the pre-history of cyberspace.txt

1000 HOWTOs for various needs [WINDOWS]

     were written more than a decade before their posthumous
     publication in 1989.

          ^4^  McLuhan (1989), 103.

          ^5^  Stuart Brand, _The Media Lab: Inventing the Future
     at MIT_ (NY: Viking, 1987).

          ^6^  Marshall McLuhan, _The Letters of Marshall
     McLuhan_, ed. Matie Molinaro, Corinne McLuhan and William
     Toye (Toronto: Oxford UP, 1987), 385.

          ^7^  Craig E. Adcock, _Marcel Duchamp's Notes from the
     Large Glass: An N-Dimensional Analysis_ (Ann Arbor,
     Michigan: UMI, 1983), 28: "The _Large Glass_ is an
     illuminated manuscript consisting of 476 documents; the
     illumination consists of almost every work that Duchamp
     did."

          ^8^  Stuart Brand (1987).

          ^9^  A further paper needs to be written on the way in
     which synaesthesia as well as coenesthesia participate in
     the pre-history of cyberspace.  The unfolding history of
     poets and artists confronting electromechanical
     technoculture, which begins in the 1850s, reveals a growing
     interest in synesthesia and coenesthesia and parallels a
     gradually accelerating yearning for artistic works which are
     syntheses or orchestrations of the arts.  By 1857 Charles
     Baudelaire intuited the future transformational power of the
     coming of electro-communication when he established his
     concept of synaesthesia and the trend toward a synthesis of
     all the arts as central aspects of %symbolisme%.  The
     transformational matrices involved in synaesthesia and the
     synthesis of the arts unconsciously respond to that
     digitalization implicit in Morse code and telegraphy,
     anticipating how one of the major characteristics of
     cyberspace will be the capability of all modes of expression
     to be transformed into minimal discrete contrastive units--
     bits.
          This assertion concerning Baudelaire's use of
     synesthesia is developed from Benjamin's discussions of
     Baudelaire.  The role of shock in Baudelaire's poetry, which
     links the "Correspondances" with "La Vie Anterieur," also
     reflects how the modern fragmentation involved in "Le
     Crepuscle du Soir" and "Le Crepuscle du Matin" is
     reassembled poetically through the verbal transformation of
     sensorial modes.  This is the beginning of a period in which
     the strategy of using shock to deal with fragmentation is
     transformed into seeing the multiplicity of codifications of
     municipal (or urban) reality.  So when the metamorphic
     sensory effects of nature's temple are applied to the
     splenetic here and now, in the background is the emergence
     of the new codifications of reality, such as the photography
     which so preoccupied Baudelaire, and telegraphy, which had
     an important impact in his lifetime.

          ^10^  See D.F. Theall, "The Hieroglyphs of Engined
     Egypsians: Machines, Media and Modes of Communication in
     _Finnegans Wake_," _Joyce Studies Annual 1991_, ed. Thomas
     F. Staley (Austin: Texas UP, 1991), 129-52.  This
     publication provides major source material for the present
     article.

          ^11^  "Machinic" is used here very deliberately as
     distinct from mechanical.  See Gilles Deleuze, _Dialogues_,
     trans. Hugh Tomlinson & Barbara Haberjam (NY: Columbia UP,
     1987), 70-1, where he discusses the difference between the
     machine and the 'machinic' in contradistinction to the
     mechanical.

          ^12^  Giambattista Vico, _The New Science_,  ed.
     T.G. Bergen and M. Fisch (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1948).

          ^13^  For fuller discussion of Joyce and these themes
     see Donald Theall, "James Joyce: Literary Engineer," in
     _Literature and Ethics: Essays Presented to A.E. Malloch_,
     ed. Gary Wihl & David Williams (Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP,
     1988), 111-27; Donald and Joan Theall, "James Joyce and
     Marshall McLuhan," _Canadian Journal of Communication_,
     14:4/5 (Fall 1989), 60-1; and Donald Theall (1991), 129-152.
     A number of subsequent passages are adapted with minor
     modifications from parts of the last article, which is a
     fairly comprehensive coverage of Joyce and technology.

          ^14^  While in one sense the dreamer is identified as
     the male HCE, the book opens and closes with the feminine
     voice of ALP.  It is her dream of his dreaming, or his dream
     of her dreaming?  Essentially, it is androgynous, with a
     mingling of male and female voices throughout.  For another
     treatment of the male-female theme in the _Wake_, see
     Suzette Henke, _James Joyce and the Politics of Desire_ (NY:
     RKP, 1989).

          ^15^  "Jousstly" refers to Marcel Jousse's important
     work on communication and the semiotics of gesture, with
     which Joyce was familiar.  See especially Lorraine Weir,
     "The Choreography of Gesture: Marcel Jousse and _Finnegans
     Wake_," _James Joyce Quarterly_, 14:3 (Spring 1977), 313-25.

          ^16^  This motif will be developed further below.  It
     relates to Joyce's interest in Lewis Carroll.  Gilles
     Deleuze comments extensively on manducation in _The Logic of
     Sense_, trans. Mark Lester with Charles Stivale, ed.
     Constantin V. Boundas (NY: Columbia UP, 1990).

          ^17^  See Dewey, _Art As Experience_ (NY: G.P. Putnam,
     1958) and Kenneth Burke, _Permanence and Change: An Anatomy
     of Purpose_ (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965).

          ^18^  Cf. T.S. Eliot, _Selected Essays_ (NY: Harcourt,
     Brace, 1932), 182: "One of the surest of tests is the way in
     which a poet borrows.  Immature poets imitate; mature poets
     steal . . . "; see also "Old stone to new building, old
     timber to new fires," ("East Coker," _Four Quartets_, l. 5).
     Joyce's use of "outlex" relates to Jim the Penman, for Joyce
     analyzing Shem in the _Wake_ is aware of how the traditions
     of the artist as liar, counterfeiter, con man, and thief
     could all coalesce about the role of the artist as an
     outlaw.

          ^19^  "Kills" in the sense of "to kill a bottle";
     "kills" also as a stream or channel of water.

          ^20^  See Walter Ong's remarks about Marcel Jousse in
     _The Presence of the Word_ (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1967),
     146-7, and Lorraine Weir's more extensive development of the
     theme in (1977), 313-325, and in _Writing Joyce: A Semiotics
     of the Joyce System_ (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana
     UP, 1989).

          ^21^  I.J. Gelb, _A Study of Writing_ (Chicago: U of
     Chicago P, 1963).

          ^22^  Cf. McLuhan (1989), 182.

          ^23^  Alexander Marschak, _The Roots of Civilization_
     (NY: McGraw-Hill, 1982); Marcia Ascher and Robert Ascher,
     _Code of the Quipu: A Study in Media, mathematics and
     Culture_ (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1981); Claude
     Levi-Strauss, _The Elementary Structures of Kinship_, trans.
     James Harle Bell and John Richard von Sturmer, ed. Rodney
     Needham (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969).

          ^24^  The usual way to indicate sections of the _Wake_
     is by part and episode.  Hence I,v is Part I episode 5.
     There are four parts, the first consisting of eight
     episodes, the second and the third of four episodes each and
     the fourth of a single episode.

          ^25^  Danis Rose and John O'Hanlon, _Understanding
     Finnegans Wake_ (NY: Garland Publishing, 1982), 308-09.

          ^26^  For detailed discussion of the treatment of the
     ear and hearing in _Finnegans Wake_, see John Bishop,
     _Joyce's book of the Dark: Finnegans Wake_ (Madison, WI: U
     of Wisconsin P, 1986), Chapter 9 "Earwickerwork," 264-304.

          ^27^  Jorge Luis Borges, _Other Inquisitions:
     1937-1952_, trans. Ruth R. Sims (NY: Simon and Schuster,
     1968), 6-9.

          ^28^  Lorraine Weir (1989).

          ^29^  Elizabeth Eisenstein, _The Printing Revolution in
     Early Modern Europe_ (NY: Cambridge UP, 1983).

          ^30^  Bishop (1986), 264-304.

          ^31^  Eugene Jolas, "My Friend James Joyce," in _James
     Joyce: two decades of criticism_, ed. Seon Givens (NY:
     Vanguard, 1948), 24.

          ^32^  E.g., in Frances Yates, _The Art of Memory_
     (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1966).

          ^33^  James Joyce to Harriet Shaw Weaver, _Letters_,
     ed. Stuart Gilbert (NY: Viking, 1957), 251 [Postcard, 16
     April 1927].

          ^34^  For a discussion of this see Gilles Deleuze,
     _Bergsonism_ (NY: Zone, 1988), Chapter 3, "Memory as Virtual
     Co-existence," 51-72.

          ^35^  Speaking of the all-embracing aspects of VR and
     cyberspace, the work which Baudrillard has made of
     "simulation" and "the ecstasy of communication" should be
     noted.  This issue is too complex to engage within an essay
     specifically focused on Joyce.  In approaching it, however,
     it is important to realize the degree of similarity that
     Baudrillard's treatment of communication shares with
     McLuhan's.  In many ways, I believe it could be established
     that what Baudrillard critiques as the "ecstasy of
     communication" is his understanding of McLuhan's vision of
     communication divorced from its historical roots in the
     literature and arts of %symbolisme%, high modernism, and
     particularly James Joyce.

          ^36^  This is a major theme of McLuhan and McLuhan's
     _The Laws of Media_ (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1988).

          ^37^  See Donald F. Theall, _The Medium is the Rear
     View Mirror; Understanding McLuhan_ (Montreal:
     McGill-Queen's UP, 1971).

          ^38^  John O'Neill credits Vico with a "wild sociology"
     in which the philologist is a wild sociologist in _Making
     Sense Together: An Introduction to Wild Sociology_ (NY:
     Harper & Row, 1974), 28-38.  The significance of Vico's
     emphasis on the body is developed in John O'Neill, _Five
     Bodies: The Human Sense of Society_ (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP,
     1985).