Imagine. . .
. . .what the world might be like if Marcel Duchamp had designed the famous box at the end of David Fincher’s film Se7en. Isn’t that an interesting notion?
So. . .the following is an attempt at some cross-hybridization of box-logic and mystoriography. It starts late last night (oh so very late) as I’m trolling through books and articles for the dreaded Marback paper. I’m in a book called Guerilla Minstrels (Wayne Hampton, 1986) and I find this passage:
Sartre refers to the totality as a "synthetic unity" brought together through a process that is ultimately symbolic, that is, the resultant oneness is to a large extent imaginary in that [. . .] it comes together only within the mind of the observer or participant. Sartre uses the example of a painting, through which a "complex of dried pigments" is given oneness, or totalized, only through an act of imagination. [. . .]
Thus the totality, if it is anything at all, is but the fleetingly temporary residue of an ongoing and continuous process of understanding and making sense of one’s social situation. It is a process that produces both citizens and revolutionaries. It links the individual to the community–any individual to any community. [As Hampton uses it], it is the process of developing a consciousness, that exhilarating feeling of oneness and solidarity with one’s oppressed, exploited, alienated, or otherwise dehumanized brothers, locked in a mythic contest to overcome evils, both real and imagined. (Hampton 43)
I don’t think I’m too far off to read Sartre’s totality (Well, Hampton’s Sartre’s totality) as an interesting analogue to some of the composition theory we’re reading for a number of reasons. First, if we adopt the ideals that Rice/Sirc/Ulmer/Vitanza et al have been championing, we acknowledge the value of fragmentation as a comp technique–which, as we see in Hampton, can lead to the creation of a coherent whole in the imagination. I think here its important to note a distinction that either Hampton does not see or that he would characterize in this fashion, viz. that the totality is not imaginary (i.e., non-existent), but rather imaginative, relying on reader/viewer/consumer insight to draw the connections. Of course, the other important analogue in this piece is the idea that an observer (reader/consumer/viewer) can also be a participant–producer/writer/designer–ah!–composer. Lastly, if the goal of Berlin/Freire liberatory pedagogy is to grant student agency. . .the totality conveys the idea of "making sense of one’s social situation".
Anyway. . .my reading continues. I’m now in a compilation called Memories of John Lennon (or maybe Remembering John Lennon?) in which a host of cultural luminaries reflect on the impact John had on their lives and work. One of pieces is by activist/poet/critic John Sinclair, in whose name Lennon protested and performed in order to overturn Sinclair’s conviction on trumped-up drugs charges. Okay fine. But the poem is dedicated to. . .get this. . .Mike Liebler–as in Wayne State’s own M. L. Liebler! I know M. L. is big on the Beatles and I know he’s a poet and that he’s involved in social causes–and Sinclair is from Detroit. . .But I didn’t expect to see one of my Wayne State English Dep’t colleagues turn up in a book about John Freakin’ Lennon.
Here’s where some more meta stuff starts kicking in. John Sinclair was also the manager for the revolutionary Detroit garage/proto-punk band the MC5. Jeff Rice teaches a 1020 course that uses the MC5’s album Kick Out the Jams as subject/inspiration for freshman comp. Jeff Rice also teaches the 6010 course in which I am enrolled. One of the readings that we’ve done in Jeff’s class is Geoffrey Sirc’s box-logic, in which Sirc offers a composition model based on the avant-garde art of Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Cornell, Maciunas, and the Fluxus artists’ movement. Yoko Ono was a member of Fluxus. Yoko Ono was married to John Lennon.
I don’t really know what the point of this curious and convoluted chain of facts is meant to be, but I find it of great interest. In doing research for a paper on Lennon as a rhetorician, I find that I stand on the periphery of a chain of connections and inspirations that connect me (however indirectly) to one of the most important cultural legacies of the past fifty-odd years.
Now. . .if there were world enough, and time, I here launch into a mystoriographic account of why I love John Lennon. But that fershlugginer paper for Barrett isn’t gonna write itself. And then I have to whip up something for my presentation for 6010 on Monday. And then something else for Barrett, and then the first paper for Marback, and then something for Barrett, and then another Marback paper.
If I seem generally pissed in the next couple of weeks, forgive me.
