from Peter Cosgrove*, "Undermining the Text," page 148:"The footnote . . . maintains . . . a double existence. It stands outside the text to impart information, but it enters the text to interfere with its narrative function."
from Ralph Hanna III*, "Annotation as Social Practice," pages 181-82:"The rhetorical forms of annotation exist and . . . they are fictive. The forms are precisely the warrant to the reader that I have not overstepped the bounds of annotatorhood, have provided a mediating service. But my act of filling the forms, of course, is quite otherwise. If I've done well, I have produced a single successful reader and her [sic] reading of the poem (however tacit this remains in the rhetorical forms of annotation): in effect, rather than serving a community, I have articulated it, created it. In this way, the forms of annotation speak what is not: they exist deliberately to obscure the aggressive act of controlling audience consumption of the text. If my annotation is successful, I have put at least temporary limits on the arena in which community conversation can proceed. The rhetorical rules of annotation exist to obscure this antisocial (yet society-enabling) behavior.
The rules also obscure another aggressiveness—toward my author. . . As annotator, I am always enveloping my author, always in the act of invading him [sic], of delimiting his possible meaning and relevance."
from Traugott Lawler*, "Medieval Annotation," page 97:"Perhaps the central question to ask, before we start annotating a text, is whether the text itself embodies an attitude to annotation."
from Jacques Derrida*, "This Is Not an Oral Footnote," pages 202-3:Secondary discourses (commentary, interpretation, exegesis,, etc.) "can only respond; they cannot speak first. They are discourses of 'respondents.' Before them, in front of them, there has been and there will be an originary text or speech act. The original is the law. It is a text that, because in principle (for it is the "principal," the first, en archê) it is nonsecondary, suffices to itself, is independent and self-sufficient in its structure. It is 'unannotatable' . . . Structurally, it does without any secondary text and constitutes by itself its own commentary.
Yet we see how this law text, which makes the law, produces at the same time a double bind: it says to the reader or auditor, 'Be quiet, all has been said, you have nothing to say, obey in silence,' while at the same time it implores, it cries out, it says, 'Read me and respond: if you want to read me and hear me, you must understand me, know me, interpret me, translate me, and hence, in responding to me and speaking to me, you must begin to speak in my place, to enter into a rivalry with me.' The more a text is 'unannotatable,' the more it generates and cries out for annotation: this is the paradox and the double bind. An infinitely 'unannotatable' text provides infinite annotation. In this way the order says, 'Read me, be satisfied with reading me, I am here in front of you'; yet it also says, 'If you want to read me, you must write, you must do something other than reading.'"
The relations between a footnote – an expository addendum to the text, an annotation, a reference – and the text to which it is a note are fascinating and complex. Annotations can seem to exist at a level of fact, but Martin Battestin* lists three variables that always affect annotation: the assumed audience, the nature of the text being annotated, and the nature of the annotator. Traugott Lawler* emphasizes the second variable, the text being annotated and its presumed attitude towards annotation.
Several critics have attempted to describe this complex relationship. For example, Peter Cosgrove* remarks that a footnote leads a "double existence," both outside and inside the text. John Lavagnino* considers ways in which this double existence can be seen in terms of conflict: the text vs. the commentary or the commentary (as supposedly objective "fact") vs. the more valued act of criticism. Less neutrally, Ralph Hanna* characterizes annotation in terms of power and aggression both towards the author and towards the presumed audience.
Jacques Derrida* captures these paradoxes neatly when he describes the "double bind" of annotation: the text says to read it in silence but also at the same time cries out for response from the reader. This response often appears in the form of commentary and annotation in footnotes.
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Footnotes' Relations to Their Texts
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Sections
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