The post-structural arguments about the "death of the author" and the parallel inclusion of authors in texts as speaking voices (sometimes as many speaking voices) is, as Gregory Ulmer has maintained, one of the essential ingredients to hypertext creation.

We have already noted one overall characteristic of production: from products, be they objects or spaces, all traces of productive activity are so far as possible erased.... The fact is that this erasure facilitates the procedure whereby the worker is deprived of the product of his labour.... the concealment of the productive labour that goes into the product has one significant implication: social space is not coextensive with the space of social labour. (Lefebvre 212)

So would inclusions of the productive voice, the worker, the producer of the space, disrupt the commodification of space? Why is it so hard to find the author of Amazon.com's web site?

   

Copyright © Brendan Riley 2002