Deconstruction and Heteroglossia Working Together

Bakhtin defines heteroglossia as “another’s speech in another’s language” (Bakhtin, 324). The relation to “Public Secrets” acts on a series of levels. First, Sharon Daniels acts as the author in the piece and even, in some cases, as the narrator. However, most of the project reflects the people she interviewed because it is those people who tell the stories that make up the central aspects of the project. Along those same lines, Daniels imitates to an extent the reality of the “Public Secret” of the prison system by illustrating the duality and co-dependence of the inside and outside, which seems very Derridian to me (once the relationship is realized, it falls apart and there is no longer “us” and “them”). Daniels also creates a frame for the reader/listener/observer that forces them to be interested. This is not an essay, but borrows the intellectual terms of knowledge generation from the institution from which it was gathered by forcing the observer to search for the aspects of “Public Secrets” which have been hidden in plain view. This, of course, is taking Bakhtin’s theory of heteroglots and applying it to an action of interpretation, rather than what it originally seems to be meant for, which is primarily linguistic “double-voicing” (Bakhtin, 325).

What makes this useful for the interpretation of Daniel’s hypertext is that she purposely has constructed the hypertext in a way that represents the different voices and uses these different voices to create a larger utterance that she, the author, has framed. They appear to be voices in and of themselves, but function through the direct lens of the author, who only appears when one has to switch from one block to the next. Essentially, the author-voice is dissolved into two things: the framing of the project and the voice of its parts. When an author and speaker dissolve into one another, they become an example of heteroglossia.

W.J.T. Mitchell’s article on metapictures is also very appropriate, especially for the opening scene of the project which is narrated by Daniels. The picture itself morphs and changes, completely upsetting any conventional idea about the “inside” against the “outside,” which is exactly what Mitchell claims happens in the “New World” drawing of a man drawing a spiral around himself. Daniels creates a black/white picture that changes so frequently and switches erratically which “dissolves the boundary between inside and outside…” (Mitchell, 42). This is essential for the interpretation, because in framing the duality of “us” and “them” or “inside” and “outside,” Daniels shows how the relationship is codependent, and thus any hierarchical representation deconstructs in a very Derridian way. And if “us” and “them” are equal, that then presents the question: why are we treating “them” like we are?