|
marginalia
From the use of an erudite note on an illuminated manuscript to the modern footnote, marginalia have a very long history in their relation to the written word.
These marginal notes, almost asides, of course can contain extremely important material, and regularly point to other references that the particular work is citing in some manner. (Indeed in many manuscripts no distinction was made between the 'original' and its annotations.)
These citations are evidence of the way in which writing relies upon other writing, and is formalised in discourses of 'authority' where explicit and even indirect citation is required to be formally noted.
Without the linearity of the sequential page a hypertext has no visible hierarchy that inevitably produces the relation of margin to centre that is the footnote. It allows for what is apparently minor (quoted work, other texts, other ideas) to have an authority that is otherwise excluded, and also allows these parts of the text to develop their own links through a work.
Furthermore a hypertext can, in theory, link into the very work that the footnote otherwise merely 'indicates', in the process not so much softening the role of the marginal but dissolving it altogether. Here the relation between a principal text and the footnote disappears as the link performs an action that has the effect of producing an object that is neither one or the other, and privileges neither.
|
