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UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Reading from A to Z: The Alphabetic Sequence in Experimental Literature and Visual Art Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/10m9712j Author Ardam, Jacquelyn Wendy Publication Date 2015 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Reading from A to Z: The Alphabetic Sequence in Experimental Literature and Visual Art A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in English by Jacquelyn Wendy Ardam 2015 © Copyright by Jacquelyn Wendy Ardam 2015 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Reading from A to Z: The Alphabetic Sequence in Experimental Literature and Visual Art by Jacquelyn Wendy Ardam Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Los Angeles, 2015 Professor Michael A. North, Chair “Reading from A to Z” argues for the significance of the alphabetic sequence to the transatlantic experimental literature and visual art from the modern period to the present. While it may be most familiar to us as a didactic device to instruct children, various experimental writers and avant-gardists have used the alphabetic sequence to structure some of their most radical work. The alphabetic sequence is a culturally-meaningful trope with great symbolic import; we are, after all, initiated into written discourse by learning our ABCs, and the sequence signifies logic, sense, and an encyclopedic and linear way of thinking about and representing the world. But the string of twenty-six arbitrary signifiers also represents rationality’s complete opposite; the alphabet is just as potent a symbol and technology of nonsense, arbitrariness, and (children’s) play. These inherent tensions between meaning and arbitrariness, sense and nonsense, order and chaos have been exploited by a century of ii experimental writers and artists who have employed the alphabetic sequence as a device for formal experimentation, radical content, and institutional and cultural critique. “Reading from A to Z” argues that, as a result of the post-Saussurean linguistic turn of the twentieth-century humanities, the alphabetic sequence—the medium of language itself— became a vital means for artistic investigation. By bringing together works from across different genres and media, the dissertation suggests that most experimental alphabetic works have a push and pull effect: they admit a complicity in a mass culture of order that is standardized, segmented, and sequenced, while simultaneously expressing a desire for something other to that order. In the hands of writers and artists, the alphabetic sequence is both tyrannical and liberatory. For Virginia Woolf in the 1920s, the alphabetic sequence is a rational means of understanding a totalized world as well as a generative creative structure, while for John Baldessari and Martha Rosler in the 1970s, the sequence is an oppressive symbol of institutional and patriarchal power and also the means through which to imagine a resistance to that power. By taking on works as diverse as Gertrude Stein’s long-ignored writing for children and the recent spate of alphabetized texts by Kenneth Goldsmith and other conceptual poets, the dissertation finds commonalities across a century of experimental writing and art. It pushes past Bourdieuian sociological readings of the avant-garde to establish a common ground between experimental writing and art movements, and ultimately reveals the alphabetic sequence—as a formal structure, a metaphor for knowledge, a didactic tool, an organizational system, and a procedural method—as the paradigmatic trope of a language-obsessed century. iii The dissertation of Jacquelyn Wendy Ardam is approved. Louise E. J. Hornby Brian Kim Stefans Sianne Ngai Kathleen L. Komar Michael A. North, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2015 iv For my parents, David and Diane Ardam v TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES .….........................……........................................……....................................... vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS …………….............…….....……….....................……...................…................ ix VITA …………............……………................…………........................................................................... xii INTRODUCTION Preamble …………………..............…….………………...............……..………..…….……………….…… 1 Pattern and Paradox ………………………….........…….………………...............……..………………… 3 Alphabetical Form …………………………………………..………………......…….………..………………… 12 Methods and Debates ……………………………………….............………………………………………… 18 Chapter Summary ……………………………………….............……………..................……………….. 22 CHAPTER ONE: Virginia Woolf’s AlphabEts: To the Lighthouse, Order, and Generation “An Easy Alphabet for Infants” ……………............…………….....……..…………………………..…. 26 Leslie Stephen and the Dictionary of National Biography ………………………………………… 37 Mrs. Woolf and Mr. Ramsay ……………………….….…………….…………………….…………………… 49 Woolf and Historical and Literary Order …………….…………….…………………..…………………. 60 Vita’s “Alphabetical System” …………….…………….…………………..……………….………………… 68 CHAPTER TWO: “Too Old for ChildrEn and Too Young for Grown-ups”: GErtrude Stein’s To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays Stein and Children’s Literature …………….…………….…………………..……………..………………… 79 To Do’s Structure and Syntax …………….…………….……………………..…………………..…………… 90 Stein’s Didacticism ………………………………….………….…………………..…………….………..………. 103 CHAPTER THREE: ThE AlphabEt in VidEo Art: BaldEssari, RoslEr, and PEdagogical Form The Cubies Take Manhattan ………………………………….………….…………………..……..…………. 119 Didactic Language in/and Modern Art ………………………………….………….…………..…………. 124 Baldessari at CalArts: Pedagogy and the Fundamental ………………………..……..…………… 137 Rosler: Feminism and Form ……………………………….………….…………..……………………………. 158 Arbitrariness, Ambivalence, and Narrative …………………………….………..………………….…… 176 CHAPTER FOUR: ThE ABCs of ConcEptual Writing: KEnnEth Goldsmith and the AlphabEtization of Literature Conceptual Writing and Reading …………………………….………….………………….….……………. 182 The Alphabetic Sequence, Literature, and Reference ………………………………………………. 190 Getting Goldsmith’s No. 111 2.7.93-10.20.96 ……………………………………..……..……………. 201 Reading No. 111 2.7.93-10.20.96 ……………………………………………………...……….……………. 207 Conceptual Writing and Alphabetization ……..……………………………….…………….…………… 217 BIBLIOGRAPHY ……..……………………….…………..……………………….………………………………..……………. 221 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: “An Easy Alphabet for Infants,” Hyde Park Gate News, 1891. Copyright 32 © The British Library Board. Figure 1.2: “An Easy Alphabet for Infants,” Hyde Park Gate News, 1891. Copyright 33 © The British Library Board. Figure 2.1: Original cover of The Word is Round, by Gertrude Stein, illustrated by 81 Clement Hurd, 1939. Figure 2.2. Illustration from The Modern ABC Book, C.B. Falls, 1930. 91 Figure 2.3: Illustration from To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays by Gertrude 97 Stein, illustrated by Giselle Potter. Copyright © Giselle Potter, 2011. Figure 2.4: Illustration from To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays, by Gertrude 100 Stein, illustrated by Giselle Potter. Copyright © Giselle Potter, 2011. Figure 3.1: Earl Harvey Lyall, Illustration from The Cubies’ ABC, by Mary Mills Lyall, 120 1913. Figure 3.2: René Magritte, The Interpretation of Dreams, 1927. Staatsgalerie 126 Moderner Kunst, Munich, Germany. © René Magritte Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Figure 3.3 René Magritte, The Treachery of Images, 1928-29, Los Angeles County 127 Museum of Art. © René Magritte Estate/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. Figure 3.4 Jasper Johns, Gray Alphabets. Museum of Modern Art, John B. Turner 129 Fund, © 2015 Jasper Johns / Licensed by VAGA, New York. Figure 3.5: Joseph Kosuth, Art as Idea as Idea [Water], Solomon R. Guggenheim 132 Museum, New York Gift, Leo Castelli, New York, 1973. © 2015 Joseph Kosuth/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Figure 3.6: John Baldessari, WRONG, 1968. © John Baldessari. 139 Figure 3.7: John Baldessari, video still from Teaching a Plant the Alphabet, 1972. © 150 John Baldessari. vii Figure 3.8: Martha Rosler, video still from Semiotics of the Kitchen, 1975. © Martha 162 Rosler. Figure 3.9: Martha Rosler, video still from Semiotics of the Kitchen, 1975. © Martha 163 Rosler. Figure 3.10: Martha Rosler, video still from Semiotics of the Kitchen, 1975. © Martha 169 Rosler. viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank the members of my dissertation committee for their unwavering support for this project. Brian Kim Stefans first introduced me to conceptual writing and to so many of the texts that I discuss in this study; I can’t imagine what my dissertation would look like without his influence. Louise Hornby has been my ideal reader—rigorous, challenging, and kind—and I always hope to emulate her when I work with my students. Kathleen Komar kindly agreed to join my committee late in the game, for which she has my deep thanks, and Sianne Ngai has provided me with years of acute and generous feedback on my work. Her teaching and writing have shaped my thinking profoundly. Finally, I want to acknowledge my chair, Michael North, who—to my surprise—supported my writing a dissertation about alphabet books from the very beginning. Throughout eight years of graduate school, I have left every meeting with Michael feeling focused, energized, and motivated to write more, and to write better. Thank you, Michael, for being exactly the dissertation chair I needed.
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