Homophonic Translation, Appositional Writing, and the Monster

Illinois State University ISU ReD: Research and eData Theses and Dissertations 9-12-2013 Homophonic Translation, Appositional Writing, And The Monster Ryan Landry Clark Illinois State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd Part of the Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Educational Methods Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, and the Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Clark, Ryan Landry, "Homophonic Translation, Appositional Writing, And The Monster" (2013). Theses and Dissertations. 34. https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd/34 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ISU ReD: Research and eData. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ISU ReD: Research and eData. For more information, please contact [email protected]. HOMOPHONIC TRANSLATION, APPOSITIONAL WRITING, AND THE MONSTER Ryan L. Clark 235 Pages December 2013 This dissertation features a combination of critical and creative work exploring the ethics of appropriative writing and the reparative potential of homophonic translation. The opening essay examines the ethics of appropriation-based poetry and introduces the concept of what I call “appositional writing,” a term to describe ethically-minded works of poetry that make use of appropriative writing methods. The next three parts of this dissertation are each appositional writing projects that make use of homophonic translation as the primary method of composition. “Arizona State Bill 1070: An Act” is a homophonic translation of the anti-immigration bill of the same name. In this work, I investigate at various points the idea of borders, the necessity of migration, the politics of race and language, and xenophobia. “How I Pitched the First Curve” is a sequence of ten different homophonic translations of an article written by William Arthur “Candy” Cummings that describes Cummings’ invention of the curveball in the early days of organized baseball. With each translation, I examine various social issues that are as deeply rooted within the game of baseball as they are in American culture. In “Is Ryan Clark a Monster?” I interrogate my own potential for domination and violence by delving into personal trauma, incorporating homophonic translations of text message responses from friends and family to the question “Is Ryan Clark a monster?”. This dissertation concludes with a pedagogical essay discussing the potential benefits of teaching appropriative writing in an introductory-level creative writing course. Throughout this dissertation I hope to show that as authors increasingly turn to appropriative writing methods and incorporate found language into their work, it is important to examine the various ethical risks involved with the act of appropriation, both in our respective writing communities and in our classrooms. HOMOPHONIC TRANSLATION, APPOSITIONAL WRITING, AND THE MONSTER RYAN L. CLARK A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of English ILLINOIS STATE UNIVERSITY 2013 Copyright 2013 Ryan L. Clark HOMOPHONIC TRANSLATION, APPOSITIONAL WRITING, AND THE MONSTER RYAN L. CLARK COMMITTEE MEMBERS: Gabriel Gudding, Chair Duriel E. Harris Kass Fleischer ACKNOWLEDGMENTS As solitary as writing often feels, I have received outstanding encouragement, feedback, direction, and support during and leading up to my work with this dissertation. I would like to first express my sincerest gratitude to my committee: Gabriel Gudding, whose support and guidance extend far beyond merely providing me with a wealth of feedback on my work or introducing me to moral philosophy or watching my cat when I’ve been out of town; Duriel E. Harris, whose encouragement for me to confront all aspects of my humanness, joy and tragedy alike, set in motion a process of maturation in my writing and in myself for which I will be forever grateful; and Kass Fleischer, whose Experimental Autobiography course and whose directness in the classroom helped me to be more direct and forthcoming with myself in my writing. I would also like to thank Michelle Naka Pierce, without whom I would neither have pursued a career as a teacher nor would I have stumbled across and then fallen in love with homophonic translation. The mentorship of Kirstin Zona has been a highlight of my time at Illinois State, and for that I am quite grateful. I could not have made it through this dissertation or the doctoral program without Shailen Mishra and Jamison Lee, with whom I have commiserated, formed writing contracts, and found a great deal of stress relief. I appreciate the text messaging assistance of those who responded to my query, “Is i Ryan Clark a monster?”, including some whom I have already thanked and also Gina Cooke, Alan Lin, Jane Carman, Nicholas A. DeBoer, Steven and Susan Clark, Travis Macdonald, Jen Marie Macdonald, Nate Jordan, Travis Cebula, Christopher Edwards, Rebecca George, Jonathan Morris, Adrienne Dodt, Quintus Havis, Kimberly Castañon, Merissa Nathan Gerson, Pankaj Challa, Susana Rodriguez, Jordan Cox, Brendan Hamilton, and Jarret Noll. Some portions of the creative work featured in this dissertation have previously been published in the following journals: Seven Corners, which published an excerpt from “Arizona State Bill 1070: An Act”; Similar Peaks Poetry, which published “Top of the First” from “How I Pitched the First Curve”; Smoking Glue Gun, which published an excerpt from “Arizona State Bill 1070: An Act”; and Tenderloin, which published material from “Is Ryan Clark a Monster?”. To each of these journals and their editors I express my gratitude. Finally, I want to thank Melanie Goss, who is the greatest friend and source of support that I have ever known. R.L.C. ii CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS i CONTENTS iii CHAPTER I. APPOSITIONAL POETICS: TOWARD AN ETHICS OF APPROPRIATIVE WRITING 1 Contextualizing the Ethics of Appropriative Writing: The Dissolution of the Subject 9 Moving Toward the Appositional 19 The Risk of Arrogance in Appropriation 26 The Risk of Asymmetrical Power Relations 30 The Risk of Exceeding Reasonable Responsibility 32 A Detailed Discussion of an Appositional Text: M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong! 35 Homophonic Translation as Appositional (re)Writing 40 “Arizona State Bill 1070: An Act” 41 “How I Pitched the First Curve” 42 “Is Ryan Clark a Monster?” 44 The Appositional Project 47 II. ARIZONA STATE BILL 1070: AN ACT 50 III. HOW I PITCHED THE FIRST CURVE 100 IV. IS RYAN CLARK A MONSTER? 173 V. APPROPRIATION AS INTRODUCTION TO CREATIVE WRITING 200 WORKS CITED 231 iii CHAPTER I APPOSITIONAL POETICS: TOWARD AN ETHICS OF APPROPRIATIVE WRITING ! On April 27, 2010, poet Kenneth Goldsmith declared on the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet blog that “Conceptual Writing is a-ethical and wouldn’t dare make the presumption that it has the power to affect the world for better or worse. Conceptual Poetry makes nothing happen. Conceptual Writing is the Switzerland of poetry. We’re stuck in neutral. We believe in the moral weightlessness of art” (“If I were to raise my children,” n.p.). This was, in part, a response to a small number of poets, including Mark Nowak and Martin Earl, who had recently posted on the blog about documentary poetics, a field of poetry which, like Conceptual Writing, often appropriates language from source materials in order to craft new creative work. Nowak, in particular, had criticized Goldsmith’s previous descriptions of language as simply material to be filtered and appropriated; in citing his own research of coal mining disasters, Nowak claimed, “I have found this language to be anything but a debased, temporary ‘mere material’” (“25 miners,” n.p.). With this debate, the question of the role of ethics in poetry (and the role of poetry in ethics) has found a new battleground: the explosion of appropriation-based writing practices in recent years that has coincided, in part, with the rise of the digital 1 age. How are we to view this act of appropriation in the context of ethics? Or should we remain neutral on the subject, as Goldsmith suggests? One of the key factors in this discussion is undoubtedly the question of exactly what becomes of text when it is removed from its original context and placed into the new context of an appropriative work. Does it, for example, become completely unmoored from its original context? As Goldsmith tends to argue,1 this is exactly what happens. While this line of thought certainly extends from the Modernist idea that texts are not anchored to a particular culture or time, the internet, with its ease of sharing, linking to, or outright copying and pasting of text, has helped to foster the notion that context is something that can be left behind, replaced, and wholly reconceptualized; the 1 Goldsmith’s stance on what becomes of appropriated text may be cloudier than I suggest, as he seems to express competing views. On April 5, 2010, Goldsmith wrote on the Harriet blog, “Language has become a provisional space, temporary and debased, mere material to be shoveled, reshaped, hoarded and molded into whatever form is convenient, only to be discarded just as quickly.” Later that month, on April 27, 2010, Goldsmith wrote on the Harriet blog in a separate post, “All language is pre-encoded with political, historical, and social DNA. We feel that writers try too hard to construct meaning when words are already so loaded, so meaningful.” Perhaps the earlier comment was the result of Goldsmith being flippant. Or perhaps the latter comment was an attempt to save face after Mark Nowak provided the example of testimony from survivors of coal mining accidents as being more than “mere material.” Nowak’s blogpost (“25 miners killed in West Virginia coal mine blast”) was posted on the Harriet blog on April 6, 2010. 2 belief that such appropriation is a-ethical exists as an extension of this same premise, because the internet is itself neither ethical nor unethical (in the sense that it is a tool that can be used for good or for ill), and Conceptual Writing attempts to mirror workings of the internet.

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