Reading hypertextuality: a critical reading of Dictionary of the Khazars (1984)

Abstract

ABSTRACT The discursive imaginings around reading and writing have undergone radical changes in recent decades. Hypertextuality is one such concept that came to inhabit the new topos of literariness. However, hypertextuality has been conceived as inextricably bound to digital technology, not accounting for the new iterations of intertextuality, non-linearity and multivocality offered by print proto hypertexts. Print proto-hypertexts have proven that it is possible to tinker with the narrative’s logical, spatial and temporal organisation with ingenuity and without being rendered incomprehensible. Milorad Pavić’s Dictionary of the Khazars (1984) is a brilliant example of a print hypertext. Self-reflective on its hypertextuality and corporeality, the novel, in a way, also actualised the post-structural conceptualisation of an “open” text that is not circumscribed by the medium. This article uses Barthesian conceptualisation of writerly and readerly texts to argue that the print hypertexts presaged and even surpassed the digital reimaginings of textuality.