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 (
http://bumppo.hartwick.edu/Oulipo/Mathews.php)
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 (
http://bumppo.hartwick.edu/Oulipo/Matrix.html). 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.