An extralinear hypertext essay is an important enhancement of the research essay pasted into an HTML document. It remains linear in the sense that the user is expected to engage the essay at the beginning and follow it through to the conclusion.

It also incorporates a set of hyperlinks that enable the user to explore areas that transcend the particular argument the author makes in the essay. These links may lead to sources on which the author relies to construct the argument.

For example, Geronimo's essay on Dominican identity began as a straightforward HTML essay. Once Geronimo published it as hypertext, he inserted links that afford the user the opportunity to explore the issues at stake in the essay. The links serve as jumping points from the essay to other areas of interest or importance for the essay.

While the essay stands alone without the links, they make it possible for the user to dig more deeply into Dominican identity. These links function like a works cited page that brings the reader directly to the sources. As with the HTML essay, one does not really navigate an extralinear essay; one "reads" it from start to finish.

Writing about the potential for hypertext to impact the work of philosophers, David Kolb sees this use of the link as mostly "a presentation medium that remains subservient to the traditional goals and organization of philosophy" ("Socrates in the Labyrinth" 324). While such an approach to the hypertext essay might supplement the work of the traditional essay, it does little to challenge key elements of standard conceptions of the essay, or linear argument. This point applies to disciplines well beyond philosophy since linearity is intimately connected to the academic or research essay.

Geronimo's essay was produced in the context of a traditional advanced composition class that emphasized (among other things) the importance of a linear essay. Initially conceived as a linear essay, it is difficult to imagine how Geronimo might have broken up his essay in ways that would have challenged the importance of linearity in an academic essay. Geronimo's extralinear approach does little to expand the possibilities for the research essay.

If hypertext is envisioned as external links inserted into a linear HTML essay it will remain subservient to the essay. Ready access to the sources in a text is a convenience for the user, but does not materially alter one's conception of the essay itself.

Until writers conceive of hypertext as containing new tools with which to articulate more nuanced, complex, and persuasive arguments, it is difficult to imagine just what might become of academic essays as hypertext.

Copyright © Enculturation 2002

Navigate Enculturation:
Home | Contents 4:2 | Editors | Issues
About | Submissions | Subscribe | Copyright | Review | Links