Novel Experience & Expression » expression

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

Preterition

Gary Hink — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:17:15 +0000

M 23-Nov Due: Response 6 — Part I (1:55pm) Creative Prompt

— Part II: Analysis of Classmate’s Entry (due 11:59pm). Prompt

Extra Credit (optional) Analytic Response — Prompt

Response 6 Extra Credit Prompt: 500-600 words, 10 points; due M 23-Nov (11:59pm)
Review assignment criteria here

Crying of Lot 49 Narrative & Knowledge Analysis

As an “anti-detective” novel, there is less certainty at the conclusion — inductive logic does not produce “resolution,” through the proliferation of “clues.” Simultaneously, “revelation” or “discovery” of the truth does not occur, even with the narrative of “reduction” of possibilities — as dramatized in the progressive elimination of characters from Oedipa’s “social network.”

Oedipa’s failure through her reduction to binary logic and the novel’s overall absence of closure suggest another mode of thought is necessary, other than truth as aletheia (disclosure): Pynchon presents a network (or “assemblage“) of narratives, figures, possibilities, histories, logics, and….and….

Prompt

First, discuss the consequence of Pynchon’s redirecting our focus off of “what happens” at the “conclusion” onto the multiple narratives; how can we interpret the novel other than “meaningless” or incomplete (reductive/exclusionary logic)?
As illustration (support), briefly describe how some of the narratives relate or operate, with specific references (summarize concisely). Besides the “paranoid conspiracy,” consider a simple example from Abbott: the way that seemingly “supplementary” developments become “constituent” information or events for Oedipa. (This is just one Cambridge example; use any/all topics from our study of narrative this term.)

Next, and most importantly, discuss how two (or more) disparate elements or narratives resonate, through Pynchon’s poetics. What is the effect? the consequence?

Finally, (as conclusion)

describe any new insights or overall understanding of
expression, knowledge (”Truth”), modes of thought besides binary;
and/or “interface metaphor” (with?), as well as narratives functioning as interface (with?).

From this, what is one lesson or technique you’ve learned from Pynchon, for our project?

W.A.S.T.E.

Gary Hink — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:11:01 +0000

“The next story I wrote was The Crying of Lot 49,
which was marketed as a ‘novel,’ and in which I seem
to have forgotten most of what I thought I’d learned up until then.”

– Thomas Pynchon, Slow Learner, 1984.

M 16-Nov Pynchon: The Crying of Lot 49 (through Chapter 3) Pynchon Wiki: Annotations (Laura Navia & Audrey Bannon)

W 18-Nov Crying of Lot 49 (Chp. 4-5) (Anna Bernstein)

F 20-Nov Crying of Lot 49 (Chapter 6) *plus* Lot 49 Short Film (Maria Tamayo)

M 23-Nov Due: Response 6

Resp 6: Narrative Interface and Crying of Lot 49

Part I: Creative Writing Entry; 400-500 words; due M 23-Nov ( 1:55pm)

Part II: Analysis of Classmate’s Entry; ~200 words; due M 23-Nov ( 11:59pm)

Review assignment criteria below; — also remember extra credit opportunity…
note: read prompt closely — three main instructions.

Part I Prompt

Creative writing entry; structural role: put yourself in Oedipa’s position, “detective” seeking “the Truth” of…(?) (Note: can be composed in first- or third-person perspective).

Key task: express one specific affect of this experience, indirectly through vignettes with original narratives and Pynchon’s figures.

e.g. uncertainty, disorientation, “groundless,” lack of reference, hopelessness, disinheritance, disposession, lack of agency, “undocumented person,” persona non grata, in vino veritas…

* not “paranoia,” “schizophrenic,” etc. (psychiatric diagnoses)

Composition method (all required):

Compose several (3 min.) vignettes (brief narrative fragments), with each of the following three components, in the style of Pynchon — “faithful” (accurate) to each type of discourse.
(Clarification notes below / here.)

In your entry, use:

1) original narrative (fragment/s)
within Oedipa’s 1960s social network (diegetic characters, settings, “rules,” etc);
you are Oedipa, (inter-)acting within her situation in “seeking” but not “finding” truth — of?
(Choose one “target/goal,” as motivated by a question: “what is ___?”) Describe how you would proceed, as if you were Oedipa, but withhold “reaching goal” — remember, narrative has constituent and supplementary events (review notes/Abbott).

Notes below (click here)

2) historical reference (factual details, event, etc.) — specific, from Pynchon (essential to research)

Notes below (click here)

3) an “interface,” from:

myth/belief
science/reason (including history)
or your disciplinary knowledge, set within novel’s context
(N.B. Pynchon was first an engineering major at Cornell)

Exceptions:
muted post-horn; circuit-board; “Bordando el Manto Terrestre” (painting)

More notes below (click here)

Note: none of these three are “allegories” or “symbolic” of the others, and one does not “explain” other(s); rather, expression through resonance between them.
– we’re composing an “assemblage” or network of narratives and figures; result is not a homogeneous composite product…

Composition mode = Indirection:

Remember, Experience of Lethe = “secret” (Blanchot), concealed; never appears, unlike truth as “illuminated” or “unconcealed” (Aletheia).

“The philosophical genealogy of divination begins with Heraclitus declaring that the oracle at Delphi does not reveal or conceal, but intimates.” — Ulmer

Part II: Analysis of Classmate’s Entry; ~200 words; due M 23-Nov ( 11:59pm)

Choose one classmate’s entry to analyze;
ASAP, post a comment on their blog, for equal distribution (i.e. everyone’s should be read, without duplicate readings) — even if to let them know you’ll post your analysis later.

On your blog (required, so I can include as part of Response 6):

in a paragraph (~200 words), describe the affect that you intuit from your reading, and how the author expresses it; on the latter, discuss their poetics, specifically techniques and unconventional (”novel”?) discourse.
Feel free also to describe the extent to which the entry demonstrates the aesthetic apparatus of expression (or either mode of judgment, for that matter: belief/myth or reason/science; review chart).

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…)

Blogging (as) Experience

Gary Hink — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:47:59 +0000

(from syllabus)
Blog Entries
1 minimum per week, beginning week 2; (100-200 words. Credit/no credit assigned).
Every student will create and maintain a blog throughout the semester, preferably using Wordpress
Blog entries due Wednesday each week, starting week 2, unless otherwise noted (e.g. weeks 8 & 14).

Elaborating upon today’s class, specific suggestions for blogging below.
Note: more technical instructions for blogging coming soon (i.e. setup / “tech. support”) — need not create your blog until next week (over weekend?)

Also, optional / additional ideas:
as part of blogging, use Twitter, Facebook, or other social media (?).
More on this below — could be very interesting and unique approach!

Weekly entries are informal (ungraded); consider as “Reading Journal”: e.g. post associative links/images, pose questions, note observations, describe insights – particularly connections between texts within and those outside of class. An enjoyable and productive way of engaging our “objects of study,” this on-going work serves as “research” and material for the final project.

Specific suggestions for blogging:

On a general level of the course, blogging itself is precisely (an) experience and (your) expression. The benefit to our method (experiment) is both to practice and develop our engaging with literature, as well as generate ideas through the process — consider as analogy the creative moments that occur during “band practice,” (not just refining old songs but generating a creative impulse!). For progress in our experiment (semester), this practice involves “warming-up”: not just “tuning,” but ourselves becoming in tune or “attuned” to different frequencies.

One perspective is our scholarly examination of our “objects of study” (literature); at minimum, your “reading journal” entries might note a specific literary topic/issue, such as one we discuss that particular week. This strategy helps generate ideas specifically for assignments.

We are also interested in additional “frequencies”: observations and connections from your unique perspective, involving any relevant personal/experiential knowledge. Specifically, explore insights through associations or connections between our texts and any content/material “outside” of class–this very much includes your experience from the past and at present (e.g. other courses, activities, media). We’ll try to develop a “three-dimensional” or “360°” perspective on “experience and expression.”

In both cases, also very interesting and productive to present new questions that our reading generates (i.e. how /what you are considering, newly or differently, as a result of reading).

Finally, your blog is the “experience narrative” of this particular semester, with all of the unique events and culture contextualized during “fall 2009.” The “incidental” associations that occur might likely provide fruitful avenues to explore for our project. We’ll want to be especially attuned to any “surprising” (accidental?) connections, especially any triggered by “involuntary memory” (more on this last concept later).

Optional / additional ideas, for blogging:

I have considered the potential use of Twitter, as part of blogging, and it might be interesting/productive in two ways. First, because we don’t know when an insight will occur, it is often useful to review our own experience as a narrative — a stream of “tweets” (entries) creates this narrative, showing us our process of engaging material (all courses, media, etc.). Alternatively, there is a new trend of users “tweeting” in character, taking up a role from literature/culture and writing in this voice. This is of great interest for us as a strategy of imagining and expressing others’ experience, which we will attempt to do at the end of the term.

The opposite of Tweeting “in character,” and yet very much the “three-dimensional” perspective of the course, would be using Facebook as part of the process. Both our novels and our class are “social networks” themselves; a new perspective would be testing what occurs when you conduct our experiment (method/process) within your established social network, especially regarding feedback.

Anyone interested in either of these options should contact me, perhaps for additional prompts/suggestions and certainly for technical advice (and to discuss how to integrate into your weekly requirement of 200-word blog entries).