The associational nature of hypertext plays out Mikhail Bakhtin's theories of dialogism and heteroglossia.  The constant interaction between meanings, words, and links in hypertext, as well as its presence as part of a greater narrative (the World Wide Web) are dialogic qualities.  The associational logic which governs many of the links in hypertext literature signals the importance of context over text, and also demonstrates that utterances, or phrases/words in the text, have different meanings depending on the order of words and links surrounding them.  For example,in Fisher's text,  the passage on  the film The Lovers takes on a new meaning when paired with the account of a sexual exchange with an older man in a cinema.

                 In S/Z Barthes puts forward the notion of a writerly text that is a network or galaxy of signifiers, not simply a structure of signifieds.  It "has no beginnings; it is reversible". (5).  A parallel can be made between Chan's
The Future Must Be Sweet - after Charles Fourier font and narrative hypertexts like Fisher's in it's associational structure of logic.  Each letter is a constellation of ideas centred around one theme, and so it is with most linked words in a hypertext: the link leads you in a direction that is not necessarily linear, but is linked through memory, experience, or geography.  Hypertext pieces like Kate Armstrong's Harsh and Point  also make use of this associational logic, leading the wreader through organic handwritten calligraphy, or magnified drawings and text to create a mental environment.
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