If you love somebody, set them free...
O.k., let's do a little close reading with a nifty twist of deconstructivist cunning. I want to quote a rather longish passage from the Introduction for Teachers of Whitman, supplementing it with footnotes on what I think I read. My main focus in doing this is the way author and text are constructed in this passage, and the way the introduction deconstructs itself by what it has to say about Walt Whitman's poems and the implications of Hypertext.
"Leaves
of Grass holds a central place [1] in
the American literary tradition, and "Song of Myself" is widely
considered to be Whitman's single most important poem. In decisive fashion,
Whitman broke the dominance of English conventions of rhythm and rhyme
and substituted for them a new and more supple free verse form suited to
the individualism of his country. Not surprisingly, then, Leaves has had
an extraordinary impact on the development of twentieth- century literature
and culture.
Whitman's significance [2] is seen in the college curriculum where he is taught in selected History and American Studies courses and in a wide range of English courses, including Freshman English, upper division period and genre courses, and graduate seminars. Whitman's centrality [3] to American culture has been recognized by publishers (e.g., Norton and Macmillan) who have created anthologies that make Whitman poems available for both halves of the American literature survey course. Paradoxically yet accurately, Whitman is seen to be a major figure in antebellum culture as well as a potent force in the development of modern poetry. [Take a break [4]]
Whitman's work is fundamental [5] to our evolving sense of ourselves [6] as Americans. His continuing vitality--for women and men and for various ethnic groups--is illustrated by the many recent reconsiderations of Whitman in popular and high culture, specifically in films such as Bull Durham, Dead Poets Society, and Until the End of the World, in recent fiction by Maxine Hong Kingston, Gloria Naylor, Julia Alvarez, and John Vernon, and in the work of contemporary poets such as June Jordan and Galway Kinnell.
To a significant extent, Whitman's "Song of Myself" has become part of the very texture of the way we think about ourselves [7], our communities, our world. This poem--as challenging as it is dazzling--is a foundational document of American culture [8]. First appearing as the lead poem of Leaves of Grass (1855), "Song of Myself" is commonly referred to as if it were a single, stable entity [9]. Yet this work took various forms and had various titles in the six different editions of Leaves of Grass (following convention, we refer to the poem by its final title). Between 1855 and 1892, Whitman continuously added and deleted lines, phrases, and entire sections; he changed emphases; and he reconceived the place of this epic undertaking within his overall project (the poem is more than 1300 lines in all printed versions).
Whitman also experimented with radically different ways of dividing "Song of Myself" into parts: for example, he presented the poem both without any numbered sections and with as many as 372 sections. Because "Song of Myself" exists in such a rich variety of states (including manuscript and notebook drafts and corrected page proofs), it is better understood in terms of process rather than product, fluidity rather than stability [10]. [...]
By "hypertext" we mean an electronic document characterized by links that allow readers to experience the text in various sequences as they choose to follow different avenues of information via connecting points [11]. [...]
[Summary]
[1] I read "centrality". I smell "canonicity". [return]
[2] It reeks of "canonicity".[return]
[3] Now I literally read "centrality".[return]
[4]Let's recapitulate:
What we have been told in the last two paragraphs is that Walt Whitman
is important because he is important. Or to be more accurate: He is important
because people think he is important and publish him and teach him. And
because people think he is important he is central. Of course, in a very
fundamental way, all of this is true. A valid construct, but still a construct.
And like most constructs, it rests on the basis of a circular argument.[return]
[5] I read, excuse the quibble,
"fundamentalism".[return]
[6] Obviously, I don't know about you, but I'm frigging German, and now I feel even more apologetic about it than I usually do. Walt Whitman contributes to the text of myself, too. And he wasn't really supposed to! He's only for the free and the brave. I guess it's Walt's fault.[return]
[7] I read "centrality". I smell "elitism". What do the kids in the Ghetto care about Walt Whitman? Or the immigrants trying to work three jobs to have money to send home and get one kid through college? Or the average person in the bus to Friendship Heights? Ask them. Not everybody who walks the streets quotes Walt Whitman on every corner.[return]
[8] I read "origin". I smell root-tree. - Let's recapitulate again at this point. All of the categories with which the authors have labelled Walt Whitman so far have one thing in common: they describe his writings as somehow "essential". Walt Whitman's poetry is a single, stable entity, formative of American culture.[return]
[9] So far, the authors have talked about "status". Now they contemplate the text, and all of a sudden I read that the text does not really exist as a single, stable entity, although it did just one line before, where the authors erected the whole American culture on top of it. I get the impression that they have built on sand.[return]
[10] I think by now it has become pretty obvious that the authors apply a double standard to Walt Whitman. On the one hand, the try to construct him as essential and overall important, probably because they feel that otherwise they would have wasted their time reading him, on the other hand, they try to construct his text as unstable and fluid, probably because they feel everything else would contradict the hypertextual approach to their project.[return]
[11] This quote could be taken straight from Landow. The "official" postmodern take on Hypertext which comes with all its implications of (I repeat myself) non-centrality, non-linearity, non-finality, non-hierarchy, non-originality (I am getting tired of this), etc. [return]
[12] Gotcha. This quote betrays how the authors of the Walt Whitman Archive really construct Hypertext. Delete all the non's above. Hypertext is like a scientific paper which moves to its logical, truthful conclusion by including every possibility. Multiplicity yields static Truth somewhere down there when all things have been considered, every text has been scanned and every variation has been noted. Multiplicity does not equal rhizome. Deleuze&Guattari describe this kind of fallacy when they are talking about the radicle-system: "[T]he principal root has aborted, or its tip has been destroyed; an immediate, indefinite multiplicity of secondary roots grafts onto it and undergoes a flourishing development. This time, natural reality is what aborts the principal root, but the root's unity subsists, as past or yet to come, as possible. We must ask if reflexive, spiritual reality does not compensate for this state of things by demanding an even more comprehensive secret unity, or a more extensive totality." (Deleuze&Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus).[return]
The Walt Whitman Archive aims at finality through multiplicity. The underlying ideological assumption is that when every space in the mould of the thick site is filled, Walt Whitman will emerge in ultimate transparency and then, then we will finally know what he is all about. Until the next picture is discovered. Or the next letter is unearthed. Or the next biographer comes up with some new data. But all of this new data can conveniently be integrated into the mould, until the hermeneutic circle has come full circle and all lines end in one dot, the essential speck of meaning and knowledge. Obviously, Hypertext fuels the root-fantasy as much as the rhizome-fantasy in its seemingly all-encompassing quality. It seems very hard to accept that meaning is never static, but in constant motion. It scares me, because it implies that I constantly have to be on the lookout, like a deer grazing a meadow at dusk. All solutions to the quest for meaning have to be momentarily and open for revision. The freedom constant revision implies is as frightening as it is liberating. The Walt Whitman Archive does not embrace this liberation, but rather envisions itself as working towards the essence. The text is bound. But then, there is still the reader, who can use the structure and materials offered by the Archive to open up their own spaces of meaning. Again in the words of Deleuze&Guattari: "Each time, mental correctives are neccesary to undo the dualism we had no wish to construct but through which we pass. Arrive at the magic formula we all seek - Pluralism=Monism - via all the dualisms that are the enemy, an entirely necessary enemy, the furniture we are forever rearranging."