72 Vol. 14, No. 4 (2013)
IMAGE [&] NARRATIVE
Manuel Portela, Scripting Reading Motions. The Codex and The Computer
as Self-Reflexive Machines.
Jan Baetens
Résumé
Compte rendu de Manuel Portela Scripting Reading Motions. The Codex and The Computer as Self-Reflexive Machines.
Abstract
Review of Manuel Portela Scripting Reading Motions. The Codex and The Computer as Self-Reflexive Machines.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 2013, 410 p., 96 b & w ill. ISBN: 9780262019460
Scripting Reading Motions is a book with a double scope: theoretical and analytical.
It first aims at making a strong theoretical claim on reading as a complex and multilayered mechanism whose very complexity and multilayeredness are being re-disclosed through the media changes that we are experiencing today and that help us reread the history of traditional print culture. Therefore, reading can no longer be seen as the natural, transparent, neutral, almost innocent effect or output of classic literacy. It has become once again, thanks to the resistance we encounter in reading new and old media artefacts, a performance that relies on as well as challenges many human faculties: cognitive, tactical , visual, intertextual, etc. This increased awareness of what reading is, Portela argues, does not only emerge in the interaction of complex artefacts and sensitive readers, it is also part of the writing process itself, which includes in various self-reflexive ways aspects of its own reading processes (hence the title of the book).
As the author puts it: “The selected works contain embodiments of reading in which literary objects are self-reflexively constituted by interaction between their material features and the physiological and interpretative processing of those features. Semantic and interpretative spaces are sustained by performative interventions in which language and discourse are experienced as material forms coinstantiated by the reading motions that make them readable.” (p. 362). Or in other words: “Reading is experienced as an embodied perception, a kinetic, haptic, and vocal interaction with material signifiers.” (p. 130).
Second, Scripting Reading Motions proposes also a vast array of close-readings of important works presenting a high degree of self-reflexivity and embodied reading, ranging from canonical examples such as Tristram Shandy till more recent works such as mark Danielewski’s Only Revolutions and various digital works by contemporary European artists-theoreticians (among them Philippe Bootz
73 Vol. 14, No. 4 (2013)
IMAGE [&] NARRATIVE and Serge Bouchardon).
The interest of this book is not to be found in the general statements on reading and the inscription of reading codes and protocols within the text. These hypotheses are neither original nor controversial, and they serve here more as a general backdrop to the close readings that follow the introductory chapter. And although well read in theory, the author does not have as its major goal to offer an innovative framework in this regard. What makes Scripting Reading Motions worthwhile, is the quality of its analyses (and here I would highlight in the very first place the detailed and illuminating reading of Danielewski).
Even more stimulating is the general approach of the corpus that is studied by the author.
On the one hand Portela manages to establish a smooth synthesis (which does not mean: seamless merger) of print and digital, refraining from opposing naturalized print and denaturalized computer code. The author succeeds very well in demonstrating the fundamental continuity between both fields and by doing so he emphasizes the interest of the current trend in “print-plus” instead of “post-print” scholarship. A healthy attitude that is now becoming more and more accepted in modern forms of comparative textual studies (to use here the term launched by N. Katherine Hayles and Jessica Pressman). On the other hand, Portela takes also great care in providing his reader with an excellent mix of Anglophone and non-Anglophone material (less known in US and UK academia, but therefore no less intriguing or remarkable). This is a rather unusual stance, but one that can only be welcomed with great enthusiasm. And of course the praise for this courage should be extend to the publishing company, which gives a brilliant proof of cultural open-mindedness.
Jan Baetens is editor in chief of Image and Narrative. Email: jan.baetens@arts;kuleuven.be
