Novel Experience & Expression » Deleuze

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)

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

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.

Beautiful Shadow

Gary Hink — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 16:09:26 +0000

“By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.
I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.”

– Plath, “The Hanging Man” (1960)

At work in novels is “a new logic, definitely a logic, but one that grasps the innermost depths of life and death without leading us back to reason. The novelist has the eye of a prophet, not the gaze of a psychologist” (82).

– Deleuze, “Bartleby, or the Formula” (1989)

M 21-Sep Plath: The Bell Jar (through Chp. 9) (Sarah Zimmerman)

”Plath’s Life and Career” (Illinois)

W 23-Sep The Bell Jar (Chp. 10-14) (Krystal Sardinas)

plus poems (optional / select) — see below. cf. List: all poems (Stanford)

F 25-Sep The Bell Jar (Chp. 15-20) (Jessica Brousseau)

plus (required):
“Ariel” (1962); “Daddy” (1962); & “Lady Lazarus” (1962)

Due: Response 2 — Prompt

Response 2: Bell Jar and Experience

500 words (min.); 10 points.
Due: F 25-Sept. Post to your blog, by ~~class time~~ midnight.

Given that this is not an autobiography, and yet highly “experiential,”
what can we learn from The Bell Jar about experience, from Plath’s literary expression?

Start by considering and/or (re-)defining “Experience”
(as a noun or verb? as a narrative or event? a combination?).

Another point of departure (contrast) is the “referential function” (153) that Abbott discusses, in that we are not evaluating this in terms of “factual, false, and fictional” (157). Rather, this novel illustrates the uncertain or undecidable status between literature and life (cf. Derrida and Miller, Cambridge 210).

In this view, consider experience as narrative: Plath presents multiple narratives throughout, concerning the past, present, and future within the time of the plot-events, specifically in the
memories (past) and aspirations (future) that she notes in parallel. This non-linear sequence gives us a thematic starting point, both in the overall structure and in the vivid image of the fig tree.

Use two to four specific descriptions from the novel as support examples for your definition, being careful not to summarize; remember to work from (and “with”) the textual instances toward an overall conclusion for your response.

Notes / suggestions:

Likewise, be careful not to generalize (e.g. “society’s view of women…”); rather, discuss the unique circumstances and ordeals that Esther undergoes or that Plath describes, as your examples.

You might find it easier and/or more effective to narrow your scope to a particular aspect or element (”sub-category”) of experience, using one of the contexts or circumstances from the plot (e.g. gender relations/roles, institutions, mental illness). This is a fine approach, but still try to pose an overall conclusion about experience from your specific example.

Finally, the references from Abbott in the prompt come from Chapters 11 and 14, which might be helpful to review (especially pp. 153-7 & pp.209-10; as well as autobio. and performance on pp. 138-43).

Sidenote: like the fig tree vision, another of Plath’s percepts to consider in your definition is the shadow that she mentions, beautiful or otherwise, there or not…

Sylvia Plath: all poems (Stanford)

Suggested

“Ariel” (1962)
“Daddy” (1962)
“Lady Lazarus” (1962)

“The Hanging Man” (1960)
“Love Letter” (1960)
“The Moon and Yew Tree” (1961)
“Berck-Plage“(1962)
* “Death & Co.” (1962)
* “Elm” (1962)
* “Event” (1962)
“Fever 103″ (1962)
“Little Fugue” (1962)
“Poppies in July” (1962)
“Poppies in October” (1962)
* “Stings” (1962)
* “The Bee Meeting” (1962)