Remediating Scriptures: HTML as a Culture of Canon

Abstract

The article signifies the programming language HTML as a way to theorize about the politics inflected in scriptural engagement, which Vincent L. Wimbush refers to as “scripturalectics.” Rather than fetishizing digital technologies as of an altogether different (or as is more often the case, lesser) order, the critical student of scriptures should think comparatively about the genealogical trajectories that inform the Internet and World Wide Web, especially in its most social forms. Beyond being a computer code, the notions of “hypertext,” “markup,” and “language” (abbreviated in HTML) reflect a socio-political architecture that not only govern the canon culture of which the blog and social media are a part, but illumine the anthropological potentialities of scriptures, leaving us to ask how scriptures constitute the human differently. Furthermore, in recognizing the cultural possibilities remediated in forms such as community directories (cf. Facebook) and the printing press (cf. WordPress), we can more fully consider the work people are doing with these digital tools and others.