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5-2011 Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics: A (Strange) Comic(s) View of Writing in the Age of New Media Sergio Figueiredo Clemson University, [email protected]
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Recommended Citation Figueiredo, Sergio, "Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics: A (Strange) Comic(s) View of Writing in the Age of New Media" (2011). All Dissertations. 705. https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/705
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A Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of Clemson University
Submitted In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Rhetorics, Communication & Information Design
by Sergio Correia Figueiredo May 2011
Dr. Cynthia Haynes, Dissertation Chair Dr. Victor J. Vitanza Dr. Christina Hung Dr. Andrea Feeser Abstract
This dissertation finds its exigency in “The 9/11 Commission Report,” and specifically its claim that “a failure of imagination” that dismisses possibilities relates to the work currently in focus within rhetoric and composition studies as it relates to writing (with) new media. My argument relies on the underdeveloped concept of ‘imagination’ in composition as a way to argue for an alternate theoretical framework for addressing what writing (with) new media entails as a growing form of art. As such, I take up Geoff Sirc’s invitation to ‘remake’ his English Composition as a Happening with all of its references to avant-garde art as conceptualized in Allan Kaprow’s figure of theunartist and Dick Higgins calls for intermedia practices. Both of these concepts appear in the unart of comics – an ‘art’ for artists who have left their ‘homes’ in disciplinary iterations of art (unart) and for artists who are more concerned with working between media than they are within a specific medium intermedia( ). Comics, as I use the term, does not refer to a specific medium, but works as a form of thought in the Deleuzian sense: a sort of intuition exercised by imagination engaged in the continuous discovery of possibilities.
Building on ‘post-pedagogical’ theories of invention—Italo Calvino, Byron Hawk, Cynthia Haynes, Gregory Ulmer—avant-garde writing and art practices (as it relates to new media)—Maurice Blanchot, Andre Breton, Friedrich Kittler, Jean-
ii Francois Lyotard—and institutional rhetorics—Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Derrida, Bill Readings, Thomas Rickert—I propose a ‘strange’ manner of writing that foregoes the demands of argumentative writing in favor of a playful writing that attunes itself to imaginative possibilities of discovery. To write strangely connotes an unconventional approach to composition that would offer us the opportunities to think about ‘the coming composition’ as we invent new forms and ways of thinking according to methods invented for the occasion. In inventing new forms by thinking in terms of intermedia, we can realize the goal of Lyotard’s postmodern writer: to present (allusions to) the unpresentable. If we are to address the ‘failure of imagination’ in institutional practice and in ‘the scene of teaching,’ we need to be willing to be nomadic as both artists AND writers. Comics ‘artists,’ or those who I refere to as unartists, are adept at demonstrating ways in which this work can proceed, especially if we think of comics in terms of Haynes’ slash-technology that cuts through the divisions between media. In this dissertation, comics function as a form of thought that extends ‘multimodal composition’ and ‘art’ to their limits in order to suggest a strangely imaginative composition capable of attending to the disast(e)rous ‘failure of imagination.’
iii Dedication
The word dedication means to ‘give of oneself to some purpose.’ No one has taught me the meaning of giving of oneself with the utmost patience, kindness, and love as my father, Antonio da Conceiçáo Figueiredo. Without him, this work would not have been possible. Com saudades, dedico esta dissertação em sua memória.
iv Acknowledgements
I would first like to thank my mother, Maria Aurora Correia Figueiredo, for her enduring support and love—she is my home, wherever either of us may go. Also, I would like to thank my brother, Daniel Correia Figueiredo, for being the sort of friend that brings me back to ‘reality’ whenever I get too involved in my own little world. A sincere and loving thank you to Kathleen Cassandra Cutler is also in order for putting up with my breakdowns, letting me vent, helping me work through ideas (usually indirectly and unintentionally), reminding me of the literature (novels/short stories) that has helped the following project come into being, and for her interminable love, even when she had every reason not to tolerate me and my (incoherent) ramblings. To Lydia Eve Ferguson, for showing me how to get back to myself, to my essence (but inessential) self; thank you for our time together—it was beautiful and, if we come back around in the times to come, hopefully we can salvage that beauty. And to all my RCID com/patriots, for making this PhD program the one that I had hoped for when taking this journey; thanks to Amanda Booher, Justin Hodgson, Josh Hilst, and Jason Helms for that first year of fun and conversation at Clemson. Finally, thank you to my dissertation advisor, Cynthia Haynes, for your undying support and exuberance concerning the work presented in this dissertation; Victor Vitanza, Andrea Feeser, and Christina Hung: the things I have learned in our conversations are, hopefully, reflected in what you are about to read and see in the following “pages”—this dissertation has been possible only due to your willingness to let me ruminate--probably longer than I should have had to-- within the imaginative space(s) of composition.
v Table of Contents
Title page...... i
Abstract...... ii
Dedication...... iv
Acknowledgments...... v
Imagining the Coming Composition...... 1 “A Failure of Imagination”...... 9 Toward a (Post)Pedagogical Writing...... 14 Six Steps on the Way to Writing the Coming (Rhetorical) Composition...... 19
There’s a Stranger(s) in My Composition...... 24 The Strange(rs) With/In Us...... 29 The (Curiously) Strange Case of (New Media) Pedagogy...... 32 A Strange(r’s) Writing...... 36 We Are the Strange(rs)...... 42
In the Shadow(s) of Image/Text...... 50 Slashing Through Image/Text: The Definitional Project...... 56 A Hesitating In(ter)vention: The Cinematic (Arts) Project...... 65 Sifting Through the Madness: Writing Imaginatively...... 74
Art Interrupted...... 81 The Narrative Corpse: It’s Alive! It’s Alive!...... 85
vi Un/Arting Comics...... 90 Post-Hermeneutics...... 97 Fragmentary Writing: Writing of the Figment(s)...... 103
A Trilogy of Collages...... 109 Lyotard Friends Heidegger with Nietszche’s Umbrella...... 110-111 Thoughts on Building a Hacienda...... 112-113 Waving Bon Voyage to Rhetorics Past...... 114-115
Uncomposing (Visual) Rhetorics...... 116 Strange Figuration...... 120 Un/Composing (in) the Digital Event...... 123 Comic(al) Interventions into the Digital...... 126
Traitorous Hospitality: An APhoristic (Composition) Pedagogy...... 130 A Traitorous (Writing) Imagination...... 134 Digital Hospitality...... 137 Aphoristic Composition...... 140 A (Comic) Pedagogy of (Twittering) Aphorisms ...... 144
Endnotes...... 162 Introduction...... 163 Chapter 1...... 171 Chapter 2...... 176 Chapter 3...... 182 Chapter 4 ...... 188 Chapter 4 ...... 193
Works Cited...... 200
vii
Introduction
Imagining the Coming Composition 2 direct other purely thatdisrupts the the copyist(rewriting)” ( Herman Melville’s“BartlebytheScrivener,” ‘pure’writing“canonlybethatof conviction, codedasacceptable.AsMaurice Blanchotpointsoutinareadingof I
little interestandevenlessactivityby providing (revelatory)answerswith would prefernottowrite‘purely.’ scriveners to writeandcorrect theirerrors.ItisthisrefusalthatI Writing unnamed Imagining theComingComposition I magining me abouttheanswer/’causethenanotheronewillcome write hisrevelation/butastheywerescrutinized/in along soon/Idon’tbelieveyouhavetheanswer/I’vegot “At atimewhenwisemenpeered/throughglasstubes ideas too/butifyou’vegotenoughnaïveté/and 145).Andyet,itis Bartleby’s refusaltowrite colleagues eyes/hesoonbecameamockery/don’ttell got conviction/thentheanswerisperfectforyou…” toward thesky/theheavenschangedinpredictable narrator’srefusalto writeatall,contentedto thought hefoundtheanswer/andwasquickto
the ways/and onemanwasabletofind/thathehad 1 Thepredictabilityofsuchwritingholds Give ‘emtheboot,youknowI’maradical…” C “Give ‘emtheboot,roots,radicals/ oming C omposition ~ BadReligion,“TheAnswer” ~ Rancid,“RootsRadicals” 3 314). Like Bartleby’s Writing 39-40). For the unnamed narrator, 39-40). For the unnamed toward the ‘easiest way of life is best’ toward the ‘easiest way of Melville conviction narrator to take up a quill and write for the first up a quill and write for narrator to take 73). Unable to gratify his curiosity, he writes, in an 73). Unable to gratify his Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing of ‘pure writing.’ Even in writing Bartleby’s “little narrative,” of ‘pure writing.’ Even in unnamed Melville 313). He was not prepared to receive Quentin’s essay, he did 313). He was not prepared to receive Quentin’s essay, convict of essays (pure writing) that we have seen so often. And Bartleby’s often. And Bartleby’s have seen so that we (pure writing) of essays Writing David Bartholomae tells us of a similar project in “The Tidy House: Basic David Bartholomae tells us of a similar project in “The not know how to respond to it, he could only ignore it even though it was the “only not know how to respond to it, he could only ignore it memorable paper [he] received from that class” ( failures” ( the first week that I was going to fail them; in fact, I knew I was going to preside the first week that I was going to fail them; in fact, demonstrating their over a curriculum that spent 14 weeks slowly and inevitably for an assignment about Jean-Paul Sartre. As Bartholomae reports, “I knew from for an assignment about Jean-Paul Sartre. As Bartholomae Quentin Pierce’s essay Writing in the American Curriculum” when he discusses attempt to make sense of Bartleby’s (excessive) refusal. attempt to make sense of Bartleby’s unable to gratify” ( sufficiently interested him, to awaken curiosity as to who Bartleby was, making his to awaken curiosity as to who Bartleby was, making sufficiently interested him, that in such curiosity I fully share, but am wholly acquaintance, I can only reply, the narrator explains his purpose for writing: “if this little narrative has the narrator explains his purpose the narrator continues writing purely, copying what he observes, describing it in purely, copying what he observes, describing it the narrator continues writing a clear picture of his former scrivener. In concluding, detail, attempting to give word-for-word, to maintain his word-for-word, to maintain and remain a the easiest way of life is to maintain the letter of the law, to write full biographies maintain the letter of the law, to write full biographies the easiest way of life is to sort can be done” – ‘a few passages’ (aphorisms) that jeopardize his conviction that that jeopardize his – ‘a few passages’ (aphorisms) sort can be done” best” ( the “easiest way of life is the of other law-copyists, I might write the complete life, of Bartleby nothing of that complete life, of Bartleby I might write the of other law-copyists, time, waiving “the biographies of all other scriveners, for a few passages in the life scriveners, for a few passages “the biographies of all other time, waiving heard of. While, one I ever saw, or was a scrivener, the strangest of Bartleby, who reproduction reproduction the refusal prompts exceeds, any criterion of acceptable writing, anything that falls outside of the falls outside that writing, anything of acceptable any criterion exceeds, look to affirm – a passive, passionate, patient writing that precedes, and therefore precedes, and writing that patient passionate, affirm – a passive, look to 4
own ways.Its students themselves is(actually)tokeepstudentsfromlearning towriteintheir that “experts”understand howstudents“actuallylearnto write” betterthan Fexpert understandingofhowstudentsactually learntowrite”(CWPA).Thinking ailyear composition”sincehelping“students demonstratetheseoutcomesrequires (scriveners) byseekingto“toregularize whatcanbeexpectedtotaughtinfirst- focusing onapurpose,anddevelopingeffective arguments–churnsoutcopyists Writing ProgramAdministrator’s(CWPA), whichincludeswritingmultipledrafts, based pedagogicalapproach–suchastheonedetailedbycurrentCouncil of perpetuate whattheylearninuniversity writing courses. and writing–readingthatwillbeginonlyaftertheylearnhowto offering studentsasetofskillsthattheywill writing pedagogies,institutionalanddisciplinarydemandsremainfocusedon and itsteachers”( divisions that[stand]asthedefiningmarkersofproblemwitheducation courses thatpostpone“‘real’readingandwriting”enforce“theverycultural and, ineffect,normalizestudentswithpedagogicalmethodsthatemphasizeskills, writing coursesthatattempttoproducewriterswhocanmake deals specificallywith‘basicwriting,’hisperspectivesapplytogeneraleducation of the‘normal’andacceptablepapersIread”( considerable skillandforce–moreforce,forexample,thanIsawinmany indeed, Bartholomaerecognizedthatthe“paperwasawrittendocumentofsome essay demonstratedalevelof“skillfulperformanceinwords”(Writing314); basic writing that leftBartholomaecuriousandunsureaboutwhathewasdoingteaching not towritepurely what wasacceptable(“normal”)writinghadbeenexceeded.Quentin unnamed narrator(henceforth,Bartleby),Bartholomae’sinitialcriterionof . ThisisnottosaythatBartholomaedidsenseQuentin’s as if Writing , andwroteaccordingthispreference,producinganessay teaching thesewriters towritetheletteroflawcould Imagining theComingComposition 315).Anddespitecurrenttrendstowardavant-garde need Writing whentheybegin‘real’reading 314).WhileBartholomae 2 In other words,askills- effective preferred arguments the
5
Acts 60). He doesn’t believe Writing . Quentin’s refusal, like Bartleby’s, answers because he has ideas too; he’s the work 192). But it would be a mistake to see 192). But it would be a mistake Acts with his refusal to write in service to/for the Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing strangely Pedagogically, regularizing the outcomes for student writing for student outcomes the regularizing Pedagogically, 3 that has no (single) answer (e.g., an answer to the question the question an answer to answer (e.g., no (single) that has disaster disaster Commenting on Bartholomae’s essay, Thomas Rickert explains some the Rickert explains some on Bartholomae’s essay, Thomas Commenting Nietzsche and Benjamin), which Bartholomae then applies to his own pedagogical Nietzsche and Benjamin), which Bartholomae then provide an alternate perspective(s). And Rickert also looks at the essay to appears in ‘a few passages,’ as aphoristic performances (as in the styles of appears in ‘a few passages,’ as aphoristic performances that Bartholomae is left to his own devices to find meaning in Quentin’s essay, as that Bartholomae is left to his own devices to find if he were looking at an avant-garde art not naïve, but he asserts his failure by performing in such an excessive manner not naïve, but he asserts his failure by performing in university, and “to learn to speak our language” ( that Bartholomae (or the university) has moment; or, to stretch Bartholomae’s “Inventing the University,” Quentin invents “Inventing the University,” Quentin invents moment; or, to stretch Bartholomae’s the university by writing of meaning; rather, he sees the act of writing as meaning in itself, as an inventive the act of writing as meaning in itself, as an inventive of meaning; rather, he sees university as being somehow liberating, empowering, or even meaningful” ( university as being somehow not mean that Rickert’s pedagogical manner is devoid 194). This, however, does servitude to the institution], to refuse to believe in a fantasy of writing for the to refuse to believe in a fantasy of writing for the servitude to the institution], standards and procedures. Instead, Rickert chooses to see Quentin’s essay as a Instead, Rickert chooses to see Quentin’s essay as standards and procedures. [his (moment) that reflects “his ability to cut through performative (singular) act Quentin’s work – and Bartleby’s refusal – as something to replace the accepted refusal – as something to replace the accepted Quentin’s work – and Bartleby’s excessive displaces and replaces current assessment writing (practices) lest the communication’ is a trap for him” ( communication’ is a trap for fails as that pedagogy is implicated at every turn in the structures that contribute turn in the structures is implicated at every fails as that pedagogy humiliation. Pierce knows all too well that ‘effective to Pierce’s nihilism and daily implications for traditional writing pedagogy: “It is not so much that pedagogy “It is not so much that for traditional writing pedagogy: implications
September 11, 2001). September through writing. of thought as manifested in the regulation implicates pedagogues concerning how to avoid another terrorist attack the likes of which we saw on of which we saw the likes terrorist attack another how to avoid concerning answer to a answer 6 limits” andsuggests thatthese“maybelimitswenolonger wanttodefineour of aModernist(generalizable) pedagogy,whichSircdescribes asbeing“allabout than amererefusal oftheinstitution;itwasalsoacommentary onthelimitations develop ever-changingprocessesintheir writing.WhatQuentinproducedwasmore that riskswouldextendthelimitsofwhat wecanprocessbyallowingstudentsto ‘process’ asastatementonthelimitsof processpedagogy”( blossomed in‘TheTidyHouse’”( seed laynot-so-dormant( in ourhumanmachine.ButQuentinisalsotheflowerdustbin,onewhose writes: “Quentin,then,istheexcessthatourpedagogycannotprocess,poison unpresentable or academicstandards,butattemptstoexceedthosedemandspresentthe – infavorofstandardoragainstthosestandardsproposedbyinstitutionalized like Quentin,apunkpedagogypaysnoheedtotheauthorizedformsofwriting its disciples,butthrustsoffanyanswersthathavebeenproceduralized.Instead, state ofmind,doesnotmerelyrefusetheanswer(s)thatawritingdisciplineoffers that hefindswithinGeoffreySirc’sDIY(do-it-yourself)‘punkpedagogy.Punk, asa (re/produce writing)accordinginstitutionallydefinedstandards. play haveturnedwritingintobasicwriting,demandingthatstudentswritepurely demands havebecomesofixedthatthedominantpedagogicalmethodscurrentlyin perspective onwhatQuentin’sessaypresents:thatinstitutionalanddisciplinary writing intheacademy”( and concluded,theutterslavishnessimpoverishmentofwhatcountsas‘good’ correct line,ineachthesisprovedandsupported,endingskillfullyreached for awritingthatwouldbeotherwise,notdisplayineachgrammatically perspective, onethatherecognizesmaybemisread:“[H]esetsoutthepossibility Unlike Bartholomae,Rickertsuggestsapedagogyimbuedwithrisk,one (Lyotard).SircrecognizesthiselementofQuentin’sessaywhenhe Imagining theComingComposition the onlymemorablepaper Acts 195).BartholomaeandRickertshareacommon English 261).AndRickertnotes“Sirc’spunon ) foreighteenyearsuntilit Acts 192).Apedagogy 4 7 . mise what will postmodern pure writing ). (Lyotard, modo ) anterior ( post postmodern writer: postmodern 325) – what Blanchot calls Writing 81) Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing 36). Quentin, in exceeding the limits of institutional of institutional the limits in exceeding 36). Quentin, . Hence the fact that work and text have the characters of . Hence the fact that work ) always begin too soon. Post modern would have to be understood ) always begin too soon. Post : hence also, they always come too late for their author, or, what : hence also, they always come English event 260), and he becomes Lyotard’s he becomes 260), and en oeuvre the future ( according to the paradox of Postmodern Condition have been done an their being put into work, their realization ( amounts to the same thing, rules, and they cannot be judged according to a determining judgment, by to a determining judgment, cannot be judged according rules, and they and or to the work. Those rules categories to the text applying familiar of art itself is looking for. The artist and writer, categories are what the work rules in order to formulate the rules of then, are working without A postmodern artist or writer is in the position of a philosopher: the texts he position of a philosopher: artist or writer is in the A postmodern principle governed by preestablished he produces are not in writes, the work Sirc’s conceptualization of English Composition as a Happening and ‘punk Sirc’s conceptualization of English Composition as a composition to be defined by those limits. Moreover, Quentin’s essay risks failure composition to be defined by those limits. Moreover, him as a according to a determining judgment, but that risk positions pedagogy’ provides a way out of the fixed position with his preference not to allow pedagogy’ provides a way out of the fixed position
has become fixed, naturalized” ( House,” Bartholomae was already recognizing some of the faults in disciplinary House,” Bartholomae was already recognizing some that “a provisional position perspectives of ‘basic writing’ programs, particularly come too soon, too soon for not only his ability to manage the essay and too soon not only his ability to manage the essay and too soon come too soon, too soon for time that he wrote “The Tidy for what pedagogy was prepared to address. By the Indeed, as Bartholomae writes, he was not prepared for Quentin’s essay; it had he was not prepared for Quentin’s essay; it had Indeed, as Bartholomae writes, English acceptability, refuses “to enable the ritual” of ‘pure’ writing any “further” (Sirc, any “further” ‘pure’ writing the ritual” of “to enable refuses acceptability, composition” ( composition” 8 imagination. in orderto‘formulate therulesof the Modernistlimits thatSircfindshavedefinedinstitutionally appropriatewriting of being,thatweareneverfinishedlearning. rather, itrecognizesrecognitionthatwe arealwaysalreadyinapedagogicalstate meanings. Inthissense, postpedagogy Nietzschean sense achieved throughoppositionalstrategies,but[as]atransvaluation(inthe attempt “areversalofvaluation(asinabinaryornegativedeconstruction) Political Agon”304).Inotherwords,Rickertsuggestsa but toallow“ not propose“anefforttoconstructa‘new’ethic”or“toproduceanyvalues,” of control”(Rickert, teacher tostudent[…]thatrefusesmirrorthesocietyofcontrolwithapedagogy promotes “writingActsthatshiftcontrolofthedominantlocicontentionfrom based pedagogy–andwritestrangely. September 11,2001terroristattacks,andcomposition’scontinuedfocusonskills- a Happening Instead, Ireceive follows isnotamerereiterationofSirc’swork–thatwouldbetowritepurely. in whichtoinhabitsituationsofwritinginstruction”( inhabitants ofwriting“asensethesublime”and“offercompellingenvironments and their(ir)respectivepractices(cf.CWPA).LikeSirc,Iwouldprefertoallow obstruction ofEnglishComposition,andonewherestudentsserveinstitutions writer Versus itsmis/re/presentationbyfolks suspicious ofpostmodernistcritiques, , ariskthatBartholomae,RickertandSircbearwitnesstoascommon 9 ” ( another doesnotresistmeaningperse,butespouses aproliferationof ByronHawkexplains thatthe “problem withexcludingthislarger English 4 his“salute”for“thenext remakeof 8 ) achievedthroughproduction” ( Acts ethic” to“enterourconversations”(Haynes,“TheEthico- 294)andwrite(of)thedisaster 163).Sucharadicallypassivewriting(pedagogy)does Imagining theComingComposition postpedagogy what willhavebeen done 7 Indeed,thisimaginative mannerofwriting does notsuggestthatpedagogyisatits end; Postpedagogy Acts English 6 English Compositionas –simultaneouslythe 173). postpedagogy ’ throughaproductive , then,aimstoexceed 1-2).However,what that doesnot 9 in favor 102), similar 102), similar that invents 11 However, before 12 The Postmodern Magic Rhetoric, and Magic Rhetoric, the answer 10 ” . Counterhistory heuretics magination and I of
ailure conduction “A F Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing
, the imagination “allows one either to make a new move or to change , the imagination “allows one : “What human imagination can maintain, perhaps, is an appreciation for perhaps, is an appreciation imagination can maintain, : “What human
Hawk’s view echoes what William A. Covino suggests in echoes what William A. Covino Hawk’s view hese are the words of former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz hese are the words of former Deputy Secretary of Defense by the 9/11 to former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, reported
Commission 336). This is precisely the sort of mindset that Hawk challenges Commission 336). This is precisely the sort of mindset imagination, and in his discussion of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s secondary Commission; it was, they write, “a mind-set that dismissed possibilities” (National Commission; it was, they write, “a mind-set that dismissed T call for revitalizing the imagination for rhetoric and composition. call for revitalizing the imagination continuing with a discussion of comics, I want to focus on what is at stake in this of comics, I want to focus on what is at stake in this continuing with a discussion new rules for writing as it acts out the practices of writing. If current trends are acts out the practices of writing. If current trends are new rules for writing as it form as both image and text: comics. any sign, writing will take as Bartleby’s, is perhaps the production of the coming composition as Bartleby’s, is perhaps the the rules of the game” (52) – the same rules that would ‘slowly and inevitably’ – the same rules that would ‘slowly and inevitably’ the rules of the game” (52) failure.’ Quentin’s refusal to write purely, as well work to demonstrate ‘Quentin’s of inventing the composition(s) to come. As Lyotard explains in of inventing the composition(s) Condition head – to refuse to write purely is to refuse, as Quentin does, head – to refuse to write purely Literacy only hope” (108). Again, Bartleby’s refusal rears its ‘absolute refusal’ that is our
to Gregory Ulmer’s concepts of to Gregory Ulmer’s and that the appeal of the imagination is that it does not “determine the path of the it does not “determine is that of the imagination the appeal and that in motion” ( “continually sets that inquiry inquiry,” but that are then plugged into a linear and acontextual model of the composing process” process” composing the of model acontextual and linear a into plugged then are that role of the imagination is that it reduces thinking to generic inventional strategies inventional to generic reduces thinking is that it the imagination role of 10 people thencouldreasonably haveknownordone”(National Commission339) formulate determined) criteria (whichisnottosay“nocriteria”) imagination offers(‘freeplay’),andtowork without(apre- to learnfromthepast,butbearwitness towhatthe of hindsight,what‘thisnarrative’indicates, isnottheneed What theCommissionacknowledgeshere inthehandicap The lackofforesight,the(in)abilitytoimagine possibilities. explains: consequences. Chapter11oftheCommissionsreport(“Foresight—AndHindsight”) Hawk findsabsentincurrentwritingpedagogy,andonethatcanhavedisastrous failure thatWolfowitzdescribesisoneignoresthethird(excessive)term and objectasathirdterm[theexcessive]”( means thatmethodisnotsomethingpre-existsandthenmediatessubject proliferation,” Hawktellsus,“notonlyopensmethodtothemomentbutalso that postpedagogical manners conflicting meanings”(NationalCommission339) disaster hasoccurred.Butbeforetheeventitisobscureandpregnantwith always crystalclear;wecannowseewhatdisasteritwassignalingsincethe the relevantfromirrelevantsignals.Afterevent,ofcourse,asignalis Harbor, RobertaWohlstetterfoundit“mucheasier that itplaceseverythingelsemoredeeplyintoshadow.CommentingonPearl clearly—with 20/20vision.Butthepathofwhathappenedissobrightlylit the benefitandhandicapofhindsight.Hindsightcansometimesseepast In composingthisnarrative,wehavetriedtorememberthatwritewith what willhavebeen Imagining theComingComposition 13 since “thelimitsofwhat
offer. “Suchaviewofcreativeinventionand Counterhistory after 109). Inpart,the theeventtosortout 11
Epic Fail . ) and 14 interruption 59-60) Writing , but a risk with the power of the refusals , but a risk with the power aphorism Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing (a refugee from reason) that Lyotard adopts. The risk (a refugee from reason) that Lyotard adopts. The risk is because that time is never sure, but is the absence of time, absence in a is because that time is never to all past-present, as well as posterior to nonnegative sense, time anterior yet to come. ( every possibility of a present Interrupted, it goes on. Interrogating itself, it does not co-opt the question Interrupted, it goes on. Interrogating it) as nonresponse. Thus, if it claims but suspends it (without maintaining the whole—at least ideally—is realized, this that its time comes only when Fragmentary writing is risk, it would seem: risk itself. It is not based on Fragmentary writing is risk, a practice one could define as any theory, nor does it introduce Again, Blanchot aphorizes: Again, Blanchot postmodern writer therefore, lose its risk. would merely position imagination in the service of institutional standards and, would merely position imagination in the service of they also propose the paradoxical solution of finding “a way of routinizing, even they also propose the paradoxical solution of finding Commission 344), which bureaucratizing, the exercise of imagination” (National Commission’s report critiques institutional bureaucracy for a lack of imagination, Commission’s report critiques institutional bureaucracy of refusal to write reasonably, as Covino suggests, may be the hope of an of refusal to write reasonably, as Covino suggests, may And yet, even as the imaginative approach the 9/11 Commission finds necessary. that Bartleby and Quentin pose – a ‘nonresponse’ – and in doing so becomes that Bartleby and Quentin the Blanchot performs the risk of Blanchot performs the risk
dismisses the possibilities of writing otherwise. dismisses the reason, and reasonable writing, being able to focus on a purpose in order to in order focus on a purpose able to writing, being and reasonable reason, utmost risk risk (and therefore, the arguments, contains no develop effective “reasonable,” for what constitutes reason failed to defer the disaster. Likewise, disaster. Likewise, to defer the reason failed constitutes for what “reasonable,” lacked the sufficient foresight. Even more telling is the Commission’s use of the is the Commission’s Even more telling foresight. the sufficient lacked 12 imagination occupies Commission positions itselfagainstwhatitrecognizesas‘evil’ –terrorismbutthe its desiretointegrate theimaginationinserviceofinstitutional practices,the first toformulate:that moral judgment Nietzsche’s demand to “take his stand beyond good and evil and leave the illusion of alternate possibilities.Asa“philosopher,” the established rules,worksbeyondthelimits ofwhatisacceptableinordertoaffirm that ‘dismissedpossibilities.’ Commission suggestsisnecessary,onlypositionsitasapartoftheletter law provocative imagination.Integratingtheimaginationintopolitical,which the besides critique:imagination”(Lyotard, same ‘blanks’thatinstitutionsuseasa“resourceofcritique”allowfor“something report andtheeventsof9/11,itisthat method toprotectitself.Still,ifthereisonelessonthatcanbegarneredfrom the of writing(i.e.,acapacityforcomingintobeingthroughwriting), an approachthatfocusesmoreoncritiqueandassessmentthanpotentialities imagination.” Butthefailurewasnotofimagination,butlack Political Writings For the9/11Commission,theseblanksare“theresource[s]ofcritique”(Lyotard, ‘blanks’ alwaysremaininthe‘text,’whatevertextitis”( system maintainsandprotectswithinitself”;yet,eventhosesystems“some Lyotard explainsthatcritiquedevelops“intheemptyinteriorspace system. InhisdiscussionoftheBerlinWalland‘Gulfsituation’in1990, be aformcritique Instead, Lyotard’s The imaginationcannotbeappliedinanytradition/alway–whichwould beneath 120)thattheyrecognizeinWolfowitz’sphrase:“afailureof 15 –butmaybeproducedwithoutapre-establishedvaluation no place there arealtogethernomoralfacts himself.Thisdemandfollowsfroman insight whichIwas postmodern writer Imagining theComingComposition within thisdistinction, ittakes the system’smethodsdonotsuffice Political Writings , inhisabilitytoworkwithoutpre- postmodern writer Political Writings ” (Portable501).Evenin 120), a no-thing 16 takes upFriedrich productive perhapsasa for granted. . The 120). and 13 ] and puissance disaster And, “it is 18 postmodern writer’s postmodern writer’s politics, in the Lyotardian politics, in the Lyotardian At this point, the At this point, 17 in the rhetorical practices, thinking and post-modern 501). , writing to invent or discover the rules of or discover the rules , writing to invent rooted Portable Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing 16). Put simply, the imagination does not think (itself), but cuts 16). Put simply, the imagination does not think (itself), – the excessive potential of the figural (image). what will have been what will have is always approaching, and the fixed letter of the law has not gone far is always approaching, and the fixed letter of the law Libidinal world that no longer exists. (National Commission 399) world that no longer exists. 9/11. Those attacks showed, emphatically, that ways of doing business rooted 9/11. Those attacks showed, good enough. Americans should not settle for in a different era are not just to a system designed generations ago for a incremental, ad hoc adjustments The men and women of the World War II generation rose to the challenges The men and women of the restructured the government so that it could of the 1940s and 1950s. They now the job of the generation that experienced protect the country. That is disaster determines it; the idea of a passage over nothing, which produces, its passage” determines it; the idea of a passage over nothing, which (Lyotard, until – rather than to think, we are not thinkers – until a producer-body, until – rather than to think, we are not thinkers – until ephemeral skin potential [ necessary that we strengthen our imagination, our palpative assessment appear to have been stripped of their power, laid bare by Lyotard’s assessment appear to have been stripped of their power, the enough. Adjustments to a system This sounds remarkably like a call for a This sounds remarkably like to defer the sense. The presented, the presentable, has not worked is precisely what the Commission recommends despite their call to appropriate the despite their call the Commission recommends is precisely what system: imagination as a part of the order to invent valuations for what functions beyond institutional practices, which beyond institutional valuations for what functions order to invent desire to write desire to write practices in the values of institutional of writing, exceeds additional potentialities are still lacking; thus ‘truth,’ at this stage, designates all sorts of things which of things all sorts stage, designates ‘truth,’ at this lacking; thus are still ‘imaginings’ ( we today call the very concept of the real and the distinction between what is real and imaginary, imaginary, is real and between what distinction real and the concept of the the very Nietzsche explains: “Moral judgments […] belong to a stage of ignorance at which of ignorance to a stage […] belong “Moral judgments explains: Nietzsche 14 Breaking gutter the center of (current) traditional composition pedagogy and move to the wayside, the 209-10; original emphasis). A post (future) writing would leave these assumptions at ought to be, and what can be changed. language, and ‘reality,’ and from there it peddles assumptions about what is, what it assumes and then propagates a particular relationship among the writer, the reader, “Even the teaching of composition, as Berlin suggests, is the teaching of a world view: is ideologically saturated” ( its corresponding pedagogy, the extent to which power/knowledge in the classroom the extent to which politics is always driving any/every rhetoric of composition and writes, “[James] Berlin’s article [“Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class”] exposed the perpetuation of institutional practices. Diane Davis explains as much when she perspectives of being able to provide students with the current pedagogical theory is any sign, that remains grounded within institutional ‘failure of imagination.’ Writing defining markers of the problem with education and its teachers” (Bartholomae, still remains a way of enforcing “the very cultural divisions that [stand] as the and postponing the ‘real’ writing that they will be required to complete later S (Lyotard, through oppositionalforceswith“ephemeralexplosionsorlibidinalintensities” imperative to provide students with what they o, what has this to do with composition (pedagogy)? Everything! The pedagogical 21 where thought can open up possibilities of “thinking the unthought” (Davis, 315), the same problems that the 9/11 Commission acknowledges as a 208). Libidinal 18)nottorecord,butwriteother/wise. T 20 oward As pedagogues, we occupy a political position, one, if Imagining theComingComposition Breaking
a (P ost 209; cf. Berlin, This is a seriously political business ) P edagogical need Rhetoric necessary skills to succeed in the university W riting 189). Davis continues: 19 to succeed in ” ( Breaking 15 The The suggests suggests You ought to to ought You them into a into them of the gutter, gutter, the of yet, because it has has it because yet, limbo limbo , it is not a a not is it , transforms transforms that Lyotard describes in in describes Lyotard that any map map any link link opens up what would otherwise be be otherwise would what up opens Understanding Comics Comics Understanding must (Il faut) (Il must ), that which has yet to be thought. thought. be to yet has which that ), 22 238; original emphasis). However, what comics comics what However, emphasis). original 238; doesn’t exist on on exist doesn’t
yours not to write purely purely write to not 66). ‘Limbo’ seems a fitting word in the current setting, setting, current the in word fitting a seems ‘Limbo’ 66). Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing 80). These linkages, then, become imaginatively inventive, inventive, imaginatively become then, linkages, These 80). takes two separate images and and images separate two takes Understanding given that linking “is necessary,” but not “a particular linkage” linkage” particular “a not but necessary,” “is linking that given ” ( ” that any of us ever get a solid sense of where we want to go. And And go. to want we where of sense solid a get ever us of any that 134; cf. Vitanza, “Three Countertheses”), and to which McCloud McCloud which to and Countertheses”), “Three Vitanza, cf. 134; so well since they incorporate both word and image (hybrid (hybrid image and word both incorporate they since well so Differend Understanding ” ( ” (can you see the linkages here?). But the ‘imagination’ that McCloud McCloud that ‘imagination’ the But here?). linkages the see you (can Differend 23 discovered wandering The gutter here is a direct reference to the space between panels in comics, comics, in panels between space the to reference direct a is here gutter The offer rhetoric and composition extends beyond the gutter, an ‘idiom’ that has so often often so has that ‘idiom’ an gutter, the beyond extends composition and rhetoric offer Lyotard that production of means available the engages comics rather, addressed; been yet to be be to yet no matter how many worthwhile destinations have been visited by earlier generations generations earlier by visited been have destinations worthwhile many how matter no that chance a always there’s -- through through makes no claim. Even an inspectional reading of of reading inspectional an Even claim. no makes only “It’s contingent: as comics of, medium the and of, analysis his sees McCloud that dismissed possibilities possibilities dismissed (Lyotard, arrangements. The preference preference The arrangements. (Vous devez) (Vous unexpected through written, or thought be to yet have that potentialities exploring “confuse necessity with obligation. If there is a a is there If obligation. with necessity “confuse Differend not to us cautions Lyotard – necessity a but ‘ought,’ an by governed not is to points excess (an abyss? perhaps an abysmal space? abysmal an perhaps abyss? (an excess to necessity the into taps McCloud Unknowingly, Moreover, the transformation that McCloud imagines takes place in the excluded excluded the in place takes imagines McCloud that transformation the Moreover, single idea” ( idea” single writing. offer Davis and Hawk that position third a uncertainty, of state a indicating human imagination imagination human postmodern writer writer postmodern the “in observes, McCloud As earlier. to alluded I as works), the space where Scott McCloud observes that readers and writers insert themselves themselves insert writers and readers that observes McCloud Scott where space the the fit to seem comics that coincidence no is It panels. between links make to
16 inaccuracy toseewhat mayariseoutoftheimagination.Ong continues: original. Indeed,Ong seesthepotentialofcomicstowrite strangely andwith possibilities ofmultimodal writinginitscontentmenttodirectly representthe of comics,theadaptation9/11Commission reportdoeslittletoforeseethe developing, onlywellaheadofthemass ofpeople”(Heer100).InOng’sestimation inaccuracy andexaggeration)thesensibilities everybodyisonthewayto one that“isoftengenuinely routes. to thinktheunthought,andallowafreeplayofimaginationtakealternate adhering toinstitutionalrecommendationsevenwhilethereportimploresreaders a backseatto Report” (ix).Here,theopportunitiesthatmultimodalwritingaffordswriterstakes to thefindings,recommendation,spirit,andtoneoforiginalCommission with their‘graphicadaptation’ofthe9/11CommissionReport.Theadaptation,as (between) thatset.SidJacobsonandErnieColónprovideanexampleoftheformer take intoaccountthechancesoffindingunthoughtpossibilitiesthatfalloutside argumentation, whichoffersasetofpossible(worthwhile)directions,butdoesnot which have found their ways into the composition classroom as ‘multimodal’ writing. associates with of thiseditionfortheircloseadherence commend thetalentedgraphicartists attention ofanewsetreaders.We the workof9/11Commissionto Commission “theopportunitytobring write intheforeword,affords9/11 Thomas H.KeanandLeeHamilton Still, approachestomultimodalwritingremainfocusedoncritiqueor 24 ForWalterOng,comicspresentanavant-garde approachtowriting, re postmodern writing: discourse presenting atruncatedversionoftheoriginalreport,closely Imagining theComingComposition avant-garde —representing (withunderstandable (word) AND T ar here t
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need Ramus, method in in method , Haynes explains that the problem for composition composition for problem the that explains Haynes , Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing Ramus that takes into account that which has led to the ‘decay’ of that takes into account that comic strip—is like the thing most opposed to. (Heer 101) comic strip—is like the thing writers returned to him and his point of view, whatever that is. But there view, whatever that is. But to him and his point of writers returned has in his own instinctive way, that the common man, seems to be signs of the disease supposed to be the prerogative of the perhaps vague symptoms art—and if there was ever popular art, it is the decadent intellectual. Popular supposition (in part an heritage from Rousseau, who may be followed in face who may be followed part an heritage from Rousseau, supposition (in right in the common man is always in principle) that where he is disowned artists and high time effete “modern” and instincts and that it is his attitudes For the back of the hostility which, in many semi-educated circles, still in many semi-educated hostility which, back of the For the the artist, lies of the modern to the problems approach an intelligent cripples In a reading of Ong’s Ong’s of reading a In imaginative: “We must be (t)reasonous. We must be intensive and hospitable; we must must we hospitable; and intensive be must We (t)reasonous. be must imaginative “We an seeks imaginative: Commission the while However, (711). way” without be One suggestion that Haynes proposes is akin to the 9/11 Commission’s desire to be more more be to desire Commission’s 9/11 the to akin is proposes Haynes that suggestion One lies at the heart of pedagogy where “reason is perfected in pedagogy, for pedagogy, by by pedagogy, for pedagogy, in perfected is “reason institutions. where of) service pedagogy of (the in heart the writing at lies locates which 673), Offshore” (“Writing pedagogues”
and across excluded possibilities. as institutionally mandated by the pre-established criteria and curricula that by the pre-established criteria and curricula that as institutionally mandated and experiment at, within, handicaps the ability of imagination to wander, explore, institutions function, there exists a focus, a rootedness, on what ‘students’ institutions function, there Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason Method, and the Decay of recognize the current effects of Ramism on how Whether ‘decadent intellectuals’ dialogue, from “the art of discourse to the art of reason” as he details in dialogue, from “the art of discourse If we are to believe Ong, comics present themselves as a way to popularize a If we are to believe Ong, comics postmodern writing 18 dissertation. of creating such work gestures toward such a writing,McCloud’s including six steps the – progression(1) Idea, (2) of Form,this (3) Idiom,of writing. (4) Structure, Comics provide (5) Craft, such a(6) way Surface to begin – tothinking write purelyabout writingso that aswe postmoderns.may explore what otherpedagogical possibilities manner present would havethemselves us in Acts in order to continually formulate the rules of ofwhat Lyotard’s will have been. And perhaps, such a Kaprow’s faculty that we have omitted from our daily lives”the ( TV image [digital media]” ( Marshall McLuhan’s perspective that “comics providecontemporary a useful composition approach to instruction understanding with a spiritproposes of the in neo-avant-garde”“Box Logic,” an approach(146). Such geared is towardposition” “attempts (“Writing to use Offshore” technology 715). to infuseSuch is theas “art a way consciousness to wander through to daily writing, life” that“ Sirc an ungrounded (non)position that detaches itselfVitanza’s from institutionally “Three Counterthesis,” accepted practicesHaynes suggests formalist that we tape-loop”turn to writing (Sirc, nomadically, aesthetic criteria still come into play, but criteriaproductively not merely (t)reasonous, cribbed off“as ana siteendless, where strangepostpedagogy explorations would arediscard appreciated, “whys” in where favor of intensiveservice performances that may be the service , but plays in an ungrounded sliver (perhaps a unartist of institutional stability, imagination pays no heed to (any single) philosopher , “who is engaged in changing jobs” ( – a postmodern writer and artist exceeding pre-established criteria English Imagining theComingComposition Understanding 32; qtd. in Haynes, “Writing Offshore” 710). Building on uncomposition testing contradictions 164) that may remind “us of all the life and ourselves from institutional demands Understanding slash Understanding ). Moreover, an imaginative ” instead of “taking a 167). Such is Allan 102). Such is the task method or 19
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teps S oming Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing ix C S advisory system advisory the 35). the manifestations of the chapters do not (always) directly correlate to (always) directly correlate of the chapters do not the manifestations hile I use McCloud’s six steps as a framework for this dissertation, for this dissertation, six steps as a framework hile I use McCloud’s
In addition, I will also be designing the the designing be also will I addition, In
English additional color (violet) in order to be able to offer offer to able be to order in (violet) color additional Blue (step 4), and (5) Green (steps 5 and 6). For For 6). and 5 (steps Green (5) and 4), (step Blue an add to had I dissertation, this of purpose the (step 1), (2) Orange (step 2), (3) Yellow (step 3), (4) (4) 3), (step Yellow (3) 2), (step Orange (2) 1), (step for this color scheme comes from the Department Department the from comes scheme color this for Security’s Homeland of color associated with each chapter. The rationale rationale The chapter. each with associated color that I propose. As you’ve probably already noticed, noticed, already probably you’ve As propose. I that a indicate will page each of side the on ‘tabs’ the work the perform to way a such in dissertation technologies and strategies can change fundamental compositional questions” can change fundamental compositional questions” technologies and strategies ( move toward digital technology; instead, comics suggest something else, and what instead, comics suggest something else, and what move toward digital technology; Duchamp interests Sirc: “showing how alternative they suggest is similar to why I do not mean to use comics as such to discuss rhetoric and composition’s current as such to discuss rhetoric and composition’s current I do not mean to use comics To explain how I use McCloud’s six steps, the following chapter descriptions offer six steps, the following chapter descriptions offer To explain how I use McCloud’s I am using comics in this dissertation. Put simply, a brief introduction into how and the ‘making’ consists of the design, writing, and production of this dissertation. writing, and production of consists of the design, and the ‘making’ subdivided through three parts: knowing, doing, and making. The first three doing, and making. The three parts: knowing, subdivided through t the last two chapters comprise the ‘knowing,’ while chapters constitute W step. The six steps, that he provides for each the descriptions or chapters, are 20 alternate perspective totheworkofcomicsthatfraternizes withavant-garde‘art’ of acomicsmedium. ArtSpiegelman’s integrate thevarious combinationsofimageandtextthat they seeastheessence Thierry Groensteen,haveattemptedto solidifyasystemthatwouldbeableto definition thatwouldaccountforother iterations.Inpart,thesecritics,specifically critics haveattemptedtodismantlehis projectinordertodevelopamoreprecise proposes wetakeon.SinceMcCloud’s cinema –andhowcomicsbegintoenact thesortofteachingthat medium –definingthemedia,comparingcomicstoothermediaparticularly its taskasaddressingthreeofthemajorconversationscomicsa (another kindof)art( writing inthe21stcentury,includingrelationshipbothseebetweenwork of writing allowsforanimaginative technologies thatenforceaproceduralizedsystemofthinking,andhowthisstrange in discussinghowa writing storiesthroughtheimagesincomics.Lyotardemergesasonekeyfigure postpedagogy students’ ownwaysofknowing.Thelinkbetweenhowthesetheoristsexplain the prerogativesofwhatOngcalls‘decadentintellectuals’inattemptstoaffirm theoretical approachestorhetoricandcompositionhavebegundoawaywith of howthesetheory-headshavethought in whichcompositiontheoristshavediscussedcomicswithspecificexamples what hasalreadybeensaidinrelationto My Composition”–Iworkthroughasurvey,sortofliteraturereview, a color for each chapter. Chapter II In Chapter I entersthemixthroughItaloCalvino’spersonaltaleofhowhebegan – form(shapeofthework) –idea(conceptbehindtheidea) postmodern writer unart Imagining theComingComposition ) andpolitics. pro-duction Understanding Comics In theShadowofNo Towers addresses theproblemsposedbyriseof postpedagogies postmodern writing : “IntheShadowofImage/Text”–takes that hassignificantimplicationsfor : “There’saStrangerin , highlightingways wasreleased,various . Thesecurrent postpedagogy bringsan
21 ) rather than ) rather than conductive logic : “Art Interrupted” – attempts to break – attempts to break : “Art Interrupted” throughout as an example of the different . “Intermedia” shares Lyotard’s view that . “Intermedia” shares Lyotard’s unart Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing . The term unart was coined in order to indicate a move away . The term unart was coined – idiom (‘school’ of art) – idiom (‘school’ The Narrative Corpse – structure (nuts-and-bolts): “Uncomposing (Visual) Rhetorics” – – structure (nuts-and-bolts): “Uncomposing (Visual) , combining media in a way that cannot be divided or assessed as , combining media in a way that cannot be divided or unart Chapter IV Chapter III intermedia begin uncomposing ourselves. turns to a discussion of what it would mean for us to surrealist project forms, perspectives, and methods that comics offer. terms. To expose how comics provide such an approach, I discuss Spiegelman’s terms. To expose how comics provide such an approach, with has been used on its own separate, than with ‘mixed media,’ where each medium from the more generalizable, more easily recognizable forms of Art that have been more easily recognizable forms of Art that have from the more generalizable, unart has more to do situated under specified categories. As Kaprow explains, Kaprow calls significance of comics for rhetoric and composition, and specifically that rhetorical rhetoric and composition, and specifically that rhetorical significance of comics for akin to comics than to Art proper; that is, to what approaches to art are more etc. – and methods. In this chapter, I begin to tackle the generally unrecognized chapter, I begin to tackle the generally unrecognized etc. – and methods. In this extends beyond traditional forms of art even though they begin with those forms. forms of art even though they begin with those forms. extends beyond traditional a variety of different elements – ink, paint, speech, For McCloud, “form” includes image and text are not separate but always already interrelated, superimposed on but always already interrelated, superimposed image and text are not separate the work, of the elements involved in producing comics, one another. The shape of chapter: (1) intermedia and (2) chapter: (1) intermedia and away from what, in current trends toward multimodal composition, has been multimodal composition, in current trends toward away from what, of ‘mixed media.’ Two major concepts inform this generally discussed in terms
attempting to directly translate print logics into electronic environments. into electronic environments. directly translate print logics attempting to for thinking of the ways in which digital technologies afford us opportunities to us opportunities afford digital technologies in which of the ways for thinking (Ulmer’s logics of electronic media think with the KY works as a conceptual starting point for a view of comics as a form well-suited as a form well-suited view of comics point for a starting as a conceptual KY works outlooks. His keynote talk at the 2006 Thomas R. Watson Conference in Louisville, Conference in R. Watson 2006 Thomas talk at the His keynote outlooks. 22 that relatedmoreto lifethantoArt,rhetoricandcomposition hasyettolearn dissertation beganin artandbecamedisaffectedbytheinability toproducework begin to relationship toart,andwithhowitoffers usawaytothinkabouthowwemight to Haynes’conceptof‘hospitality’in“Writing Offshore”asitrelatestocomics’ touches): “TraitorousHospitality:AnAphoristic (Composition) Pedagogy” a strangelyimaginativewriting. without intent,assumingasinglestandardofevaluationthatwouldhinder criteria –thiswouldmeantoallowwritingbethoughtofintermsexploration 161). Ifwethinkofthisintermscriteria–andLyotard’sdesiretoworkwithout that hails them as addressees, before they can think about it” (Readings, University the ungroundednessoftheirsituation:obligationtoeachotheranda name comics wouldthrow“thosewhoparticipateinpedagogybackintoareflection upon can besettled,theirclaimsarrangedandevaluatedonahomogenousscale”;rather, metalanguage thatcantranslateallotheridiomsintoitsownsotheirdispute thought asanin(ter)ventionthatdoes“notresolvearguments;itnotprovide a itself –then,wecanbetterrecognizecomicsintermsofBillReadings’view surrealist project–whichBlanchotseesastheexperienceofthought University 163).BuildingonChapter3,ifcomicscanbethoughtofasastranger Bartleby’s andQuentin’ssenses,torecode,orinvert,powerrelations(Readings, persuasion.’ Thisinterruptionofrhetoricaspersuasionwouldexactarefusal,in the figuraloffersitselfasaninterruptionofAristotelianrhetoric,‘art(s) generally refertoas‘visualrhetorics’–exceedsthedesireforpersuasion.Assuch, Kaprow’s termunart,Isuggestthatwhatwefindinthefigural–rhetoricians variety of meanings taken up as the focus of this chapter. Taking my cue from Allan The titleofthischapter,simultaneouslythedissertation,impliesa Chapter V–craft(skillsofproducingthe work)andsureface(finishing uncomposition ourselves.Asmost of thecomics‘artists’citedinthis Imagining theComingComposition –returns 23
204). Potable Inhuman say in a book” (Nietzsche, say in a book” (Nietzsche, not I present this dissertation as an act of love (in 25 Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing 26 Ah, writing! Ah, humanity! This chapter concludes this dissertation with a Nietzschean turn toward This chapter concludes this the Nietzschean sense). sentences,’ to be a 140-Artist, to be a 140-unartist. The singularity of such writing sentences,’ to be a 140-Artist, to be a 140-unartist. The of and to Art. offers us the ability to speak of life as the artist speaks says in a book – what everyone else does says in a book – what everyone Nietzsche would say in ‘ten 556). No! My ambition is to say in 140-characters what century. To clarify: my ambition is not to “say in ten sentences what everyone else is not to “say in ten sentences what everyone century. To clarify: my ambition environments – specifically on Twitter – we find that Nietzsche’s aphorisms provide on Twitter – we find that Nietzsche’s aphorisms environments – specifically how art and writing may develop in the 21st us with a way of understanding the fragmentary writing currently taking place in electronic (digital/online) the fragmentary writing currently interview, as we will see, Ware explains that his ‘drawing’ is more like typography explains that his ‘drawing’ is more like typography interview, as we will see, Ware Ware’s approach to writing and compare it to than ‘real drawing.’ If we take fragmentary writing. In this chapter, I build on Chris Ware’s view of comics fragmentary writing. In this Nietzsche’s ambition of writing and ‘art.’ In an production to suggest we update
monstorous of thoughts. monstorous of contradictions. Put briefly, the traitorous writer is hospitable to even the most writer is hospitable to Put briefly, the traitorous contradictions. The traitor to art and composition here becomes open to occasions for writing becomes open to occasions art and composition here The traitor to testing those own beliefs and values by that fall beyond even their and thinking Having left home – the discipline of art – comics ‘artists’ become witnesses to the witnesses ‘artists’ become of art – comics the discipline left home – Having ( to Lyotard, “is a traitor” “the witness,” according disaster (of art); categories of acceptability in favor of new, innovative, and imaginative work. imaginative and of new, innovative, in favor of acceptability categories the lessons it has seemed to support from the avant-garde: breaking away from breaking away avant-garde: from the to support it has seemed the lessons Chapter 1
There’s a Stranger in My Composition 25 in order postpedagogy The Infinite Conversation omposition C y into the forefront of writing, this into the forefront of writing, M in
figural ~ Maurice Blanchot, . In the course of my research, however, Maurice of my research, however, Maurice . In the course tranger “The suppliant and the stranger are one; both are cut off off cut are both one; are stranger the and suppliant “The from the whole, being deprived of the right that founds all all founds that right the of deprived being whole, the from S others and alone establishes one’s belonging to the home.” the to belonging one’s establishes alone and others a
s ’ Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing The Sophist The here T
To that end, I use the figure of the ‘Stranger,’ and specifically, the Plato/nic Plato/nic the specifically, and ‘Stranger,’ the of figure the use I end, that To
t’s no secret: in the past decade technology and the visual have transformed t’s no secret: in the past decade To understand how and why they have radicalized the teaching of composition. Blanchot’s work has become a significant influence in how I have come to think Blanchot’s work has become a significant influence writings on the about why the Stranger appeals to me, and how Blanchot’s in described as Stranger, to situate how I see the future of composition studies developing in the wake of to situate how I see the future of composition studies these new theories, methods, and instructional practices. and practitioners have said on the subjects of new media and and practitioners have said on the subjects of new media to cinema to music, etc.) has opened the fields of rhetoric and composition to new to cinema to music, etc.) has opened the fields of rhetoric consolidates what scholars modes of thought and creation. In essence, this chapter garde ambit of transformation. Why and how this move is occurring requires that Why and how this move is occurring requires that garde ambit of transformation. examples to mark how ‘new media’ (from video/games I work through a string of chapter provides a stasis (theory) for today’s composition pedagogy in the avant- chapter provides a stasis (theory) I moved the composition instruction and 26 That is,ifthereisany waytoprovideanexigencyforthis project, itistosaythat where newmediahas beenworkingourthinkingandwriting overinnewways. address newmedia has little,ifanything,todowithhowwe may according toourowndevices.Inrhetoric andcomposition,agooddealofhowwe in Plato’s trying todistanceusfromourownways ofknowing.Aswewillsee,theStranger of a figurethatcanputusclosertoourown waysof ways of that ‘make[s]theworldsmaller,’butcontinuetoseparateusfromourown aleatory (chance)logic,toMcLuhan’s‘globalvillage’–approaches‘newmedia’ interest. Forexample,‘thestrangenessofthevillage’relates,atleastthrough an unbuilt hacienda but Icansaythatthe‘Castle’Blanchotreferstohereappearscorrelate Like this‘stranger,’I’mnotsurethatIcanaccountfortheexigencyofproject, purpose togetherforme: Conversation think ofcompositionpedagogyandrhetoricalpractice.Anendnotein stranger havealteredandclarifiedtheimportanceofStrange(r)inwayI being There areotherreferencesinBlanchot’spassagethatrelatetoareasof without allurebyanexigencyheisunabletoaccountfor.(463) own familiarity,asthoughpulledaheadtowardthesesitesnonetheless Castle of thevillage,andastrangertohimself[FranzKafka’s‘foreigner’in …a strangertothestrangenessofCastle,a withlanguage,writing,and‘art’inaworld thatcontinues–indirectly being Sophist ] since,inanincomprehensiblemanner,hedecidestobreakwithhis , morethananyotherreflection,hasbroughttheStranger’s(non) in theworld.TheStranger,atleastthissense,ismeanttoindicate isnotstrangeenoughtoaddresshowwe maybeintheworld Geoff Sirccontinuesworkingon (Sirc, There’s aStrangerinMyComposition being , includingourownways English 1-32). be inaworld The Infinite The 27 .
) The form of comics has nothing to do with the medium of comics. As Gilles Deleuze when reflecting on form: “Aesthetic being form […] is merged with the reflection of the object in the imagination” (“The Idea of Genesis…” 61). The form of comics,
Deleuze then, has to do with a sort of intuition exercised by imagination. happen/ings offer the comics If we don’t begin allowing the may take with the coming may take with the coming 1 Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing , have attempted to describe and define , have attempted to describe unbuilt haciendas Comics As I’ve tried to explain in the introduction, I am drawn toward comics in an I am drawn toward comics explain in the introduction, As I’ve tried to our will not only lose our ability to be effective pedagogues, but will not only lose our ability to be effective pedagogues, an we will also remain part of the ‘old guard’ instead of strangers with/in us to teach us how to be imaginative, we strangers with/in us to teach us how to be imaginative, the call for writing with/in new media has yet to be fully the call for writing with/in new media has yet to be realized on their own terms. and strange(ly) imaginative since we have yet to grasp how and strange(ly) imaginative since we have yet to grasp to write and create art. The exigency for writing (with) new to write and create art. The exigency for writing (with) media would remains ‘incomprehensible,’ ‘unaccountable,’ forms media’ generation of pedagogues well-versed in using ‘new about what ‘the coming composition’ might look like, what about what ‘the coming composition’ a variety of ways that link with current perspectives on a variety of ways that link offer us a way to begin thinking composition pedagogy, and strange(rs) with/in us a way to write and create art in strange(rs) with/in us a way discussed my estimation, the form as a medium. In exigency, for this project, it would have to be that what I see in comics exceeds how would have to be that what I see in comics exceeds exigency, for this project, it among other practitioners and scholars that have Scott McCloud and Will Eisner, imply another way of writing and creating art. If I must provide a reason, an imply another way of writing better part of a decade now, and I continue to be surprised, I continue to ‘break to be surprised, I continue a decade now, and I continue better part of not only the form, but with the ways in which comics with my own familiarity’ with ‘incomprehensible manner.’ In part because I have been reading comics for the I have been reading manner.’ In part because ‘incomprehensible
processes, or what have you, from the time of print to the time of new media, we of new media, print to the time the time of you, from or what have processes, our own in/sights into of thinking that offer us (imaginative) exclude ways with new media. If we remain content to merely translate the ‘literacy,’ or writing the ‘literacy,’ translate to merely we remain content media. If with new we have yet to find ways in which writing and art can take place ( art can take writing and ways in which yet to find we have 28 So....this dude is Zarathustra? coming composition. assistants or‘toons”(Agamben, not workasa‘model’forthissortofcomposition,butlike“[t]rickstersorfakes, any commonproperty,byidentity”(Agamben, “communicate[s] onlinetheemptyspaceofexample,withoutbeingtiedby Agamben’s viewof‘thecomingcommunity,’isacompositionsingularitiesthat no wayofcommunicatingour(waysof)thinking.‘Thecomingcomposition,’like composition oftheStranger(s)with/inus,thatwhichweexcludebecausehave hope tocreatecommunalknowledge.Rather,‘thecomingcomposition’isthe sort thatseekstocreateanenclosedcommunitywithinaclassroom,and is notthesortofcommunitythathasappearedincompositionpedagogy, we haveyettoexperienceandthatareconstantlytryingachieve.This analogous toGiorgioAgamben’s (inventive) avant-garde–thecomingcomposition( When Ispeakof‘thecomingcomposition,’whatamreferringtois There’s aStrangerinMyComposition Coming The ComingCommunity Wanderer above Fogthe Sea of utmost concern, and would have us move move “bad.” and us “good” of have criteria the would beyond of and is concern, Being whom utmost for being that be would of space empty an occupy then would who “overman,” the overman; ( the sun...” the 121 before stepped the dawn, with rose over he morning came one and change heart, his a last “...at the Zarathustra: about brings community who coming Stranger the this claim, make directly not does Agamben While 11), theStrangerisanexemplarof ). The Stranger teaches us the the us teaches Stranger The ). postpedagogy Coming will appear as Nietzsche’s Nietzsche’s as appear will –acommunitythat by Caspar David Friedrich 11).TheStrangerdoes the coming community coming the ). ubermench Portable Portable -- , 29 , The Dawn likeness- Institutional appearance-making 2 s U n /I ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, ith ) “produces the imitation by following ) “produces the imitation by ) W rs ( , the Stranger turns to sophist/ic is appointed by Socrates to be a guest lecturer by Socrates to be a guest is appointed (also called ‘phantastic art’). According to our (also called ‘phantastic art’). trange S with a student of his [the Stranger’s] choosing: of his [the Stranger’s] choosing: with a student he (the first T Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing Sophist likeness-making sophistry manner, by accident. One will have to guess at it as at a riddle.” One will have to guess manner, by accident. “How did reason come into the world? As is fitting, in an irrational is fitting, in an irrational come into the world? As “How did reason appearance-making likeness-making and
After exploring he Stranger in Plato’s he Stranger in of on the subject
composition where we “is an art of deception” that attempts to mislead others to “hold a false opinion” “is an art of deception” that attempts to mislead others Geoff Sirc’s view of traditional (351). This form of appearance-making correlates to attack, twisting our words to the opposite meaning” (347) in order to deceive – this attack, twisting our words to the opposite meaning” dividing it in two once again. The first of this new division (the second sophist/ dividing it in two once again. The first of this new division of terms to make a counter ic) concerns “easily [taking] advantage of our poverty
contexts are in the habit of working to produce these sorts of likenesses. contexts are in the habit of working to produce these the appropriate colours to each part” (333). In a word: copies. the appropriate colours to students who can succeed in professional practices geared toward producing the proportions of the original in length, breadth, and depth, and giving, besides, in length, breadth, and depth, and giving, besides, the proportions of the original making Stranger, as the discussion proceeds” (271) on “the art of imitation” (275). Using Socrates’ (271) on “the art of imitation” (275). Using Socrates’ as the discussion proceeds” the Stranger separates imitation into method of division and definition, emphasized when the Stranger tells Theaetetus to “follow your own devices […] tells Theaetetus to “follow your own devices […] emphasized when the Stranger Theaetetus. Another colleague, Theodorus, explains that this Stranger “is more Theodorus, explains that this Stranger “is more Theaetetus. Another colleague, devote themselves to disputation” (267), which is reasonable than those who T 30 unify andnameappropriately” (453). Theaetetus to“besoself-indulgentas letitgoandleaveforsomeoneelseto exhausted afterworkingthroughthefirst twoformsofsophistrythathebeseeched does notmeana‘tool’intheHeideggerian sense.However,theStrangerwasso devices,’ “byemploying[one’s]ownperson as[an]instrument”(453)–‘instrument’ it, cuttingthroughthedivisionsthatseparate writers/artistsfromtheir‘own third impossible” (Vitanza, ic provide studentswiththepowertoasserttheirownneeds. can we teaching our through that and write, to how students show to answers such a way that we have been deceiving ourselves by thinking that we have the in teaching been have we that clear becomes connection the place, first the in with their own devices. When Sirc questions whether the ‘gods’ were ever there to write keeps students at a distance from their own ways of knowing, of writing not explicitly, but that teaching through the defined structures of what it means least at deceive, to order in words twist to how students teaching of habit the in are we that mean not does composition of link clear,Sirc’sview make the To constructs limitsbydetailingthe sophist/ic It wasn’tuntilMurray Bundy’s1922article“Plato’sView of theImagination” The first consciousness, versatility,style,disciplinarity,purpose, the godsarecalled,variously, one isevensurethattheywereeverthereinthefirstplace(inComposition, the nthtime,despitesadtruththatgodshavefledsolongagono …erect temples to language, in which we relive the rites of text-production for sophist/ic ), however, discards this binary in order to work at Negation There’s aStrangerinMyComposition addressesthe 245).Thesecondformof impossible power, authenticvoice,discourse,critical 3
possible , creatinga“binaryofpossible/ , whilethesecond appearance-making etc.). ( sophist/ slashing English 2) through (the 31 ) sophist/ abstractus ) in order to (the first ) was ‘named ) was ‘named the real and the ideal, as the work made of as the work made sophist/ic sophist/ic relates to the abstraction that relates to the between 81). The continued calls for an 81). The continued calls for likeness-making sophist/ic (the third (the third (the second Postmodern xxiii), abstraction/imagination attempts to xxiii), abstraction/imagination appearance-making appearance-making Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing appearance-making appearance-making appearance-making Postmodern in order to illustrate Plato’s thinking on art and aesthetics. Bundy art and aesthetics. Bundy Plato’s thinking on in order to illustrate Similarly, Cynthia Haynes questions the need for argumentative writing in in writing argumentative for need the questions Haynes Cynthia Similarly, ) and the first form of previous works as models of acceptable writing, a pedagogy of abstraction would not not would abstraction of pedagogy a writing, acceptable of models as works previous or purpose without write students allow would but stance, a take to students require paired discourse and logic” (“Writing” 673). Rather than asking students to use use to students asking than Rather 673). (“Writing” logic” and discourse paired that would unhinge the link between reason and pedagogy, and dissemble the the dissemble and pedagogy, and reason between link the unhinge would that cleanly so Ramus since been have we grip whose in education of model line assembly to direct their own education in order to “enact the necessary detachment ( detachment necessary the “enact to order in education own their direct to students encouraging abstraction of pedagogy a for calling before Offshore” “Writing affirm students’ own ways of knowing (read: using their own devices). affirm students’ own ways ic stronger sense of the unpresentable” ( stronger sense of the unpresentable” that we move beyond avant-garde pedagogy ask link the presentable and the unpresentable through creative acts that “impart a unpresentable through creative acts that “impart link the presentable and the Or to use Lyotard’s terms about “the condition of knowledge in the most highly about “the condition of knowledge in the most highly Or to use Lyotard’s terms developed societies” ( imagination is concerned with “the connecting link imagination is concerned with and that of material objects” (386; emphasis added). between the realm of ideas human creation involves an act of ‘imagination’” (386). As Bundy explains, the act of ‘imagination’” (386). As Bundy explains, the human creation involves an For Bundy, the second order of For Bundy, the capabilities, which suggests “that the highest arises out of one’s own imaginative an individual’s own body and mind, including public speech and performance. public speech and own body and mind, including an individual’s associates Plato’s view of art with one’s own (productive) imagination, in similar own (productive) imagination, view of art with one’s associates Plato’s third the Stranger describes the fashion to how with ‘the imagination,’ which traces through Plato’s corpus of writings, including of writings, corpus through Plato’s which traces imagination,’ with ‘the The Sophist, appropriately.’ Bundy finds that this second form of appearance-making has to do form of appearance-making this second finds that Bundy appropriately.’ that the second form of second form that the 32 He wasteaching themhowprint mediaworkedto conveymeaning, but nothowto reading andwriting –Frierepresentedthemwithawayassert theirownneeds. ( however, was“adistortionofthevocation ofbecomingmorefullyhuman” at willandhadnorecoursetoasserttheir ownhumanneeds;thisproduction, being treatedascogsinthewheelsofindustry, workersthatcouldbereplaced pedagogy It isinthissensethatFrieredescribes a pedagogy and personalneedsconcerns–not to teachthemwhathethoughttheyneeded. medium ofthetime–printedtextsothattheycouldaddresstheirownpolitical F Oppressed to address their own needs and knowledge, we turn to Paulo Freire’s within the university. In order to frame why there is a need to offer students ways of new media and some ways in which this move has begun to alter pedagogical goals composition before examining rhetoric and composition’s move to the need for such a pedagogy, I will briefly survey current concerns about multimodal intention and discover their own ways of writing and art-ing. In order to clarify the Pedagogy workers” ofBrazil,buttoteachthemhowwritewiththemostaccessible reire’s goalin and its relation to rhetoric and composition. for 44).Inattempting to teachthemthedominantmodeofdiscourse – the oppressed.InMarxistfashion,Freire sawthattheseworkerswere T he ( Pedagogy oftheOppressed C uriously There’s aStrangerinMyComposition ) S tr excessively close face of a stranger stares out at us, something in this infamy demands [esige] its proper name, testifying to a nge “Still, as in those photographs from which the distant but itself beyond any expression and beyond any memory.”
C a se
wasnottoliberatethe“peasant of ( N ew ~ GiorgioAgamben, of
theoppressed,andnota M e d i a ) P e da gogy Pedagogy of the figural Profanations in the age 33
4 as reductive . In this report However, Lyotard 5 , including the ‘salute’ from Sirc , including the ‘salute’ from , the oppressed (whether individuals , the oppressed (whether individuals for , not The Postmodern Condition postpedagogies with Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing 48) – the work of 16). With the rise of technology, Lyotard fears that education 16). With the rise of technology, Lyotard fears that 60; 78). For Lyotard, grand narratives correlate to scientific 60; 78). For Lyotard, grand narratives correlate to scientific Pedagogy Postmodern A decade later, Lyotard took on a similar project directed at highly developed, on a similar project directed at highly developed, A decade later, Lyotard took Postmodern due to its systematized approach that privileges its “own interests and point of due to its systematized approach that privileges its view” ( problematizes the scientific and technological approach to knowledge problematizes the scientific and technological approach knowledge that seeks to define the bounds of accepted/acceptable knowledge (or knowledge that seeks to define the bounds of accepted/acceptable argumentation and Reason) that implies a duty to verification. ( into ‘little narratives’ (singularities) as “the quintessential form of imaginative into ‘little narratives’ (singularities) as “the quintessential invention,” where writers and artists allude to the unknown/unpresentable to the Conseil of Universitiés in Quebec, Lyotard makes an effort to analyze to the Conseil of Universitiés (generalizations) and transform education from what he calls ‘grand narratives’ on scientific/technological thinking in on scientific/technological minus Freire’s Marxist perspectives – with his treatise industrialized countries – remade” ( out of which this project develops. considering that pedagogical practices (or ‘best practices’) remain focused on ‘what practices (or ‘best practices’) remain focused on ‘what considering that pedagogical to develop a pedagogy that “will be made and students need’ instead of looking or peoples) in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity,” especially when struggle to regain their humanity,” especially when or peoples) in the incessant and composition have attempted to address since the late 60s have not yet begun on begun yet not have 60s late the since address to attempted have composition and forged “a pedagogy which must be so that they may transform their world. Indeed, the political struggles that rhetoric Indeed, the political struggles transform their world. so that they may Freire clearly explains that the desire is not to teach these workers, simultaneously not to teach these workers, explains that the desire is Freire clearly discourse ability to engage in the dominant to think, but to have the students, what need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become and more they so that more supplication, and less in extended less need be 45). transform the world” (Pedagogy which work and, working, human hands means of “striving so that these hands – whether of individuals or entire peoples – or entire of individuals hands – whether that these of “striving so means use the medium for a specific intent/purpose. He was teaching them the available them the He was teaching a specific intent/purpose. medium for use the 34 George Orwell would be displeased. institutions andworldwide: methods. that ( practices –worktobreakapartsystematizedwaysofknowing,doing,andmaking students in‘themostadvancedsocieties’canbringtoinstitutionsandinstitutional writings ofthe‘illiterate’workersinFreire’sBrazil,aswellknowledge that to theperpetuationof‘societiescontrol.’ForLyotard,littlenarratives– knowledge mayexcludeotherwaysofknowing, to addresstheunpresentable,butthatsystematizinghowwegoaboutaddressing their owninterests.Thisisnottosaythattechnology can beexchangedwithinthemarketstructuresthatcorporationsperpetuatein what canbeknownbydiscardingdoesnothaveaplaceinthatsystem– what to subvertwithapedagogy to thecorporation”(“Postscript”5)–whichispreciselywhatFreirewasattempting forces knockingatthedoor”(“Postscript”4)willinevitablydeliver“theschoolover control will moveusfromMichelFoucault’s system. OneofLyotard’scontemporaries,GillesDeleuze,explainsthatthisprocess of knowledgetoonlywhatispresentableandexcludesdoesnotfitwithinthe and thoughtwouldbeweakenedbytechnologicalthinkingthatreducesthelimits in Lyotard sawhowthismovewouldposition knowledgeineducational Put differently,technological–code(d)thinking/writing/artingrestricts major –stakeinworldwide competitionforpower.Itisconceivable thatthe productive poweris already,andwillcontinuetobe,amajor –perhapsthe Knowledge intheform ofaninformationalcommodityindispensable to whose functionisto“keeppeopleemployeduntiltheinstallationofnew directly) supportcorporate-schoolswithalternate,excludedpracticesand There’s aStrangerinMyComposition of theoppressed. disciplinary societies 7 andindoingso,contributes 6 itselfrestrictstheability to thenew societies of 35 Kinda contradicts Apple’s “1984” Macintosh ad. I’m just sayin’... xiv). to “critique” Free , Lessig 5) Remix Numbers Postmodern 28), instead of a free culture 28), instead of a free culture Free ) information by commodifying ) information by commodifying , Lessig addresses what he calls our , Lessig addresses from the control of the past” ( from the control of the past” remix – Derrida uses the Sollers’ Free Culture Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing 28), analogous to the second order of appearance-making. 28), analogous to the second as free as possible Dissemination Translating such a method into digital culture, including Translating such a method 8 Remix nation-states will one day fight for control of information, just as they battled just as they information, for control of day fight will one nation-states to of access for control and afterwards over territory, past for control in the ( and cheap labor. materials of raw and exploitation A RW culture might look like Jacques Derrida’s ‘analysis’ of Philippe Sollers’ A RW culture might look like Jacques Derrida’s ‘analysis’ of imaginative and transformative works. In this sense, Lessig’s view of remix of imaginative and transformative works. In this sense, since it “is just the correlates to current perspectives of writing across media that fight for control over information, which, in so doing, restrict the production that fight for control over information, which, in so multimodal composition, has proven much more difficult since the code exercises multimodal composition, has proven much more difficult friendly laws much more control over works and the corporation-/institutional work in a new way. novels at the end of to re-arrange the the work itself, using the techniques of collage and montage
them by nature” ( Write (RW) culture that allows “citizens” to “create and re-create the culture Write (RW) culture that allows to same tools the professional uses” and those “given around them” by “using the differentiates this control, which he names Read-Only (RO) culture, with a Read- differentiates this control, ability to distribute and re-purpose (i.e., ability to distribute and re-purpose cultural artifacts and their uses. In and centralizing power over and innovators remain iTunes and its coding model that limits individuals’ One such example is Apple that “supports and protects creators […] to guarantee that follow-on creators that “supports and protects “information society” and current trends toward a feudal society where such power toward a feudal society society” and current trends “information the uses of culture” ( is the “power of control [over] regulated, owned meaning. In regulated, owned Lawrence Lessig gives credence to Lyotard’s observation when he explains that observation when he gives credence to Lyotard’s Lawrence Lessig thought and us toward systematized of technology is leading the current state 36 perspective thatexcludespossibilities infavorof standardization.For ourpurposes, which heclaimsare atthebaseofunderstandingcontemporary culture–a seeks toexplainhow thelanguageofcomputersandcomputer networksfunction, Building onFriedrichKittler’swork mediatechnologies,Galloway’sproject in thatitisinfusedwithpredetermined meaningwithlittle,ifany,wiggleroom. may bethoughtofanalogouslytotheart styleof“caricature”( executable language”that“doeswhatit says”( describes theprotocologicalessenceoftechnology: code,whichis“theonly writers andartistsfromproducingnew work.Throughoutthebook,Galloway of control Exists AfterDecentralization A act” upon(NationalCommissionxviii). imaginative, transformativeworktheycall“fellowcitizenstostudy,reflect—and least “untilthelaweffectivelyblocksit”( great writingwithoutwords.Itiscreativitysupportedbyanewtechnology,”at show otherssomethingnew;theyfailwhenaretriteorderivative.[…]Itis same sortofstuffthatwe’vealwaysdonewithwords,”whichsucceed“whenthey beyond centralizedcontrolovermeaninginhisbook lexander Gallowaytracesthedevelopmentofcodeinrelationtomove – relatedtothefeudalcontrolofwritingthatLessigfearswillrestrict There’s aStrangerinMyComposition disenchantment as it is to the blind positivity of delegitimation.” , takinghiscuefromDeleuze’sarticleon A S ~ Jean-FrancoisLyotard, trange “Still, the postmodern condition is as much a stranger to ( Remix r ’ s ) W Protocol 82-83) –effectivelyblockingthe riting 165-66).Programmingcode The PostmodernCondition Protocol: HowControl see mychapter2 societies ) 37 Sounds a bit like the Shannon-Weaver Mathematical (Communication) Model...
being 3). In (in the Ulmerian a third sophist/ a third meant to deceive us Persuasive Persuasive Games conducting to “define the way things work: second sophist/ic 3) – the particular, however, remains a ) our/selves as Strangers. ) our/selves as 9 Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing Persuasive procedural rhetoric 211). To (only) work with the protocols already coded into 211). To (only) work with the conduction Protocol Ian Bogost provides further explanation in his book imaginative approach, would necessitate a way of working with new media as a way of working with new would necessitate imaginative approach, function (in a computational sense) of the generalized process (cf. my earlier function (in a computational sense) of the generalized perceives this (rhetorical) discussion of Lyotard’s ‘grand narratives’). While Bogost processes in particular” ( part, the procedure becomes a method of making arguments with computers and part, the procedure becomes a method of making arguments general and computational the coded software, “persuading through processes in mechanical systems like engines to organizational systems” ( mechanical systems like engines to organizational systems” when he coins the term of systems, from the methods, techniques, and logics that drive the operations
sense of the word of how protocols (codes) keep us at an arms-length from our own ways of imagining us at an arms-length from our own ways of imagining of how protocols (codes) keep (with) new media, of alternate ways of writing/art-ing Internet art’ positions itself as a part of the Internet art’ positions itself defined by its oppositional position vis-à-vis previous, often inadequate, forms position vis-à-vis previous, often inadequate, forms defined by its oppositional Being ‘oppositional,’ Galloway’s form of a ‘tactical of cultural production” (212). with language, writing and art in the age of new media. The “tactical” definition of art in the age of new media. The “tactical” definition with language, writing and proposes serves, in his own words, “an aesthetic the “Internet art” that Galloway these technologies would do nothing to help us better understand our ways of nothing to help us better understand our ways of these technologies would do Internet, be it the World Wide Web, email, telnet, or any other such protocological telnet, or any other such the World Wide Web, email, Internet, be it technology” ( espouses, it would not refer “to any type of artistic practice within the global of artistic practice within not refer “to any type espouses, it would the avant-garde artists we continually refer to (e.g., Duchamp) worked – without refer to (e.g., Duchamp) worked artists we continually the avant-garde that Galloway be the sort of ‘art practice’ But this would not intention or purpose. goal of composition pedagogy, if it takes on the political need for political need takes on the pedagogy, if it composition goal of ic media, including how our ways of writing and thinking are altered by code. The altered by code. thinking are writing and our ways of including how media, this claim signifies a change in traditional writing and in writing (with) new writing (with) and in traditional writing a change in signifies this claim 38
Heidegger thinks you’re a tool. exclusion ofotherways ofknowingandtotheprogramming codesthatLessig practice, similarto Freire’s critiqueofthe done mechanically, as GallowayandBogostsuggest,writing unfoldsasarestricted potentialities –capacitiesforcominginto being–ofknowing.Ifwritingisonly mode ofunderstandingandmakingsense oftheworldwhileclosingoutother shares Lessig’sfearthat Writings by “unlocking,transforming,storing,distributing, andswitchingabout”( technological” ( we knowtoday–Heideggerexplainsthatthisessence“isbynomeansanything Question ConcerningTechnology”–writtenbeforethedigitaltechnologythat and procedures.Inanattempttoascertaintheessenceoftechnologyin“The Martin Heideggeroffersusawaytothinkabouttechnologyapartfromprotocols and 1/2)approachestowriting(with)newmedia. with/in ussincethey–perhapsunintentionallymaintainbinary(both010101 countergaming methodsdolittletoofferusawaygivevoicetheStrangers perspectives, bothBogost’s he findsinprotocolsandgames.Whiletheycometotechnologyfromdifferent be hisintention,suchaperspectivesupportstheargumentativestructuresthat as “hinder[ing]gameplay,notadvanc[ing]it”( when headdresses(video)gamesinhisbook though his“viral”methodsremainapartoftheprotocolshecritiques.Forexample, calls ustobecomeviral,infectthesesystemswithunexpectedmethods,even Galloway remainsskeptical for unpackingcomputationalargumentsothershavecreated”( method asproductivefor“makingargumentswithcomputationalsystemsand Rather thanattemptingtofocusonworkinghinderthisbrandofcontrol, 322); or,incontemporaryculturalterms, remixing.However,Heidegger Basic Writings There’s aStrangerinMyComposition technological/protocological procedural rhetoric(s) 10 aboutencouragingproceduresandprotocols, 311), but“isawayofrevealing”( banking Gaming Gamin andGalloway’s“goingviral” methodthatperpetuates the , Gallowaydefineshisgoal g 125).Whileitmaynot thinking maybecome Persuasive Basic Writings Basic 3), the 318)
39 A nation nation A the of image, perhaps? : to bring, ) that comics 76) – which he from which the from which the ducere derives from the Latin techne precondition Archeology : forth; pro ). In addition, he also warns of ). In addition, pro-duction 11 ), and abduction ( Here, 123). In this manner, a proliferation of mixes 340). The kind of art that Heidegger refers to 340). The kind of art that – this form of production shares Derrida’s – this form of production 14 13 123-24). The immediacy of these experiences, as rule work. Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing culture. For Heidegger, technological thinking becomes thinking technological For Heidegger, culture. pro-duction however, suggests an additional manner exceeding however, suggests an additional Basic Writings ), induction ( force is also called imagination” ( 12 feudal experiment-al Theater and Its Double Theater and Its Double conclusion Productive ” in such a manner that they are “sensed and experienced directly by ” in such a manner that they are “sensed and experienced , simultaneously meaning to ‘bring forth’ ( This unfolding, reality of imagination and dreams” so that they “appear there on equal footing with reality of imagination and dreams” so that they “appear life” (Artaud, well as the productions that they give rise to, obscure the distinctions between “the well as the productions that they give rise to, obscure immediacy the mind” ( realizes itself “by a return to the primitive Myths” and “giving them their realizes itself “by a return to the primitive Myths” and lead) and ‘bring into being,’ in the sense of performance(s) (such as a theatrical lead) and ‘bring into being,’ in the sense of performance(s) Artaud, this unfolding performance; cf. Artaud). Taking our cue from Antonin act in producing producere finds, in part, in the techniques of collage/montage that avant-garde artists en- finds, in part, in the techniques artist Chris Ware calls view that “ deduction (
here, however, is not the kind of art that takes place in ‘the discipline of art,’ but of art that takes place in ‘the discipline of art,’ but here, however, is not the kind devices. unfolds through one’s own “such a realm is art” ( decisive confrontation with it must happen in a realm that is, on the one hand, akin in a realm that is, on with it must happen decisive confrontation – and, on the other, fundamentally different from it” to the essence of technology terms “technology” and “art” derive; he claims that “reflection upon technology and claims that “reflection upon and “art” derive; he terms “technology” seeing technology as a neutral tool. As an alternative, Heidegger suggests that an alternative, Heidegger as a neutral tool. As seeing technology the Greek word technology by returning to we approach how to fix their writing so that they may ‘write to the test’ (here, the test is, dis/ (here, the test to the test’ may ‘write so that they fix their writing how to the vague criteria of ‘excellence’ respectfully, a means to an end – equivalent to students’ pleas for instructors to tell them to tell for instructors students’ pleas equivalent to to an end – a means fears will lead to a fears will 40 (DIY) pedagogymight looklikeinthecompositionclassroom basedinKaprow’s work. significant workunless givenmodelsof‘good’writingon which tobasetheirown singular ratherthangeneralizable. has noplaceineducation,butthatitlingers, that as alocusofdebate”(Readings, would de-centertheeducationalprocessbykeeping“thequestionofmeaning open invention ofmethodsappropriateforthe‘scenewriting.’ post-pedagogy doesnotadvocateforanysingleprocess,butsupportsaperpetual finds analogoustoAristotle’sapproachinvention. alternate mixes–or,tousethecolloquialterm, Re-arrangement linkages, this rests onseeingartasaformofbeingratherthancategoryordiscipline. of proceduralthinking/writingthathascomeaboutinthe21stcentury,thisclaim other possiblemixes.WhileHeidegger’sclaimthat‘art’canprovideusawayout would comeaboutsincetheoriginalmixonlypresentsoneamongavarietyof Similarly, Sirclookstomovebeyondthe viewthatstudentscannotproduce In contrast to the illumination. (“Box-Logic”113;emphasisadded) allowing themtocomeupwithsomethingobscure,perhaps,yetpromising order tohavethosematerialsspeakthestudent’sownvoiceandconcerns, to an easyentréintocomposition,acompellingmediumandgenreinwhich In EnglishComposition asaHappening re-arrange pro-ductive here approachesamannerofinventionthat textual materials–bothoriginalandappropriatedin banking There’s aStrangerinMyComposition , experiment-al method of instruction that defines an aggregate of University manner offers students what Sirc claims is 165). Thisdoesnotmeanthatmeaning , heoutlineswhata do-it-yourself meaning re-mix 15 Byfocusingoninvention, – whichGeorgeKennedy 16 remainscontingentand Suchanapproach unfolds through 41 just . Following 113) intersects pedagogy asks of pedagogy asks are performative, Essays happenings Happenings practice what you teach practice what something new rather than a something new rather than Instead of following a strict curriculum, Instead of following a strict 18 17 63). For those teachers fearful of what fearful of those teachers 63). For producing English , as “play without intention” ( Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing unart art – a term referring to the avant-garde art movement during movement during art to the avant-garde term referring art – a Happenings In other words, art (practices) have entered composition in order to In other words, art (practices) And baby, isn’t it boring to always us sinking they keep be bothered with thinking cause rational reasons, can’t Right now talk in the same old clichés And you know that no syllable will make us feel more real... Here comes another blank sequel cause words are not working, they are not equal on bureaucratic demands for ‘correctness.’ with current pedagogical theories of writing that ‘err on the side of life’ rather than with current pedagogical theories of writing that ‘err education(s), the way in which Art has been discussed leaves much to be desired. education(s), the way in which Art has been discussed It is here that Kaprow’s classrooms into assembly lines that offer students a place to develop their own lines that offer students a place to develop their own classrooms into assembly discussion of forms of knowledge. But, even as ‘Art’ has entered pedagogical intervene in the technological/protocological/procedural thinking that has turned thinking that has turned intervene in the technological/protocological/procedural
reproduction. rather than merely reflecting on, ‘reality.’ rather than merely reflecting a way of composition would become more relevant for them. For Kaprow, as for Sirc, more relevant for them. For an active engagement with the world, intervening in, unrehearsed, and require experiences with writing, art and technology in hopes of making composition experiences with writing, on blurring the divisions between new media, art, composition and life that avoids media, art, composition and divisions between new on blurring the of knowledge so that we may affirm students’ seeing instructors as the bearers Kaprow’s lead, Sirc proposes an approach to the composition classroom centered to the composition classroom Sirc proposes an approach Kaprow’s lead, roles will consist of in the classroom; all that a DIY, of in the classroom; all roles will consist to take part in what you teach, you is that you art that could not be duplicated ( could not be art that what your no need to panic about instructional practices, there’s this means for the 1960s where artists and spectators were involved in creating performance performance in creating were involved and spectators where artists the 1960s work on work on 42 their writing through producingtheirdevices.Sircusestheexampleofraptoaskstudents to see the institutionsthatdictate these technologiesas students useeveryday–thedifferencewouldbethatweshiftfromperceiving the taskofpopularizingeducation (Sirc, own waysofknowing,offeringthem“whattheywant:aninvitationto students tointerveneinacceptedmodelsofwritingasawaythinktheir Postpedagogy acknowledgestheavant-gardeasastartingpointthatinvites apart fromthestructuresthatdemandwefollowprotocolsandprocedures. but workstobringan“artconsciousnessdailylife”(“Box-Logic”117),think A which wouldonlyhaveusteachanotheriterationofthe‘banking’method, s Sirctellsus,postpedagogydoesnot English lack. (“Box-Logic”117; emphasisadded) pleasure […]composition asacraving;teachingstudentsto feeldesireand not onlyascollector,butadissatisfied collector,oneimpatientlyseeking of intellectualfascinationasmuchemotional possession.It’sthewriter as strange 294; emphasis added). In addition, suchamannerwouldtakeon emphasisadded).Inaddition, 294; -d, madecurious,somethinginteresting toconsider,anobject mere tools There’s aStrangerinMyComposition “The artist’s imagination is a world of potentialities that no work what studentsneed W will succeed in realizing. What we experience by living another e A for theproductionofwrittentextsinservice ~ ItaloCalvino, 19 re alreadyunderwayinthedigitaltechnologies world, answering to other forms of order and disorder.”
the S require trange instead oflettingthemdiscoverit Six MemosfortheNextMillennium studentstobecomeartists, ( rs ) become ” 43 Seriously guys...I was done with this approach, like, 80 years ago. You got nothing else? Really? is an postpedagogy The invention of these alternate 21 Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing perhaps – are products of bringing an art consciousness perhaps – are products of bringing an art consciousness remixes This method is not meant to indicate that This method is not meant 20 One of the artists most often cited in the avant-garde movement has been avant-garde movement most often cited in the One of the artists to daily life, of forging new linkages at the time of creation, creating links by to daily life, of forging new linkages at the time of creation, performances with our drifting in the scene of writing, and perpetually re-inventing arrangements – like nomads in our writing and art, letting the imaginative linkages that arise at like nomads in our writing and art, letting the imaginative any given moment direct our ways of composing. the one that Sirc and Ulmer suggest are meant to offer us opportunities to drift the one that Sirc and Ulmer suggest are meant to offer to intervening in the world around them, or as Ulmer writes in an earlier essay, to intervening in the world around them, or as Ulmer 86). Approaches like “not to reflect but to change reality” (“Object of Post-Criticism” art practices. students on their own paths ‘anything goes’ approach to composing, but to begin hermeneutics and critique” (4) – as a way to generate new pedagogical and hermeneutics and critique” than as interpretation” (4) – invention rather than critique: “a cognitive practice – invention rather than critique: “a cognitive practice than as interpretation” (4) alternative to (not opposed to, but supplementing) coming into formation as an discovery, a eureka moment “synonymous with thinking as a discovery rather “synonymous with thinking as a discovery rather discovery, a eureka moment items in unexpected ways produces “results that surprise the instructors as items in unexpected ways and he calls this moment of surprise an instance of much as the students” (3), from a valise and re-arranging them at random (Sirc’s box-logic proposes a from a valise and re-arranging describes this process, the method of re-arranging similar method). As Ulmer new from a set of ‘readymade’ objects that students collect by unpacking items objects that students collect by unpacking items new from a set of ‘readymade’ Marcel Duchamp for his critique of Art at the turn of the 20th century. In “The at the turn of the 20th century. for his critique of Art Marcel Duchamp Ulmer adopts Duchamp’s method of creating something Euretics of Alice’s Valise,”
aesthetic among our students” (Sirc, “Box-Logic” 123). our students” (Sirc, “Box-Logic” aesthetic among collection of art-ifacts that we share with students to “offer them new possibilities them new possibilities to “offer with students that we share of art-ifacts collection personal of linkages” that “foster a an “associational logic for” writing with we are unequipped to quell for our students, making our work into the playful into the our work students, making to quell for our unequipped we are In (un)common parlance, composition becomes the presence of an absence that of an absence the presence becomes composition parlance, In (un)common 44 scenes in different ways” ( one issue to another, while in [his] mind [he] told [himself] stories, interpreting the attention toward comics, spending “hours following the cartoons of each series from and writing) through comics. As a child, before he learned to read, he directed his 94) andspurring ‘little narratives’),beginningwithimages “thathavemadeanimpact”( bringing visionsintofocuswithoureyesshut,offorthformsandcolors that headsoff“thedangerweruninlosingabasichumanfaculty:thepowerof according tothemethodsinventedforoccasionandwithunpredictableresults” possible pedagogyoftheimagination[…]thatwecanonlyexerciseuponourselves, creative practicesinventedforthemoment.ItaloCalvinoreferstothisas“some established texts–givewaytonewandunexpectedoutcomesfromthestudents’ pedagogies –teachingstudentshowtowritebycopyingthestyleandstructureof and producingart. audiences –spectatorsandstudentsbecomeco-creatorsofanewstylewriting Banksy Calvino provides an example of this sort of imaginative In these post-pedagogical writing (andteaching),wewritetotellourownstories(Lyotard’s and verbalizationofthought”( experience, amatterofprimeimportancetoboththevisualization process ofabstraction,condensation,andinteriorizationsense as itistransmittedbyacultureatitsvariouslevels,and of “ what hecallsthe thinking from thelinesofblacklettersonawhitepage,andinfact pro-ductive 22 phantasmic There’s aStrangerinMyComposition in termsofimages”( Six Memos variants. and oneirictransfigurations,thefigurativeworld approaches, thepreferredoutcomesinother icastic 93) 24 , self-sufficientform,Calvinoconceives – making linkages from what he was Six Memos Six Memos 92).Ratherthanteaching 95). pro-duction 23 Inthismannerof (reading Six Memos 45 Battleship 56) even Image 93-94). For Calvino, Calvino, For 93-94). , Jeff Rice finds that Six Memos Memos Six , collage, and montage that have have that montage and collage, , The Rhetoric of Cool remix 61). In Image Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing images, but not with image. Students ‘see’ images but images, but not with image. Students ‘see’ images but -al approaches to education. Even after he had learned to read, read, to learned had he after Even education. to approaches -al the pictures and their sequence” ( sequence” their and pictures the , occupies a third space between its presentation and its , occupies a third space between its presentation and about within experiment and the filmic still image that “forces itself upon me” ( and the filmic still image Throughout “The Third Meaning” Barthes speaks of Eisenstein’s Throughout “The Third Meaning” obtuse meaning “[s]tudents write observe images but are don’t use them for generating new experience. Students looking at the unpresentable meanings they open up. Instead, writing means that looking at the unpresentable meanings they open up. the use of images in current composition courses does not allow for the inarticulate the use of images in current composition courses does images rather than meaning that Barthes describes – an attempt to domesticate metalanguage (criticism)” ( description, suspended between meanings that do “not copy anything” and exists description, suspended between meanings that do “not disturbs, sterilizes, is outside of articulated language – “what the obtuse meaning though he does not know why they attract him. The meaning of these images, they attract him. The meaning of these images, though he does not know why the Potemkin
writings about (and with) photography and film. and photography with) (and about writings would be experimenting with the possibility of additional mini-narratives. We can can We mini-narratives. additional of possibility the with experimenting be would experimental Barthes’ Roland in transfigurations phantasmic these of examples see further presentations and possible readings. While altering the arrangement of the the of arrangement the altering While readings. possible and presentations further Calvino readings, alternate his with did he as reading, was he comics those in panels further, Calvino could have cut out the comics panels to reorder them as way to create create to way as them reorder to panels comics the out cut have could Calvino further, linkages. Beginning his own stories in this way, Calvino treated the comics images images comics the treated Calvino way, this in stories own his Beginning linkages. step a Taken writers. the by dictated not way a in seen be could that readymade as there is no one correct way to reason through the sequences, but a variety of possible possible of variety a but sequences, the through reason to way correct one no is there preferring “to ignore the written lines and to continue with [his] favorite occupation of of occupation favorite [his] with continue to and lines written the ignore “to preferring daydreaming Calvino explains, “the advantage [he] gained was minimal. […] it was evident that that evident was it […] minimal. was gained [he] advantage “the explains, Calvino original,” the of balloons the in been have might what of idea no had rhymster the popularized popularized presented with, similar to the concepts of of concepts the to similar with, presented 46 the thirdmeanings he findsinbothfilmandphotography throughaprocessof own devices. Bathes’ is nonethelessalreadythere”( or notitistriggered,anaddition: whatIaddtothephotographand where the of expansion”( morality orgoodtaste:thepunctumcanbeill-bred”( punctum ‘in reverse,’accordingtomywillasaSpectator”( intentions whichestablishandanimatehispractices,buttoexperiencethem civility, ‘politeness’)whichallowsmetodiscoverthe terms, hisconcernisnotwiththe narrative arc,exploringwaysinwhichimagescanengenderthought.Inhisown third meaningarisesoutofstand-aloneimagesthatarenotplacedwithina present inastand-aloneimagewhetherphotographicorpainted( requires a“diegetichorizon”thatallowsforalternativecombinations–itisnot critics ratherthanproducers.However,asBarthesdescribesit,the classrooms meanstovalidatethe‘metalanguage’thatBarthesspeakof,become Requiring thatstudentsappropriatethedominantdiscourseprovidedtheminour mean thatpedagogy“remaininsular”( and in“theageofnewmedia”excludingthesealternatewritingpracticeswould (Rice, not askedtofindcorrelationsbetweenanimage-basedexperienceandtheirown” Adding Lyotard,we cansaythatBarthescreateslittlenarratives through Throughout Cool punctum –an“accidentwhichpricksme”( punctum 140)despitepopular(culture)evidencethatthisisalreadyunderway, Camera toits Camera Lucida appears,the 45).Still,the productive There’s aStrangerinMyComposition Camera studium limit,bringingforthanaddition(al)from one’s , Barthesbeginstosketchouthowanadditional studium studium 55).Apedagogyofimaginationwould take Cool isalsopresent.The –“akindofeducation(knowledgeand Camera 145), ensuringitsownirrelevance. isnotseparatefromthepunctum; Camera 27),showing“nopreferencefor Operator Camera 28)–butwiththe 43)with“apower , toexperiencethe punctum Image obtuse meaning , “whether 66). 47 139). , as Barthes does, is not does, is , as Barthes Duchamp’s Writings figural meaning provides a way to begin meaning provides fixed finds in the finds postpedagogy Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing In “The Creative Act,” Duchamp speaks to this method of creation from In “The Creative Act,” Duchamp speaks to this method Here, we can see a gap between the artist’s intention and his ability to realize it; Here, we can see a gap between the artist’s intention thinking about the task of Duchamp’s manner of describing art offers a way of be fully self-conscious, at least on the esthetic plane” ( be fully self-conscious, at least on the esthetic plane” intention to realization through a chain of totally subjective reactions” as a “series intention to realization through a chain of totally subjective also cannot and must not of efforts, pains, satisfactions, refusals, decisions, which an artist’s perspective, claiming that in creating a work of art, artists go “from an artist’s perspective, claiming that in creating a work
which we open up our pedagogical spaces so that we can learn as much, if not more, spaces so that we can learn as much, if not which we open up our pedagogical from our students as they learn from us. with the opportunity to enact the abstract pedagogy that Haynes calls for, one in the abstract pedagogy that Haynes calls for, one with the opportunity to enact writing unconcerned with an imposed criterion. The playful methods of avant- writing unconcerned with us comics artists adapted to their own work, provide garde artists, methods that see other possible linkages with a method found in the practice of an imaginative with a method found in the practice of an imaginative see other possible linkages thinking, and writing. Lyotard, like Haynes, Sirc and Ulmer after him, refers to like Haynes, Sirc and Ulmer after him, refers thinking, and writing. Lyotard, to an example of the writing to come, of looking again Duchamp’s readymades as pedagogical method, postpedagogy seeks to avoid the totalization of meaning that seeks to avoid the totalization of meaning pedagogical method, postpedagogy in place of finding alternate ways of understanding, requires one to take a stance doing and making, and that do not always correspond to established methods. As a do not always correspond to established methods. doing and making, and that Such a pedagogical method would be infused with an element of play that does with an element of method would be infused Such a pedagogical students to assert their own ways to knowing, not dictate meaning, but allows students’ hands and one that requires a move from argumentation to abstraction. move from argumentation and one that requires a students’ hands the work of thinking in abstractions. Haynes brings this move to rhetoric and brings this move to in abstractions. Haynes the work of thinking learning in it as one that places “Writing Offshore,” explaining composition in to think abstractly and imaginatively. An avant-garde approach of finding new of finding approach An avant-garde imaginatively. abstractly and to think art that de-stabilizes methods of making a customary one-size-fits-all pedagogical model, but a way to encourage students to encourage but a way model, pedagogical one-size-fits-all a customary imaginative linking. What linking. imaginative 48 that comicsartistshave tendedtoavoidsincetheyareconstantly lookingfornew avant-garde artists do forArtwhena‘schoolofart’begins tostabilize–aproblem postpedagogy makes anefforttointerrupttheacceptedmethods ofwriting,justas from theirwaysofbeingactivein ownlearning.Rickerttellsusthat (or betteryet,ofKaprow’s of inventioniscurrentlymovingtoward arolesimilartotheavant-gardeartists us totakea(reason-able)stance. our manner,nottoargue,butdetachourselvesfromthedialoguethatrequires guarantee ofanaudience”( credibility intheeyesofthoseconcernedwith‘reality’and‘identity’:theyhave no rules ofplasticandnarrativearts,”Lyotardwrites,“theyaredestinedtohave little of gratifyingit”(Lyotard, ‘correct rules,’theendemicdesireforrealitywithobjectsandsituationscapable “pursue successfulcareersinmassconformismbycommunicating,meansof the from theirowncreativeactswitharefusal“toexaminetherulesofart”inorder to create meaningforstudents,buttobreakwiththelogicthatholdsstudentsapart is whatHaynes’asksofuswhenshecallsforapedagogy gardes provide:abstraction–tomakeusseebymakingitimpossiblesee.This this inabilitytounderstand. of artistofindthatsomethingscannotbemadevisible,andtheartistpresents much whenhediscussesthepresentableandunpresentable,whererole contribution tothecreativeact”( world bydecipheringandinterpretingitsinnerqualificationsthusaddshis grows exponentiallywhena“spectatorbringstheworkincontactwithexternal However, this Lyotard’s The futureofcompositionstudiesinthe wakeofpost-pedagogicalmethods postmodern artist/writer pro-ductive There’s aStrangerinMyComposition manneronlypresentsafractionofthecreativeactthat Postmodern Condition unartists Postmodern Condition 25 Todothis,heimplies,weneedwhattheavant- 26 Duchamp’s Writings : topresent(allusionsto)theunpresentable. ) asawaytoavoidkeepingstudentsseparated 75). Forthose“whoquestionthe 75). We,thestrange,takethisas 140). Lyotardtellsusas abstraction : notto 49 . More importantly, comics artists, like the comics artists, importantly, . More the province of chapter 2. write purely Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing For rhetoric and composition, the figural fills a similar gap, asking us (and For rhetoric and composition, playful use of technology favors continuous inventive practices, experimentations continuous inventive practices, experimentations playful use of technology favors that can lead to surprising results. used in this process are merely technological and/or protocological. For Kaprow, the technological and/or protocological. For Kaprow, used in this process are merely course, institutionally defined and institutionalizing students to accepted modes of and institutionalizing students to accepted modes course, institutionally defined exist in writing (with) new media if the methods writing. But the similar problems students) to be cautious of standardized writing practices – composition as a service standardized writing practices – composition as a service students) to be cautious of
beyond the margins of art (history/disciplines/movements) despite all the well- beyond the margins of art – meaning attempts at normalization have a (still continuing) history of being an un-credited ‘art,’ an ‘art’ that remains of being an un-credited ‘art,’ an ‘art’ that remains have a (still continuing) history live in a technological age that attempts to proceduralize the available means of to proceduralize the available age that attempts live in a technological Unlike the other ‘arts’ mentioned in this chapter, comics writing (with) new media. The integration of the figural, as a form of abstraction, infuses a sense of how to of abstraction, infuses a of the figural, as a form The integration playful use of art and art techniques for writing across media in such a way that we writing across media in art and art techniques for playful use of of the university. rather than on the side of life” (“Box-Logic” 113) “err on the side environment, rather than rather environment, to think about the show us a (singular) way of the 60s and 70s, avant-garde artists since they work by way of linkages, enacting a practice that tries to rewrite its tries to rewrite a practice that enacting of linkages, work by way since they ways of writing and art-ing. Comics offer us a way to think about this ‘playfulness’ about this ‘playfulness’ way to think offer us a art-ing. Comics writing and ways of Chapter 2
In the Shadow of Image/Text 51 could ext /T In The Shadow of No Towers the strangest mage I of still adjusting to being away still adjusting to being away life, sitting in my first life, sitting in my first
) s ( o w ~ Art Spiegelman, ad h S only cultural artifacts that could get past my defenses to only cultural artifacts that
Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing flood my eyes and brain with something other than images flood my eyes and brain “…my mind kept wandering. I found no solace in [poetry or] wandering. I found no “…my mind kept t was of burning towers were old comic strips; vital, unpretentious of burning towers were old music of any kind […] it seemed too obscenely exquisite. The music of any kind […] it seemed the
ephemera from the optimistic dawn of the twentieth century.” ephemera from the optimistic
I n I
moment of my
an exercise I practiced on my own; to distill my thoughts throughout the semester I would ask myself how of the in this course material thesense would event allowmake thatto wouldwriting markthrough drift myto us the television off to start us on our own composition work. As we wentown our on us overstart the television off to I the syllabus, the assignments and the grading procedures/criteria, not help but think about the burning was Up to this point, writing tower. classroom, the students were in shock, trying classroom, to make sense of what was had us familyof some – York New in away drive a few hours just happening the instructor turned living in the surrounding areas. After a few minutes, college course (composition), from home and to college-life, when instructor came in and turned the the television on to show the burning North tower. Looking around the
52 initial explosionbrought memoriesofhisfather’sstories Auschwitz when theyfirstheard andfeltthethunderingexplosionof theNorthtower.The streets tofindtheir daughterwhowasalsoatherfirstday of(elementary)school aftermath. Assoonasthefirsttower was hit,Spiegelmanandhiswiferanintothe coping withhigh-stresssituationsheexplains thathewasverycogentinthe attacks. (WTC) Center Trade World the repercussions of the about book comic a publication, then-recent his on talk devastation. [the studentsinthisFYCcourse]desperatelyneededordertomakesenseof the curriculum. Somethingwasmissingfromthissortofwriting,somethingthat we academic argumentativeessayswe’vealwaysbeenassignedasapartofstandard event; rather,itrequiredustotakeastanceandwritethesamestalestandard course didnotallowus[students]toexploreourownwaysofmakingsensethe throughout thesemester,workwewereassignedinthisfirst-yearcomposition I knewwasineithertowerortheimmediatesurroundingareas.However, areas, andtalesofwherewewerewhenithappened.Inmyownaccount:noone accounts –someoneweknewwasinoneofthetowersorsurrounding months andthevictimsofattacksweretallied,eventwouldleadtopersonal time asanundergraduatestudent.Asthedebriswasclearedovernextfew
Spiegelman what was was what
In theShadowofImage/Text while notgenerally good at of hisexperience readers tells He in ThomasR.WatsonConference During the October 2006 2006 October During the was living (and still does live) in New York city when the planes hit the two towers. found finally I KY, Louisville, missing during Art Spiegelman’s keynote n h Sao o N Towers No of Shadow The In
– 1 andthe
a comic a – 53 – 2
through hyperrhetorical 3 and that Byron Hawk refers to as as to refers Hawk Byron that and Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing postmodern Lately, what has been happening in discussions of comics and the interplay Lately, what has been happening Lyotard describes as as describes Lyotard it. inventing while invention of method a discover to out sets which pedagogical thought. In other words, I see in comics a way of reading and writing that that writing and reading of way a comics in see I words, other In pedagogical thought. revitalized the medium in popular culture and have brought comics into academic revitalized the medium in popular culture and have of the form for theoretical and conversations, they have yet to explore the potential abstract form of writing. While the ‘definitional’ and ‘cinematic’ approaches have abstract form of writing. While the ‘definitional’ and terrorist attacks on the WTC with an imaginative comics approach; I’ll also terrorist attacks on the WTC with an imaginative comics the use of comics as an be referring to what others have been doing to expand think and see the world around us. The importance of this work correlates to think and see the world around to the September 11, 2001 Spiegelman’s attempt to make sense of his reactions used for a given purpose, is the way in which both change the ways in which we the way in which both change the ways in which we used for a given purpose, is perform as a part of the creative act Marcel Duchamp so effectively uncovers in act Marcel Duchamp so effectively uncovers in perform as a part of the creative what we lose by positioning writing and art as “skills” “The Creative Act.” That is, the thinking that produced the work itself and the thinking that it calls us to the thinking that produced Spiegelman’s use of comics as a form of writing abstractly, thinking Spiegelman’s use of comics ignore and visualizing the work in comics tends to writing and the figural. Reading to ignore alternate readings that take into account between image and text tends the book an attempt to make sense of his own (initial) reactions, not an expression own (initial) reactions, to make sense of his the book an attempt of a stable understanding. reeling from the aftershocks.’ However, Spiegelman asks that the audience consider Spiegelman asks that the aftershocks.’ However, reeling from the of what others (may have) experienced, both directly and indirectly affected. both directly and indirectly (may have) experienced, of what others of people still might say, ‘to the millions his voice and art,’ they ‘Spiegelman lends to get away from the mayhem. A narrative analysis of the book might suggest that book might suggest of the narrative analysis mayhem. A from the to get away example represented one generalized experience during the attacks Spiegelman’s ever happened again: Spiegelman considered leaving the city as quickly as possible as quickly leaving the city considered Spiegelman again: ever happened advice he received from his father to always keep a bag packed in case such malice in case such a bag packed to always keep his father he received from advice 54 three anchorsmustberetracted: artist for comicsthanherecognizes,anditisonewellsuitedtoa Groensteen seesthislackoflegitimizationasaproblem,itmaybemorebenefit charge itwithbeinginfantile,vulgar,orinsignificant”(“Why”3).However,while that thelegitimizingauthorities(universities,museums,media)stillregularly claims thatthey“sufferfromaconsiderablelackoflegitimacy”and“itiscurious Legitimization?” setsuptheperceivedproblemformediumofcomicswhenhe Groensteen’s oft-anthologizedessay“WhyAreComicsStillinSearchofCultural position fromwhichtoarguefortheintegrationanduseofaspecificidea.Thierry tomakecomics cinematic At first,beingabletodefinethefieldofstudycreatesaniche,legitimized since itworksacrossvariousmedia. discipline–
that I begin to work at finding some of the specifically film, comparisonsto arts, and(3)thethird primordial to the various comics throughlegitimize to second (2) attempts the ways that we might think of addressingwhycomicsare
In theShadowofImage/Text into as a medium, medium, a as to fix comics attempts it isin first the (1) 4 Tobeginsettingoutonthisproject, thissection ateachable
postmodern writer/ attempts 55 ).
5 20). In Watchmen centered on 6 System The System of , or Andrei Molotui’s 20). However well- System the same medium” in order system of comics – has deeper system of comics – has deeper the within ) rhetorically. For example, when a comic book (or a comic book when For example, ) rhetorically. Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing medium Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth , he goes on to discuss a complex network that compels an associative logic , he goes on to discuss a complex Groensteen’s larger project – defining Groensteen’s larger project , Chris Ware’s the development of the medium (and its compositions) – projects like Frank Miller’s the development of the medium (and its compositions) 300 guarding accepted manifestations as if there were some semblance of control over guarding accepted manifestations as if there were some of his classifications, a criticism that he has also pinned on Scott McCloud. Such of his classifications, a criticism that he has also pinned of conflict categorizations that can lead to an us/them relationship intentioned, this objective begins to exclude those forms of comics that fall outside intentioned, this objective begins to exclude those forms their differences and their commonalities to advance “the fundamental concept of solidarity” ( conceptual frame in which all of the actualizations of the ‘ninth art’ can find conceptual frame in which taking into account their place and be thought of in relation to each other, Groensteen explains in his introduction that he is setting out to develop “a Groensteen explains in his that can be extended to current work in new media and art criticism scholarship, work in new media and art criticism scholarship, that can be extended to current method that extends beyond interpretation alone. such as a post-hermeneutic Comics narrative elements of the medium. In issues at play that rely on knowing (definition), doing (cinematic), and making (producing). knowing (definition), doing ideas of other ways of practicing writing/art excluded from institutional ways of writing/art excluded from institutional ways ideas of other ways of practicing a postmodern age weary of notions of ‘purity’ and ‘ideals,’ the absence of an ‘ideal’ and ‘ideals,’ the absence age weary of notions of ‘purity’ a postmodern easy entre to say that they are well suited to explore form of comics offers us an does so by developing an alternate system that “defines an ideal” ( that “defines an ideal” an alternate system does so by developing While Groensteen celebrates this (non)legitimization by challenging the modernist by challenging celebrates this (non)legitimization While Groensteen end” (“Why” 9), he art to a dead that has led contemporary “ideology of purification primary factor, but its new take on a topic or how it approaches (or remediates) (or remediates) how it approaches on a topic or its new take factor, but primary Alan Moore’s graphic novel writing in unique ways (e.g. thinking and graphic novel) attracts wide public attention, the medium is not always the is not always the medium attention, wide public novel) attracts graphic a comics form (not a comics 56 would be “something that the thing is not” (Grammar 23). [substance] etymologically refers to something outside the thing, extrinsic to it,” it Burk writes, “though used to designate something within the thing, intrinsic to it, Burke’s ‘”paradox of substance” offers a better approximation of the comics form. As by providing a stance, or what in rhetorical terms is called stasis theory – Kenneth to Groensteen’s view of comics as medium – designating the limits of this ‘art’ form over the other, creating a hierarchy meant to move toward legitimization. In contrast Groensteen describes, reduces image/text relationships gives one mediation preference parameters in terms of formal categories, such as the “spatio-topical” system practices – or what I have called ‘pure’ writing. While well-informed, defining G the ‘definitionalproject’inordertooffera(non)definitionofcomicsasform. function in‘thearts’andrhetoric/composition;thisrequiresthatwefirstturnto sequential andasadominantlyprintmediumsothatwemayseehowthey of writingimaginatively,weneedtomovebeyondnotionscomicsasinherently order tosketchouthowcomicspresent Abstract Comics instruction and the various problematics of legitimized knowledge and writing roensteen’s definitional project correlates to current concerns in writing would continuefallbeyondthescopeofGroensteen’ssystem.In technology. Inotherwords,thedifferencebetweenrhetoricand “One waytoperceivethedisjunctionisviewslashasa composition isinhowtheyeachdefineandemploytechné.” S lashing T In theShadowofImage/Text he D efinitional T ~Cynthia Haynes,“Rhetoric/Slash/Composition” hrough postmodern writers/artists
I P mage roject /T ext 7 For comics, this sub-stance : with aninstance 57 Discours, As such,
most attempts attempts most comics defining at as a medium are as a medium and unnecessary generally unproductive, unproductive, generally perhaps even self-serving self-serving even perhaps , see ). A more more A ). to the point of ignoring ignoring of point the to and James Kochalka’s suggestion that art – intermedia form (for more on the larger context of of context larger the intermedial as – comics
8 chapter 3 chapter Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing
productive approach approach productive method a in appears
hyperrhetoric Greg Ulmer and Hawk Hawk and Ulmer Greg call The Comedy of Philosophy in which inserts ‘art’ directly into rhetoric
Haynes’ “Rhetoric/Slash/Composition,” Lisa Trahair’s reading of Lyotard’s of reading Trahair’s Lisa “Rhetoric/Slash/Composition,” Haynes’ figure category than with a formal/istic classifications. Here I take my cue from Cynthia category than with a formal/istic classifications. Here What I suggest is achieved through a (non) that current perspectives on comics (art) would be better and composition.
form(ulation)s (sequentiality). form(ulation)s lies outside formal/systematic conceptualizations and, has a context beyond traditional traditional beyond context a has and, conceptualizations formal/systematic outside lies 58 and rhetoric in to new involved us nothing is of those conversation This visual. the value to continues and has reading and looking the that claiming text, opposition the expose Pipe a (“Why” 8;emphasisadded).BuildingonMichelFoucault’s our sensesandexcitingemotions,thatreasonisonthesideofword” “philosophers continuallyrepeatthattheimagetricksandtroublesus,acting on became logocentrism,”subordinated“visualformsofexpressiontolanguage”since to referwritingandpainting,which,when“ouralphabeticalculturequickly Groensteen andLyotard, another unnecessaryandbetween‘computers[comics].Aswe’llsee,fromboth in theformofcomics–asimageandtextwouldneedlittlediscussiontodismiss added), perHaynes’rhetoricalquestion,itisn’tafarstretchtosaythatwriting writing [is]alreadyutterlyunnecessary”(“Rhetoric/Slash/Composition”;emphasis term would bebetterthoughtofasatechnologyinthesensethatHaynesuses both imageandtext,becausetheyexistattheintersectionsbetweenmedia, To putitbriefly,asIhopetoshow,becausecomicsareaformassociatedwith is awayofunderstandingandcondensinglife’sexperiences( slash composition’s current focus focus current composition’s Groensteen remindsusthattheGreeksused“asingleword, , Groensteen , betweenrhetoricandcomposition.If“the on ‘multimedia, but but ‘multimedia, on what Iwantto
writing
In theShadowofImage/Text
writtentextoverthe alwaysalreadyinvolvesbothimageandtext. fought long been opposition between between opposition and between image and betweencomputersand attempts to to attempts Cute Manifesto
graphien This is Not Not is This ” ).
59 Of ) that exceed methods of reading , Trahair suggests that each mode , Trahair suggests that each tropes Discourse, figure ). topos Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing , not as a separation, but as the superimposition of image , not as a separation, but as the superimposition of image 171). Evaluating these two modes of expression as Trahair 171). Evaluating these two the thought-practices that Lyotard proposes brings us back to Lyotard proposes brings us back the thought-practices that 9 graphien Comedy Reading and writing in this way presents a logic of invention that Reading and writing in this way presents a logic of . In other words, Groensteen fails to realize that the interplay of Groensteen fails to realize . In other words, 10 171). To elucidate this claim more fully, we turn to Trahair’s reading of Lyotard. To elucidate this claim more and writing categorically ( returns “texts” to conceptual starting places ( discourse will dominate; in others, the figure takes hold of the text” (Trahair, discourse will dominate; in others, the figure takes Comedy by breaking with the perspective that in “some instances of ‘textual production,’ by breaking with the perspective that in “some instances and text, each occupying the same space, just as stills in a film occupy the space and text, each occupying the same space, just as stills between image and text on a screen. This superimposition blurs the distinction of collage/montage, the Greek word age of new media. Where remix tends to work with a logic of association in the form tends to work with a logic of association in the age of new media. Where remix explains provides current multimodal composing processes in popular culture multimodal composing processes in popular culture explains provides current an ways of thinking about what it means to write in (remix) with some alternate given together ( (discourse, figure) is not an order of knowing separated from the other, but that an order of knowing separated from the other, but that (discourse, figure) is not other,” that both image and text are always already both realms “inhabit [each] Through a reading of Lyotards’ image and text lays bare the ambiguities of each and that both are always already of each and that both are lays bare the ambiguities image and text presented together. Grammatology side of the word” – despite a history of postmodern scholarship to the contrary; postmodern scholarship to – despite a history of side of the word” writing in work on language and thinking of Derrida’s here I am specifically that he frames comics here, and in the way he discusses text, is that he does is that he discusses text, in the way he here, and frames comics that he is on the credit it de-serves – “reason word the (ambiguous) not give the written that leans more toward the visual than the textual. The problem with the way with the The problem than the textual. the visual more toward that leans point to here has to do with Groensteen’s attempts to position comics as an art comics as to position attempts do with Groensteen’s here has to point to 60 consciousness. When Sirc details how composition builds classrooms as ( attributes and facial expressions” (“Drawing Blood” 45). As a representational form pseudo-scientific principles of physiognomy to portray character through a few physical point” by “deploying a handful of visual symbols and clichés” that use “the discredited loaded image: its wit lies in the visual concision of using a few deft strokes to make its to canonize or curate. “Caricature,” Spiegelman writes, “is by definition a charged or these caricatures symbolize a symptom, not the cause of a larger problem: the desire language, writing and the teaching of rhetoric and composition. For Spiegelman, been addressing over the last thirty years – specifically, the desire to control meaning, Mohammed, Spiegelman echoes the problems that rhetoric and composition have examples of this misuse, the 2005 Danish political cartoons of the Muslim prophet such as caricature(s). In response to one of the most outrageous (‘causing outrage’) if the goal is to illustrate some known idea or represent some preconceived knowledge, mimesis ‘the best that has been them writepurely,to language can they that order to learnproducethemaster’scraft”( charcoals, and sketchbooks their with galleries art in poised see we and expressedin As it relates to traditional views of comics, caricature ) of thought, caricature plays on accepted icons already present in the public –we‘invite’ with tasks tasks with the bestthathasbeenthought our language are ‘invited’ in to sample sample to in ‘invited’ are temples in which students sortsofcultural
In theShadowofImage/Text
“peculiar and maybe even, like the art students students and maybeeven,liketheart English topoi geared toward making making toward geared students into classrooms in thought and expressed.’ expressed.’ and thought of models the reproduce of caricatures create (commonplaces) can be misused 2), the issue lies with with lies 2),theissue our our
61 . While 215). McCloud has no Discours, figure a definition of comics while a definition of comics while offers an alternate perspective that offers an alternate Understanding – a form that allows writers and writers and that allows – a form fix caricature caricature : he hesitates to definition, and he welcomes an inventive approach to definition, and he welcomes an inventive approach Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing Understanding Comics Understanding fixed 23), and (2) “I’ve learned a lot about comics since beginning this 23), and (2) “I’ve learned a lot about comics since beginning Scott McCloud’s Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics Understanding comics that falls outside of his own project’s purview. comics that falls outside of his own project’s purview. illusions of creating a project and I know I have a lot left to learn. I hope you’ll all consider exploring—or project and I know I have a lot left to learn. I hope you’ll continuing to explore—comics on your own” ( ( the content is concerned, he bookends the entire project with two claims: (1) “[O]ur the content is concerned, he bookends the entire project which won’t end anytime soon” attempts to define comics are an on-going process examining the current state of the medium, even claiming that the definition is of the medium, even claiming that the definition examining the current state the rest of the book. As far as only a way to set out on the work he does throughout with concerned with verbal language and visual inscriptions. That is, comics present a and visual inscriptions. That is, comics present concerned with verbal language is precisely what McCloud attempts to accomplish hesitating intervention, which of practices that comics offer rhetoric/ composition pedagogy, a field continually rhetoric/ composition pedagogy, a field continually of practices that comics offer criticism and actually performs the work that it discusses, or what Ulmer would the work that it discusses, or what Ulmer would criticism and actually performs sort McCloud’s content aside, the book acts out the call an “object of post-criticism.” performative exploration of comics suggests an intersection between Duchamp’s comics suggests an intersection between Duchamp’s performative exploration of a place of invention – and “object” that goes beyond creative act in art and craft, – either it is too limiting (Meskin) or too broad (Cohn) depending on the critic – his or too broad (Cohn) depending on the critic – either it is too limiting (Meskin) Slash/Composition”) or the hesitating comma in Lyotard’s or the hesitating comma Slash/Composition”) criticized for his attempt to define the medium of comics McCloud has been widely from Haynes’ virgule, the slash (/), between rhetoric and composition (“Rhetoric/ rhetoric and composition virgule, the slash (/), between from Haynes’ not too distant and practice – a blurring the division between theory begins to blur over their heads. over their artists to compose without the requirement of a model or master copies hanging copies a model or master of the requirement to compose without artists What comics offer us goes beyond goes beyond offer us What comics 62 thinking ofthiscombination asmethodofsuperimposition allowsustothink simplification” (McCloud, manner ofinvention. Inadditiontoavoidingtheconcernof “amplificationthrough the textual,allowinghowwethinkof figuraltobecomea active employmentoftechnèpresentsa wayofbreakingupthedivisionbetween sequentially, conceptualizingthisdivision asanalreadyinterrelatedandinter- turns up–insteadofarrangingimage/text, image/image,text/image,text/text Grammar ofVisualDesign like theonethatKressandVanLeeuwenproposein Understanding information and/ortoproduceanaestheticresponseintheviewer”(McCloud, “juxtaposed pictorialandotherimagesindeliberatesequence,intendedtoconvey take towardthecomics.Mostnotably,initialdefinitionheprovides– problematic ifreadastheonlyapplicationandapproachthatwriters/artists experience theworld. to dowithinstitutions(andinstitutionaldemands)andmorehowwe in professionalism”(Sirc, over ourstatusasavalidacademicfield[that]ledustoentrenchourselvesfirmly cultural criticism,buttobecomeproductivewriters,andtacklethe“insecurity ‘reality’. through generativepracticesthataltershowwethinkandwriteexperience from interpretationandtowardstimulatingthoughttocreatesomethingnew comics’ connectiontothecurrentmoveinmultimodalcompositionpedagogyaway in differentways,waysthatwelcomeexperimentalarrangements.Herewesee of comicsasatechnology, Still, someoftheconceptsthatheintroducesthroughbookare If welearntolookatcomicsasMcClouddoes,havetheterrainthink 11 Thepurposeofsuchanexperimentalapproachisnottoengagein 7-9)–reliesonalinearitythatimpliesgrammaticalstructure, English Understanding . ThisiswheretheLyotardiansuperimposition In theShadowofImage/Text techné 6)insuchawaythat‘ourprofession’hasless , thatdefinesandemploysimagestext 30)presentintheconcept of Readings Images:The hyperrhetorical caricature
, 63 in the ) to elicit a singular a singular ) to elicit focuses on a grammar and cultural artifacts, visual language understood “can only be to the Frankfurt School’s School’s Frankfurt the to chapter 3 chapter model, though, his own words, Cohn parallels the grammar parallels the grammar acquisition – what in beginning as early as procedures found procedures in philosophical work
visual language
Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing
relies on a constructionist method of of relies on a constructionist method 4). reading that does not take into account the the account into take not does that reading aleatory/associative style. Cohn’s Libidinal theoretical and century, last the over he sees at the center of of he sees at the center fall may under thestudies canon of rhetorical Marcel Duchamp. In view of aesthetics, which which aesthetics, of view The problems with ‘understanding’ comics as a language, rather than as an The problems with ‘understanding’ claims that comics literary, sociological, as
of visual images comparable comparable images visual of model of comics that alternate form of thought, appears in Neil Cohn’s work on alternate form of thought, ‘Comics,’” Cohn tries to develop a theoretical field of linguistics. In “Un-Defining
knowledge” ( terminus, without ever crashing into the wall of an absence, into a limit which wall of an absence, into ever crashing into the terminus, without and but “[i]t invests without condition,” without “rule would be the mark of a lack,” and contrary to the representative cube, intensities run in it without meeting a intensities run in it without to the representative cube, and contrary where there are no longer two separate sides, and the aesthetic response arising sides, and the aesthetic response no longer two separate where there are it is infinite, closed in the sense of a volume, “is not at all out of these combinations aesthetic response rather than a general/ized response. If we take our cue from we take our cue response. If general/ized than a response rather aesthetic Moebius strip would take shape as a interaction of image and text Lyotard, the media combine (more on the combination of media in of media on the combination combine (more media about how comics create complex networks of meaning by looking at how various looking at how meaning by networks of complex comics create about how 64 thinks without regard for categorical memberships.everyday life” (Schneider, “Comics and Everydayovercomes Life” 41), logic, where and the the Strange(r) idea of causalitywrites and giveshas way to todo thewith contingency how they address and arbitrariness the ordinary, of theformulation everyday ofwhere new, “random perhaps chronology unexpected, linkages.invites, As it thehappens, proliferation of meaning beyond representation/reproduction– not as a medium (category) ( in itself, but as excludesthe superimposition more than it of incorporates; media that allows, an alternative even In essence, would be Meskin to think finds of thatcomics the tropologically definitional –project would beis ofmisguided much help since in givingany definition us critical andart, interpretive and it would guidance” seem “improbable (“Defining” that 376). a definitionthat any of standardizedcomics – even features if it were of comicsforthcoming are inherentlythat are limiting and unnecessary for any in features whose absence tends to preclude a workhe questions from falling any (andinto all)a category, attempts not at onesdefining comics: “we are typically most interested another domain. become diminishedasjustanotherwayofsayingwhathasalreadybeensaid in been workingondeveloping.Ifthisisthecase,importanceofcomicswould to handletheforminordergivevoicewhatotherfieldsofstudyhavealready that ‘understanding’thelogicofacomicslanguagecanhelpusbettergrasphow could leadto“aboomofdiversecontent”(“Un-Defining”247),heseemssuggest While heclaimsthatlanguage“placesnorestrictionsonhowitisutilized”and be akintotaking“x-raysofitunderstandhowworks”(“Un-Defining”246). linguistics” (withallofitsgrammaticalandsyntacticalconnotations),whichwould that amoreproductiveapproachwouldstudyits“visuallanguage”and independent fromtheinternalstructurescomprisingthem,”andheproposes Aaron Meskin’s “Defining Comics?” suggests that Cohn’s project is misdirected when required for category membership” (“Defining” 376). Here, Meskin acknowledges In theShadowofImage/Text 12 the relevance of comics mimesis ) in the 65 Just Gaming Just Gaming roject ) P rts
~ Lyotard, (A inematic hyperrhetorical C he in seeing comics as in a writing of form thinking. and To consider comics as a : T form that links links that form f we begin to I vention ) some headway can be made made be can headway some grounded: one can never reach the just by a conclusion.” can never reach the just grounded: one ter Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing ( n on think of comics as an art art to the everyday, everyday, the to art some of the concerns and Groensteen seem to propose, propose, to and Groensteen seem its own merits, as Meskin suggests, suggests, Meskin as merits, own its Cohn as instead of systematically, I struck by the fact that prescriptives, taken seriously, are never fact that prescriptives, taken struck by the that one should move in the direction that it proposes. But I am move in the direction that that one should there is a prescriptive function to the idea of paganism. I believe function to the idea there is a prescriptive “…it ought to be obvious that I accept completely the notion that the notion that be obvious that I accept completely “…it ought to esitating H A
66
with association (combining image including cinema, e t a n i d r o b u s Groensteen claims art, of genre a As addressed. be to need In SearchOfCulturalLegitimization?” raises in “Why Are Comics Still In theShadowofImage/Text Everyday Life” 43). (Schneider, “Comics and and marvelous reside” the place where the bizarre and mysterious’,the of “‘home the lives, everyday our how we think about thatGroensteen
n e h W exceptional be more serious than I’m not sure what could work (9-11) – although any linktoserious that comics endure a an inferior art art inferior an due toitshybridity medium lacking lacking medium a as position its and (caricature), and text), its (erroneous) position to otherarts, 67 , he that that , which technè obtuse meaning The System of Comics The System 14 ” since this sort of “operation […] consists of of consists […] “operation of sort this since ” and tends to position comics in opposition to to opposition in comics position to tends and
16 ) where we explore and invent with a rigor beyond a ) where we explore and invent Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing editing (montage) editing produce networks that stimulate logics of association un/cut from from un/cut association of logics stimulate that networks produce 15 to the obtuse the to meaning” it contains a narrative that since allows see my chapter 6 Understanding Comics Understanding related as a cinema-specific meaning that produces an abstract examination of a as a cinema-specific meaning Toward the end of his assessment of the ‘system,’ he seems to have discovered discovered have to seems he ‘system,’ the of assessment his of end the Toward While Barthes mentions that comicsmentions may offerBarthes signifier,” it would “a new While 13 cinema, rather than exploring the ways in which comics present a form of of form a present comics which in ways the exploring than rather cinema, project has been a welcome addition to comics scholarship, his study parallels that that parallels study his scholarship, comics to addition welcome a been has project McCloud’s of how they appear in random, contingent and arbitrary chronologies. While Groensteen’s Groensteen’s While chronologies. arbitrary and contingent random, in appear they how the difference: while film tends to work with logics of the cut (montage/collage), (montage/collage), cut the of logics with work to tends film while difference: the comics traditional
unified system that closes upon itself. unified system that closes and how comics present an alternate form of thinking and writing: in fragments alternate form of thinking and writing: in fragments and how comics present an (aphorisms – film, Groensteen stumbles upon some of the ambiguous differences between both upon some of the ambiguous differences between film, Groensteen stumbles for counter-narratives (“The Third Meaning” 66). By applying66). a fortermMeaning” to Third counter-narratives comics(“The that Barthes assigns to film, even as he attempts to differentiate comics from film. “ one be obtuse The most prominent example he uses is Roland Barthes’ example he uses is The most prominent the with comics even though Barthes identified he by unquestioningly associates but that equates cinema and comics – a problematic link for various reasons. problematic link for various cinema and comics – a but that equates of what Regis Debreay calls the ‘videosphere’” (8). However, Groensteen relies on (8). However, Groensteen Debreay calls the ‘videosphere’” of what Regis in media, does not reflect the differences cinematic studies that scholarship within that is demonstrated by its [comics] continuing popularity after a century and a after a century popularity continuing by its [comics] demonstrated that is new things born of cinema and of all the despite the competition half of existence, asserts that for “its part, film has other assets, and comics have theirs also, a fact have theirs and comics other assets, part, film has that for “its asserts Groensteen places comics and cinema in conversation in in conversation and cinema places comics Groensteen can be thought of as a technology (in Haynes’ sense of the word). For example, he he example, For word). the of sense Haynes’ (in technology a as of thought be can “ term the to” “objects 68 Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.” form, like Jacobson and Colón did with their graphic adaptation of the “National joining images and text to say in another way what has already been said in a different trans-disciplinarily; that is, with techniques and methods that extend beyond merely perspective does not reflect that of how ‘artists’ working with comics write and think – to be desired. So while Groensteen dismisses montage as a technique for comics, his that the ways in which the two have been discussed along side each other leaves a lot comic book. All of this to say that comics and cinema are already interrelated, but which correlates to McCloud’s discussion of the gutter between panels in a conventional takes place when “the successive images are connected” by the reader ( watching a film, the motion arises out of a projector, whereas the motion in comics with Moore and expresses a common observation from a comics perspective: when of artistic works not available to ‘other cinematic arts’ ( techniques for innovative practices, comics will restrict emselves from the possibilities “can advance the standards of comic art and writing,” but if they rely on cinematic prominent critics of film from within comics, acknowledges that cinematic techniques own environment and process” (Ellis, “the presence of an active and playful imagination trying to rewrite and redress its comics present: a manner of thinking and writing in an age of new media denoting to their relationship with film can limit the development and potentialities of what comics are considered a secondhand version of cinema. Yet, discarding terms due continue to persist speaking at cross-purposes. intervention in traditional understandings of comics that breaks apart discussions that topical’ system. while he supports the juxtapositions that montage produces throughout his ‘spatio- an intervention on a material that has already been elaborated” ( The underlying concern for Groensteen remains prominent for comics: that 17 But the intervention that comics provide needs to be elaborated as an In theShadowofImage/Text Do Anything 15). Alan Moore, one of the most Writing 3). David Carrier agrees System Aesthetics 101) even 56), 69 common to both extreme, the can help us “to its dual reliance say something else. in each text” (107). (107). text” each in as merely an alternative remix that work at breaking apart that
f a c t o r o f if this remains the the remains this if will continue to forms these two
remix in order to construct ain order to construct specific meanings in each are erected. erected. are each in meanings would allow us to better
approach falters is in in is falters approach
and its need to differentiate both the the both differentiate to and its need
narratives in order to narratives in order to unique to each medium” medium” each to unique meaning of the signs The most commonly commonly most The
Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing discussed connection between comics comics between connection discussed
systematized If taken to their (tempered) get the short end of the stick. For example, example, For stick. the short end of the get investigates Christiansen Hans-Christian and the differences between comics and film has to do with how they employ structures; narrative most significant of thought, comics methods methods systematic systematic these cinema in his article “Comics and cinema in his article “Comics differentiating current cultural and media theories of of current cultural and media theories Film,” where he claims that “the systems systems “the that Film,” where he claims systematic mix of the mixes we have been presented, cinema and comics become modes of mix of the mixes we have been presented, cinema and alternative means of gathering thinking that suggest, as Ulmer writes of video, “an of still images that forms a narrative. And if we see methods used to break apart cinematic narratives necessitate turning films into methods used to break apart cinematic narratives necessitate comics – a sequence what could, for all intents and purposes, be called traditional
how the understand the with do to has ignore approaches Let me state the obvious first: what such field of study that on on media distinct as two Where this this Where media and the systems systems the and media understand the
70 Integrating of thinking about how ‘readers’ for effective reading, including comics –a process that has been breaking apartthe customary emphasis added). and letstylebe the engine of “method ofcontrollingsomethinginadvance(orproducingageneralization Hyperrhetoric approach called the rhetoricalcanonsofmemoryandarrangement)presentssuchanalternative say andinthecreativesenseofinnovation”(“OneVideoTheory”268). having athought,ofinventingbothintherhetoricalsensefindingsomethingto information intosets,forthepurposenotofprovingortestinganidea,buta with cinema that also also that cinema with to way a provides comics but “is free to roam is“nolongershackled to Hawk’s methodofremotivatingthefiguralintoanewcontext(through ShadowofNoTowers of comics. The example Istartedwith, Spiegelman’s deduction)” (“Hyperrhetoric”77);initsplace, “is apartoftheideologyscience(induction and , asHawkexplainswhileworkingoutofUlmer,runsantitheticaltoa hyperrhetoric hyperrhetoric offers: a moment of emergence during the then control something in advance” that 19 This method nomadically of play into In theShadowofImage/Text , whichcomicsscholars/hiphasyettoadopt.
emphasizes traditional definitions text,” literate the of seriousness the thatcan hyper/mediated hyper/mediated , presentswhat such a method through the world of words and images reverse thenarrativeassociation hir 18 fill in the gaps between panels. linear panel-to-panel reading the ways we think and write (about) helps us to make headway in in headway make to us helps delivery”(“Hyperrhetoric” 88; the common reversion reversion common the represented as a mechanism hyperrhetoric In The
71 I . unfixed In the Shadow provokes : unbinding the disrupts the saw is never the film figural we iv). The way Spiegelman frames The Fifth Element Shadow The Remembered Film here means to employ various media to various media to employ here means Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing hyper/mediate hyper/mediate when he presents one way of ‘making sense’ of his experiences during when he presents one way While the playful work that comics have engaged in over the past two engaged in over the past work that comics have While the playful narrative analysis, this approach to thinking and writing would have us insert a narrative analysis, this approach to thinking and writing to consider how practices of slash between comics and cinema – comics/cinema – of linking those fragments into new assemblages. Instead of relying on formal, of linking those fragments into new assemblages. Instead this project underscores how we can think of comics as a technology that provides this project underscores how we can think of comics collages through a process us with a way of thinking in fragments and creating fragmentary thoughts in different styles” ( from the media images that threatened to engulf what [he] actually saw, and the from the media images that threatened to engulf what impulse to juxtapose [his] collagelike nature of a newspaper page encourages [his] linear narrative to produce a conceptual starting place. As Spiegelman writes, what a conceptual starting place. As Spiegelman writes, linear narrative to produce of what [he’d] experienced he was looking for was a way “to sort out the fragments relies on what Hawk practices with the film relies on what Hawk practices the WTC attacks, and even the way he remembers those experiences are the WTC attacks, and even this work puts into practice that inventive method that Spiegelman’s approach to of No Towers conflict. In particular, when Burgin writes that the “film conflict. In particular, when a corresponding example in Spiegelman’s remember” (110), we find us to think abstractly. Victor Burgin’s us to think abstractly. Victor and cinema that continues to be a source of differentiations between comics remains entrenched in ‘the literate text,’ even though the remains entrenched in ‘the how these approaches have been addressed decades provides such approaches, of cinema has to do with the dearth of work on how a comics form of thinking and on how a comics form to do with the dearth of work of cinema has new media. approaches to writing (with) us to imaginative writing can acclimate My use of cinematic theories of invention is not meant to suggest that comics are that comics meant to suggest is not theories of invention of cinematic My use coming out main reason I rely on theories other cinematic arts; the subordinate to invent allusions to the imaginable that remains inaccessible to a single medium). to a single inaccessible that remains imaginable allusions to the invent inventive practices (to practices inventive 72 Understanding Comics –ReinventingComics:HowImagination andTechnology produces a criteria foraplayfulinventivenessthat workswithcollectedfragments,and where writersandartists workwithout(predetermined) place a as explained meaning a“returntopreviouscondition” (Gaiman, finds whatheseesasanappropriatetitle forthistransitorywork: their misery”(Gaiman, more orlesstransitory”(Burgin, arrangement from“fragments[that]goadriftandenterintonewcombinations, ( There isaworldofpotentialitiesbuildinginhismind,“wheretherealfilms are” eventually somethingpierceshimaboutthisprojectandheiscompelledtowrite. purpose, hetellshimself.Itwillnotbecompleted,theworldisendingforhim, but film, assemblingthesets,actors,andshots,butnotwritinganyofit.Thereis no the endofworld,tobecompletedposthumously.Hebeginsimagine director hasonlymonthstolive,butfeelscompelledwritehislastprojectabout process mightconsistofin From withincomics,NeilGaimanandDaveMcKeanvisualizewhatsucha that aesthetictextsthemselvesmaybeconstitutiveoftheoreticalthought”(14). condenses ahostofinter-relatedideasthatallseemtoconvergeintheperception that hecalls each defineandemploy and theimportanceofeachisnotdifferencesbetweenthem,butinhowthey creating andviewingchangeacrossmedia. Signal But noneofthisisreally new.McCloudnoticesthismovein thesequelto Asbjørn Grønstadhasalreadyproposedasimilarconceptforfilmstudies 3),whatBurginmightrefertoas‘internalmemory,’manifestedan collagelike theory film work indifferentstyles(ormedia/tions). , which“providesuswithametadiscursiveconceptthat Signal techné Signal toNoise In theShadowofImage/Text . 3) bywriting.Inhisfinalmoments,thedirector Remembered . Inthenarrative,a(fictive)prominent 20 Botharetechnologiesofthe 68), untilheputs“themoutof Signal 50), which could be be could which 50), apocatastases slash , , 73
new ideas . For this this For . Reinventing unique medium unique of the technologies that brought of the technologies shells of each has emerged” so that “ of each has emerged” so that . Comics is such an idea, and most of . Comics is such an idea, and ” (Reinventing 233). And it is this idea ” (Reinventing 233). And it essence shell . After all, what I’m suggesting is how comics work as as work comics how is suggesting I’m what all, . After – a method of learning closer to invention than – a method of learning closer Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing new environments electracy harbor” escaping “the harbor” escaping Electracy, the early years: Nietzsche doing graphic the early years: Nietzsche design. Electracy, of the medium rather than thinking about the idea of a (new) of the medium rather than [can] grow in their uniqueness writing in digital environments. writing in digital environments. in which we can think about how comics offer an imaginative way of thinking and how comics offer an imaginative way of thinking in which we can think about etc.), what Ulmer calls ways goal for the remainder of this project will be to find authentication. Part of the with the logics of digital media (e.g., linking, hypermedia/tion, montage/collage, (e.g., linking, hypermedia/tion, montage/collage, with the logics of digital media the a way of writing and thinking imaginatively comics form, a form that suggests its checkered history has been the its checkered history has been in favor of rehashing the same old arguments about that continues to be ignored forms that traditional media that traditional irreducible them into being, until the 208). At the heart of this manner of thinking is the ability to consider the “ is the ability to consider of this manner of thinking 208). At the heart of thinking about “comics and multimedia in collaboration,” which he explains in collaboration,” which “comics and multimedia of thinking about ( into digital environments transfer the printed page would be merely of thinking about comics as a form of thought rather than as a a as than rather thought of form a as comics about thinking of as multimedia instead think of comics we begin to McCloud asks that re-invention, a form that can teach us how to work imaginatively with technology by inventing a way way a inventing by technology with imaginatively work to how us teach can that form a are Revolutionizing an Art Form are Revolutionizing 74 inspiration orasamodel ofwhattherhetoricalturnto that rhetoric/composition scholars,whenlookingtoartfor guidance,seeasan writing, due,moreoftenthannot,means complete. point explicitly:“theessayisnotfinished, butitisdue.”However,forinstitutional say isneverfinished–similarly,asaying fromcompositioncoursesputsthis comments onthe drawing/painting inamustacheandgoatee.Inthisinstance,Duchamp’spiece also its own.However,weknowthatDuchampwasquestioningthemeaningofArt by re/viewing ofLeonardodeVinci’s Marcel Duchamp’sremix between theoryandpractice.Forourpurposes,anexamplepresentsitselfin hyperrhetoric istogiveanexamplesincethismethodattemptsblurtheline of memorytowardtransformativeproduction.Hawktellsusthatacomponent of describes it,entailsanelementofplayfulinventivenesswithare-arrangement and therelationshipbetweenprintdigitalwriting.Hyperrhetoric,asHawk F cinema asanadditionalwayofthinkingabouttheimage/textrelationship luidity andplayguidethisinventiveprocessattheintersectionsofcomics Duchamp’s work L.H.O.O.Q. ofart,which,ifhiswritingsareanindication, hewould “if itdoesn’tcomeburstingoutofyou/inspiteeverything,/ don’t doit.unlessitcomesunmaskedoutofyour/heartand S L.H.O.O.Q. ifting In theShadowofImage/Text hasbecomeanaccepted workofArt,andone W your mindandmouth/andgut,/don’tdoit.” riting T 21 ~ CharlesBukowski,“soyouwanttobeawriter?”
Mona Lisa hrough Aninitial“reading”couldsuggestthatthis I magintively
the is asingleartworkthatstandson M adness : figural mightlooklike. 75
, in the sense , in the remix shown on the screen behind us. shown on the Mona Lisa Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing resonates with current popular art trends toward trends toward popular art with current resonates Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q. Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Duchamp’s
have a duplicate of de Vinci’s have a duplicate another to create something new. Let me provide a manifestation of playful work provide a manifestation something new. Let me another to create projector we overhead projector. On this technology: the using a now-antiquated when it was first made public. However, this remix does not only use the montage/ not only use the remix does However, this public. was first made when it one image over music, but superimposes found in cinema and collage techniques that it inserts a discrepancy and interrupts the expectations of spectators, at least of spectators, expectations interrupts the and inserts a discrepancy that it L.H.O.O.Q. L.H.O.O.Q. 76 and thefiguralwhileperformingacritiquefromwithinmedium: akin toaportraitof“punk”createdthroughplayfulapproachart,writing Duchamp’s renderingoftheMonaLisa.Whatwehavenowresemblessomething to adouble-zerogauge(aboutaninchindiameter).Welaythistransparencyover have decidedthattheywouldliketodyeherhairpinkandstretchear-piercings discuss thepaintingandwhatwewouldadd.Onsecondtransparency,students Duchamp’s remix– The firstincludesamustacheandgoateethat,whenplacedoverourcopy,mimics this isnotatraditionalcourse.Incourse,wehavetwoblanktransparencies. interpretation oftheimage–slight,coysmileindicatesahiddensecret.But would beginbycontextualizingtheimageandprovidingsomedescriptionand/or A traditionalart-criticismcourse,liketheoneItookwhileanundergraduate, Mona Lisa Re/Mix ofDuchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q. In theShadowofImage/Text has amustacheandgoatee.Weletthissit;we 22
“Doctor MD” ( critique of art. See Kaprow’sIt’s timeessay, move to past Duchamp’s Essays 127-129). 77 ), topoi portraits. It’s It’s time to critique of Duchamp’s art. move past Mona Lisa’s behind, ), which would would which ), Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing happenings by avoiding “all esthetic esthetic “all avoiding by 23 [and existing] only fleetingly fleetingly only existing] [and 24 see my chapter 3 chapter my see ( continued with a superimposition: invention accompanied by a sense unart unart
Allan Kaprow argues for such an approach approach an such for argues Kaprow Allan Still, the fear that this approach becomes “art for art’s sake” cannot be
work that comics ‘artists’ have been developing developing been have ‘artists’ comics that work formal the with disillusioned becoming since art as a category has been a motivation for the the for motivation a been has category a as art art is discarded, the art category is meaningless, is category art the discarded, is art or at least antique” (103-104). Discarding as the nonartist, for when the profession of roles, give up all references to being artists of of artists being to references all up give roles, whatever kind any calling it it calling laughter toward step to “art” when he left the
of play, like the playful revisions of both writing open by new media. Re-imagined, writing might look like Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q. serves as a way to continue the method of acceptable/accepted writing ( of argument, and modes of writing that do not account for alternate forms of practice. To write a research paper by trilogy (“thesis, antithesis, synthesis”) assignment is due and therefore complete. Conversely, many (theorists) have recognized that writing takes many forms and is a cyclical process of theory/ the changing environments in which writing takes place. The research paper still common in most writing instruction, rhetoric and composition has little (obvious) personal and professional relevance and does not (always) address seems to be a common perception among writing students. For the writing classroom that continues to focus on traditional academic essays, a practice ignored since in most traditional writing courses “writing for writing’s sake”
127-129). Essays It’s time to move past Duchamp’s Duchamp’s past to move essay, time It’s Kaprow’s See art. of critique ( MD” “Doctor 78 the superimposition ofthefiguralandtextualtoward postmodern writing Such anapproachproposes aninventiveviewofcomicsthat takesintoaccount (and comics/cinema), allthewhilemakingdifferencesapparent andinventive. means ofproduction.Comicscanre-orient ustothedivisionbetweenimage/text presents awayofthinkingandwriting strangelybyengaging(all)theavailable to completetheprojectfollowingattacks. Spiegelman’sapproachtocomics if Spiegelmanweretoattemptitadecade laterinsteadofthethreeyearshetook and re-arrangesthatevent. making senseofthoseevents,butonethatcontinueseverytimeheremembers he hascontinuedtomakesenseoftheattacks.Writingandartbecameways he mayhesitatetosaythatworkaccuratelyportrayshowfeltand the WTCwasattackedashewrote/drew “feeling therhythmwithincacophony”( senses” withinordertotuneus“withthecacophonyofinstant”( as awaytoaddressthe“constantblinkingtechnovibrationsthatwebombard our same thing!”( important wayofprocessingtheinformationexperience[…].Playandartare the awareness “be accompaniedbyasenseofplay,”which“isheightenedstate some understandingoftheworldthatwealreadyhold”(Cute121),anditshould making senseoftheworld,focusingtomakeitclearer,notawaycommunicating a wayofunderstandinginformation.Thatis,creatingartismeanswehave this workwhenheexplainsthat“artisnotawayofconveyinginformation,it’s composition, JamesKochalkaoffersusacluetohowcomics(asform)conduct unartists elements involvedwhilelearningtobecomeartists–andsothey’ve To re-begin,Spiegelmanwasabletomakesenseofhisexperiencesontheday unconcernedwithaestheticrolesandcategories.Asitappliestorhetoric/ that allowsus Cute 100-102; emphasisadded).Here,Kochalkaseescomics(form) to enternewrealmsofdiscovery In theShadowofNoTowers In theShadowofImage/Text In theShadowofNoTowers Cute 41) andwritingwithinthatstate. might lookmuchdifferent […]. Play is imaginative . However, ourmost Cute 40),by 79 method, at work Six Memos 25 ( 26 hyperrhetorical
118). Calvino identifies this 118). Calvino 93-94) that allowed for “a process of 93-94) that allowed for “a 95); this (non)method corresponds “to 95); this (non)method Six Memos 93) – a claim that breaks away from traditional 93) – a claim that breaks away Six Memos Six Memos Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing Six Memos the pictures” ( (Haynes) that would have us write as Plato’s sophist speaks: as (Haynes) that would have within touchstones behind. It mean plumbing the depths of abstraction. It means ob/ touchstones behind. It mean plumbing the depths of literating the ground” (“Writing Offshore” 715). “[t]eaching the value of exploring something in the abstract, without practical “[t]eaching the value of exploring something in the abstract, sophistic ethos (I purpose or intention, would return composition to its means leaving dare not say roots). In other words, finding new touchstones Haynes appraises this pedagogical footpath as
sophistic ethos Sophist(ic)s, as Strangers. invented for the occasion with unpredictable outcomes, and returning us to a invented for the occasion with 95) – an associational logic of assembling fragmentary thoughts in new formations. of assembling fragmentary thoughts in new formations. 95) – an associational logic parallels Hawk’s Pedagogically, Calvino’s (non)method abstraction, condensation, and interiorization of sense experience” abstraction, condensation, views of comics as merely ‘visual novels.’ Instead, he adopted an “occupation of ‘visual novels.’ Instead, he adopted an “occupation views of comics as merely daydreaming when he learned to read, “the advantage was minimal,” often “stabs in the dark [at advantage was minimal,” often “stabs in the dark when he learned to read, “the meaning] like my own” ( to the images in comics that spurred stories before he could read the text. Even spurred stories before he could read the text. Even to the images in comics that in comics. He even works hyperrhetorically, inventing through difference in the inventing through difference even works hyperrhetorically, in comics. He Writing of his ‘reading’ as a small child, he refers midst of both image and text. position as one involving internal memory, a sort of ‘mental cinema’ involving internal memory, position as one what in philosophy is nonsystematic thought, which proceeds by aphorisms, by which proceeds by is nonsystematic thought, what in philosophy ( flashes of light” sudden, discontinuous for the marvelous inherited from literary tradition into narrative mechanisms mechanisms into narrative literary tradition from marvelous inherited for the its alienation” ( that accentuate ironic use of the stock images of the mass [new/digital] media, or to inject the taste or to inject media, the mass [new/digital] images of of the stock ironic use practices similar to the one that Italo Calvino describes “as the tendency to make the tendency describes “as Italo Calvino the one that similar to practices 80 always matters’. walking alongsideeachotheraswhateversingularitiesinorder‘tobesuchthat it talks thetalk,andwriteswriting.Itwouldbesophist(ic)inSocraticsense: meaning ‘drives,moving,active.’Inotherwords,postpedagogywalksthewalk, agogos means‘tolead,’andcomestotheGreeksfromSanskritwordajati, of institutions.ThetermitselfcomestousfromtheGreekwordpaidagogeo,where mobile (ped:foot–walking)originsbyextractingitselffromthefixedspace/place grounds, Iargue”).Whenpedagogybecomespostpedagogy,itreturnsitselftoits the variousconnotations,includingphysicalspaceandjustification–“onthese Sophistic ethosinthissensewouldunhingeitselffrominstitutionalgrounds(with 27 In theShadowofImage/Text Chapter 3
Art Interrupted 82 ‘multimodal’ composition. Anewwayofthinkingabouthow tocomposewiththe the waysinwhichwe thinkdespitethemoveswe’vebeenmaking toward uncommon practice withnewmedia,apartofhowtechnology hasbeenaffecting (cf. exemplified byAndreBreton’sperpetual revisionsofa“ManifestoSurrealism” their desirestolettheimaginationrun free,tomanifesttheun-manifested,as between thetwoterms,Strangerand Surrealismshareacommonbondin of everydaylifewiththechancelogic dream-work. speak withoutanauthoritativevoice,bearingwitnesstothestrangeoccurrence T Manifestos ofSurrealism Surrealism, a‘movement’whoseparticipantstookituponthemselvesto here maybenobetter“art”toillustrateourStranger’s(comic/s)writingthan connect themandthatrequireamomentarysuspensionofthe are sofarremovedfromeachotherthatreasonwouldfailto linking twoelementsofrealitybelongingtocategoriesthat “…Surrealism sawinitthemeansofobtaining,mostoften under conditionsofcompleterelaxationthemindrather than completeconcentration,certainincandescentflashes critical attitudeinorderforthemtobebroughttogether.” ). Thechancelogicsofthisdream-work remain ~ AndreBreton,“OnSurrealisminitsLivingWorks” A rt Art Interrupted I nterrupted 1 2 Beyondthedenotativelink
83
and Essays The has no unart unart 297), a move that Kaprow 297), a move that Kaprow . To begin, Blanchot’s view of Blanchot’s . To begin, Manifestos ] is the experience of experience, ] is the experience due to its (indirect) link to rhetorical intermedia unart expérience 412) “is the offspring of high art who has left home” ( Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing Infinite ). Surrealism, like the means offered in new media, ). Surrealism, like the means than to art. As I’ll explain, like surrealism, unartist unart whether it seeks itself in a theoretical or practical form: an experience that practical form: an experience itself in a theoretical or whether it seeks as it unfolds and, in unfolding, deranges itself, disarranges deranges and experience the is – itself poetry – surrealism that this in is It itself. interrupts of thought itself. ( The surrealist experience [ The surrealist However, what comics suggests take a much different route, one much more However, what comics suggests take a much different closely related to called common art theories and practices – something I have also been guilty of called common art theories and practices – something when speaking of comics. proposing theory concerning writing with new media, and its reliance on what can now be theory concerning writing with new media, and its reliance 230), and as such is engaged in the interruption of Art and the categories therein. 230), and as such is engaged in the interruption of Art I tend to sympathize with Kaprow’s terms unart to indicate a move away from institutional perspectives on art. As away from institutional perspectives on art. As terms unart to indicate a move Kaprow writes, the “nothing to do with any aesthetic criterion” ( “nothing to do with any aesthetic attempts to affirm the experience of thought as life rather than as institutional. of thought as life rather than as institutional. attempts to affirm the experience of surrealism were in continual flux having For example, Breton’s manifestations Inoperative Community of thought similar to the interruption of myths, as detailed by Jean-Luc Nancy, of myths, as detailed by Jean-Luc Nancy, of thought similar to the interruption exposing the limits of such totalities ( spoken and written as singularities The interruption Blanchot brings up here has to do with interrupting the totality brings up here has to do with interrupting the totality The interruption Blanchot its connection to Dick Higgins’ idiom of Higgins’ idiom to Dick its connection surrealism: and specifically with how it connects with Kaprow’s (non)method called called (non)method with Kaprow’s how it connects with and specifically available means new media provide presents itself in Blanchot’s view of surrealism, surrealism, view of itself in Blanchot’s presents media provide means new available 84 exquisite Corpse coming outofSpiegelman’salternativecomicsmagazine in termsofnewmediaandmultimedia.Towardthisgoal,Ibeginwithanexample than Art–andthereforeclosertotheworkrhetoriccompositionengages with works towardtheviewofa‘comicsform’whoseidiom(‘schoolart’)is (3) All‘Comicsartist’aredisillusionedwiththeirtrainingas‘artists’–thischapter Ware wasdisillusionedwithhistrainingasan‘artist’;(2)isa‘comicsartist’; of thoughtitself,asithappens.However,inordertoavoida much more‘athome’inthestrangenessofeverydaylife,surrealexperience industry” ( in thegenerallyapprovedsetting,fashion,anddidacticcharterofthatparticular artists’: “Thoughadmittedlytrainedasan‘artist,’heneverfeltentirelyathome he tapsintoacommonperspectiveamongmanyoftoday’swell-known‘comics Speaking ofhispersonalandprofessionalrelationshiptoart(inthirdperson), graphic novel One examplecomesfromChrisWare,a‘comicsartist’famedforhisexperimental we call‘comicsartists’have(perhapsunknowingly)engagedintheunartingofart. concern forartcategoriesor‘aestheticcriteria’ofanysort,andthoseindividuals ( TNC – throughcomics. Acme NoveltyLibrary ), aprojectthatattemptedtoenactsurrealistparlorgame– Jimmy Corrigan:TheSmartestKidonEarth 17, copyrightpage).LikeKaprow,Warefeels Art Interrupted RAW , amongotherworks. syllogistic fallacy called The Narrative unart les corps rather – (1) 85 123). By in response conceived of
4
TNC 3 ! live Of Hospitality A The Infinite Conversation s ’ t ! I live A ~ Blanchot, s ’ t and transforming, this surrealist and transforming, this surrealist 5 : I orpse C master, were prisoner to his place and his power, of concern itself, or conform to itself by assuming a form.” or conform to itself by assuming concern itself, objects, indicate itself in the margins, discover itself close itself in the margins, discover objects, indicate Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing qua to the unwonted through what is stunning and fascinating. through what is stunning to the unwonted reminders of the unseemly whose law is not only to disorder the unseemly whose law is reminders of “The surreal may well seek to constitute for itself imaginary may well seek to constitute “The surreal arrative These indications still have no more than a distancing value: still have no more than These indications the order of the appropriate, but also to be unable to suit itself, appropriate, but also to the order of the N he T the master, Spiegelman and friends extend Breton’s ‘surrealist manifestos’ into 6 […] the stranger could save the master and liberate the power of his […] the stranger could save the master and liberate as if
as if to a prompt by Spiegelman asking all involved to break out of their routine to a prompt by Spiegelman ver the course of five years, 69 ‘comics artists’ collaborated on ver the course of five years,
requiring each ‘comics artist’ to use the stick figure, he [the stick figure] works as requiring each ‘comics artist’ to use the stick figure, translates as ‘strangers’ a way to implore each of his hosts – which Derrida also host; it’s ( his ipseity, of his subjectivity (his subjectivity is hostage)” seen “ if we understand this stick figure as a metaphor for comics, what we find is a if we understand this stick figure as a metaphor for that Derrida explains can be stranger’s work with a strange logic, the sort of logic main protagonist, a stick figure with a black head, will unify the narrative. But main protagonist, a stick figure with a black head, parlor game, but with one rule: the a method of invention that relies on chance arrangements, it, aimed to break “free from the constraints of rational thought” (2), a common the constraints of rational thought” (2), a common it, aimed to break “free from By emulating, trait among ‘comics artists.’ any of the panels that came beforehand. The project, as Spiegelman any of the panels that came methods of producing comics. This experimental practice asked that artists draw This experimental practice asked that artists draw methods of producing comics. on the previous three panels, but without seeing three comics panels building O 86 panels (whichdonot endthestoryonpage19),andused MarkBeyerpanels, the editorsofwork “eventuallycuttheSavagePencilstrand afterJayrPulga’s logic ofsequenceand linearity–wecanseethisinSpiegelman’s editingnotesthat of thinkingandwritingthatattemptsto stripitselfoftherationalandnarrative Breton, of writingmaybemanifestedunderthe conditionsofarelaxedimagination(cf. surrealist approachtocomicspresentedinTNCillustrateshowthisstrangeform (history), butthattheyaremuchmorelikerefugeesfromreasonandArt.The narrative –thislackofconcerndoesnotmeanthattheydirectlyconfrontArt particular, areparticularlyinterestingfortheirlackofconcernthatdominant dominant narrative”(Roeder,“ChrisWare”65).Comicsingeneral,and comics’ historyofArt,includingmisdirectedattemptsto“insertcomicsintothat writers way ofwriting,anattunementtothestrangeparteverydaylifethatallows aim” (“ArtandEvolution”53).SurrealismappealstoSpiegelmanforitsstrange and interrogateintentionwhenhedeniesthecontributors[…]accesstoanyshared (“Art andEvolution”35)inwhichSpiegelman“deliberatelychoosestoentangle of design,capriceinsteadrationality,crazydisjunctioncontinuity” Boyd, commentingon unfolds asaninterruptionofatotalizingnarrativebysingular‘voices.’Brian some aimthatwouldlimitwhatcanbethoughtandwritten;initsplace,thegame conceives it,isthatthismethodattemptstobreakaparttendenciesworktoward uninterrupted progression(‘sequentialart’). – toworkbeyondtheirnormalcontext(s)buildingafullnarrativethroughan When thoughtofasagame, What isparticularlyinterestingaboutthispractice,andhowSpiegelman and Manifestos artiststoreleasethemselvesfromwhatWareseesastheparadoxof ). TNC , explainsthismethodasapracticeof“chanceinstead the narrativecorpse Art Interrupted gestures 7 towardamanner TNC in 87 While it may seem odd that While it may seem odd that 8 game, but that also appears in the game, but that works to be surprised with the works to be surprised with , this strangeness dissipates when we , this strangeness dissipates surrealist as such the narrative corpse the narrative Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing Dali Atomicus by Salvador Dali (1948) 5). This last claim (‘without fear of making a mistake’) resonates with a mistake’) resonates claim (‘without fear of making 5). This last , and this is enough to remove to some slight degree the terrible injunction; slight degree the terrible injunction; to remove to some , and this is enough Manifestos unexpected, which is another way of saying to proceed with a ‘playful imagination.’ way of saying to proceed with a ‘playful imagination.’ unexpected, which is another comics as a move away from art comics as a move away from of look to the underlying motivations comics become linked with a now-recognized art movement, at least when viewing a now-recognized art movement, at least when viewing comics become linked with work of ‘comics artists’ in general – this lack of fear also being a lack of concern lack of fear also being a lack artists’ in general – this work of ‘comics and their values. for the demands of Art disciplines the guiding idea we find in the guiding idea enough, too, to allow me to devote myself to it without fear of making a mistake” to it without fear of making allow me to devote myself enough, too, to ( purpose as an imaginative way of working that “offers me some intimation of what some intimation “offers me working that way of as an imaginative purpose can be in writing strangely. In the first manifestation of Surrealism, Breton explains the Breton explains of Surrealism, manifestation In the first strangely. in writing which followed those, to start our story” (2) – to point to other processes involved processes to point to other story” (2) – to start our followed those, which 88 form of Art training. Art becomesformal of lack our fixed, especiallyconsidering media (digital) environments as avant-garde artists proceed to something aboutelse whenhow toa proceed in a wayofthinking developing offer comics imaginativewritinga strangeand everyday life.Andfor rhetoric with/in andnew composition, in visible most – operations chance the with but also becausecomic, ita offers up a form of proceedingconstitutes what of Kaprow’s fit force of imagination, is the experience of thought itself as the of thissurrealistwork,as Blanchot describes it, any time” (Kaprow, but isfoundin“notknowingwhattocallitat disguise,” deep in artistry secret a “possess not does it that way a such in life” ordinary in the “playground for experimental art [called] the boundaries between art and life by working but whohavelefttheir‘homes’–thepracticeof apparent throughoutthischapter.Like‘comicsartists’–thosetrainedasartists, attuned totheworkofrhetoricandcompositionforreasonsthatshouldbecome and itsassociationwithDickHiggins’conceptof composition concerningmultimediawriting–aproblematicterminitself. one thathasbeenabsentfrommanyoftheavant-gardetheoriesinrhetoricand has beenunderwaywithincomicsand give upanyreferencestobeingartistsofkindwhatever”(103),ataskthat Art ismuchmoreattunedtoKaprow’scallforartists Much likethe unart Essays 9 remarkably well considering the lack of a a of lack the considering well remarkably surrealist a method of chance. Comics 248-249). The experience concernforlifeoverart,comics’moveawayfrom Art Interrupted productive surrealism TNC unarting intermedia sincetheirinceptions,but – alwaysalreadypresentin unart ourselvesasksustoblur seems tobemuchmore themselves, “to fixed definition definition fixed Unart
89
: TNC other kind The Gay Science of art – a mocking, light, leave their ‘homes,’ they leave leave their ‘homes,’ they leave – in essence, a pedagogy with avant- a pedagogy – in essence, unartists another kind and in Lyotard’s desire for a writing stripped of desire for a writing stripped and in Lyotard’s 10 postpedagogy would interrupt rhetoric and composition’s use of Art rhetoric and composition’s would interrupt Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing unart Unart of comics performs this strange writing and how it relates to of comics performs this strange writing and how it , precisely because the ‘artists’ who have taken up the form were , precisely because the ‘artists’ unart unart But this lack of training in Art has not stopped rhetorical theories and rhetorical not stopped in Art has lack of training But this , this knowing, as artists” (37) so that we may become “the poets of our life – first knowing, as artists” (37) so in which the writing (with) new media. (its strangeness). In what remains of this chapter, I work to explicate the ways (its strangeness). In what remains of this chapter, I demonstrates the versatility of comics and ‘artists’ that have left their homes in demonstrates the versatility of comics and ‘artists’ that due to its surreality order to produce artifacts whose identity as art is uncertain artifacts that may or may not be ‘art’ – there’s no way to know since the criteria not be ‘art’ – there’s no way to know since the criteria artifacts that may or may As it relates to comics, for making such judgments have not yet been formed. in order to walk through life as strangers, writing and producing imaginative as strangers, writing and producing imaginative in order to walk through life more concerned with ‘ordinary life’ than with the training they received in the life’ than with the training they received in the more concerned with ‘ordinary briefly, when categories of Art. To put it of art of all in the smallest, most everyday matters” (240). Stripped of the categorical everyday matters” (240). Stripped of the categorical of all in the smallest, most ‘arts,’ the comics form presents us with this identifications with other into unclouded skies! […] Oh, how we now learn to forget well, and to be good at Oh, how we now learn to forget well, and to be good into unclouded skies! […] not fleeting, divinely untroubled, divinely artificial art that, like a pure flame, licks divinely artificial art that, like a pure flame, licks fleeting, divinely untroubled, to move closer to the sort of ‘art’ that Nietzsche petitions for in to the sort of ‘art’ that Nietzsche to move closer art, it is “if we convalescents still need determining criteria. determining methods taking hold in rhetoric and composition is a desire to attend to daily life is a desire to attend hold in rhetoric and composition methods taking Kaprow’s in the sense of into what is now being called is now being into what from the methods of the avant-garde What we can learn garde sensibilities. practices from incorporating these alternate methods and processes of writing processes of writing and alternate methods these from incorporating practices
90 playful formandthat “Spiegelmanplayswithmultiplepatterns, dramatic,visual, Archeology by excessive politics, allows the extent that it is strange – the ‘something like that’ – and that this work, untroubled something like that” (Ware, view that “‘their work is their reward,’ and that excessive capital pollutes its purity, or could only be called a ‘mocking, light, fleeting, divinely untroubled’ art gives rise to the in the experience of thought itself as it puts that thought to work in producing what surrealism contented to do whatever it is that they ‘do’ and a comics form that engages conceptualizations of what it means to be a ‘comics artist.’ The link between a project, the experience of performing such a project extending beyond traditional to break the form out of its complacency as a as form. I mean, what other sort of artist would take such a strange surreal parlor game C the exquisite corpse Library hris Ware once wrote: “Artists, it is well known, are strange people” ( Speaking of 76) to exceed a politics lacking in foresight. 18). And there is no stranger artist than those who work with the comics TNC and try to make it stranger? Only a ‘comics artist’ attempting , BrianBoydacknowledges thestrangenessofcomicsasa strange isliketellingone’sdreams:onecancommunicate of theoddintoourlivesarenotstory-shapedeither.They the productive force called imagination Acme Novelty Library “Reality, however,isnotstory-shaped,andtheeruptions the eventsofadreambutnotemotionalcontent, do notendinentirelysatisfactoryways.Recountingthe
U n Art Interrupted /A rting ~ NeilGaiman,“TheFlintsofMemoryLane” way thatadreamcancolorone’sentireday.” fixed medium C omics 18). But this ‘purity’ is only ‘pure’ to could conceive of this a (cf. Derrida, Acme Novelty 91 , the the , 228) LOLcats LOLcats 239). unart Heuretics Of the elements Of the Essays Essays 11 including misspellings. misspellings. including pun, pun, – because it [the pun] – because it 12 Like Allan Kaprow’s Kaprow’s Allan Like Composition, and art be could shown his Composition, and name you’ll Katz’s what Steve on Like playing know by of Science. never you Rhetorics in the interest cat, Katz. by article an Schrodinger’s up open you when see For example, the internet meme meme internet the example, For has by been popularized its effective of the use and Rhetoric to a method such Applying 14 Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing condition that gives rise in experience to a feeling of eureka. ( eureka. of feeling a to experience in rise gives that condition The pun, which simulates in writing the effect of intuition (the convergence of of convergence (the intuition of effect the writing in simulates which pun, The reminds Schleiffer Ronald As verbal. as well as visual be may sets), emotional the redundancies, creating for units linguistic basic most the of one is pun the us, In addition to simulating in writing the effect of intuition, the pun functions as as functions pun the intuition, of effect the writing in simulating to addition In 13 pun in comics works by a process where “we add, by imagination and interpretation, to to interpretation, and imagination by add, “we where process a by works comics in pun ( inventive and unfixed, variable, “meaning” render to do” we what by fragmenting the cohesive narration of the work. the of narration cohesive the fragmenting by ‘art.’ reasoning prefer) you if sequentiality, (or linear of closure the interrupting for device a practices of everyday life characterized as an imaginative ‘politics’ rather than as an an as than rather ‘politics’ imaginative an as characterized life everyday of practices For comics, the pun simulates the effect of intuition through the interrelatedness of the the of interrelatedness the through intuition of effect the simulates pun the comics, For the into us moves pun the simulated-intuition this writing in and verbal, and visual patterns of sequentiality – beyond (conscious) reasoning – beyond (conscious) patterns of sequentiality it thus: Gregory Ulmer explains each of the other elements. incorporates that Boyd notes in TNC, the most important one for addressing writing as writing for addressing important one the most notes in TNC, that Boyd from the or witticism that breaks is the ‘pun,’ the joke strangely imaginative metaphor, cliché, antithesis and pun” (“Art and Evolution” 47). Evolution” pun” (“Art and and cliché, antithesis metaphor, verbal: with verbal allusion, and with repetition, anaphora, syntactic parallelism, syntactic parallelism, anaphora, with repetition, allusion, and with verbal verbal: 92 with formalcategories ofwhatconstitutes‘acceptable’work. Indoingawaywith disciplines, inorder tosuggestotherwaysofwritingthatremain unconcerned comics artist,theintermedialist playsbetweenestablished media,orarttraditional is, digitaltechnology–isthatofthepun, oftheplayfulusetechnology.Like intermedialist a “simultaneityofroles”thatthinks“all atonce,ornonhierarchically”as“the ( defines it,an through thefleetingemploy-mentofvariousmediaallatonce.AsKaprow employed inmakingthoseartifacts. of outlet.’ Theinterruptionof‘Art’that‘comics’artists’putintopracticeimplies a lack in asinglemedium,butwithvarietyofmedia–hence,‘movingontothenext artist’ producesisperformedaslife.Andtheperformanceoflifeheredoesnot exist Let meattemptclarity:the‘faultlessuniversality’of(art)workthat‘comics writes of‘comicsartists’inthethird-personsingular: on intheirdailylives.Waredetailsthis ‘comics artists’produce;italsoappearsinthemethodsthesestrangewriterstake Essays fixity At thispoint,thelinkbetween‘comicsartists’to But thisaspectof universal…. ( of anythingatall,otherwisehisworkwouldnothavebeensofaultlessly polluting’ recompense.Also,thisartistcouldreallyhavenotchargedmuch outlet, askingonlyforabitofbread,orbowlbroth,somesuch‘non- …his jobcompleteatonelocale,hewouldimmediatelymoveontothenext in what constitutes writing, but also in the modes of imaginative production 104),proceedingfluidlyacross–no! betweenmedia( unartist does”naturally( Acme NoveltyLibrary is“onewhoengagedinchangingjobs, inmodernizing” punning Essays presentsitselfinmorethanjustthe Art Interrupted 105);the post- 18) process inaroundaboutwaywhenhe unartist’s unartists approachtomedia–that intermedia opensupexplicitly works ) with that 93 Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing also leads to a re-thinking of current trends toward multimodal multimodal trends toward of current to a re-thinking also leads unart than how we may play between media forms. between media we may play than how composition, where “multi” indicates a combination of media (“mixed media”) rather rather media”) (“mixed media of combination a indicates “multi” where composition, categories, categories, 94 intermedia something more akin to the work that comics and a Lyotardianapproachtowritingby since itmerelypresentstheminjuxtapositionratherthanintegrating nothing tointerruptthecategoriesconstitutingestablishedmediaorartdisciplines Let merephraseVisel’scommentsasitrelatestothisproject:‘mulitmedia’does (unimaginative) problemof‘multimedia’composition: innovative formswriting of and ‘art.’ create to media new working with to lotto learn about the chart. The “?”s imply that there is still a (incomplete) Higgins’sDick Writing for (“multimedia vsintermedia”) work asawholebecausetheelementscomprisingitaretoodisparate. program orthewebpage–aroundthem,anassemblagethatusuallydoesn’t an assemblageofdifferentkindsmediawitharubberband–thecomputer & youaddpicturesandsoundclipsmovies.Tomeit’salwayssuggested about whatcomputersdotoreading.Theconceptissimple:youtakeabook “Multimedia” issomethingthatcomesupallthetimewhenwe’retalking : The InstituteoftheFutureBook unartists approach intermedia Art Interrupted superimposition unartists . Instead, Visel suggests , DanViselpresentsthe produce in the idiom of 95 – or text + engage when (the simplest and (the simplest image/text binary to exist as an autonomous to exist as an autonomous into (strangely) imaginative unartists seems process of a ‘comics artists’ as an text + pictures text + pictures of comics, at least as conceived in this post- idea may better elucidate the relevance for for relevance the elucidate better may text and pictures. When you have text and pictures. the fusion of media works to undo the design failures of ‘multimodal’ works to undo the design between intermedia Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing intermedia , it’s all too easy to criticize the text and pictures separately: this pictures separately: this to criticize the text and , it’s all too easy work also implies the simultaneity of roles work also implies the simultaneity picture compared to all other possible pictures invariably suffered, just as invariably suffered, to all other possible pictures picture compared other terms, texts must suffer. Put in to all other possible this text compared vs intermedia”) it’s a design failure. (“multimedia most common way we think about multimedia) is less interesting to me than is less interesting way we think about multimedia) most common that falls a unified whole pictures [Dick] Higgins’s intermedia is a more appealing idea: something that falls that falls idea: something more appealing is a Higgins’s intermedia [Dick] a object than as a unified bear scrutiny more likely to forms is in between The simple equation of objects. collection Craig Saper’s framing of of framing Saper’s Craig rhetoric and composition, at least insofar as rhetoric has to do with ‘the available means,’ means,’ available ‘the with do to has rhetoric as insofar least at composition, and rhetoric all the “[u]nlike writes: He persuasion. interrupting of means available the including
oscillation between forms of media fused with a propensity for life rather than Art. oscillation between forms of media fused with a propensity works, especially if we can understand the iteration of previously written texts. The project, can be better understood as work that relies on fixed categories. In part, this is why the work that relies on fixed more than another better yet, reduction – of comics fails to emerge as anything in Visel’s ‘other terms,’ writing in imaginative ways – a writer is no longer one who only produces essays, – a writer is no longer one who only produces essays, writing in imaginative ways Put designs and (video) games, music and videos. but essays and images, (graphic) intermedial interrupts understanding where a single medium interrupts understanding conceptual fusing of two or more media into an paradigm of possibilities. The To put it simply, the idiom of intermedia finds a correlation to the work that ‘comics of intermedia finds a correlation to the work that ‘comics To put it simply, the idiom of fusing media into a whole that, through these links, artists’ find in their ways 96 calls instead toaddnewlinksbyanimaginativeinterpretation–whatFriedrichKittler unartists media, buthowtolinkiscontingent.This“how”thehomeofreason, Like Lyotard’s fail toconnectthem”( belonging tocategoriesthataresofarremovedfromeachother one oftheguidingtheoriesinBreton’s work hepresentsas‘networkedart’underliesan added). WhileSaperisnotdirectlyspeakingof printed poem,orfilm. Internet, isnotdefinedbyanymedium’sform.Itathinglikepainting, other arts,includingfilmandliterature,thisnewart,intensifiedbyaccesstothe post-hermeneutics usuallyreferredtoas‘comicsartists’haveleftthishome,preferring phrases indispute Manifestos It isasituation . , 302). Wherereasonfails,imaginationsucceeds. 15 Art Interrupted
intermedia : networkedart”( surrealism questions andanswers. rhetorical his quick us offers With Philosophator Philosophator). the stlye, (argumentative) debate aggresive the title the from stole Adams Douglas rumors, unsubstantiated to (according everything ponders hits 1-3)), such (parts questions concerning life, the universe, and Park (from Jurraisic velociraptor at the of The intermedia acknowledges theneedtolink intermedial : “linkingtwoelementsofreality Philosoraptor Networked Art , thesituationof , the philosophical genus genus philosophical the , approachthatechoes reason ix; emphasis would 97
16 , , , of 410) contradictory Infinite ) that was affirmed writing has no direct the logic of reason other kind of writing , perhaps ~ Craig Saper, Networked Art ~ Craig Saper, – thus encounters writing, – thus encounters writing, other surrealist the magnetic field ermeneutics -H ost P Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing , opens a space to affirm it permit easy classification as painting, sculpture, or theater.” classification as painting, it permit easy “Artists regularly cross the supposed boundaries between media cross the supposed boundaries “Artists regularly “it should come as no surprise” “it should come as no surprise” longer attempts to encourage catharsis or transcendence, nor does or transcendence, nor does to encourage catharsis longer attempts and even the link of ‘appropriateness’ for art. Even museum art no art. Even museum art no link of ‘appropriateness’ for and even the double movement by so-called automatic writing […]. Automatic writing, a writing freed from by so-called automatic writing […]. Automatic writing, work and that makes it the logic of logos, refusing everything that puts it to […]. ( available to a work, is the very proximity of thought and through this encounter denies itself. But this is a writing of another and through this encounter surrealist” attestation was produced in a kind kind. That the first “purely a double movement of writing that has no of anonymous fashion through other aim than a freeing of the space ( Surrealism –
, in the way Blanchot uses the term, has to do with interest in producing a unified whole; thinking and writing strangely, the interest in producing a unified ather than thinking as usual, the Stranger’s ather than thinking as usual,
interpretations that happen before they are able to be reasoned – that is, deduced interpretations that happen before they are able to be of another kind. It is a or induced. This is an interpretation, a hermeneutics, interpretations that propose a unified whole, while this interpretations that propose a unified whole, while with its Logos may not be contradictory as thoughts ‘happen’ before he can think about them. may not be contradictory as Blanchot puts it well: Stranger affirms a proliferation of meanings and understandings that may or of meanings and understandings that may or Stranger affirms a proliferation R 98 affirmation perpetuallypluralandmultiple”( as what,inSurrealism,Blanchotcalls“astrangeplurality”( not asaneliminationofinterpretation–evenifitwerepossibletodoso hermeneutic abandonmentofthecanonsjustificationemerges that seemethodsoflinkingasalwaysalreadycontingent.Inanutshell,thepost- of justification–argumentationcanbefoundintheassociationallogics – simultaneously like intuitiveandimaginativework,keepsitsmannerofmakingsensemysterious its logicknowsnoexclusion–itmakesownsense.Thatis,thesenseofnonsense, potentialities andpossibilitiesinthesenseof sense” (ix).Yet,intheinterruptionof understanding. Post-hermeneuticcriticism,toputthematterbriefly,stopsmaking and entersintodomainsofinquiryinaccessibletoactsappropriative language gameandformoflifedefinedbythehermeneuticcanonsjustification summarizes Kittler’spost-hermeneuticreadingsasanabandonmentof“the intuitively (e.g.,asa how interpretationproceeds, loosening oftheconstraintsimposedbyahermeneuticsthatlookstosystematize In the“Foreword”to unknown pun , asaninterruption). Discourse Networks1800/1900 and 17 RhetorialTriangle. Sorry, Aristotle. would possibilities more offer the than Triangle Penrose The andinthisloosening,apost-hermeneuticshappens strange Art Interrupted < making sense . 18 Howthis Infinite nonsense , post-hermeneuticsopensthe nonsense 409). , atleastinthesensethat , DavidWellbery Infinite abandons thecanons 408), an 19 –but puns 99 that as “the lethe sublime politics because such laws attempt 271). If there is anything that “The 271). If there is anything that 71). Politicizing the sublime, subjecting it itself” – here, Caputo defines itself” – here, Caputo defines sublime politics would be akin to the needs for an imaginative Radical lethe , the mystery which withdraws, which never hands , the mystery which withdraws, Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing sublime politics a-letheia Postmodern Explained By moving away from desires to justify and build meaning, post-hermeneutics meaning, build and justify to desires from away moving By To a certain extent, post-hermeneutics correlates to what John Caputo calls Caputo to what John correlates post-hermeneutics extent, To a certain to a uniform law, remains suspect in a of totalizing thought, of a to identify and define appropriat(iv)e understandings terror” (Lyotard, politics, but one that would avoid its bureaucratization. The desire to bureaucratize politics, but one that would avoid its bureaucratization. the sublime’ that “could only be the imagination would be more akin to ‘a politics of Politics” 420). This attempts “to subject politics to the radical indeterminacy” (“Sublime Politics” 411), attempts “to subject politics to the radical indeterminacy” why or to whom” (“Sublime that has us speak even though “we do not know exactly calls a encounter what Bill Readings, working out of Lyotard, canons of justification, since that will only serve to put us in “greater danger” and that will only serve to put us in “greater danger” canons of justification, since threaten the play of imagination. to stop ‘sticking to our guns,’ to our firm convictions about meaning(s), and to the to our firm convictions about meaning(s), and to to stop ‘sticking to our guns,’ breakdowns and losses of meaning more than we are in need of confronting the meaning more than we are in need of confronting the breakdowns and losses of stabilization militaristic terms, we need of meaning in forms we cannot trust. In itself over in a form we can trust” ( itself over in a form we can 9/11 Commission Report” the we are in need of confronting it is that teaches us, concealed heart of of meaning” and it deals “with this loss of meaning by confronting the meaning of of meaning by confronting it deals “with this loss of meaning” and of the the loss, of the withdrawal, the point of the breakdown and loss of meaning, the withdrawal and dissemination meaning, the withdrawal breakdown and loss of the point of the Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States” report addressing the the United States” report Terrorist Attacks Upon Commission on arises “at writes, radical hermeneutics 11, 2001. As Caputo events of September Caputo’s “radical hermeneutics” and Wellbery’s post-hermeneutics can elucidate can post-hermeneutics and Wellbery’s “radical hermeneutics” Caputo’s “National in light of the of abandoning the justification-game the necessity “radical hermeneutics” in his book by the same name. The link I see between link I see between name. The by the same in his book hermeneutics” “radical
100 of interpretationthat communicateswiththeunknownby throwingamessageout Hermeneutics, inthis sense,communicatesdubiously.Itis (consensus). with openingnewmediatorealmsof practices. LikeReadingsandKent,HigginsKaprowaremoreconcerned the troubling‘failureofimagination’intoday’sinstitutionsandinstitutional toward discussed earlierprovidesaclue.Higgins’movetoward the idiom–termMcCloudusestoindicatea“schoolofart” meaning. hermeneutics (a ‘masternarrative’)–afeatureofargumentativewritingandespouses hermeneutical terror state ofaffairs”(Readings, what justiceis,toderivepoliticalprescriptionsinreferenceadescribable terror, “insofarasthepoliticaltheorist,state,orsocietyclaimstodetermine always suspectsinceanyattempttofixtheserulesandcriteriacanonlylead (hermeneutics),and thosewho perpetuatethem,are fixed rulesandcriteria representative determinacy.Putanotherway,a To seehowthisworksinrelationtocomics,asconceivedproject, ( horizons, thosefromthepastandanyothers wecanfindinthemiddle. to whichwecan in historyandotherareasofcultureas wellasart,cantuneintotheshifts Through developingourownhermeneutic concepts,wecanfindourselves Modernism unart 21 highlightthemovebeyondhermeneuticsinawaythatcanaddress Bywayofexplanation,Higginsargues: of dissensus,strangepluralitiesandmultiplicitiesthought 21; emphasisadded) , 20 a become sublime politics Introducing more sensitivebybalancingourfocuson ourown Art Interrupted becoming 113). InplaceofwhatThomasKentcalls dispenses withthedesireforconsensus (dissensus) ratherthanidentity sublime politics intermedia a process,becoming proposes that andKaprow’s intermedia post-
101 offers opportunities for offers opportunities process process for justification. A “form of art” that has no concern for justification, but thrownis out into the void. I found this fragment on a bathroom a wall, place where a variety of and different images writings are assembled without regard . by which these imaginative works emerge and the emerge and works these imaginative by which 23 Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing process process intermedia called The indeterminacy of this sort of of this sort of The indeterminacy 22 is both the is both unart This is perhaps one of the least underdeveloped aspects of postmodernist aspects of postmodernist one of the least underdeveloped This is perhaps not found in the image itself. assemblages that would otherwise remain hidden by setting out to find meanings remain hidden by setting out to find meanings assemblages that would otherwise rhetorical canon of organization, but without any intentions to develop a consensus but without any intentions to develop a consensus rhetorical canon of organization, the with these assemblages, imagination reveals itself in concerning meaning. And ways of writing and invention through assemblage – in some way associated with a through assemblage – in some way associated with ways of writing and invention reveals itself through associational logics that have always already abandoned logics that have always already abandoned reveals itself through associational in favor of intuitive linkages that then become the language-games of justification “do not exist within nature, but neither do they inhabit a world other than ours” but neither do they inhabit a world other than ours” “do not exist within nature, The place of this unart, if there is such a place, then (Writing and Difference 7). eyes’” and it “is the freedom that reveals itself only in its works” even though they that reveals itself only in its works” even though eyes’” and it “is the freedom out this claim emphatically: “the imagination was already in itself an ‘art,’ was was already in itself emphatically: “the imagination out this claim the but a ‘hidden art’ that cannot be ‘revealed to art itself […]. It is art, certainly, writing – the role of imagination as sublime art, or unart. From Kant, Derrida lays art, or unart. From Kant, role of imagination as sublime writing – the
imagination imagination idiom of imaginative inventions that open up in the production of its works. To be blunt, works. To be of its up in the production that open inventions imaginative into the void. into the 102 – as indicating a portmanteau of “figment” and “imagination” writing the from the surrealist (non)method of that proceeds in a manner similarintermedia to the (strange) like that ofpost-hermeneutics, logics. In other words, a comic(s)to beform ofat-hand writing, and with indeterminatethought of as associational“have a deep, profound meaning” (Crumb, “The Artpossibilities of Comics” 55).of working As such, between comics media can beand hermeneuticparadigm; paradigms as such, sincethey areno needalso existsnot determined to by to way any of specific a mood, medium,an atmosphere, but allow a feeling,the theyfigured are not out subjected to any hermeneutic out the breakdowns of meaning through a strangeoften and mysteriousgo unnoticed. process The storiesthat can he only spins, be the moodselsewhere) worked – out intuitively, attempt to sort that these moods, atmospheres, feelings (“The Art of Comics” 55). And for those familiaror withan idea the startsdocumentary as a mood, an atmosphere, a feeling”idea for thata story works based itself on oneout drawing“intuitively” in a sketchbook—sometimesCrumb illustrates ahow story, such ora post-hermeneutica character, mannerinvolved of inwriting may begin with “…an pun fragments How any of this relates to comics can be found in the work of another ‘comics artist’ that presents itself as a , ofthe logos of reason – , emerges as a fragmentary writing – revealed – through its works. In addition, since these works unfold intuitively TNC mere à la bricolage of thought. interruption : Robert Crumb. In an interview with Ted Widner for Walter Benjamin product-tion of imagination (cf. Derrida; Lévi-Strauss) – work produced with whatever happens an intuitive writing of automatic writing . An . An figmentation unart 24 automatic – and attends to those elements of (daily) life that Art Interrupted happen , and and , – a free while he wanders around Paris (and It’s like anamusement park. The Paris Review Crumb , we know , 103 . , where that ) s ( 21; 59), it’s a from the unity of figmentation igment 25 Writing F interruptions the
of process of
Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime Lessons on the referenced earlier – Breton, Crumb, referenced earlier – Breton, post- riting the interruption of the incessant : W itself, the inherent possibility for its coming 409). Dissensus rather than consensus: 409). Dissensus rather than ~ Lyotard, (un)artists riting to it logically, but are nevertheless ‘(aesthetic) attributes.’” ‘(aesthetic) nevertheless are but logically, it to 418-419). In other words, the risk of fragmentary W Infinite offers an opening that breaks from unity. So, when Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing thinking by concept but with the derivatives connected with the the with connected derivatives the with but concept by thinking potentiality concepts […] the constituent elements of which are not attributed attributed not are which of elements constituent the […] concepts “The imagination creates another nature, which has to do not with with not do to has which nature, another creates imagination “The Infinite ary ragment F interruption , ruins meaning while leaving it intact. The fragmentary, as seen here, , ruins meaning while leaving
parlor games that the surreal parlor games that the surreal ragmentary writing, as Blanchot characterizes it, is a game of chance. The ragmentary writing, as Blanchot
writing is the opening of into being as presented through an intuitive itself in the margins” ( appropriat(iv)e understanding(s) that it interrupts. Fragmentary writing, like appropriat(iv)e understanding(s) that it interrupts. imaginary objects, indicate surrealism, would then also “seek to constitute for itself risk of a thought without unity or rules, thought estranged affirming the ( Blanchot writes that fragmentary writing is “risk itself” disaster plays a game without rules. The game: contradicting and rupturing the unification that, as Blanchot’s estimation of the the unification that, as Blanchot’s estimation of contradicting and rupturing it, demanding its realization), untiringly maintaining, in the face of the Unique, untiringly maintaining, in the face of the Unique, it, demanding its realization), ( contradiction and rupture” unification and extending beyond the whole (while at the same time presupposing beyond the whole (while at the same time presupposing unification and extending open themselves to pluralities of thought. The future of surrealism, as found in of thought. The future of surrealism, as found in open themselves to pluralities explains as an “exigency of plurality escaping comics, approaches what Blanchot F and Ware – are found in Higgins, Kaprow, Spiegelman, 104 that have no need for categories to explore theThese possibilities of linking. For imaginative production. And it is this spark that correlates to what Breton saw as the stick figure – endearingly named “Sticky” – who appears in each set as a ‘spark’ for Word” 59).Itisthispuzzlementthatweneedtofosterthroughawritingofchance. instead offers“fragmentsforthefuturetopuzzleover”(Beitchman,“Fragmentary than intermsofcategory,specificallywherecontextescapesreproducibility, and demand forunity.Theideaherehastodowiththinkingintermsofcontextrather Work –butrathertoaddressthoseaspectsoftheworkthatremainsetaside in the 428). Towritethis of writing”–encountersa“doublegame:necessity,chance”(Blanchot, Much likeKaprow’s game, theindeterminacythatliesbetweenreasonandunreason”( Fragmentary writing,then,asBlanchotexplains,canbethoughtof“theinsane unimaginable thatneedstobeimagined,with risk involvedinthefragmentaryhastodowithventuringintounknown, genre ofwriting–Blanchothasnoconcernforcategoriesgenres.Partthe We can see the fragmentary at work in Yet, itwouldbeamistaketothinkoffragmentarywritingascategorical order forthemtobebroughttogether.( them andthatrequirea that aresofarremovedfromeachother thatreasonwouldfailtoconnect incandescent relaxation ofthemindratherthancomplete concentration,certain …the meansofobtaining,mostoftenundertheconditionsacomplete flash moments unworking 26 flashes unart
of linking ‘often’ take place within imaginative realms of thought , the oflinkingtwoelementsrealitybelonging tocategories would notbetofragmenttheWork–critique momentary unworking Art Interrupted suspensionofthecriticalattitudein of theWork–“absolutevoiceand TNC Manifestos ‘unworking’ in each 3-panel set and through 302;emphasisadded) theworkofunification. Infinite TNC Infinite , Sticky 424).
105 offers a summary a offers produces novelties – novelties produces XKCD 110). But this measure is is measure this But 110). 117). 117). Notes Notes (as seen in comics) moves us toward toward us moves comics) in seen (as URL: http://xkcd.com/171/ The webcomic webcomic The of a possible ‘string theory.’ fragmentary writing writing fragmentary open up in moods, atmospheres and feelings of of feelings and atmospheres moods, in up open for productions of the imagination. imagination. the of productions for 27 flashes flashes fragmentary writing writing fragmentary ourselves as a play of limits that has no limitation (e.g., (e.g., limitation no has that limits of play a as ourselves Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing as a (non)whole, this this (non)whole, a as TNC un-arting un-arting in art is the measure of the artist’s imagination” ( imagination” artist’s the of measure the is art in Like Sticky, and and Sticky, Like novelty artistic phenomenon seen in their variety” (Ludwinski, (Ludwinski, variety” their in seen phenomenon artistic depends upon the size of the package that needs to be wrapped. The form and style of this this of style and form The wrapped. be to of needs that complex whole package a the is of size package] the [the upon “it since depends string of length the on bearing no has package measure is the one that Cynthia Haynes has told me about: it’s the length of string that that string of length the it’s about: me told has Haynes Cynthia that one the is measure not in inches, feet, yards, or miles (or seconds, minutes, hours, days or years); rather, the the rather, years); or days hours, minutes, “ seconds, (or miles or yards, feet, inches, in not the limitation of argumentative writing). Speaking along similar lines of thought about about thought of lines similar along Speaking that writing). explains Ludwinski argumentative of Jerzy limitation the historian/critic art Lyotard, and Kaprow, Blanchot, as art unart and a process of of process a and unart as the roles of comics (novelties), as we see in his mock business: The Acme Novelty Novelty Acme The business: mock his in see we as (novelties), comics of roles the as novelties, of play the As Library. something new that excites imagination only for a short time – which Ware also recognizes recognizes also Ware which – time short a for only imagination excites that new something
general, the means that spark these these spark that means the general, exigencies as offered and unexpected the imagination to produce another fragment in the margins of the whole. For comics in in comics For whole. the of margins the in fragment another produce to imagination works as the means for these flashes, a fragment that sparks each ‘comics artist’s’ artist’s’ ‘comics each sparks that fragment a flashes, these for means the as works 106 means, butwithout theintentionofpersuasion;rather,itinterrupts persuasive ephemeral artifactsofferedasfragments, addressingtheuncertaintyoffuture. posterity.’ Theearlycomicsherefersto, appearingindailynewspapers,were of thinking,allowingittotakeformas needed –‘withoutthinkingintermsof left tosay,butthatmaintainsanurgency forthinkinginrelationtothemoment known asawhole.ForSpiegelman,the fragmentaryappearswhennothingis fragmentary writingallowsustodiscover,andtheshapeofworkcannotbe The specificmoment,theexigency,presentsitselfasanunknownfuturethat sense of the events of September 11, 2001 through comics. As he writes: limits of art without limitation. This is, after all, how Spiegelman was able to make to any singe form, but are configured in a plurality of ‘fragmentations’ that play at the imagination. While comics work with ‘every art imaginable,’ they have no commitment hospitable to all of the varieties of artistic experience as they are presented through the of a comic strip” ( current art” ( simple: art of the future [is] every art imaginable, both traditional and the most comics remain open: In eachmoment,the fragmentaryadaptsitselfasnecessary totheavailable Given as a gift, we open this package and discover its contents: comics. Opened, future. They were made for a specific moment. (“Athe Novelsecond Graphic” part of 110)the book, the early comics. bidThey for weren’t posterity. made forThe somestrips ostensible were made in the acknowledgespirit of the that work the that work takes had urgencyplace in without thinkingno towers of and the I workallowed as makingthe shape any to be whateverEach it ofwas the going strips to take.was a Butcondensed I did journal entry of my month in the shadow of Notes Notes 115). And Strangely enough, he discusses this ‘future’ in the “form unart 115). Comics, as a gift, are given as a fragmentary forms . For Ludwinski, “the art of the future [is] unexpectedly Art Interrupted
107 90). Notes Step Not Step Not 42). Writing, 30 Step Not Beyond from “Art” authorities. authorities. from “Art” Banksy illustrates Sticky’s move away )). In Blanchot’s words, the fragmentary “would )). In Blanchot’s words, the Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing unart ‘model of art’ reveals something else: that there exists a reveals something else: that ‘model of art’ Without a definition in regard to a norm, the fragmentary Without a definition in regard art ( 28 the sans Much like the readymade, the fragmentary abandons itself to the Much like the readymade, (of art) – the (unexpectedly) simple form that integrates ‘any art (unexpectedly) simple form (of art) – the 29 43). After the whole (of art) has been written, the fragmentary takes place the fragmentary takes whole (of art) has been written, 43). After the beyond impossibility of conforming to the law and language of art. impossibility of conforming fragmentary. it “will need,” as Kaprow writes, “an updated language to refer to what is going “an updated language to refer to what is going it “will need,” as Kaprow writes, current language does not recognize the work of the on” (Essays 107) since the breaks from the whole of art by giving up those references in their entireties, and by giving up those references in their entireties, breaks from the whole of art relation to the whole since it does not recognize the law (of art) – definition – as it does not recognize the law (of art) – definition – relation to the whole since its guiding principle. could not be defined (arrested) in regard to a norm” ( could not be defined (arrested) of authority, but risks its own legitimacy in then, is not conferred a position never be ‘pure,’ but, on the contrary, profoundly altered, with an alteration that contrary, profoundly altered, with an alteration that never be ‘pure,’ but, on the But the explosion of But the explosion plurality in art ( explosion took place” and “the model of art ceased to exist” (Ludwinski, art ceased to exist” (Ludwinski, place” and “the model of explosion took in the the “terrible the fragmentary since as such a form, present imaginable.’ Comics, neither the fragment, part of the whole, nor the fragmentary in itself” ( fragmentary whole, nor the part of the the fragment, neither Beyond itself best […] in a language that does not recognize it. Fragmentary: meaning meaning it. Fragmentary: does not recognize that […] in a language itself best intentions. Blanchot put it best when he wrote that the “fragmentary expresses expresses that the “fragmentary he wrote put it best when Blanchot intentions. 108 impossibilities possible. of theinterruption close uponthemselves.Thiswritingwould notbethatofcomposingawork,but would nolongerconcernitselfwithargument, unity,ortotality,approachesthat the fragmentary,withan“Iprefernotto”refusalofaccomplishment,writing art assomethingcloseduponitself.Therigorousexplorationthatcharacterizes move notonlybeyondArt,butalsotheconceptionofwork(comics) the intermedia A new form of writing soughtinthe A newform The begins, imprintedwithanotherwayofthinking,writing,andproducingart-ifacts. unworking unartist This impossibilityopensaspacewheretheinterruptionof extreme maturity: first of the artist, and also of society.” (Blanchot, or continuity. The problem the work of the fragment poses is a problem of relations of this space will not necessarily satisfy the concepts of unity, totality, infinite space of the work, though with a new postulate: namely, that the values transmitted by a traditional already established and attained – the something unified and closed upon itself, as organizing and dominating the it explores with an inexorable rigor – beyond the conception of the work as problematic. Problematic not because it refuses accomplishment, but because …as the seeking of a new form of writing that would render the finished work . Anditisthis puts thefragmentarytowork of (comics)artasunified,total,andcontinuous,whichindicatesa unworking composition 32 unworking Art Interrupted unworking that weseeatworkin ( un/composing 31 posedbythefragmentary: TNC ) thatwouldrender – particularly, unartist Infinite 348) A Trilogy of Collages Lyotard Friends Heidegger with Nietzsche’s Umbrella Lyotard Friends Heidegger with Nietzsche’s Umbrella Thoughts on Building a Hacienda Thoughts on Building a Hacienda Waving Bon Voyage to Rhetorics Past 115 Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing Waving Bon Voyage to Rhetorics Past Rhetorics to Bon Voyage Waving Chapter 4
Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics 117 The Infinite Conversation The Infinite Conversation through the work, traversing through the work, traversing between reason and unreason.” hetorics ) R To un/compose would be to write isual 1 produces itself (V ~ Maurice Blanchot, omposing the word) is the insane game, the indeterminacy that lies the word) is the insane game, /C Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing it throughout. Writing as unworking (in the active sense of it throughout. Writing as n of the work as it it were only coming into being at the very moment of it were only coming into being at the very moment of U unworking [désoeuvrement]). Or again: writing is the absence unworking [désoeuvrement]). “To write is to produce the absence of the work (worklessness, work the of absence the produce to is write “To as if is not made in his own image since he does not yet know that image; is not made in his own image since he does not yet know
strange approach to writing that incorporates any and all of the available strange approach to writing etween reason and unreason is where we now find our Stranger, and his etween reason and unreason logos
writes by way of argument/ation. Carrying out one possibility at the expense of writes by way of argument/ation. Carrying out one possibility be positioned in the “realities exploring others, as Kenneth Burke informs us, is to perspective of a given rhetorical situation. of the imagination that without intention in order to subvert the bureaucratization place. It is in this image that we can begin to see the un/working of composition’s place. It is in this image that we can begin to see the His discover his own fleeting it is through composing that image that he comes to begin to make sense of all the nonsense surrounding him and his environment. begin to make sense of all the nonsense surrounding infancy of writing of unworking, he can writing. In composing this work by a singular process media, regardless of the traditional divisions separating those media. He begins divisions separating those media. He begins media, regardless of the traditional the performance of composing, begetting the by un/working writing through B 118 potential andthepotentialities ofknowing,doing,andmaking artifactsapart subject ourselvesto thesortofbureaucracythatwillkeep us fromrealizingour oflinking. Withoutsuchanarchive, we archive(s) totheinfinite possibilities unknown ifitistoconfrontthebureaucratization of the imagination, opening our and their strange ways of seeing—that remains unknown, and that must remainin they of aquandary—anuncertaintyhowthese strangelinksareproducedandwhat essence, linkingtonesandwordsnotnormally linkedpresentsuswithsomething of civicdiscoursethatdepartsfromcommonreadingsAristotle’s seeing strangely from Burke’sChaptertitle“DictionaryofPivotalTerms”)translatetoways “‘constitutional’ setting”( that ofthecasuisticstretch,un/composingwords(andnowimages)fromtheir turn towardintermedialcomposition.AkeyconceptinBurke’smethodologyis addresses howthismethodologycanbeextendedtothefiguralandcomposition’s tonal criteria”( enterprise inlinkinghithertounlinkedwordsbyrationalcriteriainsteadof his “perspectivebyincongruity”methodologyascarrying“thesamekindof unreason. or whatBlanchotreferstoastheunworkthattakesplacebetweenreasonand begin toun/composeourapproachesdoingtheworkofrhetoricandcomposition, “perspective byincongruity”( alternate “formula,”Burkesuggeststhatweuseaconceptualmethodologyhecalls development ofritualsthatre-enforcethesameemphasis”( relationships, themethodsofgovernment,productionanddistribution,in of asocialtexture,inallthecomplexitylanguageandhabits,property mean Building onthediscussionof in whatevercontextstheyarise.Itisthis uncertainty of our Stranger(s)— Attitudes , andspecificallytohowthedigitalagehasmovedusintoatheory 309). However,unlikeBurke,thefocusofthischapter Attitudes Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics Attitudes 309). Bothoftheseconcepts(whenre-framed puns 228). in thepreviouschapter,Burkedescribes 2 Throughthismethodology,wecan Attitudes On Rhetoric 225); asan . In 119
5 . Aristotle Still, the 4 polis , rhetoric exceeds 107), our Stranger has is the key word, implying is the key word, offshoot : “…rhetoric is a certain : “…rhetoric is Rhetoric offshoot . As an when he writes that to “deviate [from when he writes that to “deviate polis On Rhetoric is that they abandon the discourse (science) of is that they abandon the discourse On Rhetoric ] of dialectic and of ethical studies (which is just to call of ethical studies (which ] of dialectic and Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing offshoots paraphues
3 How un/artists are connected to civic discourse can be found in some of the can be found in some are connected to civic discourse How un/artists Stranger need not always be strange; sometimes “truth” is stranger than fiction. Stranger need not always be strange; sometimes “truth” no qualms about disobeying these laws and working outside the law. no qualms about disobeying these laws and working that it “is strange if we think we do not have to obey laws whenever they are not that it “is strange if we think we do not have to obey rightly framed and those who made them erred” ( is far off, and what is marvelous is sweet” (198). Where Aristotle’s citizen thinks is far off, and what is marvelous is sweet” (198). Where regard to word usage as they do in regard to strangers compared to citizens. As a regard to word usage as they do in regard to strangers people are admirers of what result, one should make the language unfamiliar; for echoes this point in Book 3 of echoes this point in Book 3 for people feel the same in prevailing usage] makes language seem more elevated; suggest that there are other, imaginative ways of composing the suggest that there are other, points out the incongruities they’ve observed in assembling their art/ifacts. These they’ve observed in assembling their art/ifacts. These points out the incongruities one’s own devices regardless of conventional use, and observations occur through civics in favor of taking an active part in creating a strange(r) citizenship that active part in creating a strange(r) citizenship that civics in favor of taking an in other arenas and by other (available) means. The most significant element (available) means. The most significant element in other arenas and by other that makes un/artists approach to thinking (and writing) in the approach to thinking (and and ethics/politics while engaging with each traditional argument (persuasion) draw a direct connection between rhetoric and persuasion may not be the best rhetoric and persuasion may not be the best draw a direct connection between that a rhetorician has been trained in dialectical methods, and in theories and methods, and in has been trained in dialectical that a rhetorician but has departed from those discourses. However, to practices of ethics/politics, politics)” (39). For the purposes of this chapter, For the purposes of this politics)” (39). opening remarks that Aristotle makes in that Aristotle makes opening remarks [ kind of offshoot
discourse. from the “business as usual” model that remains central to contemporary civic contemporary central to that remains usual” model “business as from the 120 that something ishappeningenacts thestrange figuration necessary foranun/ events thatescapereason. Theabilityofunartists configurations lest they beleftwithno-thing,nooptionsfor composingthose become displacedbythestrange,and strangerswhounworkfamiliar known orunderstoodthroughrepresentative compositions.Atthesetimes,citizens always beanalyzedorcontrolled;sometimes, thesemeaningsare(too)strangetobe not evena‘you’oran‘I’”(38).Themeanings givenbyfiguration,however,cannot without it,therewouldbeno-thing,nothing toknowandnothingunderstand— figuration givesworldbygivingmeaning; itistheveryconditionforknowing,and representative forms. ( this iswhatpresents“evidenceof(something) merely beautiful,andtryoutsurprising,strange,shockingcombinations”because search ofintenseeffects,canandmustgiveuptheimitationmodelsthatare whatever theirmaterials,pressedforwardbytheaestheticsofsublimein artists accomplishthis goalin“TheSublimeandtheAvant-Garde”:“[t]hearts, of theimmediatewithoutconcernforreality. I Inhuman or rhetoric;rather,Iprefertoun/configurethiswork,exploringthemeanings t is not my wish to con-figure or re-con-figure the un-working of composition and/ 100). Unlikeother‘figurativearts,’thisstrangefigurationimplodes 7 DianeDavisechoes thispointin an eventinthatthesubjectgivingbirthtoitdoesnotknow, would havebeenexpectedandardentlywishedfor.Butitis what cannotbeanticipated:theevent.Thisisnotbecause Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics the gesturewoulderuptunexpectedly.Oncontrary,it “Theeyeisreadyforthepictorialgesture,prepared S trange ~Jean-Francois Lyotard,“AnamnesisoftheVisible” F igurations 6 Lyotardtellsushowavant-garde happening cannot analyseanddoesnotcontrol.” 8 topresentuswith evidence Inessential Solidarity , ratherthannothing” : “… 121 possible To kill would 9 meaning 113). Imaging Desire 50) political” works that “make political” works that “make and Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing how to address a given (political) event occasionally event occasionally (political) address a given how to In its place, strange figurations produce “heterogeneous, In its place, strange figurations 10 Inessential Solidarity ( figure out figure response.
How these works come into being comprises the work of un/composing How these works come into being comprises the work Trying to Trying knowledge, as it knows itself responding to another possibility; a possibility that knowledge, as it knows itself responding to another the act of writing” is the other of all knowledge and whose attraction carries decisions, and its interruptions, knows itself always responsible for a latent decisions, and its interruptions, knows itself always imaginative possibilities, and pleasure of working without the stress of some imaginative possibilities, and pleasure of working without “by its detours, its external appropriative understanding. The gift of writing, (visual) rhetorics performed by un/artists. The act of writing produces meaning, (visual) rhetorics performed by un/artists. The act of
disruptive, open, pleasurable, disruptive, open, pleasurable, and our pleasure in it unpurloined” (Kelly, kill switch be the refusal to listen and to retain the complacency of the norm-al. On the other to retain the complacency of the norm-al. On the other be the refusal to listen and write) un/composes the homogeneity embodied in the hand, to speak (that is, to there are two prominent responses to this shock: to speak or to kill. there are two prominent responses As described here, dis/figuration sheds light on the strange figuration of un/ As described here, dis/figuration disruptive change of direction that shocks. For Davis, composing rhetorics with its available. This is part of what Davis means when she writes that dis/figuration when she writes that is part of what Davis means available. This may become so that others of common understandings requires a dis/figuration composing rhetoric that deviates from “politics as usual” (civic discourses). discourses). as usual” (civic from “politics that deviates rhetoric composing 122 with one’spassionbecause onerepresentsit:rather,is finishedwithitwhen of strangefigurations foranun/composing(visual)rhetoric: “Oneisnotfinished unperfected) life.Nietzsche’s viewofrepresentationsummarizes theimportance When allissaidanddone,ourStranger stepsinandre-introducesusto(the Burke callsthis“thecompletelydone”( resists thetemptationto(re)con-figure eventswiththecriteriaofperfection— demands foraconclusionfoundintheimplications ofperfection,anun/artist perfection, reason. Intheunconsciouswearegivenarespitefromimplicationsof terrorism) andthe(unimaginative)actsofcompulsioncarriedoutbyconclusive- 16, 18).Theideaofperfectionisoneinwhichwefindthedangerviolence(i.e., ‘perfectionist’” andthathasmadeus“‘rotten’withperfection”(Burke, ‘proper’ name,ortospeakalanguageinitsdistinctiveways”that“isintrinsically escape “thenatureoflanguageasmotive,”the“desiretonamesomethingbyits the playofcomposingevent.Strangefigurationsofferusopportunity to work hasnoplaceintheStranger’sprocess;rather,itenterswithin that perfectionispossiblebeginsdismantling.Thecriterionfortheun/composing 581). Byallowingtheworktoplayoutunconsciouslyinactofwriting, idea can bedoneperfectlyaslongitisstillconsciously”(Nietzsche, composing ofmotivesandourquestsfor“perfection.” to appropriateBurke’sphrasing,theimportanceofvisualrhetoricsisun/ or analyzes,butwouldarisefromthewritingthatthoseartifactsmotivate— develop fromtheseartifactswouldnotbeoneinwhichareader/viewercritiques the unknownpresentsitselfinactofwriting.Themeaningthatwouldthen Infinite that introducestheun/artistto“the Like Nietzsche,theun/artistandun/composingwriter“denythatanything 421). This 11 andthecorrespondingmotivesofcarrying themout.Withoutthe play : theabsenceofgameargumentativewritingwhere Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics play Language of theabsence(the)work”(Blanchot, 26) andassociatesitwithDeath. Language Portable
123 Digital Baroque vent E igital ~ Timothy Murray, D memories in consort with the artwork.” memories in consort with the ) in ( accomplished by speaking otherwise. by speaking accomplished into the circuit of artistic presentation simulates into the circuit of artistic presentation 12 or projects their own virtualizations, fantasies, and or projects their own virtualizations, zone of ‘interactivity’ through which the users’ entry through which the zone of ‘interactivity’ “The future promise of digital aesthetics is its enhanced of digital aesthetics “The future promise 458). To delay perfection, to instill the importance of the importance to instill delay perfection, 458). To omposing Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing /C n U Portable Portable
orking out of Nietzsche’s “Morality as a Problem,” Avital Ronell writes that orking out of Nietzsche’s “Morality from our focus on Platonic and Aristotelian rhetorics (of persuasion) keeps from our focus on Platonic and Aristotelian rhetorics (“Nietzsche Loves You” 163) 13
down of production in the digital us from engaging with the changing ways and means For composition and rhetoric, the meanings that have been left in the cold, trickling For composition and rhetoric, the meanings that have W delaying perfection: this is the play perfection: delaying one represents it” ( one represents 124 be opentothelogics alreadyinplaythosespaces The digitaloffersus opportunitiestocomposebychanceif we wereonlywillingto chance andsubdues itbyclaimingjurisdictionoverthediscovery ofmeaning(s). unreason, hasrealizedthatcontrolling anycompositionsubvertsthevibrancyof strict rules(laws)ofcomposition.OurStranger, positionedbetweenreasonand key elementofcomposingtheformerwould constitutethe chance” ( control ofthemindandtoassureitsfull development”thatattemptsto“suppress complex demand:towriteinarigorouslypremeditatedwayharmonywith the one wherewrites“accordingtotherulesofstrictcomposition;thenamore first-year compositionorotherwise.Blanchotdescribestheprocessoflatter as alternate routefromwhatcontinuestobetaughtinthecompositionclassroom, called intotheactofcomposingimprovisationally. without invention”(Ronell,“NietzscheLovesYou”174).Inthedigitalevent,we are inhabited in“anevent,anexperiment,auniquestageforrepresentingdiscovery but, undercertainconditions,asawayofdiscoveringwhatwasalreadythere,” the developmentofimprovtechniques,”wherediscoveryisnotsimply“‘invention,’ motivations. The‘digitalevent’indicatesawayoflinking“experimentationwith with way todivergefromtheseconceptsbydiscovering—notnecessarilysynonymous like thedeathfoundinperfectinganargument.Whatdigitalopensforusisa sedimented conceptsthatatrophythepossibilitiesofsocialchanges(e.g.,civics), imagination. Withouttheriskofdisruptingthisbureaucratization,weaccept terrorism) demands has becomeevenmoredangerous(e.g.,fundamentalism,inallitsforms,including age. Todisrupttheserhetoricsofperfectinganargumentinagewhenmorality inventing The improvisationaleventthattakesplaceindigitalspacesan Book toCome —new waysofplayingwithmeaningthatdonotrequirepersuasive 14 anexperimentalimaginationratherthanabureaucratized 225). Theexperimentalimaginationthat Ronellseesasa Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics 15 insteadofadhering towhat un/composing of these 125 but speaks Book to 17 Rhetoric of response in the Work. kill switch 220). And in this silence, we are given the 220). And in this silence, we Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing , we would see writers who, as Blanchot claims, become claims, who, as Blanchot see writers , we would Book to Come book to come book to (Blanchot, 16 248). Those Strangers who compose would play with the (improvisational) play with the (improvisational) who compose would 248). Those Strangers forever closed to sense, as with the language of the mystic, who would express forever closed to sense, as with the language of the mystic, (Burke, his intuitions in images meant to transcend imagery. …opens another set of possibilities whereby imagination can be thought of …opens another set of possibilities whereby imagination and imagining them as reordering the objects of sense, or taking them apart themselves derive from in new combinations (such as centaurs) that do not even visionary things sensory experience. It can thus become “creative,” and This silence presents us with an absence of sense (as in, sensation) that This silence presents us with an absence of sense (as In the
beyond the capacity of words, of arguments, to (clearly) articulate. beyond the capacity of words, opportunity to explore the potentialities of a silence that is not silent, opportunity to explore the sometimes masterly, sometimes proudly indifferent, sometimes agitated, animated proudly indifferent, sometimes agitated, animated sometimes masterly, sometimes and joyful” [that] reaches us like a surprise that is not always a repose: a perceptible silence, that is not always a repose: a perceptible silence, [that] reaches us like a surprise unwork that can lead to discovery, postponing the unwork that can lead to discovery, presents us with “the evidence of a particular silence You see, the digital event produce. While this may seem dis/connected to politics, it is precisely this lack of dis/connected to politics, it is precisely this lack produce. While this may seem that opens the imagination to creative play and the concern for political policy without feeling the need to analyze or critique the artifacts they (and others) without feeling the need to logics awakening in digital spaces and engage in a performative civics instead of engage in a performative in digital spaces and logics awakening is, they actively play in this composing space discourses concerning civics—that Come yet involved with politics but only with this new, difficult-to-see relationship this new, difficult-to-see politics but only with yet involved with ( contact with public presence” and language awaken in that literature and “he is not displeases the experts” with an energy that “involved in politics, Blanchot might call ‘the book of the past.’ ‘the book of the might call Blanchot 126 artifacts. between reasonandunreason,toaccepttheconsequencesforresulting Un/composing thedigitalevent consequences thatshutdownimaginationinfavorof(irresponsible)patriotic acts. the booktocome, a strangeplayfulness(comical)forourage.However,likeBlanchot’swritersof Book toCome ambiguous status,acertainplayfulnesswithregardtocommonlaws”(Blanchot, by thosewhohavesomethingtodowiththestrangenessofliterarylanguage an neither consolationnorremorse.Ineveryagetherehasbeenimplicitlyrecognized digital void,“thereisnolongerlaworduty”and“agoodbadconsciencebrings each aremaintainingthecriteriaofearliermediabecauseit’salltheyknow.In to thedemandsofrhetoricaltraditionorcomposition;rather,thosewhoespouse arguments meanttoestablishsensiblemeaning(s).Thedigitaldoesnotsubscribe we areabandonedbytherules arguments, andun/artistsarethrownintothevoidofdigital. In Burke’s‘sense’oftheword,‘imagination’wouldbeasilentrefusaltoresolve Motives 79) 28). Un/composingwithinthedigitaleventisrecognitionofsuch 20 un/artistsareawarethattheynotfreeofconsequences, Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics 19 : aninvitationtoimaginepossibilitiesthatoscillate ofcompositionandtheorderlyarrangement 18 Inthisvoid 127 putting- Laws of Media to the limits of their potential.” to the limits of :
~ Marshall McLuhan, ~ Marshall McLuhan, 23 “At electric speed, all forms are pushed all forms are pushed “At electric speed, This active logos constitutes the This active logos constitutes thrives in the simultaneity of forms and 21 22 Laws of Media 99). Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing Laws of Media Comic(al) Interventions into the Digital into Interventions Comic(al) of civics rather than the more passive discourse approach that contents of civics rather than the more information structures that are simultaneous, discontinuous, and dynamic. information structures that are simultaneous, discontinuous, (102) Since electronic man lives in a world of simultaneous information, he finds Since electronic man lives from this traditional (visual) world, in which himself increasingly excluded be uniform, connected and stable. Instead, Western space and reason seem to habitually relating to (visual and left-hemisphere) man now finds himself
nstead of adapting to the digital, the un/artists comics forms are “an active comics forms are to the digital, the un/artists nstead of adapting mind or body that transforms the user and his logos or utterance of the human
tradition. But this intervention and discovery do not constitute a goal; un/artists tradition. But this intervention and discovery do not have ambivalent relationships to digital work. to discover some meaning in this ambiguity by relating to the information through to discover some meaning in this ambiguity by relating rather than merely adapting imaginative approaches of linking forms and content the ambiguity of the disconnected. The un/artist’s intervention into the digital is the ambiguity of the disconnected. The un/artist’s intervention In the void of the digital, the un/artist request. McLuhan tells as much in request. McLuhan tells as itself with writing policy and law. Additionally, as the human mind (imagination) law. Additionally, as the human mind (imagination) itself with writing policy and their ground(s), evidence turns into an unreasonable transforms un/artists and into-action I ground” (McLuhan, 128 in thesecomicsun/compositions tapintotheunknowable, but speak-able,moments. mixed mediatangledupintoanunfinished whole.Thestrangethoughtsthatarise address theStranger’sambivalence:his mixedfeelings(intuitions)takeformin and tomasteroneself”(Blanchot, speak inordertopossessandhavepower, toknowandhave,becomemaster to allmasteryandservitude,alanguage thatspeaksonlytowhoeverdoesnot language isstillarelationshipwithoutpower,ofnakedrelation,foreign perspective; rather,itallowsusto“graspagainintheliteraryworkplace where approach todis-covery.Inotherwords,ambivalencehasnoopponentoropposing is notsituatedintermsofargument(andithasnoquestiontoanswer),butas an sides ofaquestion;thedifferenceisthatanambivalentapproachtocomposition as itisusedhere,correlatestotheGreek of ourcurrentculturalsituations”(Hawk,“TowardaRhetoric”149).Ambivalence, complex searchforalternateperspectivesthat“attemptstoaddressthecomplexity argumentative theory;rather,anambivalentcomposition—un/composition—is a intervention intothedigitalsubvertsneedforidentificationatheart of that informthebureaucratizationofimagination.Thissortambivalent disrupts theassertivepowerofargumentstoproposeuniformandstablesolutions of communication”( this nakedness,powerlessness,butalsoimpossibility,whichisthefirstimpulse power, thatstartingfrompointspeechshowitselfastheabsenceof of thiswork:“…thestrangestdemand:thatthroughitspeakwhichiswithout or herintothe(digital)void.Blanchothelpsusunderstandpoliticalrelevance unreason, composingtheuncertaintyofsituationoreventthathasthrownhim Michael Bernard-Donals andRichardGlejzerexplainhow the comicsform Ambivalence returnsustoourStranger’spositionbetweenreasonand Book toCome Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics Book toCome 32). Thisformofcommunicativeambivalence dissoi logoi 33). Atthispoint,comicsenterto approach ofarguingboth 129
25 of kill switch And if we recognize the digital as a And if we recognize the digital 24 Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing Between Witness and Testimony Testimony and Witness Between , comics artists are adept at signaling signaling at adept are artists comics , . As they write, Spiegelman’s ‘text’ marks marks ‘text’ Spiegelman’s write, they As . argument. a strange traveler interested only in discovering a refuge from the a strange traveler interested only in discovering a refuge of visual rhetoric(s) seeking only to gesture toward those unknowable parts within of visual rhetoric(s) seeking only to gesture toward those to wander aimlessly, like themselves, those parts that allow their imagination(s) called the digital. Without resolve, (comics) un/artists are the hospitable traitors called the digital. Without resolve, (comics) un/artists void. Composing in this space demands that we bear witness to these media by void. Composing in this space demands that we bear locus of meaning attempting to transmit that which remains in the unresolvable borderlands, and […] boundary crossings” (342). Intervening in the digital by borderlands, and […] boundary this space: the (rhetorical) learning to be(come) a (comics) un/artist throws us into by postmodern politics” that “adopts a rhetoric of space—of location, multiplicity, “adopts a rhetoric of space—of location, multiplicity, by postmodern politics” that un/artist can teach us how to compose visually complex and seamless artifacts. un/artist can teach us how affordances of thinking about comics as “informed Hillary Chute recognizes the virtual space, a sort of single-panel that integrates a variety of media, the comics that integrates a variety of media, the comics virtual space, a sort of single-panel unrepresentable meanings of an event; they are witnesses capable of intervening of an event; they are witnesses capable of intervening unrepresentable meanings a given space. in the ways we compose within the moments that escape representation the moments that escape representation It is this ability that allows them to speak the across various media seamlessly. Maus witness to—the horrors within witness to—the Beyond (73). itself” representation transmissible; we can recognize—bear recognize—bear can we transmissible; “a locus of meaning” as something that is not not is that something as meaning” of locus “a “resolvable or knowable. But it is through an analysis of Art Spiegelman’s of Art Spiegelman’s an analysis through Maus unreason in in unreason slips into the space between reason and between reason the space slips into Chapter 5
Traitorous Hospitality: An Aphoristic (composition) Pedagogy 131 edagogy ) P and the Megalopolis” The witness is a traitor.” since his sublime 1 Domus omposition domus (C with what it does not manage to think, with what it does not manage phoristic A n differend : A ~ Jean-Francois Lyotard, “ ~ Jean-Francois Lyotard, Attested, suffering and the untameable are as if already Attested, suffering and the the witness, the writer, the megalopolis is quite happy to the witness, the writer, the Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing have him or her, his or her witnessing may come in useful. have him or her, his or her thinking’s destroyed. I mean that in witnessing, one also exterminates. destroyed. I mean that in “The witness of the wrongs and the suffering engendered by of the wrongs and the suffering “The witness ospitality H raitorous ore than a witness, our Stranger is also a traitor who acts out of an ore than a witness, our Stranger of just/ice, of individuals, of life! undetermined love—of understanding, T
up of the knowable, a recognition that is itself recognizable” (69). This is the up of the knowable, a recognition that is itself recognizable” media: to move in the strange traitor’s approach to writing in the age of new a movement of meaning that resists knowing—a recognition of the swallowing a movement of meaning that resists knowing—a recognition which is similar to what Michael Bernard-Donals and Richard Glejzer find in which is similar to what Michael Bernard-Donals and witnessing in terms of Art Spiegelman, “presents us with a means of defining shrug, and the retreat into the litany of numbers” (Bernard-Donals 62), the traitor, shrug, and the retreat into the litany of numbers” (Bernard-Donals provide […] a written record of the hesitations involved when bridging the gap provide […] a written record of the hesitations involved register as silence, the between witness and testimony that in oral testimonies He needs no rule-of-law for the illusion of a stable He needs no rule-of-law for testimonies that “must works arises outside of the law. Where the witness writes M 132 [themselves]” ( far excel [their] own judgment the seeds of creativity in students who “might perhaps eventually produce works something of ourselves. Cultivating this this may be, but when what we do must have a function in relation to others, we lose the need to make a direct commentary on a given issue. I realize how odd a suggestion concern for their audience because they have forgotten the whole enterprise of art and It is this monological art that we find in the work of comics un/artists; they have no bureaucratic sense)excludefromtheircompositions. hospitality forthemostmonstrousofthoughtsthatwitnessesandpatriots(in productions. Itisthisattitude(ofambivalence)thatopensthetraitor’s witnesses whatcomesintobeingthroughhisplayfulapproachtoimaginative antecedent tothewitnessingpatriot, witnessing becomespossible,thetraitormustproduceafinishedartifact.Asan before thewitnesshasbeenabletoform(throughhistestimony);thatis, the imagination. abyss ofmeaning,nottoresistknowing,butexplorethepossibilitieswithin Friedrich Nietzschemakesthedistinctionthus: music offorgetting.( essential featureofallmonologicalart:itisbased of viewthewitness,orwhetherhe“hasforgottenworld,”whichis this, whetherhelooksathisworkinprogress(at“himself”)fromthepoint of anymoreprofounddifferenceinthewholeorientationanartistthan belong eithertomonologicalartorbeforewitnesses.[…]Idonotknow All thought,poetry,painting,compositions,evenbuildingsandsculptures, Gay Science 2 Paradoxically,thistraitorappearsinthework oftheun/artist 327). These stupidities, exceeding judgments, open up Gay Science , so that [they] utter stupidities about [their works] and Aphoristic Writing 3 ourtraitor—like thecomicsun/artist—only forgetting 324) in our pedagogical practices sows on forgetting , itisthe domus that toa 133 To produce produce To 4 , are engaging in political, political, in engaging are , The concept of traitorous traitorous of concept The 6 and retains the sense(s) of liberty— of sense(s) the retains and 5 digital humanities digital Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing 69). What he (indirectly) confronts is the “frightened, ignorant, and servile” servile” and ignorant, “frightened, the is confronts (indirectly) he What 69). 217-18). The concept of a being without being, however, seems rather confusing confusing rather seems however, being, without being a of concept The 217-18). artistic” since “as soon as art becomes culture, is the means, the instrument of of instrument the means, the is culture, becomes art as soon “as since artistic” Maurice Blanchot might refer to this sort of traitor as a “man without horizon” horizon” without “man a as traitor of sort this to refer might Blanchot Maurice Infinite Infinite purely purely the servitudes: and travesties to prey falls it itself; to belong longer no can it culture, a hospitality, as with un/art/ists, opens a space for an art that “cannot be, must not be, be, not must be, “cannot that art an for space a opens un/art/ists, with as hospitality, media, or what is currently being called called being currently is what or media, education. and policy public of issues social and cultural, resiliency. And this is precisely what is needed when addressing the ways in which new new which in ways the addressing when needed is what precisely is this And resiliency. embodies the origin(s) of thought before a witness provides a testimony; in other other in testimony; a provides witness a before thought of origin(s) the embodies ungrounded with being a have yet not does which that explores traitor the words, in the sense of going beyond the boundaries of propriety—that allow this being to to being this allow propriety—that of boundaries the beyond going of sense the in un/artist, (comics) the like traitor, the sense, this In civics. imaginative an in engage separate from the existence of a given position, given a of existence the from separate Infinite Infinite remains that being a indicate to phrasing this uses Blanchot that recognize we until that “are unable to fulfill their civic duties, having lost all sense of liberty” (Blanchot, (Blanchot, liberty” of sense all lost having duties, civic their fulfill to unable “are that everything invisible—he is what comes to me as speech when to speak is not to see” see” to not is speak to when speech as me to comes what is invisible—he everything ( who does not affirm “himself on the basis of a horizon—in a sense a being without without being a sense a horizon—in a of basis the on “himself affirm not does who to and visible everything to foreign thus present, a without presence a being,
they produce. produce. they bear witness, exercising judgments or developing other criteria for judging the artifacts artifacts the judging for criteria other developing or judgments exercising witness, bear such a perspective, un/artists remain constrained, and constrain their imaginations. imaginations. their constrain and constrained, remain un/artists perspective, a such world— the forget to refuse who others—those let they artifacts, their producing After and the creative work of the imagination. The traitorous hospitality of the Stranger, Stranger, the of hospitality traitorous The imagination. the of work creative the and others—without to relations his and world the forget to ability the from comes then, something that exceeds judgment—and witnessing—is at the heart of monological art, art, monological of heart the at witnessing—is judgment—and exceeds that something possibilities for the realization of the sublime works of the imagination. the of works sublime the of realization the for possibilities 134 the (unknown)demand ofthelingeringevent.Thetraitor, asadigitalun/artist, whereas traitor’simaginary compositionhasnodelusions of havingsatisfied argumentative writing takesplacewhenonefeelsthework asindispensable, heart ofargumentativewriting.Thestakes ofeacharenotthesame;witness’s the futureratherthanepideicticrhetoric, whichlookstothepastandisat to performingwhatAristotlecallsdeliberative rhetoricthatlooksto(convalesce the ‘law(s)’ofcompositionasdetermined by can discoverthisnothingthroughan “Anamnesis oftheVisible2”22).Inunknown,there’snothingtoknow,but we happened then,bywhatisunpredictableand W the our ways of composing with new media. for the digital humanities, this concept involves re/thinking, re/doing, and re/making wheel of values and knowledge” (Blanchot, what here thewitnesscomposes“bytestifying,byattemptingtobefaithful happened A T free ofalldetermination,deprived‘value,’andalienated ,” thetraitorlet’shimself“beledbyunknownthat to thepointwhereheisnothingbutactingconsciousness imaginary “… raitorous imaginary Aphoristic Writing of thisnothing,theessentialmanpointzero…” the referencetomandispossessedofhimself, (W imaginary is thereferencetoamanwithoutmyth,as riting Friendship governing invisible I stripped ofthemythlaw, magintion ~ MauriceBlanchot, 28) that restricts imagination; bodies. in theevent”(Lyotard, ) 7 Thiswouldbeakin Friendship 8 ) 135
11 Laws Laws There is a sort of of sort a is There 10 to his technologies technologies his to adapts adapts writing in the digital age. digital the in writing Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing what will have been been have will what
9 : “Without the artist’s intervention man merely merely man intervention artist’s the “Without : Within digital environments, it is the un/artist’s fragmentary intervention that that intervention fragmentary un/artist’s the is it environments, digital Within environments spawns an event: a writing process for the digital based on our ways of of ways our on based digital the for process writing a event: an spawns environments itself. to only belongs that event an by spurred writing of ease writing—the processing For rhetoric and composition, one of the traitor’s approaches to writing in digital digital in writing to approaches traitor’s the of one composition, and rhetoric For within a state of ease that can point un/artists (or have un/artists point us) toward toward us) point un/artists have (or un/artists point can that ease of state a within period.’ ‘adjustment our during hidden remain that thought digital of aspects those to technology are reductive, simplistic, or uncomplicated; rather, it means to write write to means it rather, uncomplicated; or simplistic, reductive, are technology to to flourish by releasing oneself from the complications of critique and/or procedure. and/or critique of complications the from oneself releasing by flourish to approach this of out arise that compositions the that mean doesn’t however, This, relationship with technology” (“Ease and Electracy” 109-10). A relationship of ease ease of relationship A 109-10). Electracy” and (“Ease technology” with relationship imaginative the for necessary effortlessness and comfort of sort a offers technology with understanding,” but involves “learning new technologies and questioning one’s one’s questioning and technologies new “learning involves but understanding,” ease in this type of composition, one that Bradley Dilger describes as a preference preference a as describes Dilger Bradley that one composition, of type this in ease complete of complication the involve doesn’t which approach pragmatic simple, “a for writing might be, might writing traitorous un/artist is released from the value(s) of argumentative writing in order order in writing argumentative of value(s) the from released is un/artist traitorous what imagine may we where space empty an opens intervention This again. begin to and become their servo-mechanism” since “the role of art is to liberate man from from man liberate to is art of role “the since servo-mechanism” their become and the words, other In (98). technologies” to ‘adjusting’ by imposed status robot the of Media of in much as explain McLuhan Eric and Marshall nothing. this see to us help can with our customary ways of witnessing and composing since these testimonies may and composing since these ways of witnessing with our customary with which they began. betray the purposes seen this nothing” (“Anamnesis of the Visible 2” 29). It is this ability to see nothing ability to 2” 29). It is this the Visible of nothing” (“Anamnesis seen this dispense called to by the imaginary—to this nothing) that we are (and make seen others, but one who no longer sees anything at all, and wants to see and make to see and all, and wants anything at no longer sees but one who others, resonates with Lyotard’s painter: “The painter is not someone who sees better than who sees is not someone “The painter painter: with Lyotard’s resonates 136 law, but with the defenses that stop the thinking process. Nietzsche observes: are self-observant. The major hindrance to the imagination has nothing to do with the some set material; we would be teaching students to be thinkers—and writers—that their defenses(makethem comes fromoneself.Toopenstudentstotheeveryday,weneedalsobreakdown the law.Butthislawisnotonlyimposedbypoliticalandjudicial(law);it also nothing Nietzschean sense)inthelaworitsjustifications;rather,traitorisguilty of the lawassuch.Asantithesisofapatriot,traitorplacesnovalue(in way tocomposingasimaginativetraitors,notthroughthelaworanadherence to through theseindeterminatemannersthatremainsuspectwemayfind our we needisawaytocreateopportunitiesfortheimaginationflourish,it being abletobeguilty)”( being: everydayindifference.(Thesuspect:anyoneandeveryone,guiltyofnot law seeksbywayofsuspiciontotrackdowneveryindeterminatemanner (and oblique)thatalwaysescapesthecleardecisionoflaw,evenwhen most difficulttofindand,assuch,“theeverydaymustbethoughtthesuspect outside ofthelawwhole.ForBlanchot,itisthiseveryday‘speech’that As traitor-friends, our pedagogical goals would have less to do with teaching An (everyday)eventthatbelongsonlytoitselfbecomessuspectsinceitsits enemies play the traitor and conduct him in by a secret path” ( The actual fortress is inaccessible, even invisible to him, unless his friends and besieged by himself, he is usually able to perceive of himself only his outer walls. Man is very well defended against himself, against being reconnoitered and (thought ofasthe(immaterial)imaginary)andbecomesdis/possessed Infinite uncomfortable 239). If,asthe9/11Commissionreports,what Aphoristic Writing , asNietzschesays 12 ), tobetraitor-friends. Human 179-80) 137 noble 199) of of 199) 291). to become become to Human Human have have Friendship Twilight of the Idols ospitality ~ Friedrich Nietzsche, H igital hospitality by the many draped windows and closed hospitality by the many draped they expect guests with whom one does not ‘put up.’” they expect guests with whom D “One recognizes those hearts which are capable of “One recognizes those hearts Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing shutters: they keep their best rooms empty. Why? Because shutters: they keep their best and testing how well these walls (values/defenses) hold up up hold (values/defenses) walls these well how testing and 13
he digital presents us with an open space, a space that we may design for he digital presents us with an open space, a space that as guests, wanderers, ourselves, and it invites us to reside in these rooms
enters, passes by way of recognition of the common strangeness that does not allow enters, passes by way of recognition of the common (Blanchot, us to speak of our friends, but only to speak to them” to enter into “this relation without dependence [where] all of the simplicity of life to enter into “this relation without dependence [where] that asks us to create our own forms of knowing, doing, and making imaginative that asks us to create our own forms of knowing, doing, friend would allow us artifacts. To think of the digital as this kind of hospitable nomads. What we find in the digital is the hospitality of an un/formed space nomads. What we find in the digital is the hospitality T artists in these spaces. these in artists composing criterion, especially when we are faced with the incongruous manners of un/ of manners incongruous the with faced are we when especially criterion, composing allows us—students—to engage the imaginary with/in the digital, “we “we digital, the with/in imaginary the engage us—students—to allows (Nietzsche, ideals” our abandon again and again unfaithful, be traitors, write on those walls, those on write that place a to get to order In traitor. (defenseless) the of hospitality the against paths and breaking down the fortress-walls that impede the ability for the imagination imagination the for ability the impede that fortress-walls the down breaking and paths The role of this strange (comic) approach to writing has to do with finding these secret secret these finding with do to has writing to approach (comic) strange this of role The 138 have tolearnlove thedigitalasafriendwhohelpsusto learn(tolove)the the digitalchanges how wethink.Wecannotmerelytolerate thedigital,butwe hospitality. with oneanotherandtoopenuptheempty spacewherewecancomposeour the comingcommunity. opens thedigitaltowaysofthinkingand formsofcomposingthathelpsuspursue and waysofwriting,thiscomposesthedigital’shospitality,ahospitalitythat spaces withoutconditionbecomesaneventthatoffersnewpossibilitiesforthinking that isproducedthroughthought”( writing thatisproducedthroughwriting,justasonethinksintoaspaceofthought community andtheuniversitywithoutconditions.[…]Onewritesintoaspace of new mediaprovides:“Writingandoffermeansofpursuingthecoming their ownwriting.AlexanderReidexplainsthisassomeoftheaffordancesthat in ourclass/rooms—nottoputupwithguests,butofferthemaplacewrite construct theseroomsintheimageofan/other,whichiswhatweshouldaspire to to returnthefavor,wespeakdigitalinourownwayswithouttrying re- to (eternally)returnthefavorbyallowinghospitalityremainasilentsubject; control thought,butunfoldsthroughimaginativelink(age)s. develops a disparate elementswithoutcommittingtoasinglerelation;rather,thetraitor relation tothedigital,traitorwandersthroughdigitalvoid,connecting invitation, whatseparatesusfromtheitputsinrelationtodigital.Inthis analysis, critique,andargument Speaking ofthedigitalonlydistancesusfrominvitationitoffers—byway To acceptthishospitality, wealsohavetobehospitable thewaysinwhich Entering intotheemptyroom(s)digitaloffersus,wearegivena whatever 15
relation tothedigital,athatdoesnotseekcontrol 16 Thissortofhospitalityhastheability to putusatease 14 Aphoristic Writing —but inspeakingtothedigital,byacceptingits Two Virtuals 194). Writingintothesedigital chance 139 324). The witness, Gay Science 207). Arriving at the digital, accepting its of learning to love the strangeness of the digital love the strangeness of the of learning to play us the gift of the empty space of the digital. This
figure in the digital age whose testimonies come figure in the digital age whose 17 Friendship Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing 262). In other words, the mutual hospitality of composing in words, the mutual hospitality 262). In other delivers untimely for our hospitality. Even those who love themselves have learned it in themselves have learned Even those who love for our hospitality. Gay Science This hospitality is the condition for composing in a digital age: to think along This hospitality is the condition thanks but as a friend that us, where morality is silent, gift, however, remains obscure, “where rules abandon (and writing) without dependence that characterizes the traitor not as an enemy, (and writing) without dependence that characterizes point of arrival” (Blanchot, a relation of thinking hospitality, the imagination takes us on a detour toward a certain beginning, a certain starting point, that lead[s] us to hope for a certain a certain beginning, a certain starting point, that lead[s] Inevitably, in treading a new path, we traitors will fall in(to) the digital void, and Inevitably, in treading a new path, we traitors will fall in which we fall, by establishing the imagination then “comes to help us fill the void The traitor—as nomad, wanderer, stranger—creates a path to the unknown The traitor—as nomad, wanderer, already been worn down. (compositions) since even the ‘less travelled’ paths have a secret path that we can only discover by composing the events of our imagination. only discover by composing the events of our imagination. a secret path that we can
hospitality. then, would be an compositions in (and of) the empty space of digital only after the traitor’s playful “All thought, poetry, painting, compositions, even buildings and sculptures, belong compositions, even buildings and sculptures, belong “All thought, poetry, painting, to art before witnesses” ( either to monological art or witness’s testimony. Nietzsche makes a similar distinction regarding works of art: makes a similar distinction regarding works of witness’s testimony. Nietzsche these transformations we are given over to the strangeness of the imagination that to the strangeness of the we are given over these transformations the distance of human relations encapsulated in the de-familiarizes itself with void (empty space) that puts us back into a relation that transforms each. Through a relation that transforms that puts us back into void (empty space) this way” ( itself in the the digital unveils gradually, it sheds its veil and turns out to be a new and indescribable beauty. That beauty. That a new and indescribable out to be veil and turns it sheds its gradually, is its our good will, our patience, fair-mindedness, and gentleness with what is strange; with what gentleness and fair-mindedness, will, our patience, our good strange. In return, as Nietzsche writes of hospitality, “we are always rewarded for always rewarded “we are writes of hospitality, Nietzsche In return, as strange. 140 we interact withwork-overthe wayswethinkand write.Inresponse toKittler’s art. new media,andthat wouldallowustoovercomeLiterature asun/artistsovercome writings offersusawaytothinkabout andperformapedagogyappropriatefor ( from rhetorictotelegramstyle”afterpurchasing (andwritingwith)atypewriter Nietzsche’s writingchanged“fromarguments toaphorisms,fromthoughtspuns, how technologyinfluencesanindividual’s compositionswhenhenoticesthat T compose: the how towrite,weareaffordedthepossibilityof(perpetually)re-beginningcall of thedigitalasagiftanemptyspacethatholdsusinnoobligationtowrite,or where thereisnolongerlaworduty”(Blanchot, Gramophone 19 Theimplicationof Kittler’s statementisacommonone:the technologies and thewayswethink.FriedrichKittler providesuswithoneinstanceof he timehascometore-thinkaboutthedigital’sinfluenceoncomposition thought ofcomposition 203). Thisshort,pithy,andun/artistic style ofNietzsche’slater to society and transparent to it, a closed personal process, “Whatever itssophistication,stylehasalwayssomething it isinnowaytheproductofachoiceorreflectionon vertical andlonelydimensionofthought.[…]Indifferent crude aboutit:itisaformwithnocleardestination,the Literature. […]styleresidesoutsideart,thatis, A product ofathrust,notanintention,and,asitwere, phoristic Aphoristic Writing that doesnotcloseuponitself. C the pactwhichbindswritertosociety.” omposition ~ RolandBarthes, Book toCome 27-28). Inthinking Writing DegreeZero 18 141 — 22 240). To use a , which Geoff Sirc of our lives instead of 21 Gay Science ) exposed in the surprise of an gutters twitter what Nietzsche wants to “say” in what Nietzsche wants to Arcades Project 20 Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing 556). But our ambitions must go beyond Nietzsche if beyond Nietzsche must go our ambitions 556). But Portable Portable Aphorisms are a part of everyday life. If we need evidence to justify this Aphorisms are a part of everyday an (experimental) art of exegesis that links thought to composition im-mediately an (experimental) art of exegesis that links thought thoughts to take up and that refuses to be elaborated, but that invites traitorous of writing achieved in a only a few words (or characters/images). The aphorism is of writing achieved in a only a few words (or characters/images). enables a condition of tremulous excitement (a pithiness—a terse form observation that sparks the deep thought of an aphorism’s pedagogical event—based on un/art practices rather than process-oriented ones pedagogical event—based on un/art practices rather thinking that typifies the digital humanities and their interdisciplinary approaches thinking that typifies the digital humanities and their approaches to the to the pedagogical event. To turn toward experimental skill” and which can be found in “interesting little bits of the everyday” (“Box Logic” in “interesting little bits of the everyday” (“Box skill” and which can be found to experimental ways of 122-23). Moreover, such a method of composing is open refers to as “notational jottings” that are “a desperately important compositional that are “a desperately important compositional refers to as “notational jottings” Walter Benjamin’s claim, we need only look to cheap analogy, this manner would have us write the cheap analogy, this manner moments consciously selected. wisdom, our own gay science, where we become “the poets of our [lives]—first of where we become “the poets of our [lives]—first wisdom, our own gay science, matters” (Nietzsche, all in the smallest, most everyday 10 sentences. To compose in such a manner would be to develop our own joyful in such a manner would be to develop our own joyful 10 sentences. To compose the immediacy and surprise of our thinking. I propose the following ambition for I propose the following and surprise of our thinking. the immediacy in 140 characters digital composition: to “say” we must recognize the ways our thoughts are being worked over, particularly are being worked over, the ways our thoughts we must recognize age, we are moving far more quickly than Nietzsche did with a typewriter. If the Nietzsche did with a typewriter. far more quickly than age, we are moving digital void, we compose within the imagination into the ways goal is to inject say in a book” ( say in in the digital environments; after all, composition in digital we are to address ten sentences what everyone else says in a book—what everyone else does not else does everyone says in a book—what everyone else what ten sentences observation, Nietzsche anachronistically answers: “it is my ambition to say in ambition to “it is my answers: anachronistically Nietzsche observation, 142 as aplacewhere possibility ofwritingstrangely.Agamben explainsthewritingofthispotentiality pluralistic interpretations(potentialities). of composition restrict imagination. thought ratherthanthefully-formedandexplicatedformsofknowledgethat the aphorismbecomesacompositionofpost-modern,interestedinruminating they composeapartfromthenarrativesinwhichwerebuilt.ForNietzsche, composition which KaprowandLudwinskiextendinthemovetoun/art.As the littlenarrativesthatLyotardseesasambitionofavant-gardeart,and since itstandsapartfromanygrandnarrative;theaphorismpresentsuswith space ofpluralistthoughtpresentedinthedigital,likeplayun/artist, is nottheinterpretationofrhetoricalargument,butruminatingwithin ( articulating sense,theaphorismisinterpretationandartofinterpreting” thing—these aretheobjectofaphorism.[…]onlyaphorismiscapable it claimstoarticulateandformulatea aphorism ispresentasa residence intheyetunbuiltroomsofdigital. Nietzsche The potentialitiesofwritingaphoristically returnus(eternally?)tothe Gilles DeleuzeexplainsasmuchwhenhespeaksofNietzschewriting:“an potentiality, thegesture ofthescribewhodipshispeninthought andwrites against theprimacy ofactualityandform—theAristotlian paradoxof [t]he traceisnothing otherthanthemostrigorousattempt toreconsider— 31). Yet,thisinterpretationremainsopentootherinterpretations;it , aphorismsmakesenseandchangesensesinrelationtothethought(s) to becomeaforminandofitself, thecompositionofan‘art’ 23 Composingaphoristicallywouldthenallowthe fragment Aphoristic Writing ; itistheformofpluralistthought;initscontent sense . Thesenseofabeing,anaction, thought of thought 143 , without , without 118). The of composing arkhë Political of addressing the writing ‘without writing capability 24 capable 216) and that experiences itself, a writing tablet itself, a writing tablet and that experiences capable Potentialities Potentialities Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing ] carries within him and that constrains him to lack a place, a ] carries within him and that constrains him to lack 25 of experiencing the formlessness of such a writing, and it is one that of experiencing the formlessness ,’ is not a form, nor is it the passage from potentiality to actuality; rather, rather, to actuality; from potentiality is it the passage a form, nor ,’ is not it is a potentiality that is it is a potentiality passivity, but the imprint of its own the impression of a form that suffers not ( its own formlessness. solely with his potentiality (not to write). The trace, write). The (not to his potentiality solely with cause, without without without history, or absence, presence telos Extending Nietzsche’s ambition of writing aphoristically presents such a Extending Nietzsche’s ambition of writing aphoristically name, a role, and an identity, that is, never yet to be a writer” ( name, a role, and an identity, that is, never yet to be a risk supplemented by the formlessness of aphorisms presents us with such a risk, (committed) writer) (c)enter testimonies and enter into “an infinite task that risks condemning the (c)enter testimonies and enter into “an infinite task of excluding the demand [the writer to a didactic, pedagogic role, and, in so doing, thought escapes bureaucratization (law). At certain moments, we must refuse to thought escapes bureaucratization (law). At certain refusal; where the witness’s testimony (c)enters what can be said, the traitor’s refusal; where the witness’s testimony (c)enters what of ‘writing’ where aphoristic composition presents us with intuitions, movements
become bureaucratized (centered). become bureaucratized (centered). significance of writing this third relation is how it is significance of writing this ‘bureaucratization of the imagination’ by refusing to points-of-contention in the (third) relation that has no central argument—it has no center at all. The political central argument—it has no center at all. The political (third) relation that has no to write (purely). In Derridean terms, a character corresponds to the written to write (purely). In Derridean but as an analogue whose reference opens a grapheme, not as its equivalent, digital composition, a character is a mark that marks the digital composition, a character a form that remains formless in its potentiality not aphoristically by imprinting is opened in the relation to the (traitorous) hospitality of the digital. In terms of the (traitorous) hospitality of the digital. In terms is opened in the relation to Thinking in terms ‘characters’ rather than merely image and/or text offers a merely image and/or text ‘characters’ rather than Thinking in terms capability 144 refusal to have usaffirmthepart(s)ittakesinformingthoughtfromformlessnessof of pluralistthought.Acceptingthedigital’shospitalityinourpedagogywould place—the oneswecarrywithinourselvesandthatopenusintothepotentialities hospitality ofthedigital,aninvitationtocomposeourselvesintoaspacethatlacks write purely A (C ~ Jean-Francois Lyotard, “The Subject of the Course of Philosophy” Like achild,itisprematureandinsubstantial.Werecommence, omic the end.Forthoughtishere,muddledupinunthought, . but wecannotrelyonitgettingtothethoughtitself,there,at trying tomakesenseoftheimpertinentchatterchildhood.” “Philosophical writingisaheadofwhereitsupposedtobe. ) P edagogy Aphoristic Writing
of (T wittering ) A phorisms
145 (and Composition) (I) Beyond Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing Of Nietzsche’s Of Nietzsche’s 146 Empty RoomsoftheDigital Aphoristic Writing (II) 26 147 27 (III) A Digital (Comic) Traitor A Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing 148 Aphoristic Writing Please ComeIn... (IV) 28 149 29 (V) Welcome Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing 150 Wonderbot Powers Activate! FormaTweet! Aphoristic Writing (VI) 30 151 31 (VII) A Leaf Falls A Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing 152 Circle Poetry, pt.1 Aphoristic Writing Circle Poetry, pt.2 (VIII) 32 153 33 (IX) Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing The Traitor’s Over/Coming Super/Power The Traitor’s 154 Aphoristic Writing And Brevity (X) 34 155 35 (XI) Tweeting Without Bound(arie)s Without Tweeting Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing 156 Composing withaHammer Aphoristic Writing (XII) 36 157 37 (XIII) 140 Characters at a Time Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing 158 A Twittering Art ofLove Aphoristic Writing (XIV) 38 159 39 (XV) A Vigilante Literature Vigilante A Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing 160 Aphoristic Writing Thank You All (XVI) 40 161 41 (XVII) How About a Glass of Wine How Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics (Visual) Un/Composing Endnotes Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics
Introduction Endnotes
1. A reference to Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street” and Maurice Blanchot’s reading of ‘Bartleby’ in The Writing of the Disaster (145), which appears in the form of aphorisms.
2. Also see Cynthia Selfe’s article “The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing.” She writes: The stakes for students are no less significant—they involve fundamental issues of rhetorical sovereignty3: the rights and responsibilities that students have to identify their own communicative needs and to represent their own identities, to select the right tools for the communicative contexts within which they operate, and to think critically and carefully about the meaning that they and others compose. When we insist on print as the primary, and most formally acceptable, modality for composing knowledge, we usurp these rights and responsibilities on several important intellectual and social dimensions, and, unwittingly, limit students’ sense of rhetorical agency to the bandwidth of our own interests and imaginations” (618).
3. As Blanchot writes, “The disaster does not put me into question, but annuls the questions, makes it disappear – as if along with the question, “I” too disappeared in the disaster which never appears” (Writing 28). Questions, in this sense, assume and demand answers, reasons, justifications that take “place after having taken place” (Blanchot, Writing 28).
163 Introduction Endnotes
4. See Bill Readings’ The University in Ruins and Stanley Aronowitz’s The Knowledge Factory for more detailed accounts of the problem facing universities focused on ‘training’ students “in knowledges that constitute an occupation or a particular set of skills” (Aronowitz, Knowledge Factory 1). Instead, Readings conceives of the University as a space “where thought takes place beside thought, where thinking is a shared process without identity or unity. Thought beside itself perhaps. The University’s ruins offer us an institution in which the incomplete and interminable nature of the pedagogic relation can remind us that “thinking together” is a dissensual process” (University 192).
5. In Networked Art, Craig Saper begins with Barthes’ notion of “receivable texts,” claiming that this term alludes to “a network of relationships linked by sending and receiving texts in the mail or as a part of a network of participants” and which “suspends traditional norms of judgment” (4).
6. “I will not say that the disaster is absolute; on the contrary, it disorients the absolute” (Blanchot, Writing 4).
7. Here, I take my cue from Geoffrey Sirc: ““[o]ur texts are conventional in every sense of the word; they write themselves. They are wholly determined by the texts that have gone before; a radical break with the conventions of a form or genre […] would perplex.” (English 10). Also, see Victor Vitanza’s article entitled “Abandoned to Writing: Notes Toward Several Provocations” for a radically passive performance. Vitanza writes:
“What writing or composition wants is a writer! To invite someone to become a writer! What rhetoric wants is a body that comes to expressing itselphs. A writer. A body filled with tics that cannot but (not) write! Twitchings.
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“Writing, however, is not ||||||||||||||||| (barcodes) nor is it //////////// (slashing of value). Only writers spawned by institutions write in this manner!”
8. Here, transvaluation refers to what that which has no pre-determined criteria and would be, in the Nietzschean sense, a valuation of love, which Nietzsche finds to go beyond good (acceptable) and evil (unacceptable) (cf. Beyond Good and Evil; The Will to Power: A Transvaluation of All Values).
9. See Byron Hawk’s A Counter-History of Composition (100-104).
10. In Internet Invention, Ulmer defines conductive logic thus: “Conductive logic subsumes the inductive, deductive, and abductive inferences of the interrogation. In conduction the inference path moves from material thing to another thing, from signifier to signifier, without recourse to the abstractions of rules” (156). To clarify Ulmer’s thinking, conductive logic can be figured as apun , a logic similar to the one Derrida builds with his concepts of deconstruction and differance, a logic of wordplay that can also extend into image realms – an image spurs another image, perhaps directly related, perhaps indirectly related. Heuretics, according to Ulmer, “contributes to what Barthes referred to as ‘the return of the politician’—one who is concerned with how a work is made” (Heuretics 4), and it indicates a process of using “the method that I am inventing while I am inventing it” (Heuretics 17). Such a process does not determine ‘the paths of inquiry,’ but ‘continually sets the inquiry in motion.’
11. This phrasing is a reference to Giorgio Agamben’s The Coming Community. He writes in a ‘chapter’ titled Bartleby: “The perfect act of writing comes not from a power to write, but from an impotence that turns back on itself and in this way comes to itself as a pure act […]. Bartleby, a scribe who does not simply cease writing, but ‘prefers not to,’ is the extreme image of this angel that writes nothing but its potentiality to
165 Introduction Endnotes
not-write” (37). Earlier, he explains ‘impotence’: “It is neither apathy nor promiscuity nor resignation. These pure singularities communicate only in the empty space of the example, without being tied by any common property, by any identity, they are expropriated of all identity, so as to appropriate belonging itself, the sign ε. Tricksters or fakes, assistants or ‘toons, they are the exemplars of the coming community” (Coming 11). Quentin was a trickster for Bartholomae, one that performed his writing, turning back on himself (“I lose again”), and coming to himself through the Act of writing. It was his “Fuck You” essay (cf. Bartholomae, “The Tidy House” and Sirc’s English Composition) that brought Bartholomae to question the field of Basic Writing almost 20 years later. The essay comes too late for Bartholomae even as the realization of that essay came too soon (cf. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition 81).
12. Later, I will refer to Warren Ellis’ Do Anything, where he quotes Harvey Pekar saying: “Comics are words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures” (5). On Stan Lee, apparently a postmodern writer/artist: “The artist would go away – with or without a supporting document, it seems – and draw out the story in pencil. Stan would then generate all the dialogue” (12).
13. See Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement (226) and Lyotard’s Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime (6).
14. Nicholas Lemann explains why reason comprises so much risk in “Terrorism Studies: Social scientists do counterinsurgency”:
In the world of terrorism studies, the rhetoric of righteousness gives way to equilibrium equations. Nobody is good and nobody is evil. Terrorists, even suicide bombers, are not psychotics or fanatics; they’re rational actors—that is, what they do is explicable in terms of their beliefs and desires—who respond to the set of
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incentives that they find before them. The tools of analysis are realism, rational choice, game theory, decision theory: clinical and bloodless modes of thinking. (73).
In essence, Lemann argues that the tools of argumentation, Logic, Reason, and rationality are the same tools that allowed the justification of disastrous actions on September 11, 2001. Also, Lester Faigley’s writes in Fragments of Rationality:
…a major source of contradictions in writing pedagogy results from the dogmatic teaching of a truncated conception of coherence, which supports bureaucratic rationality where reason is restricted to narrow channels of expertise and questions of ethics are suppressed. Even the champion of Enlightenment rationality, Jûrgen Habermas, critiques ‘instrumental rationality’ that supports bureaucracies by providing their justification and controlling mechanisms, and he argues instead for a ‘communicative rationality’ that would integrate the discourses of the arts, science, and morality. (133)
Given the subtitle of Faigley’s book (Postmodernity and the Subject of Composition), it appears that Rickert’s book (subtitle: Rhetoric, Zizek, and the Return of the Subject) works in a similar vein. Postpedagogy, perhaps, is a manifestation of the problematics Faigley detects in (composition) pedagogy – work that Rickert, among others, continuously attempt to flesh out, and the work that this project attempts to supplement.
15. See Gregory Ulmer’s “The Object of Post-Criticism.”
16. As Byron Hawk explains, “Potentiality is there first and then when it encounters the right circumstances, the right constellation of bodies and forces, it is put in motion and becomes possibility. In short, potentiality is the ‘condition for possibility” (282-83, n15).
167 Introduction Endnotes
17. Gilles Deleuze explains as much when he writes of Nietzsche’s ‘concept of genealogy’: “Evaluations, in essence, are not values but ways of being, modes of existence of those who judge and evaluate, serving as principles for the values on the basis of which they judge” (1).
18. As explained in the Glossary of Libidinal Economy: The Great Ephemeral Skin: this is in many ways the more provocative figure in Libidinal Economy. It highlights the disruptive potential of the figure, a concern which occupied Lyotard […] Freud’s elaboration of the ‘dream-work’ (cf. The Interpretation of Dreams) provides Lyotard with an articulation of the connivance of the figural and the libidinal: the dream-work (condensation, displacement, secondary revision and considerations of representability) distorts figural materials (words, signs and ideas). InDiscours, figure, Lyotard draws out the implications of the figural unconscious’ plastic invasion into the realm of the conceptual conscious, the result of which invasion is not merely to demonstrated the inevitable confusion of the two realms, but to highlight difference in their respective organizations. Whereas the conceptual relies on rigid opposition, the figural works differences: concepts, in other words, utilize negation (the ‘this’ and the ‘not-this’ in the language of Libidinal Economy), isolating unit(ie)s as opposed entities, whereas figural difference, like the unconscious whose work it is, knows no negation. […] The great ephemeral skin is the libidinal materialist (dis) solution of figural difference and conceptual opposition as polymorphous (hence ‘ephemeral’), material (hence ‘skin’) intensity. (Libidinal xiv)
19. Vitanza writes in “Abandoned to Writing: Notes Toward Several Provocations”: “’We’ may never write ‘writing,’ but ‘we’ must start letting writing write. Such a writing cannot, should not, take place, and will not, unless under the most radical, still
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unthinkable, conditions…take place…in the university (or the schools). It is simply not safe for students to write ‘in’ or ‘at’ the university. Any university. What is taught at the university is not-writing.”
20. Also, see Sharon Crowley’s Composition in the University: Historical and Polemical Essays, specifically Chapter 10 entitled “The Politics of Composition” where she writes: “No matter how nurturant the teacher, the so-called community classroom is rife with the ideological differences that students and teachers bring with them to class. These differences will inevitably be put on the table, as they might not be in a history or biology class, because liberal composition pedagogy insists that students’ identities are the subject of composition. Within the context of the universal requirement, which forces people to take and teach the class, this seems to me to be a recipe for pain” (227). In general, Crowley’s perspective reminds us that we are a highly political field, but that we rarely acknowledge the ideological differences in the classroom in hopes of ‘keeping the peace.’ The problem here is that once students leave the classroom, they continue to maintain their identities, which is enforced when we require them to learn how to argue well instead of learning that arguments, and therefore identities, are contingent singularities, forcing a rethinking both of politics, self, and the act or event of writing.
21. See Joshua C. Hilst’s forthcoming article in JAC, “Gutter Talk: An Other Idiom of Rhetoric.”
22. Here, I use the word “abysmal” as an indication of the additional Catholic (church) meaning of ‘limbo,’ which refers to a border-space between Heaven and Hell (cf. Harper, “Online”). Could it be, perhaps, that this is the space that exists beyond good and evil? It certainly appears so considering the theoretical suggestions. Could that mean that, in part, Nietzsche would have liked to read some comics? And Lyotard?
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What we do know, however, is that Roland Barthes thought comics has some theoretically interesting potentialities (see Chapter 1).
23. Again, Lyotard finds this necessity in the work of Kant, whose discussion of the “sublime” in the “Appendix” of Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement is akin to what is now being termed postpedagogy.
24. Kant links his idea of ‘free art’ with the field of rhetoric, claiming, Rhetoric“ is the art of transacting a serious business of the understanding as if it were a free play of the imagination” (284) and that the rhetorician gives “an entertaining play of the imagination” (Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement 185). In addition, U.S. Army Commander, Lieutenant General David H. Petraeus suggests that large-scale conventional tactics “may be of limited utility or even counterproductive in COIN [counterinsurgency] operations” (ix) and that “successful counterinsurgency campaigns require a flexible, adaptive force led by agile, well-informed, culturally astute leaders” (n.p.). If the work of rhetoric/composition is indeed to prepare students for academic and professional work, it stands to reason that successful students will be “flexible,” “adaptive,” and “astute” – that is, to be able to work beyond “conventional” practices in order to formulate the rules of the “unconventional” (cf. Petraeus; Lyotard, Postmodern).
25. A reference to the concluding lines of Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall- Street” (74).
26. In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche writes, “What is done out of love always occurs beyond good and evil” (Portable 444; aphorism 153). Quentin’s refusal to write purely could also be an Act of love in this sense…
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Chapter One Endnotes
1. Ulmer has proposed “terms” for writing (with) new media, calling this a move ‘from literacy to electracy’ in Internet Invention. Electracy, according to Ulmer, “is to digital media what literacy is to print” (xi), and it “adds to orality and literacy the possibility of writing the unconscious (and hence of writing with what we do not know—with our stupidity and with our trust” (163).
2. See Jean Baudrillard various works, but specificallySimulations .
3. In part, this series of divisions mimics Plato’s own series of dialogues in this sequence: The Sophist, The Statesman, and The Philosopher, where each of the dialogues correlates to each of the forms of imitation. In our own time, this estimation seems appropriate, if we consider current brands of sophistry as attempts to accurately represent knowledge in the service of professionalism and institutions, statesmen are commonly framed as deceptive in order to maintain their own will to power, and philosophers are excluded for attempting to think the unthought to cut through both, at least in Lyotard’s view of the philosopher. Plato’s The Philosopher was not written (or uncovered, whichever your preference), and there seems to be little corroborating evidence to assume a definition of thephilosopher by Plato.
4. This would be analogous to Diane Davis’ feminism in the sense that it “anticipates laughing itself out of a job” (Breaking 208).
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5. Cf. Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutionsand Paul Feyerabend’s Against Method for further explanation.
6. Lyotard vaguely observes that “it is reasonable to suppose that the proliferation of information-process machines is having, and will continue to have, as much of an effect on the circulation of learning as did advancements in human circulation (transportation systems) and alter, in the circulation of sounds and visual images (the media)” (4) at the outset of The Postmodern Condition. The vagueness in this statement suggests that Lyotard does not see technology negatively, but as a potential to provides ways of thinking systematically and non-systematically. That is, playing with these technologies can lead us to new ways of knowing (theoretical knowledge), doing (practical knowledge) and making (productive knowledge).
7. As we learn from Kenneth Burke in Permanence and Change, and Victor Vitanza in “Seeing in Third Sophistic Ways,” among others, a way of seeing is also a way of not seeing.
8. See Ulmer’s “The Object of Post-Criticism” for more on these techniques and how they relate to the current trends of art practices in composing otherwise.
9. See Ulmer’s Teletheory, pp. 64-104.
10. Galloway concludes by saying: “People often ask me if I think protocol is good or bad. But I’m not sure this is the best question to ask. It is important to remember first that the technical is always political, that network architecture is politics. So protocol necessarily involves a complex interrelation of political questions, some progressive, some reactionary. In many ways protocol is a dramatic move forward, but in other
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ways it reinstates systems of social and technical control that are deserving of critical analysis” (Protocol 245-46).
11. Bill Readings’ The University in Ruins effectively discusses and dismantles the criteria of excellence.
12. See Gilles Deleuze’s The Fold, pp. 22, 66, 158, and 181. He writes: “Unfolding sometimes means that I am developing – that I am undoing – infinite tiny folds that are forever agitating the background, with the goal of drawing a great fold on the side whence forms appear […] I am forever unfolding between two folds, and if to perceive means to unfold, then I am forever perceiving within the folds” (93).
13. The use of this term comes from Chris Ware’s The Acme Novelty Date Book, Volume One: “To create a fine line-up of brilliantly pro-duced and renderedmoving comic pictures ~ all by the original creators” (41).
14. Gregory Ulmer has worked to develop such a manner since as early as 1983 when his article “The Object of Post-Criticism” was released in Hal Foster’s Anti-Aesthetics. Ulmer then develops this method more fully in Teletheory and Heuretics, calling this additional logic “conduction.” However, the conductive reasoning that he describes is meant to deal directly with electronic (digital) media. Also, at the base of this term, as Ulmer writes, are “the features of the electronic terms (conduction and transduction)” (Teletheory 86). In trans-disciplinary and trans-medial fashion, I am using the term pro-duction as a way to address the gap that these ‘electronic terms’ exclude, specifically what Ulmer calls “a movement directly between things (unconscious thought), instead of “the established movements of inference between things and ideas (abduction, deduction, induction)” (Heuretics 127).
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15. See Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, pp. 229-230.
16. See Ulmer’s Applied Grammatology, pp. 78-79.
17. See also, Ulmer’s “The Object of Post-Criticism,” p. 86.
18. Jeff Rice explains that this sort of work is already under way in popular culture when he writes that such work has “occurred without ‘further study’” (Rhetoric of Cool 144).
19. As Ulmer notes in Applied Grammatology and in “The Object of Post-Criticism,” post- pedagogy supports the popularization of education already present in the digital technologies students use every day. The turn to the figural in composition studies is not an outright rejection of traditional forms of writing; instead, post-pedagogy aims to challenge the desire to fix meaning in order to explore what has been excluded.
20. Similarly, in the introduction to Kittler’s Discourse Networks 1800/1900, David Wellerby refers to a practice called “post-hermeneutics” in which the interpretive methods called hermeneutics are supplemented with additional readings that push interpretation to its limits until it becomes generative. As it applies in Ulmer’s work, post-hermeneutics petitions us to see readymade objects as conceptual starting places that spur abstract, theoretical thinking and approaches to research.
21. Also, these nomadic drifts share a kinship with Vitanza’s paganism in “Three Countertheses” – a process of continually finding new ways of understanding and making sense of the world around us.
22. Warren Ellis, speaking of jazz musician Anthony Braxton, writes that Braxton “makes up a name for every new ‘style’ he creates – even though his honking free-jazz almost-
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musical experiments are so dissonant, random and alien as to be almost indivisible from each other” (Do Anything 15).
23. See Cynthia Haynes’ “Writing Offshore,” p. 715. Such a “condensation” leads Haynes’ to write: “Writing in the abstract also suggests learning the rhetorical device of brevity and the rhetorical power of the aphorism” (715).
24. Calvino speaks of this as a time of inspiration that sparked his desire for literature, but also has deep relevance to rhetoric and composition. Perhaps such a method could bridge the gap between the between the cultures of literature and composition that Peter Elbow so effectively traces out in his opinion piece “The Cultures of Literature and Composition: What Could Each Learn from the Other.”
25. For more on Lyotard on Duchamp, see Lyotard’s Duchamp’s TRANS/formers. He (Lyotard) writes: “In what you say about Duchamp, the aim would be not to try to understand and to show what you’ve understood, but rather the opposite, to try not to understand and to show that you haven’t understood. No, not what you think, not a commentary on incomprehensibility in general or in particular, the seven hundred and twenty-eighth modern text on modernity as the experience of Nothing. No, to be good and conscientious and phrasey, to stick to the motif, to be technical if necessary, and at the same time to let the inconsistency of the commentary and its object be felt, by Yours Truly and Monsieur Marcel, and by the one with the other, but a conquered inconsistency, you see, not received in disappointment, not exhibited as a cardinal virtue of martyrdom, on the contrary, nonsense as the most precious treasure” (12).
26. Christopher Bracken also discusses similar concepts in Magical Criticism: The Recourse of Savage Philosophy as the convocation of “forbidden possibilities of discourse” (1).
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Chapter Two Endnotes
1. See Maus I and Maus II.
2. Hawk builds on Gregory Ulmer’s work in Heuretics, a term that he uses to describe an/ other logic of invention that “appropriates the history of the avant-garde as a liberal mode of research and experimentation” (xii) and addresses what has been excluded from “a review of the history of the arts [indicating] that the criticism that has been written and the art works that have been created are only a fraction of the kinds of things that could have been developed” (3). A postmodern writer/artist, in writing what will have been, address the fragments left excluded.
3. In inventing a method while inventing it, the criteria for developing such a method would be formulated after the fact.
4. This, of course, presents a paradox – in addressing its illegitimate position as a benefit, I could also be seen as attempting to legitimate comics in the service of institutions. However, as I will attempt to demonstrate, comics do not merely represent one form that needs be legitimated; rather, comics are in a position to explore a perpetual combination of media (both print and digital).
5. See David Wellerby’s introduction to Friedrich Kittler’s Discourse Networks 1800/1900.
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6. C ynthia Haynes currently has an article entitled “Post-Conflict Pedagogy,” slated to be published as a book chapter in Beyond Post-Process (eds. Sidney Dobrin, Jeff Rice, and Michael Vastola), that takes its task as destabilizing “the stabilizing momentum of any pedagogy that re-iterates conflict in the name of writing” (from the unpublished book proposal/abstract). What I see in a comics form is a way of enacting Haynes’ post- conflict pedagogywithin rhetoric’s and composition’s move toward new media and the figural.
7. Kenneth Burke explores the “paradox of substance” in Chapter 2 of A Grammar of Motives, titled “Antinomies of Definition,” explaining, “etymologically ‘substance’ is a scenic work. Literally, a person’s or a thing’s sub-stance would be something that stands beneath or supports the person or thing” (22).
8. “Context” also comes from Burke’s discussion of sub-stance whose origins etymologically “refer to an attribute of a thing’s context, since that which supposrts or underlies a thing would be a part of thing’s context. And a thing’s context, being outside or beyond the thing, would be something that the thing is not” (Grammar 23).
9. See also Gregory Ulmer’s “The Object of Post-Criticism and Applied Grammatology.
10. Trahair builds on Mary Lydon’s article “Veduta on Discours, figure” in Yale French Studies 99:
…discourse and figure are given together. Not sequentially, not in juxtaposition, but together at once, one on top of the other like two superimposed photographic images, or like the representations of the unconscious. This is a spatial relationship that language in its linearity does not permit, hence the imperative to write “Discours, figure,” where the comma […] represents graphically, but mutely,
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as a pause, a blank, a hesitation, one might say, that which cannot be verbalized. (24)
Earlier she (Trahair) also writes of Discours, figure, when Lyotard distinguished between vision and seeing, that it “is not possible to establish a relationship of simple epistemological exteriority between the text and the image” (20). Comics present a way of thinking about this relationship, and a way of thinking about how other hybrid media – I use cinema as a synecdoche for digital media in this dissertation – may be thought of in a similar manner.
11. See Gregory Ulmer’s “The Object of Post-Criticism,” p. 86.
12. Pun intended. :)
13. Barthes writes in “The Third Meaning” (where “meaning” is translated from the French sens, which means “meaning,” “sense,” “direction,” “tenor,” “wits,” among others) that the obtuse meaning indicates “a theory of the supplementary meaning” (55) and “what the obtuse meaning disturbs, sterilizes, is metalanguage (criticism)” (61); in doing so, it also disturbs attempts at mounting meta-narratives in favor of alternate directions spurring from sensation. Here we may find a link to Lyotard’sThe Postmodern Condition.
14. This phrasing of “fragmentary work” comes from Blanchot’s The Infinite Conversation. He writes that fragments are
problematic not because [they] refuse accomplishment, but because it explores with an inexorable rigor – beyond the conception of the work as something unified and closed upon itself, as organizing and dominating the values transmitted by
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a traditional already established and attained – the infinite space of the work, though with a new postulate: namely, that the relations of this space will not necessarily satisfy the concepts of unity, totality, or continuity. The problem the work of the fragment poses is a problem of extreme maturity: first of the artist, and also of society. (348)
If thought of in this way, the fragmentary writing that comics suggest would subvert Barthes’ claim that comics are “derisory, vulgar, foolish, dialogical forms of consumer subculture” (66n1), but rather, present a way of thinking and writing in their prime manifestations
15. See McCloud’s Understanding Comics and Eisner’s Comics and Sequential Art.
16. Groensteen only acknowledges McCloud’s work twice in The System of Comics, even while his (Groensteen) project has a great deal in common with McCloud’s earlier analysis. Yet, McCloud appears to be a bit more flexible with his view of comics than Groensteen’s system allows for.
17. In part, this conceptualization of montage appears a bit narrow. A more productive view of montage comes to use from Walter Benjamin in “The Author as Producer: “I am speaking of the process of montage: the element which is superimposed breaks into the situation on which it is imposed” (Reflections 234). Gregory Ulmer also discusses such a process in “The Object of Post-Criticism” that moves beyond critique into a productive process of in(ter)vention.
18. In the second endnote, Hawk explains that he uses “’hir’ to denote a conflation between her and his. Aside from the practical reasons, it is also emblematic of the gender problematic I see in The Fifth Element” (89).
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19. Umberto Eco echoes a similar manner in “A Reading of Steve Canyon,” offering an active means of reading/visualizing comics as a collaborative moment of creation with and apart from the writer/artist. Eco describes an experiment at the end of this article that finds readings had inserted images that were not present in the original sequence – creating an alternate narrative.
20. In Vitanza’s terms, this would be “a Rhetoric that not only is without the philosophical pretensions of adjudicating ‘philosophical knowledge claims’ but also (and more importantly) is without the philosophical-Rhetorical pretensions of adjudicating ‘hermeneutical understandings.’ It is, in other words, not concerned either with attempting to resolve rhetorical, interpretive differences or with even accounting for them. Instead, it identifies, detonates, and exploits the differences” (“Critical Sub/ Versions” 42).
21. Italo Calvino on da Vinci: “And not just in science but also in philosophy, he was confident he could communicate better by means of painting and drawing. Still he also felt an incessant need to write, to use writing to investigate the world in all its polymorphous manifestations and secrets, and also to give shape to his fantasies, emotions, and rancors – as when he inveighs against men of letters, who were able only to repeat what they had read in the books of others, unlike those who were among ‘inventors and interpreters between nature and men’” (Six Memos 79).
22. See Ulmer’s “The Object of Post-Criticism” in which he looks to move beyond critique toward production. Post-criticism, then, would be “to think the consequences for critical representation of the new mechanical means of reproduction (film and magnetic tape – technologies which require collage/montage)” (91).
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23. See Diane Davis’ Breaking Up [at] Totality: A Rhetoric of Laughter.
24. In The Coming Community, Giorgio Agamben writes of the term whatever: “Whatever is the figure of pure singularity. Whatever has no identity, it is not determinate with respect to a concept, but neither is it simply indeterminate; rather it is determined only through its relation to an idea, that is, to the totality of its possibilities” (67), and that “Whatever is singularity insofar as it relates not (only) to the concept, but (also) to the idea” (76). Here, “whatever singularity” is that which has an “inessential commonality, a solidarity that in no way concerns an essence” (17-18). It should also be noted that his understanding of “whatever” does not indicate indifference, but is etymologically based on the Latin translation of “being such that it always matters” (1) – which is precisely what Kaprow looks for in unart.
25. Calvino: “In the cinema the image we see on the screen has also passed through the stage of a written text, has then been ‘visualized’ in the mind of the director, then physically reconstructed on the set, and finally fixed in the frames of the film itself. A film is therefore the outcome of a succession of phases, both material and otherwise, in the course of which the images acquire form. During this process, the ‘mental cinema’ of the imagination has a function no less important than that of the actual creation of the sequences as they will be recorded by the camera and then put together on the moviola. This mental cinema is always at work in each one of us, and it always has been, even before the invention of the cinema. Nor does it ever stop projecting images before our mind’s eye” (Six Memos 83).
26. This concept correlates to Cynthia Haynes’ desire for writing instruction to move away from ‘argument’ and toward more nomadic and inventive approaches in “Writing Offshore.”
27. See Agamben’s The Coming Community, p. 1.
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Chapter Three Endnotes
1. The title is a reference to Jean-Luc Nancy’s “Myth Interrupted” in The Inoperative Community.
2. The phrase “dream-work” comes from Lyotard’s article “The Dream-Work Does Not Think” where he writes that the dream-work “does not think, calculate, or judge in any way at all; it restricts itself to giving things a new form” (Reader 20). Surrealism works with such logics and ‘restrictions.’
3. As a Frankenstein reference, this subtitle is very appropriate considering that the project is a mish-mash of parts from a variety of ‘comics artists.’
4. I work with Spiegelman’s work again, primarily because he has been (consistently recognized as) one of the leading avant-gardists working within comics.
5. See Gregory Ulmer’s Heuretics, p. 5.
6. Compare with Kenneth Burke’s “Unending Conversation” in The Philosophy of Literary Form 110-111.
7. Here, I use the word “gesture” as Giorgio Agamben does in Means Without Ends: “The gesture is the exhibition of a mediality: it is the process of making a means
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visible as such” (58). Spiegelman even addresses this in the introductory remarks when he acknowledges that the surrealist exercise was not very effective as a work in itself, but it worked well as an exercise in thinking about the process of making and experimenting with comics.
8. See James Elkins’ Why Art Cannot be Taught and What Happened to Art Criticism.
9. See Derrida’s The Archeology of the Frivolous, p. 76.
10. This is also a key trajectory of Ulmer’s “Electracy” project. Jeff Rice and Marcel O’Gorman concisely explain the use of avant-garde art methods in new media practices in the “Introduction” to New Media/New Methods: The Academic Turn from Literacy to Electracy as “…about making methods and not art (as Greg Ulmer reminds his students on a regular basis)” since “avant-garde artists serve as ideal exemplars in the invention of new modes of discourse” (9).
11. Boyd’s article is the only article that explores the importance of TNC for comics, at least that I could find. Also, to clarify his use of the word “pattern,” he writes: “If all art plays with pattern, the best art plays best with pattern” (“Art and Evolution” 47).
12. See Ulmer, Heuretics, p. 228: “Chorography continues the speculative circulation of meaning through equivocal words but introduces a different style of linkage (hence a different ‘method’)—one that is ‘punceptual’ rather than conceptual—in which conduction (passing from thing to thing in the real, ‘external’ to my conscious reasoning) reorganizes abduction, deduction, and induction.”
13. In Ulmer’s “method” CATTt, he defines the “t” (target) as “the immediate domain of application” in which “Breton also intended to change the status of art itself, constituting it as
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a practice of daily life better characterized as ‘politics’ than ‘art’ (Heuretics 11). While Ulmer seems to be interested in ‘methods’ of how we may think of media processes, the methods I work with here have already been put into practice.
14. For more on Puns, see Jonathan Culler’s edited collection On Puns: The Foundation of Letters. For a specific reference to my thinking on the pun as an interruption, see R. A. Shoaf’s article “The Play of Puns in Late Middle English Poetry: Concerning Juxtology” in Culler’s collection.
15. This phrasing comes from Lyotard’s The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, but it is also a common phrase throughout his writings. Rather than quote a specific instance, I felt it more appropriate to paraphrase with references to his work on language games – hence, phrases.
16. See Readings’ The University in Ruins, p. 161.
17. See John Caputo’s More Radical Hermeneutics, p. 55.
18. For a most extensive discussion of sense and nonsense, see Gilles Deleuze’s The Logic of Sense.
19. See Diane Davis’ “Addressing Alterity” for a fuller discussion on this ‘impossibility.’
20. Thomas Kent’s phrase, hermeneutical terror, appears in his 1992 article entitled “Hermeneutical Terror and the Myth of Interpretive Consensus” in Philosophy and Rhetoric 25.2. Kent defines the phrase as “the silencing of voices with discourse communities through an appeal to interpretive consensus” (135). While argumentation does not necessarily require that ‘silencing of voices,’ many attempts to argue for a specific
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point of view is done with creating a consensus – and we have seen the dangers of such interpretive consensuses with World War II and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.
21. See Lyotard’s Libidinal Economy, p. 19.
22. This sentence is a patchwork consisting of Blanchot and Lyotard. Blanchot writes: “Communication—to employ this dubious word—is communication with the unknown. But communicating with the unknown requires plurality” (Infinite409). And Lyotard writes in “Tomb of the Intellectual” about “the responsibility of artists, writers, or philosophers”: “Their addressee is not the public and, I would say, is not even the ‘community’ of artists, writers, and so forth. To tell the truth, they do not know who their addressee is, and this is what it is to be an artist, writer, and so forth: to throw a ‘message’ out into the void” (Political 4).
23. In relation to ‘cartoons and comic strips,’ Barthes explains that the relay advances “the action by setting out, in the sequence of message, meanings that are not to be found in the image itself” (Image 41).
24. See The Arcades Projects where Benjamin collects fragments of writings and observations while wandering about Paris.
25. Estrangement, as an interruption, Blanchot explains as a commitment “to unfolding in various modes of experience” (Blanchot, Infinite128).
26. In Ulmer’s forthcoming book Avatar Emergency, he writes of “flash reason,” a concept intimately connected to Breton’s “incandescent flashes.” As Ulmer writes, flash reason is “a practice for deliberative reason, for public policy formation, making democratically
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informed decisions in a moment, at light speed” (3). The role of comics, as a stranger sort of surrealism, takes on the role of such a practice.
27. For more on this aspect of Surrealism, see David Cunningham’s “The Futures of Surrealism: Hegelianism, Romanticism, and the Avant-Garde,” where he writes of Blanchot’s view of Surrealism: “As such, surrealism, in its most radical manifestation as a temporal modality of experience, calls forth neither an immanent end nor a utopianist projection, but an ‘exigency’ that comes from the ‘unexpected’ itself. The future as ‘unknown,’ ‘ever exterior to the horizon against which it seems to stand out’” (58).
28. This sentence parallels a paragraph in Jean-Luc Nancy’s discussion of interrupted myths. He writes: “The gift or the right to speak (and to speak of gifts and rights) is no longer the same gift or the same right, and it is perhaps no longer either a gift or a right. No more is the mythic legitimacy that myth conferred upon its own narrator. Writing is seen rather as illegitimate, never authorized, risked, exposed to the limit. But this is not a complacent anarchy. For it is in this way that writing obeys the law—the law of community” (Inoperative 70).
29. De Duve offers an indication for why this is the case in Kant After Duchamp: “…art is not the order of seeing and knowing but rather of that of judging, not the order of the descriptive but of the prescriptive. Misinterpreted conditionally and immanently, the modern imperative prescribed: do whatever in art, but do it in art only” (347).
30. For more on this claim, see de Duve’s Kant After Duchamp, where he writes that creativity “also abandons the thing to its absolute impossibility of being determined as underdetermined, that is, to its impossibility of conforming to the law of the necessity of a universal whatever. And it’s precisely thanks to this abandonment that the readymade—and not the readymades—conforms to the universal of this impossibility” (358-59).
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31. Later in The Infinite Conversation, Blanchot writes that ‘the work of unworking’ is “a practice of life and of writing in which we thought we recognized one of the characteristic traits of the surrealist project” (417).
32. In Blanchot’s discussion of “interruption,” he summarizes his thinking similarly: Let us go no further and summarize. We have, first of all, two important distinctions: one corresponding to a dialectical, the other to a non-dialectical exigency of speech: the pause permits exchange, the wait that measures infinite distance. But in waiting it is not simply the delicate rupture preparing the poetic act that declares itself, but also, and at the same time, other forms of arrest that are very profound, very perverse, more and more perverse, and always such that if one distinguishes them, the distinction does not avert but rather postulates ambiguity. We have “distinguished” in this way three of them: one wherein emptiness becomes work; another where in emptiness is fatigue, affliction; and the other, the ultimate, the hyperbolic, wherein worklessness (perhaps thought) indicates itself. To interrupt oneself for the sake of understanding. To understand in order to speak. Speaking, finally, only to interrupt oneself and to render possible the impossible interruption. (Infinite79) This impossible interruption would also be the interruption of art by unartists (or ‘comics artist’).
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Chapter Four Endnotes
1. Unlike Lloyd Bitzer’s article title “The Rhetorical Situation,” the focus of this Stranger’s does not deal with a question (cf. Bitzer, “Rhetorical Situation” 5-6), nor does he suggest that an answer is possible. Rather, he merely wants to discover the available means of being in the world, of living, and therefore, of writing with significance.
2. Later in his discussion of “perspective by incongruity,” Burke also refers to this method as a “planned incongruity” (Attitudes 309).
3. Here, I use the term civic discourse to mean an engagement in what Aristotle called deliberative rhetoric: “The important subjects on which people deliberate and on which deliberative orators give advice in public are mostly five in number, and these are finances, war and peace, national defense, imports and exports, and the framing of laws” (Rhetoric 53). The role of the un/artist in civic discourse is to present artifacts that inform these deliberations, often indirectly. Additionally, it would also be necessary for these deliberators to engage in Burke’s “perspective by incongruity” methodology to link these artifacts to the topics being deliberated.
4. Here we could also continue with a discussion of pirates and the ways in which they work outside of the law to enact some change in social, cultural, and political
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proceedings that ignore their interests and input. Perhaps we could learn to un/ compose ourselves via Captain Jack Sparrow of the Black Pearl (cf. the Pirates of the Caribbean movies). Also, in Permanence and Change, Burke discusses the Nietzschean theories of decadence and eternal recurrence as devices for working outside the law, which he claims offers opportunities for “uniting under one head movements which were generally considered in complete isolation from one another” (89).
5. This phrasing, in part, comes from Bad Religion’s song, “Stranger than Fiction,” from the album Stranger Than Fiction.
6. Parts of this phrasing are reminiscent of Lyotard’s “Anamnesis of the Visible” (108).
7. Lyotard makes a similar comment when discussing ‘landscape arts’ in “Scapeland”: “…the estrangement that landscape procures does not result from the transfer of a sensorial organization into another sensorium, such as the transfer of the fragrance of scents into the flagrance of colours or into the light of timbres. This estrangement is absolute; it is the implosion of forms themselves, and forms are mind” (Inhuman 189).
8. If it is not clear yet, I am using Allan Kaprow’s term un-artist from here on out as a reference to ‘comics artist’ since both share the common trait of leaving Art in favor of doing something more interesting (without the constraints of art-istic forms or conventions).
9. In the second chapter (“Figuration”) of Inessential Solidarity, Davis includes a sub- section called “To Speak or to Kill” where she explicates this in more detail.
10. A kill switch, in current technological cultures, refers to a system put in place to shut down an unwanted response (communication—usually between software and
189 Chapter 4 Endnotes
hardware) that cannot be stopped in the normal manner. Kill switches usually shut down communication at all costs.
11. For more on this, see Burke’s Language as Symbolic Action, pp. 16-20.
12. I use play rather than work purposefully here.
13. This phrasing comes from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Administration’s (1980- 1988) economic policy of “trickle-down economics,” a concept that proposed a standard tax for all US citizens. Like this economic policy, persuasion provides those with the resources more opportunities for success than those without the resources.
14. Here, I use demand as a verb meaning to require some action in order to function effectively.
15. Gregory Ulmer discusses these logics in terms of linking and play throughout his work, particularly in Heuretics, Teletheory, and Internet Invention.
16. Blanchot makes this claim in reference to the plastic arts, but my claim is that it is also applicable to the un/artist imaginative play and the digital event.
17. For more on silence, and an explication of rhetorics of silence, see Cheryl Glenn’s Unspoken: A Rhetoric of Silence.
18. This sentence refers to the Bill Readings quote in the introduction (chapter 4 description): Thought as an in(ter)vention that does “not resolve arguments; it does not provide a metalanguage that can translate all other idioms into its own so that their dispute can be settled, their claims arranged and evaluated on a homogenous
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scale”; rather, comics would throw “those who participate in pedagogy back into a reflection upon the ungroundedness of their situation: their obligation to each other and to a name that hails them as addressees, before they can think about it” (Readings, University 161).
19. In part, this phrasing comes from Nietzsche’s famous aphorism: “If you stare into the abyss long enough, the abyss stares back at you” (Beyond Good 89).
20. Blanchot writes that writers who play the strange game of literary language do not
…have the right to escape the consequences. Whoever has killed out of passion cannot alter the passion by invoking it as an excuse. Whoever comes up against, when writing, a truth that writing could not address is perhaps irresponsible, but must answer all the more for this irresponsibility; he must answer for it without calling it into question, without betraying it—that is the very secret about himself: the innocence that saves him is not his own; it is that of the place he occupies, and occupies by mistake, and with which he does not coincide” (Book to Come 28).
The digital is one of the places that un/artists occupy, and they do not coincide with it, which is why they write with all the means and media available to them: to discover this new game of literary language.
21. McLuhan makes this claim in reference to a tetrad form of the laws of media as he sees them. However, the artifacts we have seen composed in the early 21st century do not always adhere to these laws.
22. Recall my discussion of the un/artists in chapter 3—the connection to McLuhan’s electronic man should be clear.
191 Chapter 4 Endnotes
23. Blanchot makes a similar claim about the work of the writer in relation to the book to come: “The work demands much more: that one not worry about it, that one not seek it out as a goal, that one have with it the most profound relationship of carelessness and neglect” (Book to Come 30). Also, the term ambivalence here is being used in the sense of ‘uncertainty’ and a mixture of ‘perspectives’ that have not yet been untangled.
24. Franny Howes sees this potential in comics when she explores a “multiplicity of visual rhetorical traditions,” claiming that such a theory offers ways of composing “across genre and form” that explores relationships “in a similar location, or within a similar culture or discourse community” (“Imagining a Multiplicity…”).
25. This addresse the problem that Jeff Rice sees for digital writing: “…the problem of digital writing is how to write visually in a complex but seamless fashion” (138).
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Chapter Five Endnotes
1. Lyotard has a major influence on this chapter, and the framework for this chapter comes from his article “Domus and the Megalopolis” where he writes: “It is impossible to think or write without some façade of a house at least rising up, a phantom, to receive and to make a work of our peregrinations. Lost behind our thoughts, the domus is also a mirage in front, the impossible dwelling” (198). The one who writes in this illusion of a domus still rising is a (traitorous) stranger aware of the impossibility of completing this dwelling (references to Heidegger should not be lost here).
2. In “Book 5” of The Gay Science, Nietzsche has a similar view of the importance of ‘picking the stick up from the other end’ (to use a Vitanzian phrase) of what is generally accepted as “good”: “Even genius does not compensate for such a deficiency, however much it may deceive people about it. This becomes clear to anyone who has ever watched our most gifted painters and musicians from nearby. All of them, with scarcely any exception, know how to use cunning inventions of manners, of makeshift devices, and even of principles to give themselves after the event an artificial semblance of such probity, of such solidity of training and culture—without, of course, managing to deceive themselves, without silencing their own bad conscious. For you surely know that all great modern artists suffer from a guilty conscience” (323-24).
3. This is a reference to the USA PATRIOT Act—which stands for “Uniting and Strengthening American by Providing the Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept
193 Chapter 5 Endnotes
and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001”—passed in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. One of the most important parts of this act, if you’ve read through it, is that it introduced “electronic communication” into the United States’ surveillance laws. We’ve all heard the criticisms—which are, at times, driven by paranoia—but it’s an important part of the ‘legality’ of composing within digital environments. Blanchot definespatriotism as “the most prodigious power of integration, being that which, in the intimacy of thought, in everyday practice, in political movement, is at work to reconcile everything—works, men, classes—to prevent all class struggle, to found unity in the name of values that particularize (national particularism promoted as universal), and to set aside the necessary division of an infinite destruction” (Political 92)—World War II offers us one example of such a power that desired to reconcile everything.
4. This sublime work of the imagination seems akin to Sigmund Freud’s dream-work, and Lyotard’s further development of this concept throughout his works, particularly in The Libidinal Economy and “The Dream-Work Does Not Think” (which can be found in The Lyotard Reader, edited by Andrew E. Benjamin).
5. For a further explanation of this concept, see Gerald L. Bruns’ book, Maurice Blanchot: The Refusal of Philosophy, pp. 138-39.
6. Matthew Kirshenbaum situates digital humanities similarly in the context of scholarship: “Whatever else it might be then, the digital humanities today is about a scholarship (and a pedagogy) that is publicly visible in ways to which we are generally unaccustomed, a scholarship and pedagogy that are bound up with infrastructure in ways that are deeper and more explicit than we are generally accustomed to, a scholarship and pedagogy that are collaborative and depend on networks of people and
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that live an active 24/7 life online” (“What is Digital Humanities…” 6).
7. This is a double reference to the Council of Writing Program Administrators and the political bodies that set policy for education, knowledge, and domestic and international relations.
8. This is a reference to Nietzsche’s call for “another kind of art” that relies on the ability to forget, to forget the past, to forget the world.
9. This is a reference to Roland Barthes’ Writing Degree Zero, which he offers us as “no more than an Introduction to what a History of Writing might be” (6).
10. This is an extension of Lyotard’s description of the postmodern in The Postmodern Condition cited/referenced earlier.
11. Dilger explains these concepts: “With comfort, the first widespread concept of ease relied on two other qualities: effortlessness, the reduction or elimination of physical labor and intensive activity; and perhaps the most important, transparency, or freedom from concern with complications or unnecessary attention to details and procedures” (“Ease and Electracy” 110).
12. Nietzsche notes in 1875: “To make the individual uncomfortable, that is my task” (Portable 50).
13. While not a direct reference, Cynthia Haynes speaks of a similar approach to Writing Center pedagogy in “’Hanging Your Alias on Their Scene’: Writing Centers, Graffiti, and Style.” As she writes: “graffiti serves as a sign for expressing anger without violence in assigned writing” (120). This, I think, is what composition/rhetoric should
195 Chapter 5 Endnotes
aspire to in the digital age, writing on the networked walls.
14. Bruno Latour echoes a similar point in the first plank in his composition manifesto: “In a first meaning, compositionism could stand as an alternative tocritique […]. With critique, you may debunk, reveal, unveil, but only as long as you establish, through this process of creative destruction, a privileged access to the world of reality beyond the veils of appearances. Critique, in other words, has all the limits of utopia: it relies on the certainty of the world beyond this world. By contrast, for compositionism, there is no world of beyond. It is all about immanence” (“An Attempt…” 475).
15. The concept of whatever, as stated earlier, comes from Giorgio Agamben’s The Coming Community.
16. As stated in chapter 1, this way of composing, in Agamben’s view, is one that communicates “online the empty space of the example, without being tied to any common property, by any identity” (Coming 11).
17. Etymologically, traitor stems from the Latin traditorem, literally meaning “one who delivers.”
18. Jean Baudrillard uses this phrasing when explicating the etymology of the term aphorism (as an aphorism): “‘Aphorizein’ (from which we get the word ‘aphorism’) means to retreat to such a distance that a horizon of thought is formed which never again closes on itself” (Cool Memories V 31).
19. This is not to say the end of literature, but of another kind of literature resonating with Katherine Hayles’ Electronic Literature, and beyond. Barthes also comments on what may occur beyond Literature: “It is at this moment that the modes of writing
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begin to multiply. Each one, henceforth, be it the highly wrought, populist, neutral or colloquial, sets itself up as the initial act whereby the writer acknowledges or repudiates his bourgeois condition. Each one is an attempt to find a solution to this Orphean problematics of modern Form: writers without Literature” (Writing Degree Zero 61).
20. This is a direct reference to Twitter, a social networking platform that works with the Short Message System (SMS) for mobile technologies. While SMS limits messages to 160 characters, Twitter shortened this limit to 140 so that “usernames” would be able to be included before the message. Also, a “character” in a digital environment would be the smallest “read-able” mark, not necessarily an alphabetic letter.
21. This term comes from McCloud’s Understanding Comics, but Hillary Chute’s description of gutters is more helpful in this context: “…gutters, the rich empty spaces between the selected moments that direct our interpretation” (“History and Graphic…” 342).
22. In The Two Virtuals, Alexander Reid explains how this is possible with the advent of new media pedagogy: “New media pedagogy, because it still remains largely uncharted and undisciplined, offers a number of such experimental opportunities. […] though the means for teaching new media, and the particular contents of such courses, remain fairly open, such courses quickly become a site for re-enacting some of the oldest concerns in rhetorical instruction, particularly this concern that courses in new media sacrifice humanistic content in the name of career preparation. This concern is essentially a reincarnation of a debate between rhetoric as a set of skills and rhetoric/ philosophy as a mode of intellectual investigation that goes back to Plato’s arguments against rhetoric in Gorgias and Phaedrus” (170-71).
197 Chapter 5 Endnotes
23. At the end of the preface to On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche writes that the aphorism “is necessary above all to practice reading as an art in this way, something that has been unlearned most thoroughly nowadays—and therefore it will be some time before my writings are ‘readable’—something for which one has almost to be a cow and in any case not a ‘modern man’: rumination” (23).
24. The ‘trace’ that Agamben refers to here is a reference to Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology: “The trace is not only the disappearance of origin—within the discourse that we sustain and according to the path that we follow it means that the origin did not disappear, that it was never constituted except reciprocally by a nonorigin, the trace, which thus becomes the origin of the trace. From then on, to wrench the concept of the trace from the classical scheme, which would derive it from a presence or from an originary nontrace and which would make of it an empirical mark, one must indeed speak of an originary trace. […] The (pure) trace is differance. It does not depend on any sensible plentitude, audible or visible, phonic or graphic. It is, on the contrary, the condition of such a plentitude.” (61-62). A character, in this sense, would be such an originary empirical mark for the condition of potentialities.
25. “The (committed) writer,” for Blanchot, saves “the place of the one who will come, to preserve absence from all usurpation” (Political 118).
26. Courtesy of @l_I__I_l (renamed).
27. Courtesy of @tw1tt3rart (renamed). Unless otherwise noted, these designs can be found on the individual artists’ pages on www.twitter.com.
28. Courtesy of @MargaR1da (renamed).
198 Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics
29. Courtesy of @mightymegadon.
30. Courtesy of @TwitComicStrip.
31. Courtesy of @KatCutler. Very e.e. cummings, don’t you think?
32. Courtesy of @VisuellePoesie (renamed).
33. Courtesy of @hg47 (renamed).
34. Courtesy of @aggregart.
35. Courtesy of @followingfuture (renamed).
36. Courtesy of @aggregart (renamed, with a reference to Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols, or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer).
37. Courtesy of @paintedtweets (renamed).
38. Courtesy of @140artist (renamed).
39. Courtesy of @hg47.
40. Courtesy of @MargaR1da.
41. Courtesy of @riv7art (renamed).
199 Works Cited Un/Composing (Visual) Rhetorics
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