Text and Textual Technology: The Fragmented and Layered Body

I am interested in the idea of text as the fragmented body. Both Barthes and Hayles argue the same way; that the text consists of the elements, the fragments. I think the idea of fragmented body means realizing the gaps between the elements that construct the text. It is risky to say the gaps since the gaps that is explicit is the space and if we say we try to find the implicit meaning, it will be misunderstood as trying to find the moral value or doing interpretation. Yet, I think what we need to seek another thing that might be overlap between the elements, to realize, as Barthes discusses, "the very plural of meaning"(1977:159).

As I think of the gaps between the elements or what I called earlier as the overlap area is similar to the I.A Richards' concept of ground(1963) as the overlap area between tenor and vehicle. Yet, I am not sure about it.

However, on her essay, Hayles has focused on "what difference the medium makes"(2004:68) instead of what the difference between work and text, as Barthes has done before. The different medium can consist of the layers. I come to think that the text is not only the fragmented body, but also the layer one, although the fragments and the layers may be vary.

The idea of the fragmented and layered body, parallel to the idea on the building of identity of the text and "inductive -deductive science of text"(Barthes,1977), will be important for my final paper. The overlap area of logic is the gaps I need to find out in Poe's works as texts. The fragment and layer of logic might exist as well. The building of text identity that consist of science of text is matter too because I argue on the deduction, induction, and the abduction, which I finally know later as the deconstruction[of logic].