I had some difficulty following the flow of chapter seven in Digital Performance.  Some of the segments of the chapter were more comprehensible to me than others, for example, the segment which presents different perspectives on the automation at Disneyland.  I expect this is because I had a pre-existing frame of reference for the subject of that segment.  Not only have I been to Disneyworld (though not Disneyland), I have also read various criticisms of its place in our culture and had that place be the subject of class discussions.   This pre-exposure made it easier for me to follow the arguments presented in that segment.  However, I think that all the segments assumed a certain amount of pre-exposure to the ideas being presented and, unfortunately, for me this was not the case.  The discussions of cybernetics and the philosophies of Jacques Derrida, for example, were interesting in as much as I could follow them, but I know I missed a lot by not having the expected background in the subject matter.

One point I did find particularly interesting was actually raised in the first few sentences of the chapter when the author states: 

"While postmodernist and poststructuralist critical approaches can by nature be fluid, eclectic and "open," they can equally operate doctrinally to impose specific and sometimes inappropriate ideas onto cultural and artistic works in precisely the same way previous ideological master codes such as psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminism, and structuralism did in the past."

I think this is a particularly salient given the current trend of analyzing art within an inch of its life.  This is not to say that I disagree with the idea of criticism.  I think it is an incredibly valuable tool for understanding a piece of art, be it a sculpture, a novel, or a play.  However, the quotation above is not warning against criticism, but against forcing an artwork to fit into a doctrine of ideas that it was never intended to fit.

A prime example of this is the trend of viewing Ibsen's "A Doll House" as a piece of feminist literature.  Ibsen was not a feminist writer and there are no indications that he wrote "A Doll House" to be read as a feminist work.  By applying the lens of feminism to the play, modern critics and scholars are forcing "A Doll House" to be seen in a way it was never intended, rather than attempting to understand the play as it was meant to be understood by Ibsen.

This is not to say that applying a new lens or doctrine of understanding to an old work is inappropriate.  However, it is important to remember, if a new doctrine of thought is being applied, that that new doctrine is not the be-all and end-all of interpretation, but simply a new lens for examining an old work.