The Sun Always Already Rising:
Xebra Into The Future
Reflections On Time, On Xebra, On Whys and Wherefores
The onflowing of Time, as depicted in "The Bear," is often held to be a good thing, a blessing, bringing with it a chance for renewal, the lifting of old curses, the atonement of old sins, the healing of old wounds, the fostering of untainted, uncorrupted growth, for the founding, discovering of new Canaans, lands overflowing with milk and honey.
Counterpoint to this organic, ever-renewing, renewable concept of time in relation to space, "juxtaposed and reliefed against it,"1 is the constant flow of images, scenes, and circumstances that quite insistently assert an opposing view, where nothing ever changes, at least, not for the better. Slaves remain slaves, as with Uncle Ash, or worse, they become free, as with Fonsiba, becoming prey to all the natural, not to mention human-concocted ("lynching mobs against the race their ancestors had come to save")2 disasters. Atonement is impossible (Just who gained from Isaac's relinquishment, one wonders? Was it the former slaves? Perhaps it was Sam's other people, the American Indians? If not these, then who?), and escape is a nightmare (old man snake, hiding in the bush, appearing and disappearing at will, blocking all avenues). Thus, everyone is condemned to incessant repetition, perpetually reliving the evil men do, without end, without hope.
After experiencing "The Bear," it is difficult to think of time in terms of anything other than a trap, a wheel of misfortune. Still, there appears to exist a need in human beings to believe that all is not for naught, that building for the future does not always have the Ozymandian end. So this dissertation turns itself toward the question of the Xebran future, of what that future might be for the Experimental Eclectic Barthesian Reader's Assistant.
There are a number of possible futures, but all the best ones demand that Xebra have, first and foremost, a capacity for ease of adaptability to the changing needs of its potential user community. No matter how well a tool is crafted for its present application, its adaptability to changing circumstances, changing values, and changing needs is the key to short and long term survival. Secondarily, Xebra needs enhancements in functionality just to make it a better tool for the present. Serendipitously, some of the changes benefit both the present value and future value.
This chapter concerns itself, then, with the what and the how, of the changes Xebra must have in order to blossom, organically, into a fuller, more capable tool.
1William Faulkner, "The Bear." in The Portable Faulkner, ed. Malcom Cowley, rev. and exp. ed. (New York: Viking Press, 1974), 198.
2Ibid., 284.
On Xebra: The Near Present Time
In CHAPTER IV, the problems encountered were, by and large, driven by human error--the error of the coder and the analyst/critic attempting to apply the tool and the underlying Barthesian system. Since one of the advantages of a computer-based tool is the reduction, if not the elimination, of human error, it is clear that Xebra requires additional support for the human coder and the human analyst that will help avoid such errors.
The errors were of two types: insufficient labeling and mislabeling. Insufficient labeling means that a lexia should have been given a label, but was not. Mislabeling, on the other hand, means that the incorrect label was applied. Incorrectness can be one of two kinds: incorrect type or incorrect level of abstraction. Type can be further subdivided into wrong code or wrong concept.
Examples of each of these are to be found in Table 27, below. Since not all types of errors were committed during the coding of "The Bear," some of the examples were invented as illustrations. The only two kinds of errors made in the Barthesian/Xebran reading of "The Bear" presented in CHAPTER IV were those of insufficiency and level of abstraction. Using wrong codes and wrong concepts was avoided.
LABELING ERROR EXAMPLES
Insufficient Labeling:
Lexia 270: "This is the way he wanted it. He told us." He told us exactly how to do it. And by God you ain't going to move him. So we did it like he said,a
Problem: "This is the way he wanted it." is a reference to a burial rite, so the lexia should have been coded "REF, Code of Rites and Rituals," but was not.
Mislabeling:
Incorrect Type:
Incorrect Code:
Lexia 45: It was not Uncle Ash on the mule. It was Sam, returned. And Sam was waiting when he finished his dinner and, himself on the one-eyed mule and Sam on the other one of the wagon team, they rode for more than three hours through the rapid shortening sunless afternoon, following no path, no trail even that he could discern, into a section of country he had never seen beforeb
Problem: The difference between SEM and SYM is particularly difficult. Here it was the latter part of the passage which was coded, starting with "sunless..." as "SEM, Blindness," which is correct, but "SYM, Blindness" could be used, but probably should not. A seme is a brief naming of a fleeting theme, while a symbol stands in for something larger, more substantial, it is more than a mere name. "One-Eyed Mule," on the other hand could very well be symbolic of all those men who seek to be kings of the blind, yet they themselves can not see all that well.
Incorrect Concept:
Lexia 26: Each morning the gray of dawn found him and Sam Fathers on the stand, the crossing, which had been allotted him. It was the poorest one, the most barren. He had expected that;c
Problem: If someone, not reading carefully, coded this as "SEM, Poverty," it would be wrong.
Incorrect Level Of Abstraction:
Lexia 371: in none of which he dared undress because of his secret golden girdle like that of a disguised one of the Magi travelling incognito and not even hope to draw him, but only determination and desperation, he would tell himself: I will have to find her. I will have to. We have already lost one of them. I will have to find her this time.d
Problem: This lexia was coded "ACT, Travel," which while correct in a sense, is at the wrong level of abstraction. What is really involved is the action of "Questing," which is a subset of "Travel."
aIbid., 251-252.
bIbid., 204-205.
cIbid., 201.
dIbid., 272.
All of these errors are best addressed via the same set of enhancements to Xebra's user interface. First, a third database type needs to be added to the two existing ones: Lexia and Label. Second, an online dictionary, preferably the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) should be made available to the user. Third, an application-specific interface should be built on top of the databases and the dictionary, thus, allowing a user to interact with the databases and the dictionary seamlessly, consistently, and precisely.
The new database, the Label Definition database, would contain all of the labels that a user had ever assigned to any lexia in any text. Along with the label, a definition of it, and one or more examples of the lexias it was used with, would be held, as well. This database would be used, first, by the coder in selecting labels during a coding phase, and, second, by the analyst/critic during the analysis phase. The coder would use it to help assure completeness, precision, and consistency of labeling, while the analyst would use it to aid in understanding what the labels are meant to indicate. This would help eliminate all of the various known types of errors.
The dictionary would be used to supplement the definition database. As new labels were needed and new concepts were encountered, which the stored labels did not quite express, the dictionary would help in clarifying the wording needed to express the concept. Secondly, it could be used to research items. For instance, the meaning of "Ben" as the inner room in a two-room Scottish cottage was found in a dictionary.
Finally, by having an application-specific interface between the databases and the dictionary, the user could be guided into using each database and the dictionary in profitable ways, while keeping them from having to know the specifics of the database engine and the dictionary software. This application would have to be designed to support the kinds of operations that a coder and an analyst/critic, using the Barthesian methodology, would need and want.
To support the lexia coding phase, the interface would have windows open to: the dictionary, the lexia database, the label database, and the code definition database. As a coder scrolled down through the list of lexias, or through a particular lexia, it would be possible to scroll through the code definition database in search of pertinent labels. As they are found, they could be selected and automatically posted to the label database for the lexia under study. If no appropriate labels were found, then the coder could use the dictionary to help form another label. The software could support the entry of this new label in a way that would insure consistency of syntax.
Analyst/critics, conversely, would use the dictionary and the code definition database windows to ascertain what the coder had meant when applying a particular label to a given lexia. Besides using the three database and dictionary windows, the analyst/critic would have access to a text editor for note taking purposes.
Given these enhancements (a new database for code definition, a dictionary, and an application-specific interface), most of the problems concerning the mishandling of labels would be ameliorated, if not eradicated.
On Xebra: The More Distant Time
Walter Davis, in The Act of Interpretation, while discussing dialectical criticism, states that dialectical critics hold that
literature is a special mode of knowing which alone, perhaps, gives us an adequate apprehension of concrete experience. Whereas other ways of thinking inevitably compromise life's complexities, literature preserves 'the whole of things' in a nonreductive and concrete totality. ... Literature strives, in effect, to establish a coincidence of itself with the real; thus the essence of literature lies in the cognitive relationship between reality and form.3
A user of Xebra, and more specifically, a coder using the Barthesian method, is attempting to preserve the reality, the essence of elements, of atomic units of meaning, of signifiers that exist within a specific text under study. By using the results of such a preservation action, a critic has the facts of the text in a form that allows for the application of any of the array of existent critical methodologies in order to engage in an act of interpretation. The question arises, however, concerning why one would want to apply such an array of methods.
One might do it in order to know the text as text, that is, to gain a deeper experience of it as textual art. The "Art for Art's Sake" mode of approaching art and literature, certainly has its appeal and its devotees.
Or, one might do it in order to know, as deeply as possible, that "whole of things," that reality, that concrete experience which the text attempts to preserve "in a nonreductive and concrete totality."4 This is a major reason why a critic attempts the act of interpretation or why a reader reads a text: to achieve a knowledge of the world, of how things are, one would not otherwise have.
One might do it for both purposes, of course. Consider Algernon Swinburne, a passionate practitioner of that style of art, that theory of art, where art is its own justification. In particular, consider "Faustine": the poem, the succubis, the queen, the woman, the
She who loved the games men played with death,
Where death must win;
As though the slain man's blood and breath
Revived Faustine.5
3Walter A. Davis, The Act of Interpretation: A Critique of Literary Reason, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 35.
4Ibid., 35.
5Algernon Charles Swinburne, "Faustine," in Victorian Poetry and Poetics, ed. Walter E. Houghton and G. Robert Stange, 2nd ed., (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968) 657, lines 65-68.
And in considering, note that while there is beauty there, there is also knowledge to be gained, a knowledge that is nonreductive, concrete, and carried in a totality. Indeed, beauty itself is part of that knowledge, preserved via a mode of preservation within a literary work--the poem's beauty preserves the beauty of Faustine, in truth, of all Faustine's (and Faust's, one could assert). So the denials of the Pater's and of the Wilde's concerning art's "usefulness" can safely be resisted by those who so desire.
But if a literary work is an act of preservation of a particular concrete experience as a totality, then what is a set of literary works? Indeed, what is the set of all literary works? Carrying out the logic of Davis' statement, one could assert that they are, in fact, the preserved collection of all such concrete experiences known to the human consciousness which artists have attempted to preserve in this manner for the generations of readers, of "knowers," to come to each, individually and collectively.
If this is the case, one might next wonder what the relationship between each preserved totality, each work of knowledge, might be. Upon reflection, it becomes apparent that the relationship is of three kinds: that of part to whole, whole to part, and part to part. Upon further reflection, a critic in the Barthesian mode would most likely assert that these three kinds of relationships are traceable in the atoms of meaning (signifiers) that Roland Barthes, in S/Z, was attempting to foreground. Now, if this is true, then it follows that as each text is a galaxy of signifiers, then the set of all texts is a universe of signifiers, interconnected at a variety of levels through the individual nodes, through the subnets of nodes, and through the subnets of texts.
That is, there are:
- individual nodes in a given text that are connected to individual nodes in other texts;
- subnets (patterns of nodes) in a given text that are connected to subnets in other texts;
- subnets of texts, containing inward connections (as defined in statements one and two) that are, themselves, connected to yet other subnets of texts.
If this hypothesis is correct, then a Barthesian/Xebran reading approach should not only work with individual texts, it should allow readers and critics to make inter-text, inter-galactic, as it were, explorations, as well.
Assuming that the hypothesis is correct, then one can attempt to determine what Xebra must be that it currently is not in order to make these inter-textual explorations. First, Xebra must become what was outlined in the section above, "On Xebra: The Near Present Time," for it would be difficult to manage inter-textual readings without a fully prepared and expanded tool. To do so would be a task akin to taking a row boat made for a lake on a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. Second, it must be able to operate on more than one text (preferably, an indeterminant number) independently of each text. Third, it must be able to allow the user to: one, discover the inter-text connections, as represented in the paths between single nodes in one text and another, as well as, those between subnets of nodes, and even those subnets that are themselves comprised of multiple texts; and two, recognize the larger patterns that are formed via these connections, given the capabilities outlined in statements one and two, above.
The first need, that of completing the necessary enhancements to Xebra for making it a better present time tool, can be taken as a given. They can be done, as they do not stretch the current state of the art in computer technology. The second need is actually fulfilled, since Xebra, as it sits, already can handle multiple texts, concurrently or sequentially. Adding the enhancements mentioned as necessary for present time needs will not delete or dilute that capability as it now exists. The third need is more problematic, requiring some small amount of thought before one can affirm its feasibility.
In order to handle the third need, of aiding in the making of explicit inter-text connections and the patterns those connections form, several actions must be taken. First, a codification of the codes used to label lexia must be accomplished. In the present time Xebra enhancement package presented above, it was suggested that there be an addition of a Label Definition database connected to the work on a particular text. But for inter-text work, this database must be accessible for use across texts, while not diluting or infringing on its usefulness for a single text. Indeed, there must be but one such database for use by all Barthesian coders and analyst/critics, because this codification, this standard for codes, must be used by all Barthesian coders of texts. This requirement ensures that the codings in the database will be accessible and usable by all Barthesian/Xebran users.
Which segues to the analytical tools which the analyst/critics use, both those incorporated in the database engine and those residing within the spreadsheet engine. Xebra users must be able to have access not only across the databases associated with a single text local to their own workspace, but to all such databases for all the texts previously coded, locally in the analyst/critic's workspace, as well as, those created and stored elsewhere in the world.
This standardization of labels is not an easy task. It is a necessary one, however, if a Barthesian/Xebran approach to gathering basic facts of text is to ever have more than a small impact in the world of literary critics. As it happens, there is a movement within the computer science community, as well as, the publishing community, to develop, maintain, and use a standard approach for coding texts called Standard General Markup Language, SGML for short.
It appears possible that this SGML use movement might provide a way to shorten, to make more reasonable, the task of standardizing Barthesian labels. Unfortunately, it requires some reengineering of the SGML standard.
The SGML standard is aimed at marking up text in terms of structure. That is, the structural elements such as title, authors, table of contents, chapters, sections, paragraphs, figures, tables, equations, and so forth, are captured by surrounding each such element in a text with a standard label for that element. A Barthesian markup (or coding of a text) is aimed at capturing content, not structure. Further, an SGML markup of a text occurs directly within a text; indeed, it is a part of the text in a very concrete manner. A Barthesian coding of a text most often exists outside the text, though one might argue that Roland Barthes' example in S/Z does, in some sense, intermingle the two. Still, it is the case that, with Xebra, the coding and the text are separate.
Neither of these two differences are insurmountable, however. The SGML community of theorists and practitioners has long since recognized the need for content coding; they just have not, to date, acted in a concerted way on that recognition. A few individual practitioners have started coding texts with locally defined extensions to the SGML standard, while theorists have begun to work on a standard approach to the problem.
As for the other problem, certainly the codings of a Barthesian/Xebran coder could be stored back into the text. Though one would still want, indeed, need, the present format as well, since it is the database form of the codes and the text that is most easily manipulable for pattern matching and analysis.
What is being proposed here is a two-step process. First, there needs to be a reworking of the SGML standard to include the concept of content markup, as well as, structural markup. Second, there needs to be a reworking of the Barthesian model, as currently embodied in Xebra, to support the SGML approach to markup. This has to be both in terms of importing a text into Xebra for work by coders and analysts, and exporting it back out for dissemination to other users, both Barthesian and non-Barthesian.
The latter step, the reworking of Xebra, is clearly feasible. The former step, of reworking the SGML standard, is more problematical. Since it is an international standard, any changes to it have to be made through the various controlling standards bodies, both inside the United States, and throughout the rest of the world. This is, clearly, not a simple or straightforward matter.
All of this discussion presupposes that Barthesian readings will be done in some quantity, an assumption that certainly has some risk to it. However, given the impetus of the SGML standard and the needs of the users of SGML, there is no risk to the prediction that content markup will be incorporated in some form into the standard.
One could argue, quite logically, that it is in the best interest of literary researchers, practitioners, and theorists, to either influence this standard in terms of their needs, or, at the very least, to use whatever standard finally results. The amount of prose text, fiction and otherwise, that will be available in machine-readable form, marked up in SGML, will be growing, possibly exponentially, over the next decade. This text data will provide a rich reservoir for literary researchers using computer-based tools such as Xebra. If these tools are SGML-conforming tools, then the text will be all the more accessible.
Clearly, bringing Xebra into the future as a fully SGML capable tool, conforming to the standard in all pertinent ways, is a reasonable direction for supporting further research beyond that presented in this dissertation. It will assure Xebra users accessibility to all SGML-conforming texts, a very important source of raw input to the Barthesian methodology as implemented in Xebra, as well as, any other coding approaches with which Xebra can be used.
On Xebra: Towards The Always Already Rising Sun
Performing a Barthesian reading on "The Bear," or any large, complex text, is a very intense, excruciatingly detailed, always exhausting effort. If one accepts the theory that literary works are the result of an effort to preserve the totality of concrete experience in a "nonreductive, concrete manner," than it is hardly a major finding that any effort to comprehend that which is preserved by a work as complex, dense, and complete as "The Bear," would result in a difficult Barthesian reading process. As CHAPTER's II, III, and IV have shown, a Barthesian reading is, itself, a complex activity, even when the input to the process is something as small and simple in nature as a two or three sentence paragraph.
That being said, there are three conclusions that should be clearly realizable by this time. They are drawable, first, from the experiencing of Roland Barthes' decidedly extraordinary performance in S/Z, and second, from the experiments and the discussions presented in this dissertation concerning both the Barthesian system, as such, and its Xebran implementation. The three conclusions, which constitute a summing up of the goals of this dissertation, are that:
- the results of a Barthesian reading are worth the expenditure of effort;
- given a tool such as Xebra, a Barthesian reader's efforts can be profitably turned to intellectually difficult, very necessary tasks, that only humans can do, the computer having spared the Barthesian reader the arduousness of the detailed clerical (yet just as clearly necessary) tasks involved in the performance of a Barthesian reading;
- a computer-based tool such as Xebra can directly aid in the intellectual analysis work of a critic by presenting the data in forms that would otherwise not be available to anyone undertaking a fully manual process.
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