The Irreducibility of Space

The Irreducibility of Space: Labyrinths, Cities, Cyberspace
Author(s): Kristin Veel

Source: Diacritics, Vol. 33, No. 3/4, New Coordinates: Spatial Mappings, National
Trajectories (Autumn - Winter, 2003), pp. 151-172
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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THE IRREDUCIBILITY OF
SPACE
LABYRINTHS, CITIES, CYBERSPACE
KRISTIN VEEL
At a lecture on the history of the book in May 2003 at the University of Cambridg
Jerome McGann, a vehement spokesman for the cultural significance of informatio

technology, was asked why it is at all worthwhile for literary scholars to occupy them
selves with digital technologies. Why this marveling at the possibilities of the new
media? His answer emphasized the opinion that literary scholars have an obligation t
use their abilities of aesthetic analysis on new phenomena such as the interface, and
learn to take advantage of the possibilities that the new media offer their professio
Only by doing so is it possible to take part in the ongoing definition of what purpo
these technologies serve. In contrast to this optimistic and affirmative attitude, we f

polemical positions that are less eager to embrace the new media. In his most recen
novella, Im Krebsgang, the Nobel Prize-winning author Gunter Grass points to the
dangers of the apparently ethically neutral spatial freedom of the internet. Grass clai
that this neutrality blurs the sense of history and continuity compared to the more eth
cally coherent realm of literature in the traditional sense. Information technology a

the ever greater impact it has on our everyday lives, right down to the metaphors
use, are thus greeted with an equal amount of optimism and pessimism, if at all tak
seriously as an object of study outside small dedicated circles. As such, the recepti
of digital media today resembles the way in which photography and film were initia
addressed with an equal amount of hope and fear, but above all conceptualized
less-profound expressions of popular culture well into the twentieth century. Much
the distrust of information technology and digital narratives as an object of study f
the humanities originates in the emergence of these new media coinciding with th
prevalence of poststructuralist theory, which saw in the technology a practical proof
the assumption of a play of signifiers, fragmentation, multilinearity, and the death
the author. This meant that the future possibilities for the technology, rather than t
actual realities, were highlighted; and once the first wave of euphoria had subsided,
humanistic approach to cyberspace and information technology was to a certain exte

stigmatized as being immaterial and lofty speculation. McGann's answer to the skept
member of the audience in 2003 emphasizes the necessity of a profound attempt t
make use of the actual possibilities that the digital technologies provide. One shou
not overemphasize the revolutionary potential ofthe new media, nor shut one's mind
new possibilities. If successful, this balancing act renders it possible to create a cohe
ent continuity in the study of information technology that aims at mapping out the wa
in which media are part of shaping our lives, our values, and the way we relate to t
world. To provide a starting point for this approach, I shall examine the way in wh
we relate to and navigate the space that computer media conjure up through an inves
gation of the metaphors by which we conceptualize it, and thus aim at an anthropolo
of media that is able to define the qualities of what we call cyberspace.
diacritics / fall-winter 2003 diacritics 33.3-4: 151-72 151
The word "cyber" derives from the Greek word kybernan, which means "coxswain" and which is present in the English "cybernetics," meaning "control of information." The word itself thus harbors a notion of a mass of information that needs steering
and which is situated in a certain space that arises from the interaction between a user
and a computer. I shall attempt to identify here the characteristics and qualities of this
notion of space by tracing the historical roots of navigation and orientation from the
labyrinth metaphor through to the modern industrial city and into cyberspace. This
somewhat circuitous method is necessary because it makes it possible to read this more
or less abstract type of space as linked to a bodily orientation that calls for experience
just as much as for rational analysis. Furthermore, it provides a way of avoiding the
poststructuralist discourse, which?with a starting point in Derrida's remark "II n'y a

pas de hors-texte"1?regards cyberspace as a realm in which the hierarchical structures
that construct our language and socially determined understanding of space could be
broken down. Quite on the contrary, I shall argue that orientation and navigation in
cyberspace is indeed governed by a highly physical and even geographical experience
of space, of which we find evidence in the metaphors with which we conceptualize and
talk about cyberspace.
Metaphoric Space
Navigation is central to our experience of space. This is also true when it comes to experiencing cyberspace. This truth becomes evident from the way in which the labyrinth
metaphor, as a figure of orientation, crops up in scholarly work as well as everyday lan?
guage whenever cyberspace, or perhaps more precisely the experience of cyberspace,

is put into words. Here I shall take a closer look at why this constellation of labyrinth
and cyberspace seems so obvious, and to examine what this metaphorical conflation
signifies, I shall begin by defining my understanding of "navigation in cyberspace" or
"experience of cyberspace." As already pointed out, the word "cyberspace" indicates a
paradoxical constellation of, on the one hand, "spatiality," which traditionally implies
a physical and bodily sensation and, on the other, "information," which moves the
spatiality to an abstract, conceptual realm. This duality often results in an imprecise
way of talking about cyberspace that attempts to mediate between the abstract and
the concrete, but ends up in ephemeral, almost mythic, vocabulary about an "other"
space. An example is the way in which the concept of cyberspace seems to lend itself
to the concept of "heterotopia" in Foucault's sense. Heterotopias are spaces situated on
the outskirts of society. They are simultaneously real and unreal and their function is
to represent, contest, and invert real places. An example of such a space could be the
mirror:
The mirror functions as a heterotopia in this respect: it makes this place that
I occupy at the moment when I look at myself in the glass at once absolutely
real, connected with all the space that surrounds it, and absolutely unreal,
since in order to be perceived it has topass through this virtual point which is
over there. [Foucault 24]2
7. That is, that the signifiers in a text are not able to relate to "reality"?understood as
society or another form of externality?but they turn into other signifiers without reaching a
signified. Meaning can be reached only on an immediate, limited level [Derrida 158 f].
2. Another obvious example would be Donna Haraway's "A Cyborg Manifesto," which
from a socialist-feminist perspective regards cyberspace as a sphere freed from gender roles.
152
To avoid this way of talking about cyberspace, my approach will be that of the
cognitive semanticists George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, and Mark Turner, who apply no-
tions of "schemata" from psychology and neurobiology to language. They claim that
all our experiences, knowledge, and thinking derive from small temporal and spatial
stories that are not culturally determined but universally linked to the human body. Our
consciousness conceives of everything that goes on around us as spatial stories, which

are comprehended in correlation with the experience of our own body. Through the so-
called image schemas, it becomes possible to comprehend nonspatial objects through

spatial modes of expression. For instance, an "image schema" such as the "source-pathgoal schema" derives from the experience that every time we move any where, there is a
place we start from and a place we end up, the path being the journey in between which
is determined by a direction. This leads to a metaphorical valuation in which achieving a purpose is understood in terms of passing along a path from a starting point to
an end point [Lakoff 275]. Other "image schemas" are "the part-whole schema," "the
container schema," "the centre-periphery schema," "the up-down schema," and "the
front-back schema." According to the cognitive semantics these schemas constitute the
foundation of our ability to understand and describe the world metaphorically [Lakoff
271 ff.]. New metaphorical constellations are constructed by bringing together mean?
ing from a so-called source space and a target space, which are not related beforehand.
The expression "it has gone down the drain," for example, brings together information
from a source space concerning drains and sewers and a target space concerning the
notion of wasting something. When these two different realms are brought together in
the expression that "something has gone down the drain," a new meaning is created
which was not present in either the source or the target space. At the same time it makes
use of an image schema that values "down" negatively and "up" positively. By regard?
ing these schemas as universal points of reference that form the way we think, talk,
and represent the world, it becomes possible to regard cyberspace as a metaphorical
conceptual blend that is made up of a source space, that is, physical space, and a target
space, that is, to handle information. This blend results in the concept of cyberspace
as something that can be conceived of in bodily terms of navigation while being performed in an abstract mathematical space consisting of the Os and 1 s of a computer.
This allows us to speak about navigation in cyberspace as a spatial undertaking in a
concrete three-dimensional sense as well as an abstract sense, which does away with
the ambiguity and utopian scope of the concept of cyberspace and permits us to treat it
in a constructive manner.
Once we have established this metaphorical heritage it becomes necessary to examine the metaphors with which we describe cyberspace. To do so I shall look at the
labyrinth motif, which is recurrently applied to cyberspace. It will become apparent
from my analysis that the labyrinth motif is also at the core of other spatial conceptual-
izations of cyberspace such as "network," "web," "information highway," or "shopping

mall," as they rely on modes of navigation that are all immanent in the development
of the labyrinth figure. The labyrinth, however, proves to be the strongest metaphor
containing them all. This approach regards cyberspace as a target space, which is juxtaposed with a source space called the labyrinth in order to see what meaning arises
from the conceptual blend of these two spheres. Thus I shall examine the bifurcated
significance ascribed to navigation in the labyrinth.
The labyrinth has been a recurrent motif and design of navigation in numerous
cultures and mythologies. It has been subject to widely differentiated interpretations,
and the form itself has undergone significant alterations throughout the centuries. Since
my focus is on its spatial constitution I shall not look at the mytho-poetical implications
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of the labyrinth in detail, but rather on the way in which the development of the form
discloses how its space is conceived.3

One can identify three major historical changes in the form of the labyrinth. In
the strictest sense the labyrinth is a religious-mythic figure of orientation in which one
single path leads to the center by a roundabout route. This route fills out the entire in?
terior space of the labyrinth, but allows for no intersections of pathways which would
require the walker to make choices [Kern 23]. The most ancient form, "the Cretan
type," can be traced back to prehistoric times as a guideline of stones most likely laid
out to direct chain dances performed in religious rites. Here the path leads through
seven convolutions before reaching the center. This structure is extended in the medi?
eval church labyrinths to contain eleven convolutions organized in a similar one-pathed
manner in which the navigation is aimed at God. As opposed to this one-way labyrinth,
the maze, which first appears as a visual pattern in the late Middle Ages/early Renaissance, offers a multiplicity of paths to choose from, of which many turn out to be "dead
ends" [Kern 136]. This gives the maze walker a very different spatial experience, and
thus it acquires a different symbolic value. In the one-pathed?unicursal?labyrinth
the walker is guided to the center by the spatial framework of the labyrinth structure,
which constitutes a single route to its center. This allows the walker to turn the atten?
tion inward to the process of walking and the symbolic communication with the gods
which the labyrinth signifies. In the maze, however, the walker is constantly forced to
make choices, which will determine his/her movements and thus has to focus outward
on finding his/her way in order to reach the center or the exit. Though still essentially a
religious motif with a clear sense of order, the maze is a figure in which one risks losing
one's bearings, rather than being a figure of guidance [Kern 316]. Umberto Eco [81 f.]
has proposed a third and secular postmodern variant of the labyrinth, which is based on
the metaphor of the rhizome suggested by Deleuze and Guattari and Eco's own notion
of the so-called Model Q.4 This type of labyrinth is conceived of as a network in which
all points can be connected with one another; it has no center but provides an almost
unlimited multiplicity of alternative paths. This implies that it is impossible to rise

above the structure and observe it from the outside, because it transcends the graphic
two-dimensionality of the two earlier forms of labyrinths. This type of labyrinth can be
experienced only from the inside:
No one can provide a global description of the whole rhizome; not only be?
cause the rhizome is multidimensionally complicated, but also because its
structure changes through time, moreover, in a structure in which every node
can be connected with every other node, there is also the possibility ofcontradictory inferences. [Eco 81-82]
The divine perspective that created order is thus removed from the labyrinth meta?
phor.
3. Manfred Schmeling distinguishes between three fundamental functions ofthe labyrinth:

the topological function which ascribes to the labyrinth the ability to structure a certain space;
the semantic function which refers to the symbolic or semantic function; and the axiological
function that deals with the link to stable values and worldviews [41-42]. It is the interrelation
of these three factors which is implicit in the following outline.
4. Model Q is a model ofa linguistic system that is able to incorporate new information in
an unlimited semiosis and thus adjust its code to the changing competences ofthe language users. Significantly, Eco identifies the eighteenth century encyclopaedia by Diderot and d Alembert
as the concept that made the rhizome and Model Q thinkable [Eco 83].
154
This triple set of metaphorical connotations makes it difficult to map out the no?
tion of the labyrinth which is at work when we describe cyberspace as labyrinthine.
It is tempting to regard the transition from singularity to multiplicity, from simplicity
to confusion, as a historical development representing a secularization of the relation

between the subject and the world which is dependent on the technological innovations present. Following this scheme the plain one-pathed labyrinth can be regarded as
the original form in which the reenactment of cosmic patterns through the ritual chain
dances created a correspondence between the divine and the earthly. The appearance of
the maze might be regarded as a step toward secularization of the labyrinth motif. The
maze walker who has to find his/her way can be seen as a metaphor for the increased
responsibility bestowed upon the individual from the Renaissance onward. Finally,
in the late twentieth century, the labyrinth, interpreted as a rhizome, no longer has a
center. This figure can be regarded a reflection of communication networks, modern
urban experience, the complexity of economic organization, and circulation of capital,
none of which operates on a clear hierarchical system with a fixed center. This would
seemingly allow us to regard the most recent version of the labyrinthine shape?the
rhizome?as a representation of the structure of cyberspace and link it up with poststructuralist discourse on the conditions of life in the postmodern world. Such reason?
ing seems to be at the core of much theory on cyberspace and its textual formation,
hypertext?something that bestows a redemptive power on the ambiguity and refusal
of closure of the rhizome. Significantly, the theorist and electronic fiction writer Stuart
Moulthrop, whose work I shall return to later on, stated in 1988:
Seen from the viewpoint of textual theory, hypertext systems appear as the
practical implementation of a conceptual movement that coincides with the
late phase of modernity. This movement rejects authoritarian, "logocentric"
hierarchies of language, whose modes of operation are linear and deductive,
and seeks instead systems of discourse that admit a plurality of meanings
where the operative modes are hypothesis and interpretive play and hierar?
chies are contingent and local. [Moulthrop 1]
This apparent refusal of a linear, unicursal mode of navigation seems, however, to be
more utopian in its scope than actually relating to the factual possibilities of cyberspace
in its present form, even now more than fifteen years later. The dream of a parallel
world in which the social, economic, and historic limitations ascribed to conventional
geographic space is abolished and replaced by a world of endless play s of signifiers and
multiple meanings, which is inherent in the image of the rhizome, thus infuses the un?
derstanding of cyberspace with utopian potential. In the following sections, however,

I shall argue that all three forms of the labyrinth motif (in a secular understanding) are
in fact present simultaneously when we describe navigation in cyberspace as labyrin?

thine?not just that of the rhizome. An indicator of this claim is the way in which the
other spatial metaphors that are used to describe cyberspace appear to be built into the
labyrinth metaphor. While metaphors such as "information highway" give an image of
a one-pathed way that leads to the goal of information, the metaphors of "web" and
"shopping mall," which have outer limits, indicate the concept ofthe maze. And, final?
ly, the all-pervasive metaphor of "the network" resembles the structure of the rhizome.
The reason for regarding the labyrinth as the dominant metaphor is precisely because
I want to transgress the pitfalls that are immanent in applying the characteristics of the
rhizome or the network to cyberspace without taking its less open-ended qualities into
consideration.
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Walker and Viewer
One way of underscoring this argument is to look at how the labyrinth has previously
been envisaged and depicted. Significantly, the stepwise evolutionary development is
strictly bound to representations in the visual arts, since the labyrinth occurs as an impenetrable space of perplexity in literary representations much earlier than the Renais-
sance [Doob 18]. The following passage, for example, occurs in Ovid's Metamorphoses: "so Daedalus in countless corridors / Built bafflement, and hardly could himself /
Make his way out, so puzzling was the maze" [8: 169-71]. Significantly, this descrip?
tion of perplexity made the translator choose the word "maze" rather than "labyrinth."
This difference between the literary, metaphorical use and the visual employment of
the motif most likely derives from the fact that in the tradition of visual arts the laby?
rinth is a more concrete architectural artifice, which can be viewed from a privileged
perspective and thus seen as an artistically assembled structure, whereas the literary
metaphorical use of the labyrinth motif is related to the fictional-mythical tradition
of the concept and emphasizes the confusion and feeling of entrapment that is felt by
those inside the labyrinth. This calls attention to the distinction between the labyrinth
walker and the labyrinth viewer as a central element of the labyrinth metaphor, no mat?
ter in which form. A distinction that I shall aim to prove is still alive in our understand?
ing of cyberspace.
Essentially, navigation has to do with the distinction between overview and embeddedness. In the changes in the labyrinth motif one can thus identify alterations in
the relation between the view from above and the experience of moving inside the laby?
rinth. This interweaving of the two different points of view from which the labyrinth
can be observed makes it an ambiguous motif, and allows for the labyrinth structure
(even in its most simple one-pathed form) to be interpreted as simultaneously order and
disorder, clarity and confusion, unity and multiplicity, artistry and chaos. The labyrinth
walker, whose vision is constricted and fragmented, is overtaken by confusion, and

his/her experience of the labyrinth is one of disorder, multiplicity, and chaos, whereas
the labyrinth viewer, able to overlook the complete structure, will get a sense of order,
clarity, unity, and artistry. Significantly, both perspectives are incorporated in the tra?
ditional labyrinth motif. This dichotomy is most significantly represented in the contradictory interpretations of the labyrinth in the Middle Ages. The labyrinth represents
simultaneously the sublime, complex world that God had created, and the spiritually
dangerous and sinful world, which the human being has to pass through to get to God.
This binary opposition becomes more complex when in the later Middle Ages and early
Renaissance the one-path labyrinth is accompanied by the multipath maze?not only in
literary, metaphorical interpretations but also as a graphic form.5 The changed position
of the individual caused an increasing importance for such values as reason, linearity,
logic, science, and transparency, and the maze was consequently regarded as a negative symbol of confusion as opposed to the cartographic map, which in the sixteenth
century became a mathematical undertaking of perspective and precision [Boyer 209].
In confined areas, however, such as the medieval and baroque garden, labyrinths offered a place in which one could loose oneself and escape into the artistically twisted
labyrinths. The aimlessness was praised as a quality in itself, and the labyrinth was
regarded as a controlled piece of disorder?an artistic emblem of leisure and erotic
entanglements?though without loosing its religious significance. The interweaving of
order and disorder thus remained at the core of the labyrinth motif.
This opposition between viewer and walker is central throughout the history of the
labyrinth. My aim is to show how these ambiguous connotations are carried on into the
5. Kern dates the first mazes to Giovanni Fontana in thefifteenth century [138].
156
notion of cyberspace, when this space is described as labyrinthine. A different notion

of viewer and walker is adapted here, however, because it has become problematic?if
not impossible?to gain a full overview. To fully to understand the changes that this
double perspective of viewer and walker undergoes in cyberspace we need to compare
the way cyberspace is described as labyrinthine with the way the modern industrial city
was conceptualized as labyrinthine at the time of its emergence. An examination ofthe

labyrinthine characteristics of the modern city will provide us with an insight into how
the labyrinth has previously worked and infused a target source (here the city) with
meaning. The comparison shows how a new metaphoric complex such as the concep?
tual blend, "the labyrinthine city," which arises from the juxtaposition of labyrinth and
city, reinforms the source space of the labyrinth itself and changes our notion of this
concept. An investigation of the conceptualization of the modern city and the shaping
of the urban experience by technology is thus relevant given that the city is the most
immediate antecedent to cyberspace that has exposed the human subject to a radicalized change of the meaning of space. Significantly, both phenomena have acquired the
term "labyrinthine," meaning that the characteristics we ascribe to the labyrinth, when
we use the term today, are to a large degree the result of the conceptual blend with the
modern industrial city.
The link between the city and the labyrinth, however, is by no means exclusively
modern. According to Hermann Kern the connection between city and labyrinth can be
dated back to Roman antiquity [32]. In the Aeneid Virgil recounts the so-called Trojan
game that accompanied the founding of a city. It consisted of a public ceremony in

which youths traced the course of a labyrinth on horseback [5: 711-75], and in ancient
Etruscan and later Roman rituals the labyrinth seems to have had a general and magical
protective function for cities [Kern 82]. Kern, however, deals only with the correspondence between the labyrinth in its strict unicursal form and the city as urbs, as a sacred
territory marked out by a ploughshare, which is concentrated around a center. When the
experience of the modern industrial city of the nineteenth century is described as laby?
rinthine, we are dealing with a different secular labyrinth metaphor, since the modern
city does not have an edge and an order in the same way that the medieval town did;
rather it spreads itself out further and further, creating an ambiguous borderland be?
tween the city and the countryside. The changed conditions oflife were all embodied in
the turmoil of the modern city that exposed its inhabitants to severe sensory challenges
and changed the understanding of urban order. Technologies such as the bicycle, tele?
graph, telephone, electric light, power networks, and railway were all part of changing
the prevailing paradigms for understanding cities, space, and time which were rooted in
the preindustrial past [Graham and Marvin 74]. When in the late nineteenth century the
labyrinth became a common way of conceptualizing the modern industrial city, it was
not the closed unicursal labyrinth that was meant. Even the form of the maze with its
erroneous paths is transgressed, because notions of center and borderline have become
ambiguous. In the following section I shall compare the way in which cyberspace and
the modern city are described as labyrinthine by looking at the position of the walker
and the viewer in these two divergent, yet overlapping spaces. After starting with Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Man of the Crowd" (1840), which has become emblematic for the changes in the experience of space and the appearance of the modern
industrial city as labyrinthine, I shall move to Walter Benjamin's conceptualization of
the modern city as the realization of an age-old dream of the labyrinth [5/2; 1007], and
finally look at Michel de Certeau's treatment of the relation between the viewer and the
walker in the late twentieth century city. By comparing these views of urban space to
the way the labyrinth is used in a hypertext novel such as Stuart Moulthrop's Victory
Garden (1992) in the subsequent section, I shall attempt to illuminate the similarities
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and differences between movements in the city and in cyberspace, and also the respective relation between the viewer and the walker.
Urban Space
As I endeavoured, during the brief minute ofmy original survey, toform some
analysis of the meaning conveyed, there arose confusedly and paradoxically

within my mind, the ideas of vast mental power, of caution, of penuriousness, of avarice, of coolness, of malice, of blood-thirstiness, of triumph of
merriment of excessive terror of intense?of extreme despair. Ifelt singularly
aroused, startled, fascinated. [Poe 18-84]
This passage comes from Poe's short story "The Man ofthe Crowd" (1840) at the mo?
ment when the narrator sitting safely behind his window in the coffeehouse gazing out
at the impersonal crowd of passers-by catches sight of the man that he later character-
izes as "the man of the crowd" [187] and who fascinates him to a degree that he starts
to follow him out into the streets of the modern city. The emotions depicted here are
what the narrator reads in the face of a man he glimpses through the window, but the
passage also expresses the sentiments ofa man on the verge of entering into a labyrinth
from the elevated position of the observer.
"The Man of the Crowd" tells the story of a convalescent man, sitting in a London
coffeehouse, letting time pass while he looks out of the window onto the hectic street.
The impression is that of disorder, the crowd is likened to waves rolling through the
streets: "the tumultuous sea of human heads" [180]. The narrator analyzes the crowd,
deducing the class, occupation, and personal weaknesses of the people in the street,
grouping them into neat categories from their mere appearance. From his distanced
point of view it is possible for him to be above the crowd and transform the bustling
mass into a social pattern. As it gets darker, however, he starts to look at the individu?
als and catches a glimpse of a monstrous face. This is where the rupture of the story
occurs, and the position of the narrator shifts from clear overview to embedded confu?
sion. The passage cited shows how the attempt to create a distanced analysis capsizes
in perplexity and confusion as the narrator suddenly finds himself at the same level
with the person he tries to interpret. There occurs a moment of identification or recog?
nition that shifts his focus and changes his position from being a voyeur observing the
crowds in the street from behind the screen of the window to being dragged down to
the ground and forced to enter into the streets himself: "[h]urriedly putting on an over-
coat, and seizing my hat and cane, I made my way into the street, and pushed through
the crowd in the direction which I had seen him take" [184]. He takes up pursuit on a
long, labyrinthine circuit, which goes through many districts of the foggy city and its
outskirts, in which the stranger keeps seeking out crowds. The narrator never reaches
his goal of getting to know the so-called man of the crowd. The plot is aborted without
an anagnoresis; the narrator is resigned to understanding that the man of the crowd is
such a horrendous phenomenon that "es lasst sich nicht lesen" [188]. The city as well as
the man of the crowd are accordingly written off as enigmas that cannot be penetrated
by logic understanding and categorization?they cannot be read or decoded. A shift to
a different kind of logic or legibility is necessary to understand the man of the crowd
and the environment in which he moves. The logic required is that of the labyrinth, in
which confusion and disorientation are traditionally fundamental parts of the path to
revelation or rebirth. The narrator's representation of the man of the crowd as a mon?
strous being, a modern Minotaur, thus reveals itself as a projection of his own fear of
158
the unknown exterior environment in which he moves and which he cannot decipher.
The man of the crowd and the narrator merge into one, and what he encounters stands
forth as his own fears of the city space in an uncanny doubling of his own body embed-
ded in that space.
"The Man of the Crowd" serves as an example of the way the changed notions of
space of the modern industrial city are experienced. Since there is nothing new in the
constellation of city and labyrinth, the change must be found in the relation between
the city and the subject. Not only does the size of the city make it labyrinthine, but the
physical encounter on ground level has lost the possibility of transcendence, which
makes the labyrinth become something simultaneously feared and attractive. The loss
of a fully symbolical way of thinking with regard to the divine ruins the relation, which
had been implicit up until now, between the secular life as chaos and the divine as
order, and this changes the experience of the city.6 Walter Benjamin's flaneur can be
regarded as the labyrinth walker of the modern city par excellence, because it is he
who is open to the experience of the city as a labyrinth. The flaneur is for Benjamin the
modern Theseus, who turns the boredom of bourgeois life into an adventure by getting
lost in the labyrinth of the streets:
The city is the realization ofthat ancient dream of humanity, the labyrinth. It
is this reality to which the flaneur, without knowing it, devotes himself. Without
knowing it; yet nothing is more foolish than the conventional thesis which ra-
tionalizes his behaviour, and which forms the uncontested basis ofthat volumi-
nous literature that traces the figure and demeanor of the flaneur?the thesis,
namely, that the flaneur has made a study ofthe physiognomic appearance of
people in order to discover their nationality and social station, character and
destiny, from a perusal of their gait, build, and play offeatures. The interest in
concealing the true motives ofthe flaneur must have been pressing indeed to
have occasioned such a shabby thesis. [SW 4: M6a, 4; GS 5/1; 541]
For Benjamin the modern city is a place in which oppositions such as modern and
archaic, sacred and profane, public and private, exterior and interior come together
and demand another logic and legibility from the person who wants to navigate in
this space. Navigation becomes a question of chance and sensory impulses rather than
of reason and calculation, because the passage through the labyrinth is now totally
secularized, and the journey has become an end in itself disposing with the center
as the climax of experience. The flaneur is not only a spectator, he is part of the city
labyrinth, and his steps constitute its outline. He is both viewer and walker. The nar?
rator of "The Man of the Crowd" illustrates how the city brings about this interaction
between viewer and walker: from the moment he leaves his comfortable seat behind the
window and ventures out into the streets, following a sudden impulse, he is confronted
with another mode of experiencing the city, which he conceives of as threatening, but
nonetheless intriguing. His intentions are those of the detective seeking a solution, but
the experience in the labyrinthine city educates him in the uselessness of searching for
a center?a solution to the enigma. The traditional notion ofthe labyrinth as leading to
an endpoint thus undergoes significant changes.
Benjamin's distinction between Erfahrung and Erlebnis seems to be illuminating
here. While Erfahrung describes the individual's skills at linking sensations, informa6. David Harvey points to this also in more secular terms with regard to what he calls
"time-space compression," which refers to the changes in space-time dimensionality that forces
us to "adjust our notions of space and time and to rethink the prospects for social action"
[243].
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tion, and events into a coherent experience that originally was in correspondence with
the mythic divine, Erlebnis refers to what has become of experience in modernity?that
is, a series of fragmented and separate moments that isolate the human subject from
tradition and a genuine perception ofthe surroundings [GS 1/2; 608]. These two modes
of experiencing the surroundings provide an understanding of the way the notion of
space changes in modernity and in what form the motif of the labyrinth is applied
to the modern city. As Gilloch points out, the German word Erfahrung derives from
fahren, meaning "to travel," thus Erfahrung means "to have gathered experience and
knowledge through traveling" [143]. This is the mode of navigation that has been lost
in modernity; memory now occurs only in glimpses, and navigation has been deprived
of a sense of direction, rather than depending on experience to guide you on the basis
of what steps you have previously taken. The method of resistance against the volatility of experience and space in modernity that Benjamin points to is that of the flaneur,
who makes Erlebnis a goal in itself. To go astray becomes a desirable and liberating
act, but not in the frantic manner of the man of the crowd. For Benjamin the heroism
of the flaneur stems precisely from this refusal to become part of the crowd: "There
was the pedestrian who wedged himself into the crowd, but there was also the flaneur
who demanded elbow room and was unwilling to forgo the life of gentleman of leisure"
["On Some Motifs" 172-73; GS 1/2: 556]. The attitude toward the crowds is simultane?
ously governed by desire and repulsion, which links it up with the baroque notion ofthe
maze garden, but also points to a new, secular attempt at making aimlessness a positive
strategy.
The ambiguity of modernity, where the city is dystopia at one moment, and utopia
at the next, is captured in the double perspective of the labyrinth walker/viewer: the
simultaneous wish to master the aerial perspective and represent the city from above,
and the feared desire to lose oneself in the masses of the city itself. Fifty years after
Benjamin, Michel de Certeau traces this view ofthe modern city as labyrinthine in The
Practice of Everyday Life (1988), in which he probes the conceptualization ofthe aerial
view. Certeau takes his starting point in the myth of Daedalus and Icarus attempting
to escape from the labyrinth and uses it to make an interesting distinction between "to
see" and "to do" when experiencing the modern city. Viewed from a distance the city
becomes a map that can be read, understood, and interpreted as a text. Encountering
the city in this way bestows power upon the viewer because he/she is at a distance and
does not risk being dragged into and absorbed by the city. At street level, however, the
walker is at the mercy of the city. You move through space, making use of it, but you
are not able to see the entire structure yourself, because you are a part of the creation
of this space. While the distanced spectator "reads" the city as an image, the man on
the pavement is part of creating or "writing" the city. In the same way it is not possible
to get an overview of the city until you are able to get above it and see it as a pattern
or a map. Doing this implies, however, that the city becomes fiction, something that is
not lived. Certeau has been criticized for bestowing too much redemptive power on the
streetwalker, a figure who bears a resemblance to Benjamin's flaneur. What is signifi?
cant in this context, however, is how Certeau's theory represents a general distrust of
the overview presented by the aerial view, a distrust that can also be identified in the
theory of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who likewise takes a critical stand toward the visual
dominance in Western culture, which is specifically directed toward long-distance im?
ages that attempt to encompass a total view [Jay 335]. This transition from Benjamin to
Certeau points to a significant development of the modern city and the relation between
viewer and walker in the twentieth century, in which the ability to construct a trustworthy overall perspective from above is drawn into question as the technologies that allow
for a construction of the aerial perspective become more and more skillful, while at the
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same time the importance of the actual geographic outline of the city decreases.
Significantly, the interest in mapping the city and creating a total view of it, which
had been growing since the sixteenth century, increased dramatically in the nineteenth
century. New ways of representing the city, which valued the panoramic overview,
emerged [Boyer 209 f.], while the representation of the city in literature and visual arts
in the nineteenth and twentieth century focused on the confusion of the streetwalker.
The fragmented perception of the modern city with its speedy railway, telegraph, and
telephone connections affected how space was perceived, and thus how it was repre?
sented in the language of art?the aesthetics of shock, unpredictability, and provocation became artistic strategies which caused a reconceptualizing of the categories of
oeuvre, public, and artist. The man of the crowd is only the first of many labyrinthine,
literary streetwalkers in the nineteenth and twentieth century. Charles Baudelaire's fla?
neur wanders aimlessly in the crowds of Paris, Knut Hamsun's alter ego walks hungrily
through Oslo in Hunger, and James Joyce's Stephen Dedalus, whose name echoes the
master builder of the Cretan labyrinth, traces everyday Dublin in Ulysses. Common to
all these streetwalkers is the fact that the sense of a goal?a center to reach?is removed.
In "The Man of the Crowd," the narrator also never moves out of the city, and his alter
ego, the man of the crowd, never attempts to do so either. On the contrary, there is a
wish to stay within the labyrinth, whose walls are not constructed by the structure of
the city but by the human crowds. To the man of the crowd the intoxicating experience
of walking within this ephemeral mass vanishes when the people become scarce, the
walls thinner. The man of the crowd is not observing a structure, a path; he is creating
it himself by moving through the masses. The interaction between the urban order and
the physical body is what is central to the labyrinthine experience. Walter Benjamin has
pointed to this conception of the metropolitan crowd as a mobile labyrinth within the
city labyrinth. The crowd is "the newest drug for the solitary. ?Second, they efface all
traces of the individual: they are the newest asylum for the reprobate and the proscript.
?Finally, within the labyrinth of the city, the masses are the newest and most inscrutable labyrinth" [SWM16, 3; GS 5/1; 559]. Crowds are central to most experiences of
the modern city, aesthetically as in Poe or theoretically as in Benjamin and Certeau,

and the fact that the crowds constitute the labyrinthine character of the city points to a
transformation of the classical link between the city and the labyrinth. Originally the
relation seems to have been based more explicitly on a resemblance in graphic struc?
ture, but in modern times the labyrinth refers to the experience of moving in the city.
Thus the perspective of the walker rather than the viewer determines the labyrinthine
character of the city.
What comes out from this essential digression on the way the modern industrial
city is conceptualized as labyrinthine is the fact that the traditional expectation inher-
ent in the classical unicursal labyrinth and also in the multicursal maze of having to
reach a goal when navigating is carried on into the modern city where it is inverted and
distorted. The significant occurrence in this (city)space is a disappointment of the goal-
oriented mode of navigation. Erfahrung becomes Erlebnis and the labyrinth metaphor
changes meaning. The dichotomy between confusion and survey, chaos and artistry
immanent in the labyrinth as a metaphor for navigation represented by the perspective
of the viewer and the walker capsizes so that describing something as labyrinthine now
refers only to the confused perspective of the walker. The double perspective of the
labyrinth thus disappears or merges in the figure of the streetwalker, while the survey
has become suspect as a mode of representation. This transformation becomes central

when looking at how navigation is understood in cyberspace, because it seems to be an
all too undiscriminating equation of the perspective of the streetwalker of the modern
city and the point of view of the navigator in cyberspace which is the reason for the
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Seven of Nine
Rachel Harrison
poststructuralist conception of cyberspace and hypertext as an utopia liberated from

physical constraints.
Victory Garden
Any attempt to describe the kind of space we are dealing with in cyberspace necessarily
has to take into consideration the specificities of the media through which this space is
created. The space that the computer medium creates differs decisively from other notions of space in that numbers and abstract mathematics, not shapes or volumes, define
it.7 What we experience as a space in which we can navigate consists in fact of numeri-
cal data. As an example, a digital image is made up of discrete elements, or pixels, each
assigned a specific numerical value that determines its position and shade. The space
created is thus essentially a mathematical space in which body and sensory perceptions
have no place insofar as it is not a human space in the traditional sense. If we go back
to the metaphor theory of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, however, it becomes pos?
sible to argue that cyberspace is not just mere mathematics. Of course mathematics
and statistics conjure it up, but since it is brought into being in a human environment,
it is perceived as space, not as a constellation of Os and ls. Significantly, mathematical
domains are mentioned by Lakoff as examples of abstract spheres that are represented
spatially, when we conceptualize it [Lakoff 281]. This implies that even though math?
ematics and statistical analysis have become increasingly abstract since the eighteenth
century, what they conjure up is still understood as essentially spatial when they are put
to use in a human space.
The consequence of this argument is that a medium such as the computer should
not be regarded in terms of the technicalities of the mathematics that make the system
work, but rather in anthropological terms, that is, the way in which the computer as a
medium influences how we conceive of space. I shall suggest that one deals with the
medium in terms of "discourse networks." The concept of "discourse network" was de?
veloped within continental structuralism and poststructuralism, and according to media
theorist Friedrich Kittler it can be defined as systems of writing down that provide the
framework by which meaning becomes possible: "Whatever the historical field we are
dealing with, [.. .] we are dealing with media as determined by the technological pos?
sibilities ofthe epoch in question" [qtd. in Wellbery xiii]. The claim is that it is possible
to map the systems of rules and codes of a given epoch, to show not only what was
said and done in that epoch but also the limits of what it was possible to say and do,
determined by the available media. In the present context this implies that the techno?
logical abilities of any given culture take part in determining the way in which space is
conceived.
Once again it is useful to look at the city and how this space was shaped by new
technology, because?such as it is the case with the labyrinth metaphor?the concep?
tion created by the encounter with the new technologies of the nineteenth and twentieth
century has laid the foundation for the way in which we regard the digital media to?
day. Walter Benjamin and Friedrich Kittler both approach the question of the way we
perceive and map out the city as a question of the influence of new media. Benjamin
concentrates on the way the correspondences between external experience and interior
perception became problematic because of the changed notions of time and space in
7. This point harks back to a paradigmatic shift in mathematics in the mid eighteenth centu?
ry, when the method of proof of mathematical calculations shifted from being envisaged visually
in geometric figures or so-called synthesis to being conducted as pure abstract analysis without
the need for visualization [Hankins 20].
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the industrial city, and thus places his focus on the ground with the overlooked and the
abandoned artifacts of the nineteenth century. His interest in technology is primarily

directed at media that represent the city such as the film and photography, rather than
those that bind the city together through communicative networks such as telegraph,
railway, and telephone. Kittler points to the way in which cities as such can be regarded
as networks of communication, which turns the modern city into a media-system trans-
mitting different forms of information [718]. He emphasizes how technologies and

sciences of media do not merely extend human capacities, as Benjamin stresses, but
rather work to determine their thresholds [284]. Kittler's notion of media rely on the
presumption that the concept of media can be generalized to a degree to which it can be
applied to all domains of cultural exchange. Hence all methods of processing, storage,
and transmission of data can be conceived of as media, and the changes of technol?
ogy determine the development of society as such. All technology is thus regarded as
disseminators of information, which means that the telegraph and the telephone can
be dealt with on equal terms with photography and film. By differentiating between
"communicative media" and "interpretive media," it becomes possible to reconcile the
views of Benjamin and Kittler and to approach the question of the ways technology
changes our perception of the world. "Communicative media," to put it bluntly, are
active participants in the changed notion of space and time, and thus part of making
the experience of the modern city labyrinthine from the point of view of the walker.
"Interpretive media" respond to and display the existing notions of space, but thereby
participate in the reinforcement of the dominant modes of viewing. When it comes
to the computer as a medium (and cyberspace as the space created in this medium) it
becomes apparent that the computer is simultaneously a communicative AND an interpretative medium. This means that the computer at the same time creates and represents
the type of space that can be identified as cyberspace. This will prove significant when
we return to the way in which the labyrinth motif is expressed in cyberspace.
I shall focus on a relatively narrow field of hypertext novels, because this example
provides a clearly demarcated sphere that allows for investigation into a particular text,
while also revealing the general principles of navigation in cyberspace. Most naviga?
tion in cyberspace relies on the concept of hypertext, which may be described as a non-
sequential writing that allows the reader to make choices along the way. In the beginning of the 1960s this technique was developed for manuals and educational material,
but eventually it became fundamental for the structure of the internet. Hypertext novels
organize their text entities in the same way by highlighting certain words that the reader
can choose to click on and thus move the story in multiple directions. Hence navigation
is central to operations in cyberspace, and consequently it does not seem surprising that
the labyrinth metaphor is adapted so all pervasively.
When we look at the metaphorical constellation of labyrinth and cyberspace, it

becomes clear how meaning has been transferred from "the labyrinthine modern city."
The way in which hypertext is characterized as labyrinthine is indebted to the removal
of the double perspective of the labyrinth motif that occurred when it was used to
describe the modern city, which made the labyrinth signify only the confusion from
the perspective of the streetwalker. When navigating in cyberspace we cannot create
an all-encompassing view of the entire structure for two reasons. First, regarding the
internet, the amount of information accessible necessarily makes overview impossible
and search engines providing partial views offer the only entrance. But, second, even
when we consider a relatively closed entity like a hypertext novel that comes on a
CD-ROM, it is problematic for the reader to create a survey, because the interactive
element of the experience allows for divergent experiences of the same structure every
time. This is the way cyberspace adopts the changes that the modern city caused to the
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labyrinth motif and which has caused cyberspace to be regarded as an enactment of

the rhizome structure. By tracing the intertwining of the labyrinthine modern city and
cyberspace as labyrinthine, I have pointed to a significant factor that has allowed such
people as George P. Landow and Jay David Bolter to conceptualize digital narratives
as narratives in which the reader becomes the author of his own individual tale in the
same way as in the modern city the streetwalker constructs his/her own path through
the labyrinth.8 Even though the navigator in cyberspace is deprived ofthe full overview
of the space in which he or she moves, however, the distance between the reader and
the author?the constructor and the navigator?is maintained and even reinforced in
cyberspace.
I shall focus on the example of Stuart Moulthrop's hypertext novel Victory Gar?
den,9 which today has almost acquired the status of a classic within its field. Moulthrop,
who significantly for this genre, is both an electronic fiction writer and a professor at
the School of Information Arts and Technologies at the University of Baltimore, pub?
lished it on CD-ROM in the program Story space in 1992. Victory Garden can best be
described as a virtual encyclopaedia of characters, plots, television news transcripts,
interviews, and letters. They tell the story of Emily Runbird, a graduate student who
leaves college to serve as a mail officer in the Gulf War; she narrates her experiences in
the Middle East and the lives and feelings of those back home. Emily, however, is the
main character only insofar as she links all the other characters together; from then on
it is free for the reader to deliberately choose hyperlinks that follow the story of Emily's
sister Veronica and her boyfriend Harley, the intrigues at the university, or the menage
a trois comprising Emily, Victor Gardener, and his thesis adviser Boris Urquhart. There
is no fixed ending; in some readings Emily returns home, in others she is killed by an
enemy missile that turns the text on the screen into fragments and opens for no further
links. If the reader wants to learn more about the characters, he/she will have to start a
new reading leading in different directions.
What is significant for my approach is the way the text adopts the labyrinth as a
central metaphor that occurs in the text itself but also as a metacomment to the way in
which the reader navigates the text. In the following I shall examine both ways of using
the labyrinth motif.10 At several intersections the labyrinth occurs as a leitmotif that
8. Landow and Bolter were among the first literary critics to write digital narratives. Land?
ow attempted to fuse poststructuralism with hypertext and digital literature by conceptualizing
hypertext as a laboratory in which poststructuralist theory could be tried out. Bolter appointed
digital literature the heir ofmodernism 's project of destabilizing the text. Digital narrative is thus
regarded as the media that gives the author the opportunity to break open linearity, something
that experimental literature has been striving to do from Laurence Sterne to Thomas Pynchon.
These two currents have been and are to a wide extent still dominating in internet discourse and
have contributed to making the critique utopian in scope, dealing more with the formalistic pos?
sibilities ofthe medium than the actual realities [see Blok].
9. The title echoes Borges's short story "The Garden of Forking Paths," in which time is
conceived as a bifurcating into many different realities: uyou arrive at this house, but in one of
the possible pasts you are my enemy, in another my friend" [51]. In general Borges's oeuvre
seems to have had great impact on the way in which cyberspace and the internet has been conceptualized, and may possibly be "responsible" for many of the utopias that theorists wish to
see made possible in cyberspace (such asfor instance the all-encompassing (Aleph"). A further
investigation is unfortunately beyond the scope ofthis essay.
10. Another set of connotations is likewise at work here?that is, that ofthe labyrinth as
a metaphor for narrative as such [see Faris]. Further investigation into this would allow for a
comparison of the differences between the imaginary worlds that, respectively, cyberspace and
traditional literature conjure up. I shall limit my self here to pointing to the way in which digital
narratives seem to stage a more physical sensation of the labyrinthine character of narrative,
because the reader feels more actively immersed in the creation ofthe sequence of events.
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loops the same sentence again and again with only small alterations, which nonethe?
less emphasizes the way in which small diversions change the course of narrative, both
for the reader and concerning the choices of the characters in the plot. The following
sequence can be found:
In the labyrinth
America : oftime
It allows us to click on either "America" or "time." By clicking on "time" the sentence
becomes:
In the labyrinth oftime

there : you
Choosing the word "there" we get:

In the labyrinth oftime there
always : are
Clicking on the word "are":
In the labyrinth oftime there are
always : no
Clicking on the word "no":
In the labyrinth oftime there are no
real: fictive
Clicking on the word "fictive":
In the labyrinth oftime there are no fictive
choices : victories
Clicking on "victories":
ln the labyrinth oftime there are no fictive victories walking in the garden.
From here we are directed to a longer contemplation by one of the main characters
about the significance of the Fourth of July and the Gulf War, and the story sets off
in a new direction. Choosing another word at each of these forking paths would have
led to a different modulation of the sentence above and to another point in the story.
As readers we thus get some sense of having an influence on the direction of the text,
even though we are moving within a constricted space and the number of possible
paths is determined beforehand. The choices do not stand forth as completely random,
and one very quickly reads some sort of intentionality into having to choose between
symbolically laden words as, for instance, "real" and "fictive." Most of Victory Garden
does not work on the sentence level, but with linking larger chunks of texts. I chose
this particular sequence, however, because it illustrates the hypertext principle at work
on its most basic level. Word by word we work ourselves toward a coherent sentence,
which can then be related back to the overall story itself and be interpreted. Navigation
166
has become a process of building. The framework constituted by the structure laid out
by the designer Moulthrop demarcates the limits of the reader's actions, but the fixed
walls of the traditional labyrinth have become porous. In one of Emily's letters in Victory Garden she quotes a reporter commenting on the Vietnam War that "the only kind
of position you can have ON the thing is your position IN it." This holds equally true as
a metacomment on the immediate experience of reading hypertext novels.

Nonetheless, Victory Garden does enter into the discussion of viewer versus walk?
er, survey versus confusion, by beginning every reading with a map. The first screen
reads:
IN
THE
labyrinth : beginning
and from this you are guided to a map of the different paths of the story which can
be said to plan out the cognitive space of the story. The map does not represent the
geographical place of the action; it is a symbolic representation of the structure of the
narration, which provides a conceptual framework in which such categories as "north,"
"south," and "middle garden" create a sense for the reader of having to orient him- or
herself in unexplored space. The map shows names of some of the plot threads through
which the reader can enter the text. Only a few of the vast number of text entities are
shown on the map, however, which makes intentional navigation impossible. The read?
ing process thus quickly becomes a matter of reaching the areas in the story with which
one is not already familiar, which puts the emphasis on the process of reading rather
than the plot. As we saw with regard to the labyrinthine character of the modern city,
the aim of navigation has shifted from focusing on reaching a goal to focusing on the
process of navigation itself.11 The preliminary map first and foremost illustrates that
there are limitations to the possible number of combinations because the story after all
consists of a finite series of linear narratives; it by no means attempts to give an overview of the story, however. We are situated somewhere between the maze and the rhi?
zome. Unlike the entire internet, the hypertext novel has some sort of notion of an outer
limit like in the maze. Navigation, however, is no longer directed towards a center, like
in the rhizome; it is rather the pleasure of the navigation itself which has become the
goal. What the reader is able to do is to stroll through this conceptual labyrinth much
like an invisible participant and on his/her way encounter and gain privileged access
to the thoughts and actions of the fictitious characters, but without being able to get an
overview of the volume, composition, and structure of the text. The entire upper layer
of interpretation is thus removed, because it is not possible to identify an implied author
[Booth 73] who guides the reader through the elements of the text; the reader takes on
that function himself much like the flaneur of the modern city finding his own path.
This does not imply, however, that the reader has become an author?or the navigator a constructor. The belief that interactive texts such as Victory Garden bestow
much more freedom on the reader than the book does is a claim that needs qualification. In a linear text the reader follows the sequence in which the author has laid out the
text entities; the end defines what did not happen and thus provides the possibility of
ascribing a meaning to the whole text. In a digital narrative the reader chooses his/her
11.1 am specifically talking about hypertext novels here, and I am aware that another point
could be argued for the case of computer games, of which many on an immediate level strive
toward reaching a specific goal. Even in these games, however, it can be argued that the main
attraction is the path, not the goal, which explains why the same game can be played over and
over again with equal pleasure.
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own ending, insofar as the ending is dependent on the choices made through reading,
and consequently the security immanent in reaching an end disappears. The author,
who has created the structure of the text, has consequently the overview of the text
entities but only limited influence on the movements of the reader and thus on the way
the actual narrative path is constructed. As identified above, the reader who is given
the role of the labyrinth walker makes his way through the text, often experiencing it
as unfulfilling, confusing, and without meaning. The view is limited and there is no
privileged access to a hierarchical structure of the text. In his study of digital narrative
Espen Aarseth has pointed out that in order to overcome this unsatisfactory position
the reader of digital narrative "has to become a meta-reader, mapping the network and
reading the map of his/her own reading carefully" in order to regain a sense of reader-
ship [Aarseth 93]. Instead of embracing the Erlebnis mode of experience the reader
must attempt to reinstate Erfahrung. This is a so-called ergodic process. "Ergodic" is
derived from the two Greek words ergon and hodos, which mean respectively "work"
and "path," and it describes open, dynamic texts such as digital narratives that demand
that the reader takes action (works) to create a narrative sequence by choosing the paths
by which the narration goes [Aarseth l].12 This refers to my suggestion that the reader
has to perform the process of the implied author, not that of the author.
We have returned to the distinction between viewer and walker, which the use of
the labyrinth as metaphor for describing cyberspace initiated. In order to be above the
level of the walker it is necessary to raise oneself to a level of interpretation which

takes into account the medium and the way in which it produces meaning. Only in this
way is it possible to be part of the process that creates meaning and simultaneously to
read its structure. It becomes clear that the relation between the reader and the author
is not inverted in cyberspace such as it is claimed in many poststructuralist readings of

digital narrative. And it seems possible to conclude that in the area of cyberspace dealt
with (hypertext novels), the perspective ofthe viewer, which emphasizes the order and
the artistry of the construction, resurfaces again from the exile to which it was sent in
the modern city in a new secular way. The original function of the labyrinth as a figure
of orientation is reinstated, because the necessity of the double perspective makes the
reader able to navigate within the text.
The point I raised in the beginning of this section with regard to the computer's
conflation of the communicative and representational qualities of media further reinforces this identification of a reinstatement ofthe perspective of both the viewer and the
walker?the chaos and the artistry ?in cyberspace. The computer medium is storing
vast amounts of information (the perspective of the walker), on the one hand, and on
the other it also exists as a medium that requires a metareflection on its own construc?
tion (the perspective of the viewer). This does not mean that other aesthetic media such
as the book, photography, and the film are not equally able to stage metacomments
about their own media. My argument is that the computer medium, by conflating the
communicative and the representational qualities of media and involving the observer
directly in the process, radicalizes the need for the metaposition that takes the specific
characteristics of the medium and the way it produces meaning into account and thus
reinstates the double perspective as an essential part of the navigation in this type of
space.
I have aimed to underscore my argument raised at the very beginning that, when
cyberspace is conceptualized as a labyrinth, not merely the notion of the rhizome in
72. But Aarseth also shows how this principle is already at work in an ancient Chinese
text such as I Ching or Apollinaire 's calligrams, in which there is a central dichotomy between
chance and order, which resembles that ofthe interaction between the perspective ofthe viewer
and the walker.
168
which the viewer and walker has merged is at stake, but also very much the connotations of the unicursal labyrinth and the maze are at work?though in a secular manner.
When the labyrinth is employed to describe the experience of cyberspace, it reveals

that the perspectives of the viewer and the walker coexist in cyberspace. The kind of
labyrinth we refer to when describing cyberspace as labyrinthine thus draws on a whole
range of sources, the labyrinthine modern city being the most marked, both in manner
of transition of meaning and as a point of opposition. Thus the comparison of the way
in which the labyrinth has been ascribed to the modern city and cyberspace has pointed
to the ways in which it is necessary to qualify the postmodern notion of cyberspace as
liberated from physical boundaries.

The utopian wish for cyberspace to create a parallel world in which the traditional
notion of space in geographical terms is abolished on behalf of a hope vested in the liberating effects of not being limited by space seems thus to rely on a conceptual contra?
diction.13 Even in the hypertechnological informational city, geographical place is not

rendered invalid.14 The utopian hope vested in cyberspace as promising the removal of
the economic, social, and cultural constraints of geographical space15 can be regarded
as an extension of the conception of technology as prosthesis?now to not only the hu?
man body but also the space we inhabit. The virtual and the physical worlds, however,
are very much dependent on each other and seem only to become increasingly more
so?a tendency shown by the function ofthe internet for business life. New technology
has been developed which can trace the geographic whereabouts of users of specific
homepages in order to determine a target group and streamline the interface to suit the
needs of the users. Another development, which most clearly shows the way in which
cyberspace as information space is related to geographical space, is the ability of new
mobile devices to provide online information linked to a specific place. Thus it is pos?
sible to walk down a street and get online information about the neighborhood, shops,
and other relevant sites along the way.16 This development illustrates how the percep?
tion of our surroundings has changed significantly, because space is not just what we
see before us but the amount of information available. It also points to the way in which
space and information are more closely interlinked than before. What has occurred is
thus not an abolition of space but rather an increased spatialization of information lead-
inng to a dramatic expansion of what we conceive of as space. The emergence ofthe in?
formational city and cyberspace shows the increasing importance of information space
in everyday life and space, which means that it likewise becomes necessary to make the
13. It seems ironical that this focus on the novelty and liberating possibilities of the new
medium seems to be in concordance with modernism's positive valuation ofthe ever new, which
Benjamin emphasized.
14. Urban theorist Manuel Castells defines the informational city in the following terms:
"The information age is ushering in a new urban form, the informational city [. . .] because of
the nature of the new society, based upon knowledge, organized around networks, and partly
made up of flows, the informational city is not a form but a process, a process characterized
by the structural domination of the space of flows" [398]. Castells dijferentiates between the
"space of flows" character istic of social practices in the network society and the older more
traditional?but still prevailing?realm of personal experience and culture "space of places."

Places have not disappeared, but since the virtual network of communication has become afundamental spatial structure, place and navigation are turned into modes and hubs that are linked
up. This "space of flows" is reflected in the new city structures which are characterized by being
externally connected to the rest of the world, while internally disconnecting so-called superflu-
ous or socially disruptive groups.

15. A dystopian version of this perspective can be found in the writings ofPaul Virilio. See
the essay "Dromoscopy, or the Ecstasy ofEnormities."
16. See The Economist for a presentation ofthis prospect.
diacritics
fall-winter
2003
169
theoretical conceptualization of cyberspace relate to the factual circumstances and not

address it in utopian terms. This implies examining cyberspace in terms of the way we
experience and talk about it, which is what I have attempted here.
Conclusion
The original impulse for embarking on this project was a sense of fallacy in the cause
and effect of cyberspace's spatial qualities within much discourse on information technology. No doubt the reason why we are able to understand this phenomenon (which is
essentially made up of mathematical calculations) is that the interface is made to mimic
three-dimensional space. The fallacy occurs, however, when cyberspace is infused with
redemptive and liberating qualities and conceived of as an "other" space that is cut
off from geographical space, thus "forgetting" that the experience of physical space is
what makes us able to relate to cyberspace in the first place. When objections are made
that aim at considering the significance of physical space after all, it is usually in rela?
tion to social issues. It is often pointed out, for instance, that information technology
causes a significant division between those who are online and those who are not, and
on the internet an ideological segmentation into leftists, rightists, radicals, chatters,
cyberpunks, and cyberfeminists can be identified [Frohne 205]. These points, raised as
objections rather than obvious observations, however, are only indicators of the initial
fallacy, beyond which I have aimed to go here, by tracing the layers of spatial connotations with which we conceptualize cyberspace and thus showing that cyberspace is
linked to geographical space on all levels of conceptualization. The pivotal point here
has been is the constellation of labyrinth, city, and cyberspace. By looking at the rela?
tion between the walker and the viewer, I have attempted to approach an understanding
of the qualities of what we call cyberspace in the following terms: the experience of
navigation, the technological characteristics, and the function of cyberspace as a storage space for information. This approach, however, demands in conclusion?and as a
final twist?that the position from which I myself have undertaken this study be taken
into consideration.
Let us return to the question put to Jerome McGann in Cambridge. McGann was
asked why one should bother oneself with information technology. In his answer he
changed the "why" to a "how" and thereby pinpointed the core problem of relating
to contemporary information technology. Since we encounter and handle cyberspace
every day, its familiarity makes achieving the necessary distance to deal with it as an
object of study in an academic framework problematic. Studying cyberspace proves
difficult precisely because it positions the observer on the moving ground of the pres?
ent, between the past and the future. Forcing the academic to conceptualize information
technology in the terms of previous media and simultaneously whirling him/her further
on into the future that the new information technology promises. This difficult balanc-
ing act between future and past, utopia and skepticism, must be conducted when con?
sidering contemporary media. Letting oneself succumb to the suction forward means
paying more attention to the future possibilities of utopia than to the actual stage of
invention, while attempting too hard to resist progress and insisting on understanding
new media only in terms of the old means neglecting the opportunities that the new
technology brings. Thus we are back to the question of continuity between past and
present that Gtinter Grass calls for. One way of approaching this problem is waiting
until present has become past. Another possibility is to deal with the present by look?
ing at the actuality of the past and thereby to break the simultaneity with the objects of
study and create the necessary distance that permits an interpretation of contemporary
170
phenomena. Trying to approach a contemporary phenomenon such as cyberspace highlights these difficulties. My approach has been to invoke the cognitive semanticist's
notion of spatial metaphors as the foundation of everyday life, thought, and action as
a way of "taking the bull by the horns" and handling the problem of simultaneity with
the object of study. This is the reason for exploring?with a starting point in common
usage?the way in which the labyrinth metaphor is used to conceptualize and relate to
cyberspace, an approach that embraces the simultaneity with the object of study. None?
theless, it has also been necessary to take a step back and compare the notion of space
in cyberspace with the way in which space is represented and experienced as labyrin?
thine in the historic phenomenon ofthe modern industrial city?a comparison that like-
wise points to possible reasons for the misinterpretations of cyberspace. My approach
thus mediates between the perspective of simultaneity and distance?the perspective

of the walker and the viewer. By performing this mediation of the dual perspective and
thus regarding cyberspace in cognitive semantic terms as a conceptual blend which

derives its meaning from respectively the labyrinth motif and the modern city, I have
been able to approach an understanding of how space is valued and experienced in this
contemporary realm. Although cyberspace is essentially made of abstract mathematical calculations, it is experienced as three-dimensional space, which means that the
utopian hope vested in the liberation from physical and geographical space is illusionary. Cyberspace radicalizes the necessity of the navigator to become a metareader; the
labyrinthine sensation arises in the interplay between the sense of artistry and chaos,
and anyone who wants to address the human space of contemporary information tech?
nology also has to mediate between this duality of feelings.
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The Irreducibility of Space: Labyrinths, Cities, Cyberspace

Author(s): Kristin Veel

Jerome McGann, a vehement spokesman for the cultural significance of informatio

these technologies serve. In contrast to this optimistic and affirmative attitude, we f

cally coherent realm of literature in the traditional sense. Information technology a

humanistic approach to cyberspace and information technology was to a certain exte

diacritics / fall-winter 2003 diacritics 33.3-4: 151-72 151

poststructuralist discourse, which?with a starting point in Derrida's remark "II n'y a

guage whenever cyberspace, or perhaps more precisely the experience of cyberspace,

consciousness conceives of everything that goes on around us as spatial stories, which

called image schemas, it becomes possible to comprehend nonspatial objects through

izations of cyberspace such as "network," "web," "information highway," or "shopping

discloses how its space is conceived.3

unlimited multiplicity of alternative paths. This implies that it is impossible to rise

experienced only from the inside:

3. Manfred Schmeling distinguishes between three fundamental functions ofthe labyrinth:

to confusion, as a historical development representing a secularization of the relation

derstanding of cyberspace with utopian potential. In the following sections, however,

in fact present simultaneously when we describe navigation in cyberspace as labyrin?

labyrinth metaphor. While metaphors such as "information highway" give an image of

Walker and Viewer

walker, whose vision is constricted and fragmented, is overtaken by confusion, and

notion of cyberspace, when this space is described as labyrinthine. A different notion

was conceptualized as labyrinthine at the time of its emergence. An examination ofthe

game that accompanied the founding of a city. It consisted of a public ceremony in

analysis of the meaning conveyed, there arose confusedly and paradoxically

ded in that space.

the modern city, aesthetically as in Poe or theoretically as in Benjamin and Certeau,

distorted. The significant occurrence in this (city)space is a disappointment of the goal-

has become suspect as a mode of representation. This transformation becomes central

poststructuralist conception of cyberspace and hypertext as an utopia liberated from

abandoned artifacts of the nineteenth century. His interest in technology is primarily

mitting different forms of information [718]. He emphasizes how technologies and

the labyrinth metaphor is adapted so all pervasively.

When we look at the metaphorical constellation of labyrinth and cyberspace, it

labyrinth motif and which has caused cyberspace to be regarded as an enactment of

In the labyrinth oftime

Choosing the word "there" we get:

a metacomment on the immediate experience of reading hypertext novels.

level of the walker it is necessary to raise oneself to a level of interpretation which

is not inverted in cyberspace such as it is claimed in many poststructuralist readings of

When the labyrinth is employed to describe the experience of cyberspace, it reveals

liberated from physical boundaries.

diction.13 Even in the hypertechnological informational city, geographical place is not

traditional?but still prevailing?realm of personal experience and culture "space of places."

ous or socially disruptive groups.

theoretical conceptualization of cyberspace relate to the factual circumstances and not

wise points to possible reasons for the misinterpretations of cyberspace. My approach

thus mediates between the perspective of simultaneity and distance?the perspective

thus regarding cyberspace in cognitive semantic terms as a conceptual blend which

Aarseth, Espen J. Cybertext?Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: J

Main: Suhrkamp, 1974-85.

Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken, 1968. 155-200.

Blok, Rasmus. "Fortaelling og litteratur i en digital aera [Narrative and literature in

Frohne, Ursula. "Re-mapping the Virtual World?Utopian Construction versus Power

on Space and Science. Graz: Neue Galerie, 2000.

Spaces, Urban Places. London: Routledge, 1996.

Jay, Martin. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French

Thought. Los Angeles: U of California P, 1994.