The pleasure of the hypertext

Abstract

In this paper I examine the relation between textualism and eroticism and how this relation evolves in the digital age. The point of departure is Roland Barthes’ works on the notion of text and especially The pleasure of the text (1973), where we find enough evidence that the attitude of the French semiologist is of fetishistic character with explicit erotic connotations. Such attitude is quite representative for the whole epoch of both structuralism and post-structuralism. The age of the hypertext (and the internet in general) changes the textualists’ culture in new forms of intertextual exchange where the pleasure itself becomes object of communicative exchange. The eroticism of the hypertext is more explicit compared to the text and it is getting a myriad of forms, difficult to be put in a general model. The last chapter examines the consequences of the hypertextual reality for the educational institutions and their role in the digitalized societies.