WHAT IS SITE?

 

Site is a particular point where many factors or forces interact or conflict with each other. Such interaction and conflict between different and opposing forces produce meaning. The individual or individual subject, text, and literary movement can be the sites where many factors- sociological, economic, religious, moralistic, and philosophical- interact with each other and produce meaning. For example, a literary text is a point that reflects the author’s experiences, religious beliefs, ideologies, philosophy, etc. Therefore a literary text is a site where many factors interact with each other and produce meaning.

Social themes and categories also can be the sites. For example, class, race, gender, or sexuality. Now let us have a look at the example one by one. Class is a point where two opposing groups- the haves and have not or economically powerful and economically less powerful people- interact with each other. In the case of Race whereas two opposing groups, blacks and whites, interact with each other. Gender is a point where males and females interact with each other and produce meaning. In the interaction, the contributions of males are considered as valuable and meaningful than their counterparts females. 

Sites like individual, text, and gender are not self-determining or complete in themselves. They are shaped by the context or society. Gender and gender roles are socially constructed and that varies based on the society where we live. A literary text can be interpreted based on the social-political and economic context. It means that context is the one that makes a site meaningful. The use of this word or term coincided with the influence of structuralism and poststructuralism. Because the structuralist also believes that the meaning of words is relational. The meaning of a word is determined by its relationship with other words in a sentence. In other words, the meaning of a word is determined by the context. 

The term site can be compared with the term “domain”. The domain is not a physical location but a virtual site on the internet whereas the number of sites is connected to each other.