Points of Praxis

My Blog Reflects on Visual Rhetorical Theory and Disability Rhetoric and their Connections to Classical and Contemporary Rhetorical Theory

I was looking around Dr. Grigar's motime and Nouspace this morning and came across a reponse posted in motime by Dr. Grigar to the students of a previous e-lit class.  It seems students were discussing their dislike of poetry to which Dr. Grigar responded by posting a list of reasons why she disagrees with their sentiment.  I found this list to be very interesting in light of my "readings" this week of Stephanie Strickland's, Deena Larsen's, and Jennifer Ley's works.  Two points she made that were of particular interest to me were that 1) poetry is the first literary genre and forms the basis of all other genres in Western Literature and 2) poetry is an activity of the body, mind and spirit. 

In regard to her first point, Dr. Grigar explains that by understanding poetry, we can understand all other forms of literature--since all other genres were derived from some type of poetic expression.  I find this point particularly interesting in light of the current literary genres we're studying in e-lit.  Specifically, looking at Deena Larsen's "Spiritual Comfort," I understand how to read the work based on my experiences with other literary pieces.  I recognize it, initially, as a poem because of the short lines of text, despite their position on the page, and I know that words will reflect much more elaborate ideas.  I understand this work because of my experiences with other pieces of poetry (albeit they were much more conventional).  However, Larsen's work takes those genre expectations and uses the medium to subvert its delivery.  In other words, readers can't read the poem like they would one printed in a book.  Individual lines and words are presented horizonally and vertically, with no apparent order or direction. 

Whereas we would naturally expect to read the lines from left-to-right, that is not the case in this work.  Lines run horizonally, vertically, and diagonally.  They intersect with each other and some are presented separately from the others.  That is not even mentioning the fact that each word or line represents a hyperlink that projects new texts onto the page.  It seems that this work forces the readers out of their comfort zones because they must look at the work first as a piece of text--orientate themselves with it and figure out how to navigate through the page--before they can "read" the work as a literary text.  And, to be honest, I'm going to have to go back to it several more times before I can really get a sense of what the poem is "about."  However, it is because of my experiences with traditional works of poetry that I understand how to interpret this "new" genre or subgenre of poetry.

Dr. Grigar also noted that poetry is an activity of the body, mind, and spirit.  While those poets, like T.S. Eliot, John Barryman, and William Wordsworth, those considered to publish in more "conventional" means, would agree with this statement, it seems that statement is also supported by examining Ley's work, for example.   Ley's "The Amniotic Meander" and "Catch the Landmine!!" seem to infuse the texts of the work with a passion that only a social commentary could.  For instance, in "Catch the Landmine!!" Ley uses the commonly-seen Pop-Up ad in which users, for example, are asked to "catch" the dancing monkey.  However, Ley changes the monkey to a landmine and when viewers fail, they are linked to pages that comment sarcastically on the users' new prothetic limbs.  Ley uses contemporary experiences with hypertext to present (almost subversively) her message on the inhumanity of landmines.  I say "almost subversively" because readers are probably accustomed to the pop-up ads that the cartoonish landmines seem both fitting but in poor-taste.  Perhaps, that is just as much the social commentary as the use of landmines are:  that we're living in a time when "hitting the landmine" is hardly irreverent or shocking at first glance.  Ley infuses her work with contemporary references and makes it thought-provoking.  Her passion is, thus, reflected in the piece.

Deena Larsen, "Spirtual Comfort," http://www.pifmagazine.com/vol32/hypertext/index.html

Jennifer Ley, "The Amniotic Meander" http://www.heelstone.com/amniotic/first.html

Jennifer Ley, "Catch the Landmine" http://www.heelstone.com/amniotic/first.html

Stephanie Strickland, "The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot," http://www.wordcircuits.com/gallery/sandsoot/frame.html

posted by: rgregory at 17:41 | link | comments (4) |

I suppose the "bloom has worn off the rose," so to speak, because my two-week introduction to e-lit is tripping me out.  It just seems so difficult to wrap my brain around the concept of new media like video games and interactive fiction as "literature."  Not to say that I don't think there aren't some interesting arguments for its inclusion as literature.  It's just unlike anything I've ever read or thought much about before. 

What I suppose makes the most sense to me is our class discussion on the "text" of a Gothic church.  I'm thinking here of how everything from the rituals of the candles and prayers to the glass windows constitute "texts."  (Or, one large text into which those parts make up the text.)   Because, what I'm really thinking here is of the "performance" of the church space: Gothic churches make up "spaces" for the performances much like digital spaces offer places for performance, which are considered new media.  Camille Utterback describes how texts are reconsidered as objects that occupy spaces in her essay "Unusual Positions."  And while some might say, of course, texts are physical (i.e., the printed word), what she seems to be talking about here are "texts" as part of the Sign (as in Saussurian model of the signified/signifier).  This reflected in her discussion of the Interactive Poetic Garden or the _Text Rain_ simulation.  Specifically, in the _Text Rain_ simulation, "viewers see a mirrored black-and-white video of themselves on a large projection screen.  Colored letters in the projection fall down on them from above, like rain or snow" (221).  The text in this case is digital, thus, illustrating how, for Utterback, "the symbolic world of text or language attains presence in the physical world and engagement with viewer's bodies via unusual forms of interface" (225).

Likewise, "texts" are no longer singular, if you will, like printed documents or spoken words.  Text in this case is performance.  Which, if you think about it makes sense.  Texts are what humans use to construct meaning.  Performances construct meaning.  Texts are performance.  (Ahhh.  That was my lightbulb moment, in case you missed it.  In a truly Aristotlian-model, invention and rhetoric are always linked for me.  As are enthymeme and invention.)

Perhaps, the reason this connection was so difficult for me to come to is because thinking about text as performance requires the signified of "text" to be reconsidered.   Funny how I am constructing and reconstructing my own meanings in regard to jelly sandwiches and Jon Stewart, but something like this, text as performance, is so difficult for me and others to come to (if the contstant justification in the essays from _First Person_ is any indication of the resistance).  But, perhaps this is best saved for another day... 

Utterback, Camille.  "Unusal Positions--Embodied Interaction with Symbolic Spaces."  _First Person:  New Media as Story, Performance, and Game_.  2004.  218-26.

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posted by: rgregory at 03:57 | link | comments (3) |

Since this is the beginning of my semester-long orientation with Electronic Literature, I'm going to start my blog by discussing the relevance of Electronic Literature, particularly for a student of Rhetoric.  Of course, as the semester goes on, I hope to be able to add to this discussion as well as explore E-Lit from a genre-based perspective, since that is one of my areas of interest.  But for the time being, I think a broad examination as to "why?" is a good a place to start as any.

And, I have to admit, this is all completely new to me.  But, I am very excited--for reasons that really have little to do with studying this emerging genre.  I have always been an "English major."  I was reading and writing my own stories for as long as I can remember.  So, English studies were not terribly difficult for me in high school, college, and graduate school.  I suppose, looking at my own experiences from a genre-based perspective, I'm very good at intuitively understanding how to write academic papers; after all, if I have trouble with an assignment, usually the first thing I do is go and find a sample to read. 

However, the "man" I'm seeing currently is also an English major finishing his M.A., but he is not now nor ever really was the "typical" English major.  Writing academic prose is very difficult for him, and he always felt left out of the departments.  He preferred to read comic books to Chaucer, play Final Fantasy to reading Hemingway, and although he can pick out plots and subplots in Japanese anime, he struggled to find the comma splices in his own papers.  He was the shoe that just didn't fit.  But, after my first class, I called him immediately.  He wasn't a "bad" English major, he was in the wrong program. 

As I see it, Electronic Literature is embracing, creative, and cutting-edge. 

Electronic Literature, as I am just coming to understand it, seems to be "occupying a space" that is both visual and rhetorical in ways that have never been imagined.  Specifically, E-Lit seems to operate in a semiotic theoretical framework that also might be considered "visual literature" since it illustrates "the narrative capacity of the visual" (Blair 51).    Looking more specifically at E-Lit from a semiotic theory, I am thinking here of Gunther Kress' discussions on language practices--the emphasis on the syntagmatic relationship of signs to each other.  As Daniel Chandler explains, "Thinking and communication depends on discourse rather than isolated signs" (84).  Therefore, if discourse is operating like dominos, then discourse is often quite narrative in nature.  However, there are other syntagmatic forms "based on spatial relationships [...] and on conceptual relationships" (84). 

It seems so obvious to me that E-Lit applies these relationships.  Video games, for instance, are both visual and discursive.  Video games are visual narratives:  besides the images on the screen, they rely on spatial and conceptual relationships, just like any discourse or literature would. 

And, I'm so excited about this new "genre," if that is even an appropriate word for it.  Studies in Electronic Literature seem to open up the discipline so much more than anything I can imagine.  It seems almost democratic.  After all, if "Literature" means those works by the Shakespeares, Chaucers, and Hemingways, then most people do not study literature.  Many in our population are left out of the "Ivory Tower" of academic studies because they can't relate, they don't understand, or they simply don't like those texts deemed important.  And, just like my "man" who always felt excluded from his traditional English department, studies in E-Lit might welcome new students--disenfranchised students--who have been interested in and working with semiotics and visual rhetoric for decades, although they may not have ever known it.

Chandler, Daniel.  The Basics:  Semiotics.  New York:  Routledge.  2002.

Blair, J. Anthony.  "The Rhetoric of Visual Arguments."  Defining Visual Rhetorics.  Charles A. Hill and Marguerite Helmers, eds.  Mahwah, NJ:  Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers.  2004.

posted by: rgregory at 17:25 | link | comments (5) |

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