Which Came First, the Chicken Device or the Textual Egg? Documentary Film and the Limits of the Hybrid Metaphor

Though hybridity is certainly a productive theoretical metaphor, there are limits to its usefulness. In our postmodern, "telectronic" culture, we are surrounded by examples of boundary confusion between text-generating devices and texts themselves. The organic metaphor of hybridity is of limited value in theorizing these conflations. This article considers examples of such collapse between text and "apparatus" in the documentary films of Errol Morris, particularly his "folklife" portrait of a small town in Florida.