In Hypertext, is the Author Invisible?

As I read Landow’s “Hypertext and Critical Theory” and Deleuze and Guattari’s “Introduction: Rhizome,” I couldn’t help but understand hypertext and the rhizome as a method of individualism. All three theorists make it very clear that hypertexts and the rhizome are about the reader, the individual. However, it is obvious that hypertexts and rhizomes are not authorless. Yet, the author is barely mentioned within these texts. For Landow, Deleuze and Guattari, what is the author’s role in a medium where the reader is argued to be the source of a text’s multiplicity?

 Deleuze and Guattari say that rhizomes have multiplicity, and that multiplicity comes from the personal experiences, knowledge, and history a reader brings to the text (Deleuze and Guattari 8).  Landow makes a similar point in stating that hypertext is a system in “whose provisional point of focus depends upon the reader, who becomes a truly active reader in yet another sense” (Landow 36).  Basically, as a reader, one brings to the table a multitude of experiences and personal traits that would inevitably influence the way one would read and center information in a text. What these theorists think in common is that each person who interacts with a hypertext or a rhizome will follow a different path and thought process as they read, and that that is the beauty of the hypertext/rhizome model. One is free to interpret and understand a text exactly how they would wish without feeling confined to a particular hierarchy.

This personal approach seems to resonate with what we strive for today as a very self-aware generation. As a group, we love anything customizable and personalized.  While I appreciate and understand the allure of a text without rules, if you will, I find myself questioning the role of the author. While there definitely is an author for both rhizomes and hypertexts, I find myself either misunderstanding or simply questioning how the author is perceived according to Landow, Deleuze and Guattari. All three theorists mention authors briefly, but the focus is so consistently centered around the reader.

Landow quotes Heinz Pagel, who says, “There is no central executive authority that oversees the system,” with regard to hypertext (Landow 44). To me, this almost entirely denounces the author. If the author has no authority over their text and how their audience interprets that text, then what, if anything, does the author have control over? Deleuze and Guattari state that books exist only through the outside and on the outside (Deleuze and Guattari 4). Again, for me this insinuates how little the author really has to do with how their work is interpreted. Are we to think that in a hyper mediated world, the author is gradually becoming less and less imperative?

In a more positive light, it could be that hypertexts are making writing a more accessible venture. By that I mean that maybe hypertext and the rhizome prove that you don’t have to be a famous rhetorician or novelist to write something capable of engaging an audience or creating an experience. Maybe the point isn’t that the author doesn’t matter, per se, but that the name of the author doesn’t matter. That it isn’t about the tropes that accompany a particular author’s name but about the experiences of individuals that give a text real meaning.