Texts in N-Dimensions and Interpretation in a New Key [Discourse and Interpretation in N-Dimensions]

The IVANHOE project can be understood in various ways – an interpretive environment, a tool of collaborative critical thinking, a pedagogical game for studying cultural materials – it emerges out of a basic shift in the theory of texts and textuality. IVANHOE is regulated by seven key ideas: 1. The textual field is a Baktinian space (heteroglossia); 2. In textual space, a equals a if and only if a does not equal a; 3. Textual fields arise codependently with interpretative action; 4. Textual forms are generated by algorithmic and autopoietic devices; 5. Interpretive action is always performative/deformative; 6. Interpretation of a textual field proceeds at an inner standing point ; 7. Textual fields are n-dimensional. Act always so as to increase the number of choices. The aesthetical imperative: If you desire to see, learn how to act. Heinz von Foerster, Observing Reality IVANHOE is a project to begin realizing a set of new ideas about textuality and semiotic fields. The essays in this collection examine the project as an educational game of interpretation, an interactive digital environment for studying cultural materials, an online annotation tool, and a device for enlisting computer technology in the service of critical thinking – especially thinking about literary and other aesthetic works. Each of these descriptions would fairly characterize important features of IVANHOE. But the project can be usefully approached from the slightly different perspective of the history of the book and theory of textuality. This point of view is important to preserve because IVANHOE emerged (a) at a significant point in time in the history of textuality, and (b) as an explicit move to force a rethinking of some basic received ideas about literary works and how we engage them in a critical way. First of all, IVANHOE is a program of reading traditional works of culture and the documents that instantiate those works. We believe that