Week 3: What is Hypertext?

Hypertext fiction emerged in the 1980s and 1990s alongside the development of digital technologies. In chapter 3, Rettberg focuses on the way Postmodernism and Modernism shaped and continues to shape hypertext fiction. He states that "Hypertext fiction represented a bridge between the literary experimentation of the late twentieth century and the cultural shifts accompanying the move to networked computing" (54). Readers do not follow a fixed, linear narrative like before but instead navigate links, making choices that shape their experience. This encourages exploration, as different choices reveal different aspects of the story.

Jorge Luis Borges' The Garden of Forking Paths is a mind-bending short story that explores the infinite possibilities of reality. At its core, it suggests that time is not linear but instead branches infinitely like a labyrinth, where every decision creates multiple parallel paths, sort of like how hypertext starts from one place and branches to many others. 

I chose to explore My Body & a Wunderkammer by Shelley Jackson from 1997. The textbook describes the experience as an "investigat[ion] [of] the way that the body becomes a kind of inscription surface for personal history and memory, and how it surfaces, limbs, and organs function both as individual entities and as indivisible aspects of a human subject's identity" (Rettberg 73). It starts of with a sort of title page with eerie music. Once you click anywhere, it brings you to a picture of a naked woman with boxes over her various body parts. After clicking on a couple different body parts it became clear there are creative writing works for each body part written by the author pertaining to each body part and her life experiences. I found it very liberating and creative, as well as a sort of personal memoir pushing the boundaries between fiction and personal truths.