Editing (Journals?) in the Late Age of Print Byron Hawk
The collection seems to be centered on the Daniel Ferrer's notion of "genetic criticism." In his essay "Production, Invention, and Reproduction: Genetic vs. Textual Criticism," he develops the new editorial practice he calls "genetic criticism" in opposition to a traditional notion of textual scholarship. For textual critics, "the editor's job is precisely to disentangle and to assess the social and authorial decisions that concurred or clashed in the historical production of the text" (48-49). However, the editors are generally concerned with the later stages of the writing/drafting process and only go deeper into the production of the text if they suspect the production of their authorial edition is corrupted in some way. The goal for textual critics is to eradicate the contamination and purify the text. Genetic critics, on the other hand, are "concerned with the entire range of documents as evidence of the multiple decisions that were taken along the way, not because they throw light on the proper tenure of the text and help in making new editorial decisions, but because the object of genetic criticism is inseparable from the decision-making process itself" (49). The distinction is one of product vs. process. Ferrer wants to open literary critics to a more detailed notion of textual production and open textual critics to a wider notion of the social context of production. While textual critics focus on traces that produce a line to the final product, genetic critics focus on the relations among those traces, the final product, and the social and psychological elements that inform and develop out of those traces. Again, hypermedia provides the testing ground. Ferrer sees hypertext as a good medium to represent this kind of movement/process that can never be fully articulated. The goal is not produce an authorial edition but to map the historicality of a text which includes the various decisions made in the production of editions. Such a criticism creates a "new textual body" beyond the book. This new textuality is "bound to be mutilated almost beyond recognition when it is forced in the Procrustean bed of a book" which "involves a linearization of something that is nonlinear . . . introduces an artificial hierarchy between elements that are only retrospectively hierarchized, and . . . causes not only a loss of the energy that nobody who enters into contact with drafts can ignore, but the sheer loss of information" (55). Hypermedia can offer a better solution, according Ferrer, because it is open to continual updating and offers nonlinear modes or presentation. It can better handle the complex interrelationships the genetic critic is after since, "It offers an unlimited number of paths through the documents; it allows instant juxtaposition of facsimiles, transcriptions, and commentaries . . . ; and it welcomes dialogic readings, with the unlimited possibilities of reordering, additions of new documents, and changes of readings . . ." (56). This ability to create a network of relations among texts and readings allows Ferrer to see genetic criticism as being more "material" because it takes into account more of the historical and social forces operating in the production of a text or edition. 1 | 2 | 3 | Next Node | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | TOC | Single Page
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