Barthes has 7 conditions explaining what "Text" is to him, and I'm going to go through each one, looking at the Facebook app on my iPad in order to see where it falls on the plain of "work" and "text."
1.) Text is not a defined object, cannot be separated from work, a "methodological field" vs. something concrete, held in the language vs. held in the hand
Okay, so Facebook is definitely not a concrete object. It is held entirely in computer code language and whatever language users choose to post on their profiles. If Facebook is a text, I would not know how to go about separating it from the "work" because I'm unsure what the work could possibly be. Perhaps, if someone compiled a book entirely of Facebook statuses or Facebook notes, that would be a work, whereas Facebook would go on existing as a text.
2.) Text does not stop w/ (good) literature, not a hierarchy, cannot be classified, always paradoxical, limits rules of enunciation
It kind of makes me giggle thinking that "good" literature has any place in Facebook, and yet it must. Of the millions of people who use Facebook, some of them must be influenced by "good" literature and must post ideas founded somewhere in "good" literature. Actually, there are millions of Facebook profiles dedicated solely to "good" literature. For example, I am a fan of the David Foster Wallace page on Facebook and a fan of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. After the billions of misspelled and slanged statuses that people regularly post, I don't think that anyone would argue that Facebook stops at (good) literature. And yet, there is nothing hierarchical about the posts on Facebook. Is Robert Bell's Facebook better than mine because he has 900 friends and I only have 50? No, there is no hierarchical advantage to having more friends. Is Robert Bell's Facebook better than mine because his statuses contain well-thought out ideas communicated in multi-syllabic words and mine usually only contain the lyrics to a song I'm listening to? No, again no hierarchical value. Like many digital mediums that exist today, the text that is Facebook cannot be classified in in its entirety according to literary genre. However, the app store does easily classify the Facebook app as a "social" or "social networking" app.
3.) Text structured but decentered, no closure, serial movement of dislocations, overlappings, variations
Currently Facebook has no center and no closure. I thought at first, the "center" might be the profile screen or the homepage, but then, I realized that screen is different for every person who logs on. As of now, there is no "closure" or end to Facebook in sight. Sure, the sight may close down someday, but when that happens, it won't be the same as the closure provided by a work. If Facebook stops running, there will be nothing to look back on, no closing the cover of the book, the way that their is with a work. As for the notion of serial movement, I think this is one of the places that the term text is most applicable to Facebook. Facebook is ever-changing because people are constantly posting new ideas, information, etc. on their profiles, and new profiles are being created all the time. There may be 4 different Facebook pages for the same band or event or even the same person, and the information that people post may in some ways overlap.
4.)Text is plural/has plurality of meaning, it is like a cloth, the text can be itself only in its difference
For every user, the Facebook homescreen looks different because they are connected to different people, pages, and events. The Facebook experience differs from person to person, though some experiences may be similar. Depending on who you are, who you're friends with, what pages you follow, and when you log on, the Facebook experience can be completely altered.
5.) The text has no father figure, text=network, no respect owed to the author, author can only visit the text as a guest
As I previously mentioned, the Apple App Store, classifies Facebook as a "social networking" tool. By definition, Facebook is a network. It is a web of profiles linked together by comments, likes, pokes, messages, and other posts. Perhaps Mark Zukerberg is the founder of Facebook, but his control over what people post on Facebook is limited at this point. This is not to say that it is totally absent. Facebook gatekeepers do exist in order to ensure that users do not post anything "offensive" on their profiles.
6.) Work=object of consumption, text=activity, something to be played with
Facebooking is definitely an activity. It is a verb; it is something that people do. Users spend hours logged into Facebook chatting with their friends, updating their profiles, and posting things on friends walls. But isn't Facebook an object of consumption as well? Why this social networking site over any of the other ones? And while users are Facebooking, aren't they also taking in their friends' profiles and taking in the ads on the side of the screen?
7.) Work=pleasure of consumption, cannot be rewritten; text=inseparable from enjoyment, achieves transparency of social relations, all language circulates freely
I'm not sure where Facebook falls in the topic of enjoyment, as most Facebook users claim to hate the site while spending hours on it. However, visiting Facebook is a choice, and I'm going to argue that people would not freely choose to get on Facebook if they did not somehow feel that life would be less enjoyable if they did not have a profile. Obviously, social relations are transparent on Facebook. When I log in, my homepage shows me who has recently become friends with who and what my friends have posted on each other's walls. Also, all of my friends and their comments to me are displayed on my profile for anyone to see.
After this exercise, I feel that Facebook does not fit neatly into Barthes' critical framework in terms of his distinction between "work" and "text." Though, the Facebook app seems to be more controlled and tangible than Barthes' "text," it seems to be more text than work due to its classification as network which is constantly changing and which creates different experiences from user to user.
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A good strategy: walking through Barthes 7 conditions of a "Text" using Facebook as your model. (Is there/should there be a distinction b/w Facebook itself and the Facebook app?)
ReplyDelete1. The distinction b/w Facebook as it is and Facebook as it might be compiled from a moment in time works well. There have been and will be books about/of Facebook. But the text itself is continual (although it does have a physical locale w/ regard to the servers on which all the code is stored--perhaps analogous to the pages of a book on which words are stored?)
2. I'm not sure I follow your logic here. On the one hand, Facebook may or may not participate in/as "good literature." On the other hand, the non-hierarchical nature of Facebook still submits numbers of friends--as if to suggest popularity as a quantifiable term. So I question the potential for Facebook to participate in this second condition as you say it does, particularly with regard to your parting statement about its clear (commercial) categorization as a "social networking app."
3. The apparent paradox of a text being at once structured and decentered does indeed seem to be an apt description of Facebook.
4. I wonder if "plurality of meaning" here might be further complicated in order to account for the "woven" nature of Facebook, as well as for the idea of "difference" being that which causes Facebook to cohere continually...
5. This might be the most identifiable condition of Facebook with regard to Barthes' conditions for "Text." However, I am interested to know more about how we might reconcile Zukerberg and the gatekeepers ("authors," perhaps?) with the notion that no "father figure" exists for Facebook... [Maybe this connects w/ Barthes' death of the author?]
6. Perhaps Facebook becomes a strange synthesis of work and text here? It is clearly an activity, given, as you say, that it has become a verb in its own right. But is it not also an object of/for consumption?
7. I very much appreciate how you handled this last condition, particularly given the "love-hate" relationship that seems to abound w/ social networking sites in general. At the same time, however, is this not ultimately attributable to the pleasure of consumption (whether it is pleasure through "love" or pleasure through "hate")? Conditions 6 and 7 seem to suggest the productive unraveling of the distinction b/w work and text that you call attention to in your final sentences above. So perhaps this unraveling is precisely what brings Barthes' "From Work to Text" to bear more directly on digital media?