Novel Experience & Expression » CATTt

Resonance Assemblage

Gary Hink — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:15:51 +0000

M 07-Dec Due: Final Project — “Resonance Assemblage” (checkpoint)

Workshop / “Studio” class

“Stage 1″ Checkpoint instructions here.

W 09-Dec (no class)

Due: Final Project — (9pm finalized / online)

Overall guidelines here

[See post to watch Flash video]

“Stage 1″ Project Checkpoint due M 07-Dec (class time) — required

Note: must be online, “in progress,” by class time to avoid penalty
(late / point deduction from final project).

Content: 6-8 entries (”posts”) minimum (of 16-20 total).
— reminder: entries are fragments (100-200 words); see below for more.

“Research” is complete; definite/revised topic/issue; sources and “materials” selected.

List sources on “Materials” page:

Literary: 2 from Part II novels; (4 req’d total)*
Scholarly: 1 min. from research; (2 required total)
Culture: 2 min. (distinct from “Literary” sources; 4 min. total)
Multimedia: 2 min. (10 total, including 1 non-image e.g. video, audio, animation, etc.)

— * Note: any material from a novel is sufficient: quote, phrase, description, figure/image, character, setting, references/allusions, style/”voice” (?), narration technique (?)….

— Prospective materials: list any sources not used yet but anticipate including in entries; also might list any items seeking but not found thus far.

——–

Layout : Blog reformatted (see instructions below — click here).

Static home page created.

“Entries” page created.

Required Pages created (see below; content incomplete)

New title (creative / applicable, re: “critical expressionism” of your project)

New “theme” (blog template)

Categories and Tags (create, relative to topic)

All old entries categorized (and tagged? optional);
e.g. “research,” “response,” “reading journal”

Widgets: “Categories” and “Tag Cloud” (minimum / req’d)

——–

Required Pages:

Home
About
Entries (or “Posts”)
Materials
Poetics
Reflection

——–

Multimedia

— Be sure to embed at least one image and/or audio/video clip (even if you change/delete them later).
— Use from Web or your own (upload to Wordpress)

Instructions:
Embedding Images
Video Instructions (for YouTube; cf. Google, Vimeo, etc. on page)
Adding Audio Instructions
Google Maps

Note: We’ll want to troubleshoot practical issues about this during Monday’s workshop; please attend/arrive with specific technical questions/issues.

——–

Content

6-8 entries (”posts”) minimum.

— reminder: entries are fragments (100-200 words).

Flexible / hybrid poetics: might be single topic/vignette (for emphasis); or, juxtaposition of diverse elements, e.g. text and image from different paradigm levels.

Note: strongly discourage using images for “representation” (illustration, depiction, etc), as this is not expressive (but logical). Instead, use expressive images guided by intuition (associative and affective logic), without “obvious” (explicit, rational) connection…

Paradigm (one example from each dimension, for Monday):

Personal
Disciplinary (historical / scientific)
Cultural
Original Narrative

Interface: one example (from any of three paradigm dimensions)

Expressive Figure: one example (from any of three paradigm dimensions)

Manipulated image : one example

“Ready-made” or “Bricolage” Method of using images: “re-fashion” / “re-purpose” visually, by using any image program like Photoshop; including free software online:

Pixlr
Phoenix
Picnik
Wordle (?)

——–

Blog Format / Layout Instructions

Creating Pages

1) Dashboard -> Pages -> Add New
2) “Add New Page” -> Title / compose -> Publish

*3) Create a new page that will become your home/front page.
*4) Create a new page titled “Entries” or “Posts”

A) Convert blog to static home page.

1) Dashboard -> Settings -> Reading.
2) Front page displays -> choose “A static page.”
3) Select Front page (from drop-down menu).
4) Select Posts page (from drop-down menu).

B) New Theme & Title

Change Theme to one expressive of experience/affect.

1) Dashboard –> Appearance –> Themes

Change title: re-name your blog with an apt title for your project.

1) Dashboard -> Settings -> Blog Title & Tagline

C) Enable “Tag cloud” & “Categories” widget

1) Dashboard –> Appearance–> Widgets

* To tag and categorize entries

1) Dashboard -> Posts -> Edit Posts
2) Select post to Edit -> Add/type tags (right column) -> Click “Add” Button.
3) “Categories” -> Choose/create (right column)
*4) Click “Update” (right column) to save (not updated, otherwise).

Simple Solution, Impossible Problem

Gary Hink — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 04:11:17 +0000

“Truth depends on an encounter with something
that forces us to think and to seek the truth.” (14)

“if the resonance has both objective and subjective conditions,
what it produces is of an altogether different nature:
the Essence, the spiritual Equivalent….that breaks with the subjective chain.” (154)

— Deleuze, Proust and Signs (1972)

M 30-Nov     Foer: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (through p. 173)
                       (Laura Hampson & Tahara Franklin)

W 02-Dec     Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (pp. 174-259)
                       (Krystal Sardinas & Paige Miller)

Due: Project Proposal Update (revised/finalized; 7pm, on blog)
(counts as blog entry; add Foer to your “poetics inventory”)

→ Notes from class discussion (plus reminders and clarifications)

F 04-Dec Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (pp. 267-326) (Sarah Zimmerman)

plus: (required): “Mystory” excerpts by Ulmer (PDF)

M 07-Dec Due: Final Project — “Resonance Assemblage” (checkpoint / partial)

Resonance

Gary Hink — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:55:58 +0000

“The project is to learn to write with patterns that function
more like music than like concepts.” (91)

— Ulmer, Heuretics

“For what one lacks access to from experience one will have no ear. ”

— Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

Final Project: “Resonance Assemblage”

Informal Proposal — due Friday 27-Nov
— (contact me if you need to post on Saturday, as I am replying in queue)

suggested reading: “Mystory” excerpts by Ulmer (PDF)

Review Experiment, especially CATTt
(and notes from 09 & 23 Nov classes;
have you updated your “Analogy” category inventory?)

Final Project: “Resonance Assemblage”

Context: (parameters)

02 September 1945 – 10 September 2001
American Society
(temporal, geographic, social, political, economic “setting”)

“Genre”:

Hybrid — “critical” and “creative.”
Writing with our entire “paradigm,” all three levels of discourse:
personal (autobiographical), cultural (literature, art, popular media), and disciplinary (scholarly, professional); see Ulmer on this combination.

Project Proposal

Informal and brief answers (1-2 sentences), to the extent you’ve developed and researched (both academically and personally) initial topic; including a sentence describing difficulty/uncertainty or posing a question is also useful (both for you and me).
Answer to best extent that you can at this time, with revision and/or supplement later; note that the more developed your ideas, the better feedback and guidance I can provide (I will not respond to proposals missing more than one answer, though).

1) What specific experience will you undertake the task of, and take responsibility for, expressing? What is the concrete historical context?

Describe the experience first in objective terms, with as many traits/categories as you can:
both A) Historical Situation, Event, Issue (actual, not invented)
and B) Identity
(entire “matrix”: race/ethnicity, sex/gender, sexuality, class, religion, age, etc.)

Note: while we are intuiting the lived experience, we’ll detach the affect from the specific identity (e.g. family member), so as not to make a personal anecdote (or “family history”) — but one slight degree removed. More about this focus later; you can cite a tentative affect (subjective dimension of lived experience), but likely will work on this subsequently.

2) “Explanation” or “account” of this experience from a conventional view? What is the dominant understanding?
(belief/morality or reason/disciplinary discourse — foreground your point of contrast)
Source of objective account? (list one, even if you’ll research more later.)

3) Personal resonance for you in the present?
(hint: testing whether this is your feeling/bias, or whether you are “attuned” to past experience of event.) Source and level of your familiarity? (i.e. extent of “expertise” or “curiosity”?)
note: not necessarily “easier” or “better” to undertake something extensively knowledgeable about; might actually be more challenging — what about an area of inquiry or “wondering,” within this same objective topic? see Q. 5)
Advantage and/or difficulty of this personal resonance for the project?

4) One cultural narrative or image that is prominent in your memory (any media)?
(Or, what is one narrative that comes to mind by association, from any discourse? Use intuitive and associative logic…)

5) One “forgotten” (or overlooked, neglected) aspect or element? (remember: Lêthê…)
Speculate a “blindspot” of historical discourse: what is conventionally forgotten or excluded about this experience?
(Or, what is “filtered” out by reason, and possibly by reductive binary logic?)
Why is it important to actively “recall” (resonate) and inscribe this into writing and into present/future memory? (”socio-historical significance,” humanities perspective)

In what specific way, “impossible” to express? (Literally speaking.)
As for project, what practical obstacles do you foresee at present?

6) One lesson (abstract) and one technqiue (specific) from one of our relay novels, that you will implement? (”Analogy” in CATTt)
If able, list the key poetics that seem promising for the project, so far.
Reviewing our novels, how many narratives seem to be an adequate/effective number to include in the assemblage? (i.e. estimate minimum and maximum)

7 ) A potential interface? and A potential figure (expressive)?
(from any level of discourse: personal, cultural, disciplinary — perhaps “discovered” through this week’s “mining” exercise; if not, need more reflexive contemplation…)

Part II — “Tuning”
(post when you have a chance; can be added separately / subsequently to proposal)

Cite one sentence/expression/phrase from any of our novels this term that resonates with you, at present (without “overthinking” or explaining). Might post the phrasing as you remember it (possibly fortuitous…); although, only takes a second to confirm: Google Books.

Next, from memory, state one of your favorite lines from a song, however “nonsensical” or incomprehensible out of context — in fact, all the better for being “nonsensical” or “non-rational.”
(Don’t explain why you like it, though!)

Afterward (only/even if after posting this), examine how the line and the song overall is expressive — most likely, by the mood that it conveys (not the simple sentiment or denotation meaning — what is the connotation (second) or “third meaning” (feeling/affect)?)

Following from Pynchon’s reference to Karlheinz Stockhausen (p. 34)…

“ Stimmung

= “mood,” “atmosphere,” tone or “tuning.”

→ key lesson, modality, poetics of project

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Theory Supplement (insight for project)

Nietzsche, Ecce Homo:

one will have no ear

events

a new series of experiences

Reading James Joyce’s Ulysses and proposing a new mode of understanding,
Derrida hears “a dominant affect, a Stimmung or a pathos, a tone” (Acts of Literature 291).

“Now if laughter is a fundamental or abyssal tonality in Ulysses,
if the analysis of this laughter is not exhausted by any of the available forms of knowledge….
then laughter bursts out in the event of signature itself.
And there is no signature without yes.” (295)

“The yes of memory, with its recapitulating control and reactive repetition, immediately doubles the light, dancing yes of affirmation, the open affirmation of the gift.
Reciprocally, two responses or two responsibilities refer to each other without having any relationship between them.
The two sign yet prevent the signature from gathering itself together. They can only call up another yes, another signature.” (308)

“I hear this vibration as the very music of Ulysses.” (308)

“Only another event can sign, can countersign to bring it about that an event has already happened.
This event, that we naively call the first event, can only affirm itself in the confirmation of the other: a completely other event.” (309)

Mining Experience

Gary Hink — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:16:30 +0000

Note: The following prompt is in addition to updating your “inventory” (required) with specific lessons and techniques from the novels, which is part of the project proposal; we’ll update one last time next week with Foer’s poetics.

For this week’s blog entry (due Friday),
exercise practicing a generative method and mode of thinking crucial for the final project,
following Monday’s creative writing entry: intuitive, inventive, and reflexive (personal).

“We should not be satisfied with either biography or bibliography;
we must reach a secret point where the anecdote of life and the aphorism of thought
amount to one and the same thing” (The Logic of Sense 128).

— Deleuze (via Ulmer; citing Nietzsche’s method for invention).

two prompts and examples below…

A) “Emblem” (examples)

B) “Signature Theory” (example)

For this week’s blog entry:

Personal Research Experiment
(choose A, B, or both…)

— toward “discovering” an interface

A) “Emblem” (from Greg Ulmer)

Consider your current major and career choice (or intended/prospective).

Within this context, recall your childhood (pre-adolescent) experience; what memory emerges?
This could be in the form of an anecdote or a figure (image); it might be “arbitrary” or limited/particular — not asking “origin” of desire/ambition for career/major choice.

Secondly, recall one cultural narrative within this context, ideally similar time-period of your life
(in addition to literature, stories from film/TV, and even pop forms like advertising, sports, consumer culture, etc.). What resonance do you notice? Insights about yourself, from this association?

note:
This is the opposite of fabricating a “brand” identity and logo, inventing an “image” for the marketplace and advertising. Rather, “mining” your experience database to notice unexpected connection(s) of resonance between past and present.

Examples here.

B) “Signature theory” (Derrida & Ulmer)

Research the various meanings and etymologies of your given and family name.

Through wordplay and intuitive combinations, generate and develop your signature into a link between your life experience and your major/career/artistic endeavors.

The “signature” of a musical composition appears at the beginning of the piece, providing the key and time for the performance of the music. (More here.)

What resonance do you intuitively notice about your present experience/identity and your signature: in what key and time signature is your life “played” (performed)?
More concretely, we can use our signature not to explain but to better understand our own idiosyncratic (”signature”) mode of working — our “fingerprints” or “trace” on our work.

remember: Resonance is Deleuze’s term for the non-totalizing and non-homogenizing consistency that appears across the assemblage of heterogeneous elements, for example within an author’s work or within a concept.
For him, Proust’s distinct signature (”style”) resonates throughout all seven discrete volumes of In Search of Lost Time.

What insights do you gain through your signature theory about your “style” — especially a style of working across different disciplines (college courses)?

Example here

“Emblem” examples:

Detailed accounts by Greg Ulmer:

* Frank Gehry: “fish”
Albert Einstein: “compass”
Antony Gormley: “rectangle“

ghink

Cochlea: spiral-shaped part of ear; converts vibrations to neuro-sensory (audible) information;
i.e. literal interface between physical (”frequency”) and neurological sensory data.

Anecdote: (childhood memory)

In 4th grade, my class was assigned to paint something in art class to be considered for inclusion in the forthcoming playground, which our community (including my family) was building.
As I lacked fine art skills — unlike my younger brother Brian, the visual artist — I simply spent the period painting abstract shapes, deliberately not attempting to paint “a picture” like my classmates (following the instructions).
Not intending mine to be considered in the contest, I carelessly splattered some paint over it — which I found I quite liked, incidentally. A few more ’splatter” motions drew the attention of the teacher, who unexpectedly praised my work; (in retrospect, shapes of geometrical abstraction and methods of abstract expressionism!) I’d mainly used the colors that I consistently loved during pre-teen years: black, purple, and teal (as well as some complements of red, if I recall) — not any referential scheme.

The most prominent shape in the painting was an imperfect spiral, which I’d been constantly practicing in those days (before perfecting the circular pencil technique).

It looked something like this:

Two notable elements that frame this anecdote, prior and subsequently:

1) I most definitely was (and am) not skilled in visual arts, and never drew/draw
(except for tracing comic book characters in an attempt to match my brother’s skilled renderings! but that is a separate anecdote)
My brothers and I all grew up playing music, first through involuntary piano and vocal lessons for me, followed by saxophone and trumpet choices by me and Brian respectively (once we reached fourth grade) — then eventually our “real” instruments of choice (passion) by high school, guitar.
Andrew (youngest) is without exaggeration a musical prodigy, having begun playing piano at age four voluntarily (with a piano in the house, after all); he quickly superseded my skills at first piano and then saxophone(s) (but not guitar, a mandatory instrument for him in college!).
Indeed, Brian has become the visual artist (photography, painting, mixed-media) he has always been (after years of guitar/bass); Andrew has been / will always be a musician (composer and performer) — for them, there is little differentiation of their “life” and “career” (key lesson for all of us, as my parents have supported for 26 years and counting).
In this context, I consider myself not “involuntarily” but incidentally and notably situated in relation to them: artistic sensibility (way of understanding and expressing), yet in a scholarly context; thus, the priority of the aesthetic mode for my career and scholarly method, originating from the “life” dimension (passion for music).

2) The painting from class with the spiral and paint-splatter apparently was only a “draft,” which is unusual for art but not writing (as I’d later endure and then require dozens of composition students to practice).
Unfortunately at the time, I could not quite replicate the original composition for the playground, having a much different attitude toward the desired reproduction.
However, this was fortunate, as I have the framed original (”draft”), which hung in my room where I practiced saxophone and guitar in the subsequent years, until we tore my childhood home down.
Similarly, the playground was torn down last year, perhaps “fated” with its name on our barrier-island town: “Sandcastle Park,” (two blocks from the beach).
The spiral image ended up being just like the cochlea of the ear after all, only receiving vibrations (”hearing”) in the present tense — like the splatter-technique impulse, or live musical performances,
or the conversations between the “architects” (me and my dad) and the “engineers” (Brian and Andrew) of sandcastles during an ephemeral construction at the beach — where of course one might find a spiral-shaped seashell.
(This present time always belonging to Lêthê.)

Whereas the spiral once signaled the movement toward “immortality,” — selected for one of the playground’s (castle) towers in the context — there eventually became a point in time when the movement shifted, progressing toward destruction. Rather than linear narrative, we could say that both of these motions were always-already encompassed in the spiral shape.

Career Resonance

// Spiral in chaos theory

summary: dynamical systems are sensitive to changes in initial conditions (not deterministic); ordered systems include movement toward chaos, while chaotic systems include movement toward order. In other words, “undecidable” with binary logic, not “either/or.” Consider: is spiral moving “inward” or “outward”? Unknown, undecidable; both.

At SUNY Buffalo, my thesis supervisor was Joseph M. Conte — who uses chaos and complexity theory in his work with postmodern literature.

Spiral’s in/direct appearance or function
in (French) poststructuralist theory
(my primary area of research):

— Roland Barthes: “third meaning” of expression is neither denotation or connotation, but signifiance. The “third sense” is hearing.
(Image-Music-Text)

— Hélène Cixous: task is to hear the unsaid, with attunement.

— Jacques Derrida:
“middle voice” is between active and passive, self-address. (i.e. speaking-hearing oneself)
Also, Différance is neither word nor concept, but active moving forces: undecidable, as différer means both “to differ” and “to defer.” Between speech and writing; becoming-space of time and becoming-time of space; new logic of impossibility.

— Gilles Deleuze:
Greek myth of Ariadne (from Nietzsche’s understanding); labyrinth is both spiral shaped and sonorous in Deleuze’s reading. For him, Ariadne’s song becomes one of affirmation of Life, as lover of Dionysus — rather than slave to ressentiment that results from judgment.
Thus, way of living that affirms Life.

B) “Signature Theory” example: ghink

(g)ary

ary:
Main Entry: “-ary”
Function: noun suffix
Etymology: Middle English -arie, from Anglo-French & Latin; Anglo-French -aire, -arie,
from Latin -arius, -aria, -arium, from -arius, adjective suffix

1 : thing belonging to or connected with; especially : place of <ovary>
2 : person belonging to, connected with, or engaged in <functionary>

French: -aire = “surface”

— also, River Aire in England (?)

Suffix -aire
1. -er; suffix used to form agent nouns.

e.g. legionnaire

* Latin: “ARIA” = expressive melody

noun
an air or melody in an opera, cantata, or oratorio, esp. for solo voice with instrumental accompaniment

— thus, expressive melody (solo) + connected with (orch/accomp.)

* voice/song as gesture (expressive quality of voice; unique)

(g)ary
= connection (”ary”) gesture (”aria”) agent (-aire)

(h)-ink

ink, = writing, literature, signed signature

“ghink” as gest + (h)ink = gesthink

gest aria (expressive)
gest of the “agent” (actor-participant)

→ gesthink ?

“gesthink” as “gest” + “think” + “ink/signature”

cf. Barthes: understands text as “pure gesture of inscription” (”Death of the Author”)

thus, my “signature”:

gary: connection agent song surface

hink: think writing

Novel Experience(s) Week

Gary Hink — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:15:54 +0000

M 09-Nov read:

Gregory Ulmer, “The Learning Screen.” 4 pages. Networked. 2009.
and Franz Kafka’s parable, “Before the Law”

Orson Welles’ version: Watch/Listen (2:50)

W 11-Nov No classes—Veterans Day
Due: Response 5 — Prompt (deadline 11:59pm)

F 13-Nov EGO Conference: see schedule below.
Due: Blog Entry, “Inventory” about lessons thus far; see more below.

M 09-Nov *read: Ulmer, “The Learning Screen.” Networked*. 2009.

T 10-Nov ~~(guest lecture, optional)~~ Rescheduled Noah Wardrip-Fruin (Asst Professor, UC-Santa Cruz). “Process-Oriented Fictions: Narrative in the Age of Media Machines.” ~~5pm, 285 Reitz~~. More Info

W 11-Nov No classes—Veterans Day Due: Response 5	Blog Entry due Friday

R 12-Nov English Graduate Organization	9th Annual Conference
F 13-Nov Class meets in 150 Pugh Hall; choose 2pm or 3:30 session (attendance required; normal policy applies) EGO Conference Schedule Keynote Speaker: Dominick LaCapra (Cornell University). “Sebald, Coetzee, and the Narrative of Trauma” Ustler Atrium, 13-Nov 7pm
additional UF events:
F 13-Nov Good Bye DDR: Memory and Material Culture Dauer Hall (10am-5pm). Schedule –see especially: “Memory and Visual Culture” Facebook

F 13-Nov UF School of Art + Art History “ArtBash” 2009 6-9pm, Fine Arts Complex (Fine Arts Buildings A/B/C/D) Website

13-14 Nov 2009 Florida Writers Festival. Schedule

Intuiting Affect

Gary Hink — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:16:20 +0000

“Spinoza’s ethics has nothing to do with a morality; he conceives it as an ethology, that is, as a composition of fast and slow speeds, of capacities for affecting and being affected on this plane of [Nature]” (125).

–”you do not know beforehand what good or bad you are capable of…what a body or a mind can do, in a given encounter, a given arrangement, a given combination (125).

–Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy

M 02-Nov Ceremony (through p.186 ) (Jessica Brousseau & Phil Cafaro)

W 04-Nov Ceremony (through end) (Eric Roe & Jake Jacob)

F 06-Nov No class (away at conference)
Due: Blog entry (Friday this week)

Resp 5: Myth and Experiential Narrative in Ceremony
500 words min., 10 points; due W 11-Nov (deadline TBA)
Review assignment criteria here — also remember extra credit opportunity…

note: read instructions closely — three main tasks/objectives.

“Languages are more or less thick; certain amongst them, the most social, the most mythical, present an unshakeable homogeneity..: woven with habits and repetitions, with stereotypes, obligatory final clauses and keywords, each constitutes an idiolect or more exactly a sociolect.”

— “the antidote of myth would be the extreme pole or rather the region—airy, light, spaced, open, uncentred, noble and free—where writing spreads itself against the idiolect, at its limit and fighting it” (168).

Roland Barthes, “Change the Object Itself: Mythology Today” (1971). Image-Music-Text

Prompt:
Choose one Laguna “story” (myth) that Silko includes—

e.g. “Thought Woman,” Ceremony (frame); drought/rain; “Spider Woman” and “Gambler”; Fly & Hummingbird; Gallup Ceremonials; “Shush” / Bear; Coyote (Ck’o'yo magician) and Big Fly; Descheeny and captive girl; Witchery; Mountain Lion & T’seh; Sunrise offering.

— use this story to understand an historically specific experience in the novel’s diegesis/plot, not in mode of belief but expression (life). review: Apparatus

First, briefly discuss affect that you intuit (third mode) from reading the aesthetic figures and the myth together (novel expression); describe the objective experience/situation in particular and concrete terms, avoiding generalization and abstraction. What is this experience? (focus should be specific, within Tayo’s overall narrative/s)

Tip: review your last Reading Response; likely need to describe experience in affective terms to greater extent (embodied exp., subjective, feeling but not “sentimental” or cliché emotion).

From this, address key question: how does this relation of myth and experience “negotiate” or “mediate” 1) {the past, culture, tradition} and 2) {historical situation or event, individual’s circumstances and identity}?
In contemporary terms, perhaps helpful to think of myth as “interface” for understanding subject’s (Tayo’s) “situation.”

Tip: review notes on “loss,” beyond single individual; on nature (esp. “the land”) and Nature; on “good/bad” (ethics) over “Good and Evil” (morality); on memory/forgetting, presence/absence, and reconfiguring these binaries.
Also see additional quotes from Barthes, below.

Finally, consider in relation with other “storytelling”:

either a form of narration within the novels
(e.g. Nick Carraway, metafictional Kurt Vonnegut, anonymous Jazz narrator)

or a story with which you are familiar, in “mode of belief” (from personal experience/knowledge):
e.g. parables/fables, religious/spiritual narratives, Greek mythology

Beyond compare/contrast (which is fine to limited extent), discuss the relation of narrative and experience, from this perspective — particularly what you’ve learned from Silko, in terms of expressing affect through aesthetic figures and “stories” (myths).
Speculate how we might apply your insight(s) in our experiment–not in the mode of belief (avoiding judgment), but concerning experience (Life).

After all, we are not passive receivers inheriting myths (and values) but active producers of culture and knowledge.

Poetics

Gary Hink — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 05:36:32 +0000

I am interested in the intersection between poetry and history. How does history make its path in a poetic work?
We rarely see history in a literary text since it is so hard to deal with. Perhaps poetry does not know how to say or utter history. …History simply smothers and squashes.
Yet some books show that one can remain poetic in the very midst of history. (110)

–Hélène Cixous, “Poetry, Passion, and History” (1985)

M 26-Oct Jazz (Chp. 6-10, pp.137-229) (Tahara Franklin)

W 28-Oct Silko: Ceremony (Intro + through p.37) (Laura Hampson)

F 30-Oct Ceremony (pp.38-85) (Maria Tamayo)

Due: Response 4 (deadline: 11:59pm)

Resp 4: Imagining Experience through Jazz
500 words, 10 points; due F 30-Oct (deadline TBA)
Review assignment criteria here.

“To have only the value of knowledge is not to have the value of life, or love.” (64)

–Hélène Cixous, “Grace and Innocence” (1982)

Choose an historically specific experience from the novel
(for example, from general categories of “loss,” “desire,” “freedom,” “alienation/isolation,” parentage/progeny relation — but do not generalize, stereotype, re-situate in present day, etc.)

Option 1

First, briefly define (”explain”) the experience either in the mode of belief or of reason (rational mode/knowledge).
Present one textual illustration that aptly supports your definition.

Next, discuss the same experience, but in terms of what you intuit from your reading (from the novel’s expression); describe this in more detail than the first definition, showing an attempt at working with the aesthetic mode. As always, provide the key figures from the novel that enable your understanding, and discuss figures in form+content terms (considering both dimensions).

Major tip/reminder

remember to consider “affect” and “lived” or “embodied” experience…

To conclude, speculate about your new understanding — either in terms of the novel (function/effects? significance?); or of consequence (”what changes?” new perspective?). In any case, explicitly describe the qualities (”benefits”?) or implications of this mode for working with the novel, as you’ve experienced thus far.

Option 2

Having selected a specific experience, examine this in both Jazz and Ceremony together — focusing upon a respective character from each, with this perspective on experience.

Discuss an understanding of this experience through an intuitive reading of the novels’ expression. Not necessary to simply compare/contrast the characters; rather, describe the unique aspects of your respective examples toward an illustration of the aesthetic mode, providing specific figures (support).

To conclude, consider your new intuitive description of this experience against one (or both) of the modes of judgment (belief/morality, reason/knowledge)–with which you might contrast, if you’d like. Overall, address the key difference(s) and the implications/value of attempting this mode for working with literature and understanding experience.

Note: contact me (soon/Mon.) with questions; subsequently I will add/elaborate the prompts if necessary.

Imagined Experience (Part II)

Gary Hink — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 03:14:37 +0000

M 19-Oct Experiment–Part II

from 07-Oct ( Greek etymologies)

“catastrophe” = katastrephein
{kata “to overturn” + strephein “turn”; or strophe “a turning”}

= “reversal of what is expected” (originally in drama)

Q. in what does a “turn” occur? (hint: EXP)

W 21-Oct Morrison: Jazz (through Chp 3, pp.4-87) (Erin Gallagher)

F 23-Oct Jazz (Chp. 4-5, pp.89-135) (Hillary Silvestri)

Lêthê Dis-aster

Gary Hink — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:36:46 +0000

(Audio) CBC | BBC (original broadcasts, 16 Feb 1945)

Notes and Context for Wed 07-Oct

When all is said, what remains to be said is the disaster. Ruin of words, demise, writing, faintness faintly murmuring: what remains without remains (the fragmentary). — Blanchot (33)

“And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like Poo-tee-weet?” — Vonnegut (24)

Notes and Context for Wed 07-Oct

Context:

Paradox of “writing experience” (writing the disaster)

Greek etymologies:

word for “truth” is “alētheia” : unconcealment, disclosedness (Heidegger) // (classical intro.)

Q. what of a truth (of experience) that is not disclosed?

“catastrophe” = katastrephein {kata “to overturn” + strephein “turn”; or strophe “a turning”}
= “reversal of what is expected” (originally in drama)

Q. in what does a “turn” occur? (hint: EXP)

Blanchot: The Writing of the Disaster

“disaster” as “dis-aster”

– literally, separated from the stars (astronomy/astrology = fate)

“The disaster: break with the star, break with every form of totality…;
the disaster: prophecy which announces nothing but the refusal of the prophetic as simply an event to come, but which nonetheless opens, nonetheless discovers the patience of vigilant language.

The disaster, touch of the powerless infinite: it does not come to pass under a sidereal sky, but here—a here in excess of all presence.” (75)

→ thus, not accounting for experience of disaster by fate/destiny/fortune

Problem: Neither Belief (faith) nor Knowledge (reason/science) addresses or includes the “human element” of EXP…

“Target” (object/area of concern): experience of disaster → writing of experience?

i.e. how to write the experience of the disaster?

“The disaster, unexperienced. It is what escapes the very possibility of experience—it is the limit of writing.
This must be repeated: the disaster de-scribes.
Which does not mean that the disaster, as the force of writing, is excluded from it, is beyond the pale of writing or extratextual.” (7)

* Note Vonnegut’s foregrounding his writing of the novel, in the metafictional frame (and emphasized through other textual elements.

→ hypothesis: experience is (in/of) writing

Q. What lesson(s) to take from Vonnegut, from reading the novel?

Q. (more immediately) Vonnegut’s using disaster as figure:

if the event is the vehicle, what is the tenor (expressed element)?

Literary Definitions: Simple || Extended

Note: I am not using “Figure” to mean metaphor; if anything, closer to metonymy… I can further explain rationale and distinction later; logic simply stated: contiguity favored over substitution.

Q. hypothesis / premise:
if memory concerns truth that “manifests” (as Alèthéia),
then what of the absence or absent-truth?

note: Lêthê (Greek) = “forgetfulness” or “concealment.”
         (thus, a-lêthê = Alèthéia = unconcealed Truth.)
        Also: in Hades (mythology),
        the River and spirit/goddess “Oblivion”—opposite to Mnemosyne (Memory).

Blanchot: “Forgetfulness” — “refers us to nonhistorical forms of time, to the other of all tenses, to their eternal or eternally provisional indecision, bereft of destiny, without presence.” (85) → i.e. oblivion

Q. What is the (forgotten) experience of oblivion?
Or perhaps an oblivion-experience (the disaster). How to express this?

Additionally, note the different conceptions of time in Slaughterhouse Five…?

Simultaneity of past – present – future (at/as one moment) = Eternal Moment

Ethical implications? (beyond “illusion of free will” vs. “determinism/fatalism”)

cf.

Eternal Recurrence

ewige Wiederkunft

not literal, but “thought of perpetual recurrence” as if, not as such

Looking further ahead:

Potential discussion in next week’s blog entry:
reflection upon the “catastrophe” (turn) of experience — writing (of) experience.
(premise / hypothesis: the “turn” happens through writing experience…)