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• 1 2021-11-17T14:03:58-08:00 Paths: Flexibility in Navigation 9 plain 2023-02-07T10:41:04-08:00

  We conceptualize the various navigational Paths in Scalar as a “techne” for feminist recovery work. Barbara Biesecker defines  “techne” as a sort of “‘getting through’ or ‘making do’ by a subject whose resources are necessarily located in and circumscribed by the field in which she operates” (155).  Biesecker comes to this definition through her own attempt to dismantle the binary of passivity and activity in assessing historical feminist agency and accomplishments. In this way, the history of women’s writing practices can be extended beyond those who wrote to include those who exhibited “techne.”  In this same way, we argue that the readers and circulators of women’s writing in Scalar projects exhibit “techne” as they navigate its unique navigational possibilities through hypertext. 

  Somewhat distinct from the fluidity that already defines hypertext as a medium, which is typically a function of either the reader’s actions or the author’s devices, much of the hypertext experience in these Scalar features is suggested or even required by the interface itself. For instance, one cannot, as far as we can tell, turn off the ability for users to access the metadata visualizations within a Scalar text and use them as hypertext to navigate the contents. As a required feature, they compel certain rhetorical considerations on creators, and invite certain engagements on behalf of readers. In our experience, they compelled us to consider connections more deeply and to consider our users more fully as embodied and agentive contributors to feminist recovery. 

   

  Rather than merely “exploratory hypertexts,” which facilitate the searching of information in ways largely determined by an author, these visualizations and the navigation options they represent are more akin to “constructive hypertexts,” which Michael Joyce (1988) explains “require a capability to act: to create, to change, and to recover particular encounters within the developing body of knowledge” in ways that may not be anticipated by authors. Through the use of these hypertext features, provided by the interface itself, users are creating new paths, webs and networks of meaning not anticipated by the authors. 

   

  As the individual user creates another vector of experience, they continue the collaborative work of creating intersections between various recovered works. Thus, as readers and contributors of digital scholarly texts, we work towards “recogniz[ing] hidden strains of feminism in webtexts” (Almjeld et al.), situating our anthology and future work in Scalar as explicitly “feminist.” 

  The reader’s navigation choices can uncover “hidden strains of feminism within webtexts” and work to represent the broader goals of feminist recovery work that opens up rhetorical space for silenced and invisible voices (Almjeld et al.).  Navigation options, including an author’s intended “Paths” sequence as well as unintended or unforeseen paths through the content, can lead to diverse theoretical insights through user engagement. 

  Almjeld et al. remind us that by creating multimodal work, feminist rhetoricians “acknowledge multiple ways of learning, privileging multiplicity over the author-as-expert model” (Almjeld et al.). In this way, Scalar disrupts the hierarchical relationship between the author and the reader by encouraging readers to discover their own navigational pathways. Instead of limiting the reader to their own or the author’s own web of knowledge, Scalar allows for multiple ways of finding meaning and complicated understandings of the text through metadata and hypertext features.  Through the use of such “constructive hypertext” options, readers of the Scalar texts exhibit Biesecker’s definition of “techne,” creating new meanings and contributing to the performative acts of feminist recovery through their own innovative experiences with the text.