Reading Potential: The Oulipo and the Meaning of Algorithms

Mark Wolff

wolffm0@hartwick.edu

Hartwick College


Recent efforts to reconceptualize text analysis with 
computers in order to broaden the appeal of humanities 
computing have invoked the example of the Oulipo, a group of 
writers in France that invent potential ways to create 
literature using rigorous formal constraints.  Rejecting the 
practice of using computers as tools for objective, empirical 
research with texts, Stephen Ramsay envisions an algorithmic 
criticism that transforms texts for "the purpose of releasing what the Oulipians would call their 'potentialities'" (Ramsay 172).
Stéfan Sinclair has developed HyperPo as a web-based tool for 
helping scholars read and play with texts using procedures 
inspired by the Oulipo. The idea of playing with texts using 
computers is pursued further by Geoffrey Rockwell who calls 
for the creation of web-based playpens where scholars can 
experiment with tools and discover the potentialities 
inherent in the practice of humanities computing.

Although there are similarities between the activities of the 
Oulipo and the new approach to computer-assisted literary 
analysis, the development of tools for the express purpose of 
encouraging scholars outside of humanities computing to play 
with texts does not follow the model of Oulipian research 
into potentialities. For the Oulipo, the invention of 
procedures for playing with texts is not necessarily a means 
to greater engagement with literature: it is its own end, an 
intellectual activity that invites application but does not 
require adoption by others as an indication of success.  
According to Raymond Queneau, one of the founding members of 
the Oulipo and author of the Cent mille milliards de poèmes, 
"The word 'potential' concerns the very nature of literature;  
that is, fundamentally it's less a question of literature 
strictly speaking than of supplying forms for the good use 
one can make of literature.  We call potential literature the 
search for new forms and structures that may be used by writers in any way they see fit." (Oulipo 1986, 38)  
Queneau makes it clear that what the Oulipo does relates to 
but does not constitute literary creation. Writing is a 
derivative activity: the Oulipo pursue what we might call 
speculative or theoretical literature and leave the 
application of the constraints to practitioners who may (or 
may not) find their procedures useful. According to François 
Le Lionnais, another founding member, a method for writing 
literature need not produce an actual text: "method is 
sufficient in and of itself. There are methods without 
textual examples. An example is an additional pleasure for 
the author and the reader" (Bens 81, my translation).

The Oulipo did not articulate a clear statement explaining 
potential methods for reading literature, but we can 
extrapolate a definition from how they described their 
efforts to invent methods for writing literature. Potential 
text analysis is less a question of interpreting literature 
than of supplying algorithms for the good use one can make of 
reading.  Producing exemplary interpretations with algorithms 
is a secondary consideration. It follows that the 
interpretation of texts using a computer should not be in and 
of itself the objective of the new computer-assisted text 
analysis. The objective should be the invention of 
algorithms that scholars may (or may not) use, according to 
their own interests.  The potentiality (as opposed to the 
reality) of computers as tools for text analysis implies that 
scholars engaged in the derivative activity of interpreting 
literature may not find such methods useful.

When the Oulipo formed in 1960, one of the first things they 
discussed was using computers to read and write literature.  
They communicated regularly with Dmitri Starynkevitch, a 
computer programmer who helped develop the IBM SEA CAB 500 
computer. The relatively small size and low cost of the SEA 
CAB 500 along with its high-level programming language PAF 
(Programmation Automatique des Formules) provided the Oulipo 
with a precursor to the personal computer. Starynkevitch 
presented the Oulipo with an "imaginary" telephone directory 
composed of realistic names and numbers generated by his 
computer. He also programmed the machine to compose sonnets 
from Queneau'sCent mille milliards de poèmes. In both cases 
the Oulipo was impressed but did not believe these computer 
applications had potential.  What worried the Oulipo was 
the aleatory nature of computer-assisted artistic creation:  
they sought to avoid chance and automatisms over which the 
computer user had no control (Bens 147-148). In 1981 
the Oulipo published Atlas de littérature potential where 
they described some of the computer applications they devised 
for reading literature. Their early experiments included 
machine-assisted readings of the Cent mille milliards de 
poèmes and Queneau's Un conte à votre façon. The algorithms 
used to read these texts provided a certain degree of 
interaction between the user and the machine but did not 
reveal unforeseen potentialities. Some members of the Oulipo 
   formed ARTA (Atelier de Recherches et Techniques Avancées) 
   and ALAMO (Atelier de Littérature Assistée par la 
Mathématique et les Ordinateurs) to explore computer-assisted 
writing, but the Oulipo itself has not further pursued 
methods for reading texts with machines.

This is not to say the Oulipo abandoned the idea of 
potentialities in reading.  There are at least two examples 
of original algorithms developed by Oulipians for reading 
texts. The first is Harry Mathews's Algorithm, which 
consists of combinatoric operations over a set of 
structurally similar but thematically heterogeneous texts.  
These operations generalize the structure of the Cent mille 
milliards de poèmes and allow for the production of new 
texts. Mathews notes that the algorithm works not only with 
letters, words and phrases but with entire works, entire 
oeuvres, entire literatures, entire worlds. Creating a computer 
program based on this algorithm () 
is relatively simple, but 
its interest does not lie in its application.  According to 
Mathews, the aim of the algorithm "is not to liberate 
potentiality but to coerce it" (Oulipo 1986, 139). A 
new reading of a text (or a reading of a new text) 
through the algorithm is not the objective. The use of the 
algorithm is meaningful in that the apparent unity of texts 
can be dismantled by the algorithm and give way to a 
multiplicity of meanings. Mathews invented a system of 
constraints that illustrates what deconstructionists have 
maintained for decades.

The second example is Raymond Queneau's matrix analysis of 
language, published in Etudes de linguistique appliquée and 
discussed at length during one of the Oulipo's early 
gatherings. Using principles of linear algebra, Queneau 
devised a mathematics of the French language that could 
describe the structure of texts and provide statistical 
"indices of an author's style that may be interesting, for 
they escape the conscious control of the writer and doubtless 
depend on several hidden parameters" (Queneau 319, my 
translation).  Queneau himself provided analyses of a number 
of short sample texts. His ability to apply the algorithm to 
lengthy texts was limited, however, because he did his 
calculations by hand: he did not use a computer. With the 
availability of part-of-speech taggers such as Helmut 
Schmid's TreeTagger, it is easy to use a 
computer to perform a matrix analysis of any text written in 
French (). Matrix analysis may prove useful for authorship
attribution in combination with other techniques, such as the use
of Markov chains proposed by Khmelev and Tweedie. Queneau,
however, expressed greater interest in the algorithm's
mathematical properties: he proved several theorems on the
behavior of matrices and identitified similarities between them
and the Fibonacci series. The members of the Oulipo were
intrigued by matrix analysis but looked forward to the creation
of poems written in columns and rows rather than the
transformation of existing poems into matrices (Bens 236-237).

Mathews and Queneau offer two algorithms we can 
operationalize with computers for literary analysis, but the 
interest of the algorithms lies not in what they help us see 
in a given text but in the way they invite us to play 
rigorously for play's sake. Oulipian constraints on reading 
are better understood as toys with no intended purpose rather 
than as tools we use with some objective in mind. These 
procedures for making sense of texts provide for their own 
interpretation: they are not instruments for meaning but 
reflections on meaning itself.



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