Madrid Tennant
February 9, 1999
Siggraph 2000
Arts and Culture
Essay Submission

 

A Hypermedia Wickedary: Feminist Adventures in the Web

As a scholar and an activist, Mary Daly has always been on the forefront of feminist theory. Not surprisingly, she took the step into hyper-communication without necessarily being aware of the implications. Her 1987 parody of patriarchal dictionaries, the Websters’ First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language (Wickedary), is a document written in hypertext. It may be confined to the printed page, but with its bits of information cross-referenced, coded and annotated, its text occupies an intellectual space rather than a flat page. It clearly fits the definition given to hypertext by Theodor Holm Nelson, the inventor of the term. When he discusses hypertext, and by extension hypermedia, he simply means "non-sequential writing — text that branches and allows choices to the reader." (Nelson, 1992) This definition and the Wickedary’s relationship to it are crucial to the understanding of its visionary nature.

With the Wickedary, Mary Daly positions herself among writers who have rejected the confines of the linear argument (or narrative) and the printed page. The Wickedary allows the reader to freely navigate terms and concepts from her other books. She gives the readers connections to follow at their discretion and gives them notes that expand her text into other writers’ works, making connections to the larger feminist community and an intellectual heritage. This step into hyper-space, while unfulfilled in the digital sense, fulfills her own demand for "Weaving" by "Websters," "Lusty Leaping," "Journeying" and occupying the "Otherworld." The Wickedary is a hypertext document, and therefore, an analysis in terms of current hypertext theories can only serve to illuminate its meaning, even beyond the author’s intention.

In this age of digital communication much has been written about the impact of this new form of media and industry. Hypermedia’s increasing accessibility can change the "shape" of ideas and discourse. The translation of Mary Daly’s Wickedary into digital hypermedia not only fulfills the Wickedary’s potential, but also enriches the landscape of readily available knowledge in the electronic matrix with Daly’s feminist perspective. The proliferation of hypermedia will create a different type of reading, writing and rhetoric, creating the philosophical space that Mary Daly imposed on the book format with her print version of the Wickedary.

The culmination of this essay is a hypermedia/hypertext version of the Wickedary. The Wickedary will be the object of my investigations, because it lends itself to a faithful transformation into hypertext. With the Wickedary, the process of hypertextualizing enhances features that she has already built into the text. Making her cross-references into hyperlinks, using visual elements to indicate the categories that Mary Daly has already assigned and making the dictionary format searchable are all steps in creating a usable, friendly and fun version of the Wickedary. These modifications enhance the usability of the text and emphasize its anti-linear style of presentation without transforming the content in a substantive way. Instead, it changes the text in a radical way. Mary Daly’s style has progressively departed from the academic essay since The Church and the Second Sex. The reader’s experience of her metaphors is more powerful in illuminating her philosophy than the academic architecture that she uses to present them. These steps will demonstrate how the Wickedary needs hypermedia, and how hypermedia needs the Wickedary.

Daly uses a variety of intellectual processes that have informed later feminists. Her use of metaphor and etymology arm contemporary feminists with powerful tools to dismantle the cultural assumptions that codify the oppression of women. Cyberfeminists such as Donna Haraway and S. Paige Baty have benefited from this legacy of inquiry. They also could only benefit from a continued association with their intellectual heritage. The hypermedia version of the Wickedary acts as a bridge between adversaries who should be compatriots.

Women’s experience of the Internet and the challenge brought by Haraway’s cyborg metaphor add a new dimension to Daly’s concept of "Verb-Goddess." The Verb-Goddess in Daly’s words is "Metaphor for Ultimate/Intimate Reality, the constantly Unfolding Verb of Verbs in which all be-ing participates; Metaphor of Metabeing."(Daly 1988, 76) Women are experiencing a shifting of their realities and knowledge to an integration of technological prostheses. Haraway’s claims about a cyborg existence have never been more urgent than when a substantial portion of the culture’s knowledge is housed in networked documents over the Web. Her claims about the intermingling of flesh and technology, especially with the broadening of popularity of the Internet, have never seemed so urgent and paradoxically comforting. Haraway asserts that not only should the meshing of identity with technology not be feared, but it should be embraced as a source of power.

Daly and Haraway are intimately related in their use of metaphor. They are both battling for ontological understanding. They both describe larger arguments and assertions using singular terms for women’s condition: Haraway’s cyborg and Daly’s "Verb Goddess." Haraway inherits the battle for an accurate pragmatic approach to women’s being that Daly took up against patriarchal religion. Whether Haraway agrees with Daly’s religious interpretation or Daly appreciates the integration of technology with identity, Haraway and Daly share a conceptual space. Thinking of their terms and metaphors in a hypertextual space together, they do not seem so incompatible.

Another of Daly’s most compelling methods is the interpretation of radical etymology. The process of investigating the history of a word’s meanings reveals interesting connections in meanings. Patching these new/old meanings together into a larger worldview has been one of the print Wickedary’s functions.

S. Paige Baty uses this process to reveal the origins of the word ‘matrix." This etymology is useful, because it not only uses the process that is familiar to Daly’s own work, but also reveals a very interesting legacy for "matrix." Understanding the matrix in Baty’s terms returns the power of the medium to women’s control and understanding. For Daly, Baty is "Dis-covering: …finding the treasures of women’s Memory, Knowledge, History that have been buried by the grave diggers of patriarchal re-search."(Daly 1988,118) Baty and Daly both use etymology to reveal new understandings of feminist realities.

The matrix, in its current use, describes the Internet and its various connections between documents, data, and people. However, according to Baty, the matrix derives from the "late Latin meaning womb, in older Latin pregnant animal, female animal used for breeding; app.f. mater mother, by change of the ending into the suffix of fem. agent-nouns. Cf. matrice." (Baty 1999) This root reveals a different interpretation of the Internet and its relationship to women. It is not merely the tool of the "Dissociated State: …patriarchy, the state of separation from Biophilic purposefulness."(Daly 1988,194) The hope for the matrix is to be a source of creation and connection, itself a possible source of Biophilic purposefulness.

In Haraway’s cyborg world, a world in which bodies are fluid and boundaries are blurred, the matrix emerges as an appendage, a second womb for women, albeit an exploited womb, that needs presence and power apart from what Daly would call the "Sado-society," i.e. patriarchal culture. Daly might interpret such a "womb" an abomination or an appropriation of women’s power, but one may also understand the matrix as another" illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism" like the cyborg. In Haraway’s terms, these "illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins."(Haraway 1991,151) Haraway uses a literary phenomenon in order to understand a new way to conceptualize political and material conditions of women. While Haraway does not mention the Internet in her analysis, she provides useful terms with which to understand the way in which we cannot and should not separate ourselves from our tools, especially ones that represent feminine powers. Adding the Wickedary to the Matrix (the Internet) helps to preserve its potential as a life-affirming phenomenon by accounting for the heritage of feminist thought.

Hypertext theorists provide ample analysis of issues of narrative space and philosophical territories. They provide a vocabulary and metaphors to explain the potential of hypertext. This vocabulary helps to connect the seemingly disparate elements that are brought into play here: feminist metaphysics, socialist feminism, mass media and philosophical discourse.

In "Socrates in the Labyrinth," David Kolb investigates the impact of hypertext on philosophical rhetoric. He begins by differentiating the traditional function of hypertext from the more experimental. The traditional forms would "be multilinear but would remain organized around the familiar philosophical forms of linear argument," such as making claims, giving backing, contesting claims, raising questions, and stating alternatives.(Kolb 1994, 324) These forms would express the majority of traditional philosophical exploration.

He then attempts to theorize how an alternative use of hypertext would function. Citing different forms of written philosophical inquiry such as meditation, the aphorism, the pensée, the diary, and the dialogue, he suggests that hypertext could be used in more innovative ways. Taking his cue from literary uses of hypertext, Kolb explores the metaphor of territories of thought.(Kolb 1994, 340) The philosopher may not be able to control every intellectual step her reader takes, but she could create an impression of a whole intellectual picture. In Kolb’s words, "[t]he enduring significance of the works of Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Hegel does not rest on our ability to locate their claims definitively but on the works’ having opened up new territory for thought."(Kolb 1994, 340) Hence, he concludes that hypertext offers philosophers the option of expression based on spatial and territorial qualities rather than linear forms.

This interpretation of the potential of hypertext serves the translation of Mary Daly’s Wickedary into hypertext very well. The Wickedary is not a literal dictionary; Daly did not mean it to function as a source in which to look up words. She chooses her words, and she creates words; therefore there is no way to discover these words. For example, the word "snool" is not in common usage, but it is one that Daly has included in the Wickedary. Even Daly herself is not likely to use the word "snool" without some account of the meaning within the essay. The Wickedary is a philosophical text in itself. On the surface it is a dictionary, but it functions as a conduit by which one can access Daly’s feminist territory. Hypertext enables this transmission by allowing the user to customize the text according to a personalized encounter. The author (Daly) can devise a link or links for a word or a phrase, but she cannot control how a user will choose to encounter the text. Thus, she has created a territory for exploration rather than a road to be taken from introduction to conclusion. Kolb’s essay offers a way in which to look at hypertext that takes into account the needs of philosophical inquiry and rhetoric using a spatial metaphor for argumentation.

Stuart Moulthrop’s article, "Rhizome and Resistance: Hypertext and the Dreams of a New Culture," addresses the issues of a medium’s impact on a text. Using Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s Thousand Plateaus, Moulthrop investigates the impact of hypertext on meaning in terms of their investigation of the rhizome. In Deleuze and Guattari’s terms, a rhizome "has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo…the rhizome is alliance, uniquely alliance."(Deleuze 1987, 25) In practical terms, Moulthrop’s interpretation seems to focus on rhizome as a set of nodes, which are linked, so that every point of reference has equal importance and has no absolute, linear, temporal characteristics. This is a useful interpretation when speaking about hypertext. Moulthrop explains that their experimentation has to do with a political relationship with knowledge that the rhizome, and also hypertext, encourages. The idea of the text as a rhizome was suggested in order to offer an alternative to the "logocentric, hierarchically grounded truth."(Moulthrop 1994, 301) Moulthrop's article is an account of this vision and it’s implications for this new way of communicating.

The idea that hypertext resists "logocentric, hierarchically grounded truth" would be very attractive to Mary Daly. In her discussions about academia, she is often critical of the status quo. From the beginnings of her radical feminist journey in Beyond God the Father, she explains "methodolatry" as a "sin" of the patriarchy. "The tyranny of methodolatry…prevents us from raising questions never asked before and from being illuminated by ideas that do not fit into pre-established boxes and forms."(Daly 1985,11) This suspicion of traditional and academic forms can be traced throughout her career. She takes it further in the Wickedary noting that methodolatry "hid[es] threads of connectedness."(Daly 1988, 82) It is not clear that her resistance is particular to books and linear texts, but in the terms of hypertext theorists, print text does indeed constitute "boxes and forms." Her mention of "threads of connectedness" must be considered closely, because this is the aspect of argumentation that digital hypertext makes very simple and intuitive. Connections that Daly sees among issues and texts can be made not only literal, but also swift. As we have seen, the Wickedary is already a hypertext, one without digital fulfillment. Daly wants to use the connections to make a pattern apparent. The links, and enabling the links, give rise to new understandings of material. It seems like Daly, by creating the Wickedary already had discovered this important factor in her attempts to create feminist texts.

Moulthrop’s investigation into the relative characteristics of the smooth and striated space give a context for the observation that hypertext can be used to serve feminist ends. He has characterized hypertext as a smooth medium implying that it is nomadic, mystic, and rhizomatic in the social space of writing.(Moulthrop 1994, 304) Many of the terms offered in his analysis of "smooth" media correspond to feminist, and particularly Mary Daly’s rhetorical goals. He uses the metaphors of journeying to describe the way in which a reader must approach a hypertext document. Daly uses journeying as a metaphor for active living of one’s life. He references Gregory Ulmer’s term "mystories" as a "way of thinking about the matrix of ideas that cuts across cultural registers, mixing the disciplinary with the personal or the ludic."(Moulthrop 1994, 305) Combining personal with the political has been a mainstay of Daly’s practice of exposing insidious private practices of patriarchy. One of Moulthrop’s conclusions from his review of social thinkers is that "any new culture will be as promiscuous as its texts, always seeking new relations, fresh paralogic permutations of order and chaos."(Moulthrop 1994, 317) Daly might reinterpret the terms "promiscuous," "order" and "chaos" in terms of the struggle between women’s experience and male dominated society. The admission of women’s perspectives into discourse on any terms whatsoever and on their own terms in culture has traditionally been equivalent to chaos. His labeling of hypertext and its impact on culture in terms of promiscuity and chaos in discourse is almost an invitation for exploration of hypertext in feminist terms.

Hypertext’s contribution to a line of argumentation is that it obliterates the singular line. It creates a new space of understanding, and it requires that readers of a text participate in the process of unfolding the conceptual landscape. Emerging from a series of texts is a whole understanding of what reality is. As a student and teacher of religion, Mary Daly is deeply concerned with the communication of ideas that reflect ultimate reality. The multidimensional text is uniquely qualified to express this totality.

The terms in which these authors discuss hypertext closely resemble, and sometimes parallel, the terms of Daly and other feminists when criticizing current discourse or positing new approaches to expression. Kolb’s notion of hypertexts as territories of thought clarifies the relationship between "Journeyers," women who go on "multidimensional Voyages through the Realms of the Wild," and hypertext documents, like the Wickedary. Moulthrop also discusses the space that is created by hypertext using the metaphor of journeying. Daly’s idea of "Journeying" demands an active reader and learner. Kolb and Moulthrop provide a framework in which to understand how a medium such as hypertext changes the meaning of a text and its potential to change the "meaning" of the reader experience in a way that is consistent with the aims of Daly’s metaphysics.

So far, a few of Daly’s terms have been cited and explained as evidence that hypermedia will reflect the content of the Wickedary more accurately than the printed page. Within the Wickedary, there are also what I will describe as "circuits" of related words. Daly coined various terms that are very similar to the terms that the hypertext theorists use, some of which are cross-referenced to each other, creating circuits. This chapter will discuss one such group of words in order to give an understanding of the functioning of the Wickedary and its meaning.

The word, "network," might be a good place to start using the print Wickedary. However, one would immediately notice that if s/he searches alphabetically from the beginning, s/he will not locate "Network" until the alphabet has gone from beginning to end once, and begins again at "A." This is because, "Network" is located in Word Web Two. The Wickedary is divided into three sections. Word Web One includes Elemental Philosophical Words and Phrases and Other Key Words; Word Web Two contains the Inhabitants of the Background, Their Activities and Characteristics; and Word Web Three contain terms that describe the inhabitants of the foreground, their activities and characteristics. In Daly’s work, capitalization is an important sign to represent the relative virtue or value of a term. One can usually assume that most capitalized terms are feminist and positive terms even though they may seem negative e.g. "Hag," although sometimes particularly troubling adversaries to women’s rights will also be capitalized, e.g. "Big Brothers of Boredom." While terms that are in lower-case reflect petty and usually sexist concepts, people or behaviors. Thus, the reader should notice that network is capitalized in this dictionary.

According to the Wickedary The Network (in this section, for clarity, bold typeface signifies the word to be defined) is "the Gyn/Ecological context; tapestry of connections woven and re-woven by Spinsters and Websters; the Net which breaks the fall of Journeyers experiencing the Earthquake Phenomenon and springing us into New Space."(Daly 1988, 149) Within this definition are quite a few terms that need to be unpacked. One might wonder about the meaning of "Spinsters," "Websters," Journeyers," and "New Space," not to mention "Gyn/Ecological" and "Earthquake Phenomenon." In a digital version of the Wickedary, each one of these terms would be highlighted to indicate that they could be clicked to reach the Wickedary’s section on their meaning. Each adds vital understanding to the totality of Daly’s vision.

Turning to Word Web One, a reader would then locate New Space, which is "Space on the Boundary of patriarchal institutions; Space created by women which provides real alternatives to the archetypal roles of fatherland; Space in which women Realize Power of Presence." (84) Which would refer the reader to the Boundary or back to Word Web Two to find Fairy Space. The Boundary is "the location of New Time/Space; Time and Space created by women Surviving and Spinning on the Boundaries of patriarchal institutions; dimensions of be-ing experienced by Labrys-wielding Amazons who choose not only to combat the phallocratic order but also to wrench back our Archaic Heritage and Journey into the Background." (67) Cross-references provided in the Boundary definition would lead the reader to Women’s Space which is defined as "Space created by women who choose to separate our Selves from the State of Servitude: FREE SPACE; …Space in which women Spin and Weave, creating cosmic tapestries; Space in which women find Rooms, Looms, Brooms of our Own." (101) The circle then closes, because the cross-referencing for Women’s Space returns the reader to New Space. If from New Space, one chose to follow the reference to Fairy Space, s/he would learn that Fairy Space is "Space Dis-Covered by Fey Women who Spiral beyond Stag-nation; Space where Weird Women gather and Gossip with Fairies." (123) The cross-references that Daly provides in the Wickedary send the reader right back to Women’s Space and New Space, closing the circuit.

Emerging from this series of words and cross-references, is Daly’s concept of Space with a capital "S." This space can be characterized as women created, women defined and separate from the dominant culture. It is not necessarily separate in a physical sense, but in psychic or psychological terms. The Space that Daly describes supports women’s be-ing and Be-ing, "be-ing" referring to the ontological process and presence of women and Be-ing referring to god as Verb, Daly’s concept of the divine. Her method of re-naming and re-defining almost every word creates attention for her argument. The reader is alert to the capitalization and spelling of each word, participating in the unfolding of a new reality. The "Leaps" that Daly wants her reader to make are possible, because the reader is involved with the text. Hypermedia also demands an alert "screener." One cannot engage a hypertext document without participating in its generation, link by link. The "Space" that hypertext creates must be "Journeyed," as Daly’s Wickedary should be experienced as an Otherworld Journey.

Flipping back to Word Web One, the reader can see that Otherworld Journey refers to "Metapatriarchal Labyrinthine Journey of Exorcism and Ecstasy, in the course of which patriarchal demons are dispelled by Voyagers." (87) This discovery leads to a search for the definition of Voyager. A Voyager is an Otherworld Journeyer, and a Journeyer is one who whirls through Other Worlds, Spinning/Spiraling on multidimensional Voyages through Realms of the Wild." (140) The Journeyer is a suitable metaphor for the "screener" of hypertext. Digital hypermedia is Wild in that it is multidimensional and offers a spatial metaphor. As the text unfolds into a New Space, the Journeyer creates her encounter with it.

However, the story does not need to end at Daly’s analysis of Space. Returning to the definition of Fairy Space, the term Gossip might catch the reader’s eye. Looking through the Wickedary, one would discover that Daly’s term differs from the popular definitions. Gossip for Daly is to "exercise the Elemental Female Power of Naming, especially in the presence of other Gossips." (132) Gossips are Female Friends…especially Fates, Fairies and Friends "who invite themselves to be Present at any Female Act of Creation." (132) Taking a "Leap," one who knows Daly would be inspired to seek out her definition of Friends, but knowing that she prefixes these dynamic relationships with "Be," would, therefor seek Be-Friending. In the definition that Daly offers, in the third entry, the Journeyer will find that Be-Friending is "weaving a context/atmosphere in which Acts/Leaps of Metamorphosis can take place." (65) One then might discover that Weaving is an "Original activity of Websters: creating tapestries of Crone-centered creation; constructing a context that sustains Sisters on the Otherworld Journey." (99) These terms describing processes invoke the understanding that women should be actively engaged in processes of creation.

Daly’s use of the metaphor, weaving, to discuss women’s creation is particularly interesting, because of observations made by Sadie Plant about the origins of the computer in Zeros + Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture. In Plant’s account, "weaving of complex designs demands far more than one pair of hands, and textiles production tends to be communal, sociable work allowing plenty of occasion for gossip and chat. (Plant 1997, 65) Her analysis shows how textiles are the "software linings of all technology," and she concludes that women’s "microprocesses" in weaving are the basis of all later great advancements in technological processes. "The interlaced threads of the loom compose the most abstract process of fabrication." (Plant 1997, 61) Unlike Daly, she speaks literally, not metaphorically, but it is telling how many terms are shared between Daly, Plant, and metaphors taken up by digital technology. It is also interesting how industrial interests usurped a process that accounted for such a valuable function of women in the economy that resulted in women interacting with each other. Given the analysis of Plant, if for no other reason, the digital translation of the Wickedary should be achieved to reclaim the prosthetic body that patriarchy has created to fill powerful processes of women.

I hope to take this experience one step further by becoming what she calls a "Spinster," by "Spinning" a "Parthenogenic Creation." In other words, I would like to be a "woman who defined herself by choice,"(Daly 1988, 167) who is "Dis-covering the lost threads of connectedness within the cosmos and repairing this thread in the process"(Daly 1988, 96) resulting in a "method which seeks to construct a female train of thought."(Daly 1988, 154) My position as hypermedia developer includes me in the economy of feminist creative energy or Gynergy. (Daly 1988, 77)

Daly accounts for not only the feminist as student, one to absorb her wisdom, she also demands of her readers that they participate in the writing as well as the reading of feminist texts. Words like Spinster and Spinning invite women to create, and her redefinition of words like Weird, Harpy, Silly and Bitchy give meaning to some of the attacks that expressive women might receive. An important concept in her work is the unfettered Be-ing of women.

To this end, she has offered the term Parthenogenetic Creation. Parthenogenetic Creation has two meanings listed in the Wickedary. The first is "work of feminist creation produced by women alone; woman-made work which may use males as re-sources but never as progenitors, spiritual fathers, mentors, or models." The second is "method of Philosophia: method which seeks to construct a female train of thought working with primary and secondary sources only by women; method which focuses more on actions of women for our liberation from patriarchy than on dissection and critique of patriarchy." (Daly 1988, 154) Hypermedia not only gives a shape and space to the text while pulling the reader into its generation, it also gives the programmer an opportunity to Weave and Spin. She has the opportunity to participate in the metaphoric play, because the popular metaphors for hypermedia are often the same as the feminist metaphors for method. Even when they are not, by Daly’s example, Websters (i.e. a woman whose occupation is to Weave, esp. a Weaver of Words and Word-Webs) can assign their own words and definitions as necessary.

Webs and the Network are examples of terms that offer double meanings to the developer of hypermedia. These word plays and their various meanings keep the mind sharp and nimble for learning new things. The digital version of the Wickedary should also be nimble for additions from feminists, because new technologies are emerging and new metaphors accompany them. Donna Haraway’s "Cyborg" and S. Paige Baty’s "Matrix" have been added to the digital Wickedary. Another addition to the digital Wickedary comes from the analysis of Sadie Plant. The word "Computer" should be added to reflect its roots. Computers were formerly groups of women who computed targeting coordinates for the military. As she explains "when computer was a term applied to flesh and blood workers, the bodies which composed them were female."(Plant 1997, 37) The addition of these terms changes the Wickedary. There is a sense of innocence lost. Excluding women’s position in relation to computer and other technologies prevented Daly from confronting the truly messy alliances that are the reality of women’s lives today. Her heritage and training in theology equipped her with notions of goddesses, pixies and witches, but did not prepare her for cyborgs. I think that it is important to add them today.

The Wickedary, as it stands, is material. However, it has multiple layers of impact. It is a parody, a game, an experiment, and an encounter with Mary Daly’s philosophy. It behaves in some ways as a dictionary and plays with the idea of dictionary, but because of its content is completely unusable as a dictionary. As women are obscure to patriarchal culture, the Wickedary is obscure as a functioning dictionary. It is exactly its feminist content that separates it from usability in this culture. One does not encounter the Wickedary as a dictionary or even a book; one collects bits and pieces of meaning by browsing its content. It already occupies hyperspace (or in Daly’s terms meta-space), but the words are glued cruelly to a page. Hypermedia allows for this dynamic text to be dynamically encountered.

My addition of metaphors which refer specifically to women’s encounters with technology is intended to bring together feminists that do not necessarily share ideologies, but are continuing to use Daly’s methodology. Metaphors, etymologies, and historical "Dis-coveries" are hallmarks of Daly’s feminist process. Using Baty, Plant and Haraway, I hope to use hyperspace as a territory in which different feminist legacies can meet and mingle without negating each other or their connections to the feminist heritage.

The use of hypermedia to publish the Wickedary is a radical process. Because the Internet does not exist without authors, it is important for there to be feminist authors. Using the Internet as a medium of resistance is still possible, because the Internet is being made with every file produced. File by file, women can conceivably change the shape of reality in virtual terms, because we create the Internet as we create new texts, hypertexts, and illustrations for it. Feminist visions and experiments can be added to the reality of the Internet to influence the way that we look at knowledge in the future. The creation of feminist texts to add to the knowledge on the web not only changes the fabric of discourse, but it also creates the opportunity for women to participate in empowering processes of "Parthenogenetic Creation."

Please see http://www.wickedary.com to try it out.

Works Cited

Baty, S. Paige. E-Mail Trouble: Love and Addiction the Matrix. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999.

Daly, Mary and Jane Caputi. Websters' First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language. London: The Women's Press Limited, 1988.

Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Gilles. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987.

Haraway, Donna. "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science Techology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century." In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, 149-182. New York: Routledge, 1991.

Kolb, David. "Socrates in the Labyrinth." In Hyper/Text/Theory, ed. George P. Landow, 323-344. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

Moulthrop, Stuart. "Rhizome and Resistance: Hypertext and the Dreams of a New Culture." In Hyper/Text/Theory, ed. George P. Landow, 299-319. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

Nelson, Theodor Holm. Literary Machines. Sausalito, CA: Mindful Press, 1992.

Plant, Sadie. Zeros + Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture. New York: Doubleday, 1997.