The notion of intertext adds to Devitt's understanding of intertextuality the idea
that within a genre system one can distinguish different sub-systems that make
sense to each sub-group of participants in a text-mediated interaction. Christensen
is arguing that not only does each party have its own set of genres, but also its own
situationally-defined sub-system that includes some of the genres from the genre
sets of the other participants in the work interaction. However, not every
combination is possible, since the genres in a system have affordances, that is, they
allow for the establishment of some kinds of intertext and not others, thus
encouraging certain kinds of regularities or routines.
In his analysis, Christensen offers another three-way typology of intertextuality.
Unlike Devitt's taxonomy, which classifies kinds of intertextuality, Christensen's
focuses on ways in which intertextuality can be achieved. He distinguishes between
"complementary intertextuality" (when intertextuality is achieved by design,
creating forms or documents that complement one another in the information they
capture and/or their functionality), "mediated intertextuality" (when intertextual
meaning is achieved by means of a third kind of text, such as references to regulatory
or legal texts), and "intratextuality" (when the connection is made by juxtaposition
or superposition of texts; for instance, by affixing the same identifying label to a
series of different forms).
One may argue that these scholars who are using and expanding the views of genres
and intertextuality are actually trying to capture the contingency and situationality
of practice. In contrast with the traditional archival science's view of the record and
its context as fixed and frozen in a moment in time, scholars who adhere to RGS
consider genres as "stabilized for now," and regard this imperfect stabilization as
depending on the situation and the participants involved. In fact, they have started
to delve not only into how genres get combined, recombined, and changed, but also
into how they may get combined and recombined so as not to change. They also look
at the document as having an in-built portable context or portable place "which
helps the reader locate the meaning and the spatio-temporal order out of which it
emerges" (0sterlund, 2008, p. 201). That is, the very physicality of the specific time
and space in which a document works is yet another element that supports the
notion of the inseparability of document and context.
In order to illustrate how some of these ideas may work within a specific archival
environment (as opposed to the contemporary organizational environments in
which most genre analyses and genre-infused ethnographic work are conducted), let
us summarize a case that one of the authors examined in more detail elsewhere
(Ilerbaig, forthcoming).3 The case study analyzes the genres used by Charles Darwin
during his years of fieldwork aboard HMS Beagle and the years immediately
following his trip, during which time he prepared his descriptive work on his
collections and developed his first versions of his evolutionary theory.
During the 5-year-long voyage of the Beagle around the world, when Darwin was
allowed to spend some time on land, his fieldwork consisted of two main activities.
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He would observe and write down his observations in a series of small field
notebooks he carried with him at all times, and he would collect a variety of animal
and plant species, using diverse means, depending on the nature of the organism.
Irrespective of the kind of organism, he would immediately affix to it a label with a
number. As to the field notes, they constituted the first genre of his field set, the
starting point of all the other scientific writing he would do. These notes tended to
be extremely brief descriptions of a situation, a behavior, or an environment related
to the organisms he collected; they were rarely in sentence form, more often just a
few words that would later serve as a reminder of the whole situation, and that often
would make little sense to anybody else.
At the end of a day or a few days spent collecting, Darwin would sit down and open
his catalogue or specimen notebook, in which he would sequentially record the
number from each label next to a name (family, genus, or species) or, more often,
brief descriptions of the specimen including the sex, perhaps the locality. He would
then use his field notes to bring to memory the events of the day and elaborate on
them in a narrative fashion, in a separate notebook. This, his scientific diary, is cross-
referenced with the catalogue via the specimen numbers. In parallel, Darwin keeps a
personal diary in which he writes an account of events that in most cases are not
strictly scientific. He distinguishes this one from the scientific diary by noting that it
contains "not a record of facts but of my thoughts" (Darwin, 1832).
Because Darwin is at the time more an apprentice than a full-fledged naturalist, his
collecting activities are oriented towards providing scientific materials for the
specialists working in the scientific societies and museums back in Britain. He needs
to organize his notes so they can be of use to those specialists, and this is a task he
carries out in the long periods when the Beagle is at sea, between continents, or
between the continent and an island or group of islands. This task consists in
bringing out the collections, sorting them out, rearranging the master catalogues
and notes, and splitting them into separate lists and separate sets of notes along
taxonomic lines. Unlike all the other genres in this field set, written for Darwin's
own eyes, these taxonomically-arranged lists and taxonomically-arranged notes are
intended for the London specialists.
At the end of the voyage, Darwin will spend months, even years, interacting with
those specialists, writing scientific descriptions of the different organisms for
publication. Correspondence with a number of parties will ensue. Specialists, for
instance, will inform him of problems and decisions. Darwin will also prod other
members of the expedition, trying to collect information that he has not kept (for
instance, on the location where some specimens were collected), and they will
respond. In some cases, a single note contains Darwin's question, the response (for
instance, by Capt. Fitzroy), and Darwin's own notes affixed to the response.
Darwin will also use scientific publications from other naturalists, trying to complete
his scant knowledge of some areas of the science. The result of this process will be
the completion of two kinds of works. The scientific monographs, based on the
materials he collected and collated in the different texts mentioned above, and
dealing with the fauna and flora of the areas visited by Darwin, will be co-authored
with the specialists. The other work, the one that will make him famous around the
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archives in liquid times
3 Please note that this is a very abridged version of the case study and that a few of the elements of the case
have been hypothesized, so the case can illustrate all of the aspects of intertextuality described here.
All the materials mentioned here can be accessed through the Darwin Online project (http://darwin-online.
org.uk/).
fiorella foscarini and juan ilerbaig intertextuality in the archives
