Hypermedia

Hypermedia is a term often used synonymously with hypertext, which is defined as the nonlinear media of information. Hypermedia and hypertext allow for the creation of multilinear narratives. George P. Landow defines hypertext as text that is based on groups of images and words that are electronically connected through many paths. Hypertext can be described using the terms link, node, network, web, and path. Hypermedia extends the notions of text in hypertext to multimedia forms of content, including images, video, and sound.

Hypertext theory came of interest in the 1960s, when academics were searching for ways to displace the traditional narrative structure. Critical theory can be embodied within hypertext. Hypertext promises to embody and thereby test aspects of theory, particularly those concerning textuality, narrative, and the roles or functions of readers and writers. This form of text has arguably been described by Roland Barthes as an “ideal text.” One of the main issues at play in discussions of hypermedia is the disappearing role of the author. As reader and writer become indistinguishable, text is freed from traditional notions of ownership. Such free-playing text provides unique opportunities for the realization of post-structuralist theories on writing. Text freed from the author may allow readers a sense of agency as they navigate and create the meanings of texts through their choices of hyperliterature. Often hypermedia or hypertext narratives exist only as digital media. Through the use of linking, text can flow in a nonlinear format, giving room for feminist practices of narrative writing. Feminist writing often uses different forms of rationality and logic to allow feminine subjectivity to come to light. Nonlinear writing is particularly effective for feminist politics because of the challenges it poses to male-dominated models of narrative.

Hypermedia also provides the possibility for new individual political responsibility and subjectivity. Because the reader plays an active role in the creation of hypertext, much of the responsibility for the narrative lies in the reader's hands. Such self-empowered use of information provides new possibilities for expression and reading. The reader of hypertext is free from the confines of traditional textual structures.

Traditional forms of argument and writing rely on linear knowledge and logic to create a convincing argument. This system of writing and logic is tied to a male-dominated mode of communication that has excluded alternative perspectives. The strict rules of logical argumentation have been assigned as the privilege of a patriarchal system. Hypertext provides radical potentials that challenge and expand notions of narrative. As hypertext demands a nonfixed center with no boundaries or beginning or end, we begin to see information in matrices. Cybertheorist Donna J. Haraway points to the relationship between human and machine as a place for a gender-based struggle against the domination of information. Through the figure of the cyborg, she advances a new subjectivity that articulates the oppression females experience in [Page 170]a culture that is determined by a male-dominated system.

Women have played a crucial role in the development of hyperliterature. Using nonlinear formats, writers are using a whole new array of possibilities in the creation of narrative structures. Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl (1995) is an example of hypertext literature. Patchwork Girl is a modern feminist reinterpretation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818). Making use of available media technologies, Patchwork Girl weaves a narrative of the displaced female body, and by “clicking” through the narrative the user weaves a story that reunites the broken pieces of what Jackson refers to as the body made hysterical female form. Her text demands an engaged reading that in turn gives meaning to her text.

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