Radiant Textuality

Book excerpt: This book describes and explains the fundamental changes that are now taking place in the most traditional areas of humanities theory and method, scholarship and education. The changes flow from the re-examination of the very foundations of the humanities - its theories of textuality and communication - that are being forced by developments in information technology. A threshold was crossed during the last decade of the twentieth century with the emergence of the World Wide Web, which has (1) globalized access to computerized resources and information, and (2) made interface and computer graphics paramount concerns for work in digital culture. While these changes are well known, their consequences are not well understood, despite so much discussion by digital enthusiasts and digital doomsters alike. In reconsidering these matters, Radiant Textuality introduces some remarkable new proposals for integrating computerized tools into the central interpretative and critical activities of traditional humanities disciplines, and of literary studies in particular.