An essay version of Kolb's argument can be found in Landow's Hyper/Text/Theory. Kolb, Professor of Philosophy at Bates College, attempts the dual tasks of simultaneously articulating and demonstrating how argument can be presented in hypertext. The software package includes a "book-length" argument and four shorter essays. The central piece in this collection, "Socrates in the Labyrinth," rebuts the standard notion that linearity is central to argument; in it readers using the Storyspace software can follow a variety of paths, none of which will present the entirety of the essay- text, each of which offers rhetorical evidence for Kolb's thesis. Readers may wish to consult the available map and chart views in the software program for a visual construction of argument paths. Kolb argues that despite the necessary unidirectionality of the syllogism, the supposed linearity on which argumentative rhetoric in general presumably relies is a fiction, that dialogic and nomadic forms are both inherent to argument and amenable to hypertext. In posing new models for argumentative hypertext, "Socrates" weaves a rhetorical web that is at once multimodal and polyvocalic. Four shorter essays--"Earth Orbit," "The Habermas Pyramid," "Aristotle's Argument," and "Cleavings"--present brief arguments. Each experiments with a particular rhetorical form: nomadic, pyramidal, syllogistic, and annotated. Readers new to Storyspace may find navigation of the main essay frustrating. Furthermore, its hardware requirements (the Windows version can overwhelm a 486 with four megabytes of RAM) and price ($49.95) may limit the pool of prospective readers. Consequently, some readers may wish instead to consult the essay version that has been anthologized in George Landow's collection Hyper/Text/Theory--a version that, interestingly, cannot advance the same set of claims with the same degree of authority that the hypertext version can, a phenomenon that would seem to underscore the point Kolb wishes us to understand. (J Paul Johnson.)
Return to Electronic Text: Selective Annotated Bibliography.
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Michael Hancher

Department of English, University of Minnesota

URL: http://umn.edu/home/mh/ebibjpj5.html

Comments to: mh@umn.edu

Created 29 April 1995

Last revised 17 September 1996