What a striking experience to read digital literature! And what adds to this great experience is when the text represents postmodern premises. When I started looking at the required texts, I expected to find written text as usual, then I felt confused on how to approach them; however, I stared attempting to find the top of the thread to understand something. I think that the carpenter’s works are mixed with some kind of absurdity. No harm in that because we are reading texts of post-modernism, and this idea is one of the salient features of the writings in this period. The author represents meaningful but more meaningless actions, pictures, drawing, events, and finally words that call questioning the certainty of existential concepts such as truth, value, nothingness, emptiness or being in itself, but nothing left to chance. Certainly, these texts embody the idea of differential texts not only in their genre, but also in the meanings they carry for one single item.
For these texts, the first reading does not help much understanding of what is going on, but after perusal and scrutinizing the texts, graphics, lines, dots and fonts, I could find connection between the text and the intended meaning even though the meaning sometimes seems vague, and this vagueness led to the confusion at the beginning. Carpenter’s makes connection between the themes and the color she uses. For instance, in “The Cape”, she uses black and white color although the text was written in 2005. These two colors represent the time of the story; its events took place in the remote past. Another point is the motion of pictures. Since the words in any literary text, which composes the body of the plot and relates experiences, are absent in these works, a considerable portion is set for motion pictures to add more and precise details to the body of the work. They carry deep meanings and absolutely express themes.
Tariq, I have had the same striking experience with Carpenter’s texts. Yet, you write that Carpenter “represents meaningful but more meaningless actions, pictures, drawing, events, and finally words”, I’m wondering what do you mean by that?
Asmaa. When you consider a post-modern text, the first impression that comes to the reader, who is newly exposed to this field, is that the text is full of meaningless words or even sentences and paragraphs. However, after a thorough study of the text you can figure out the intended meaning out of what a reader is expected. It is clear that the writers of this period leaves this responsibility, the responsibility of understanding the text as it is intended, upon the reader to try to come up with a meaning from anything that appears meaningless when you approach the text initially. Then you discover the secret of the working elements inside the text whether they are words, lines, pictures, maps or drawings.
Tariq, I also found it an amazing way of introducing postmodern literature. I also faced the same difficulties in understanding and following the events in these stories. I am afraid the reason is because this type of literature is not renowned in our culture, yet! Thus, we kept struggling to understand what is going on.
Nourah, that is true, this is the main reason why I registered this course; I wanted to familiarize myself with this amazing field, and I mentioned that in the first class when everyone talked about the reason why he registered this course. Arab writers avoided such writings for long time; however, they have recently started writing in such way, departing from the general principle or the standpoint of postmodern philosophy which is in the following statement: “that could be true for you but not for me”. Anyway, I would suggest a book if you are interest in Postmodern Arab writings. The book is composed by Dr. Mustafa Jumaa; it is called as I translate the title “Post-modernism in Modern Arab Novel”. Here you can find writers and criticism in Arabic about the new writers who engaged postmodernism in their writings. I hope you will find it interesting.
This discussion has taken an interesting turn. One of the limitations of the emerging “canon” of digital literature is that it is primarily written by folks in the US, England, and continental Europe. With a few exceptions ….