not knowing the significance of its ‘threads,’ (or even an understanding that would permit the knot’s dissolution) an initial reader must dismiss these moments as “odd tricks” and let the significance be “tossed…overboard.” Yet, for the returning reader that possesses the knowledge to “Undo it…”, they have paradoxically rendered the ‘knot’ useless, as they already know what it contains. All that remains is the “play” (Barthes) that comes from unraveling the knot – much like “the Text” that emerges from “the Work.”

The metaphor the narrative presents thus suggests that “the Text” is only available for those that return to the novella after a prior consumption. It is, essentially, a work written to be reread, not read. When we take this understanding and turn to face the “problems of annotation” (Bauer and Zirker), we realize that this element of the work creates substantial complications for an initial reader. Understanding Bauer and Zirker’s method of annotation as a means to elucidate “the Text” in tandem with consumption of “the Work”, we can conjecture that annotating “Benito Cereno” would essentially reveal a rereading of the novella to any initial reader as “the annotation of parts presupposes the understanding of the text as a whole while at the same time providing such an understanding.” (Bauer and Zirker) For instance, in annotating the incident with the “Gordian knot,” an annotator will be forced to consider whether they wish to elucidate the connection between the knot and the narrative. To do so will reveal several elements of the plot that would be hidden for an initial reader. Yet, to abstain from such an annotation, and thus avoid ‘spoiling’ the novel, would fail to do justice to “the Text.” That is, the pleasure of exploring “the Text” and the pleasure of consuming “the Work” will be in contention. Thus, I return to my original question: is a reading of AN obfuscated “Text” equivalent to a reading of “the Text.” If not, the annotator is duty bound to elucidate all aspects of “Benito Cereno.” If so, he is bound to abstain.

For me, the experience of working collaboratively to create an audiobook of Bartleby the Scrivener, a Story of Wall Street by Herman Melville was an instructive exercise in learning how to negotiate a collaborative project. I found it oftentimes a painful exercise because I had to step out of my comfort zone and muster up enthusiasm for a handling of Bartleby which failed to convince me, namely, the translating of text to speech by automated voice. My inclination was to craft a warm storyteller’s space where we would do our best to translate into auditory terms the beautifully rich, funny and tragic story of Bartleby, but our process was a democratic one so I gracefully set my old-fashioned ideas aside.

After a first discussion of what we could do, Lauren created a Google Doc summarizing our brainstormed ideas and division of labor. I wanted different (human!) readers and sound effects. Everyone else wanted automated voices, an idea that I liked at first but came to see as an oversimplification of the 19^th century urban landscape as a totally dehumanized space transformed by the capitalist machine. Maybe this would have worked better for George Orwell’s 1984; and maybe it would have worked better if we had had more time to humanize the machine by annotating our audiobook with human voices, chirping birds, music and other sounds.

My first task was to choose a fifteen-minute sample segment of the audiobook to present our project with, and I chose the part where Bartleby first says that he prefers not to do what the lawyer requests because in this part there is a lively conversation which involves a number of different voices, and the key emblematic “prefer not to” is tossed around a lot. The segment actually could have been one of any number, for the novella engages the reader from start to finish. The second part of my role was to proof listen to the recording and mix annotated tracks into a final version where all participants would have jumped in and added voices and sounds to enliven and humanize the monotonous robotic voice. Had we had more time, we would have annotated more extensively.

As I worked on finding ways to bring the thing we had created, Frankenstein-like, back to life, I forged a deeper relationship with Melville’s text and a greater appreciation of the context of its times. I had said that the lawyer was from the South; I had based this bold assumption on his comparing Broadway to the Mississippi; I realized that his references to canonical white male literature and philosophy – Lord Byron, Cicero, the Bible, Marius at Carthage and so on – were representative of the slave-trading aristocratic South, while the scriveners represented the industrial North. I also – probably because I annotated to push against the automated voice – appreciated how very funny Melville’s tragic novella is. Finally, I came to appreciate the exercise of dehumanizing and rehumanizing the text as a potentially rich conversation that could be a pleasure to listen to.

Within our adaption of Bartleby, the Scrivener as an audiobook, we decided to divide the text into four parts, read by three [or four, depending on the interpretation of “Samantha”, the pre-installed “American-English voice” of my computer which we used to record the title and the author at the beginning as well as the credits at the end of the audiobook] female voices, and to then add different kinds of sound effects to these readings.

To me, the decision to record the text in three different voices (in the literary and metaphorical sense of the word) revealed how even though we all can read the same text, every one of us will always also read a different text depending on our interpretation and understanding of what we read. When I listened to the whole audiobook told in those three voices, I perceived the narrator to be a slightly different character in each of them. Every reader emphasized different aspects and interpretations of him and his personality. This made the experience of reading/hearing the story a more diverse one than merely reading the text alone in silence and therefore staying within my own “reading voice”. Even though the readers were not changing the text itself at all, merely the tones they chose, their way of emphasizing, of putting pauses showed how a text can change depending upon who reads it.

I was part of the editing team, specifically in charge of the sound effects, within the production of the audiobook. In my interpretation we were using sound in at least two different ways:

First, as an element of illustration. By using the sound of dropping coins instead of the “___/blank” Melville left in order not to mention the exact address of the narrator’s office on Wall Street, the sound of a computer-voice, and within Kelly’s manipulation of her own voice, we were referencing and interpreting elements the text itself suggested to us. In the first case, the illustration is quite literal: Melvilles textual “___/blank” could maybe be translated to audio most obvious with a “beep”. Instead, we decided to use the sound of dropping coins, referencing to Wall Street as a place that is defined by finance and money, which matches the role Wall Street is associated with in the short story:

In the second case, we let the introduction of the audiobook as well as the credits at the end read by the “system-voice” of my computer which I see as a reference to the interpretation of Bartleby/scriveners/workers as being expected to “function like machines” within capitalism. In this light, I find it to be witty that the story ends on the notion of “Oh humanity!” which is then followed by a “computer-voice” reading the credits:

Additionally, I think of Kelly’s sound editing of her own voice as a way to translate her interpretation of the dissociation (see Kelly’s post) into the sound of her reading. This can be seen like adding another layer to the text in order to transfer and illustrate her interpretation of it to the listener:

Secondly, I would argue, we also used the sound effects in order to add thoughts and elements to the text that were not induced by the written story itself. Our creation of what we called the “I prefer not to-chorus” can therefore be seen as a movement throughout the text, one that was not invented by Melville, but created by us. The creation of different voices echoing Bartleby’s famous “I prefer not to”-statement can of course again be interpreted in different ways: e.g. as a wish for Bartleby to be not alone, for a movement joining him in his passive resistance, as a reminder that others—particularly his immediate colleagues—could have joined him, but didn’t; or as a adding a force or maybe even a sort of power to Bartleby within the audiobook which he doesn’t have in the text:

I very much enjoyed the creation of the audiobook and the collaboration with Anthony, Julia, Kelly, Patrick and Raven! I’d just have one suggestion for groups who work on the same assignment in the future or maybe even for a little change of the assignment: I think that the process would have been easier and even more fun if we would have chosen a few scenes/passages and only worked on them. I feel it’s a little sad that we spend so much time on reading/editing the whole 1.5 hours, and therefore had less time to develop our ideas concerning the audio-storytelling part, to add sound effects etc.

While completing our Bartleby audiobook, my attention was most drawn to how much more my understanding of the text was newly grounded in literal words, diction, and syntax, as opposed to imagery or theoretical and hypothetical ideas within the text.

It also forced me to wrestle with the central question, what is the “right” way to read?, in the outwardly expressed mode of audibly reading the text. This resulted in a much more tangible engagement and expression of that question. I found that in speaking the text I inhabited an area of tension where I was reading simultaneously closer and further than I previously had; some sentences, with challenging syntax, diction, and grammar required a more behavioral, practiced approach where I was focused on my adequate performance of what and how the text was written rather than on the meaning of the text. Other sentences pulled my focus to the opposite. The push and pull of this effect could alternate in each sentence:

Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.

If the individual so resisted be of a not inhumane temper, and the resisting one perfectly harmless in his passivity; then, in the better moods of the former, he will endeavor charitably to construe to his imagination what proves impossible to be solved by his judgment.

Even so, for the most part, I regarded Bartleby and his ways.

Poor fellow! thought I, he means no mischief; it is plain he intends no insolence; his aspect sufficiently evinces that his eccentricities are involuntary.

He is useful to me. (pg 10, I think)

Overtime, while reading aloud, I appreciated the flow and rhythm resulting from this structure and became much more comfortable speaking through it. By the end of my recorded segment, I actually found myself needing to slow down, because I had adjusted to speedily moving through the sentences. This created a tension, however, when I would make a mistake and feel the frustration and destabilizing effect of having a break in the rhythm. This comfort, speed, and breakage also mirrored the development of the narrative and the anxieties and excitement of the narrator as he continued through his story of Bartleby, so my own flubs and pauses (the word ‘ignominiously’ was a serious obstacle for me) created an uncomfortable but also parallel breach in that rhythm that I had a hard time taking in stride as a productive reading tool.

The aspect I was most excited to hear in the completed project was the echo effect of many voices at each “I prefer not to,” and how it mimicked the disruptions of my reading in a more purposeful and controlled way, by creating a slowing but also confusing and obfuscating effect when the phrase appeared. It also gave a consistent tone throughout the narrative as we switched readers, and complicated my understanding of Bartleby as a single, rare, uncommon human to more of an indefinite type. The echoing also gave a ghostly effect which emphasized his death at the end and how the story is being told from a place of the narrator’s haunting memory of him.

A criticism I have for myself, however, is that with all the challenges and the time required to read out loud, I wish I could have spent the time recording multiple takes as I developed a strengthened sense of voice and character, plot, sub-themes, grasp on the language and syntax, etc.  While I was able to get a lot out of reading aloud as a personal close-reading exercise, I’m not positive that had a listener heard my voice alone without effects or without being framed by the other narrators in my group, that they would not grasp the issues that I found myself countering (and benefiting from) during my reading.