Totally!
More thoughts on totality.
For 7010 we’ve read Lukacs on class consciousness. One of the ideas he addresses is Marx’s concept of the totality. Something about how class consciousness isn’t possible until the class (as a whole) understands its relationship in the totality of the system of production/consumption. Or something like that. Crazy commie pinkos.
So. . .McGinnis reads Hampton reads Sartre/Lukacs reads Marx? I find this interesting–look at the way totality has moved–as a trope–from Marx’s economic study to a few days ago where I read it as a possible way of theorizing composition. Freaky deaky.
Furthermore. . .Thinking about the essays I’m presenting on today: Ulmer reads Nelson/Coleridge/Bartram/Lowes–Xanadu as choragraphic site that resonates through these voices. Ulmer reads Nelson reads Orson Welles (as hypermedia designer) which leads to C. F. Kane’s Xanadu (in Florida, no less, where Ulmer teaches).
McGinnis listens to the White Stripes, remembers afresh that their album White Blood Cells features the song "The Union Forever" which is more or less about Kane.
So Coleridge to Welles to White to McGinnis?
The idea of the totality comes into play here, doesn’t it? The relationships might be tenuous, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. In fact, I don’t think the actual "veracity" of the relationships matters as much as the realization that the idea/trope/image repeats in different registers throughout different discourses. That different choragraphic voices sing "Xanadu" is of note, whether they are singing the same tune or no. (I have a feeling I may have mishandled and maybe mangled the music metaphor.) Ulmer’s notion of choragraphy has harmonic, musical is replayed again–"registers" is also a musical term.
The totality, then–what is it, how does it work? How can it inform our approach to composition pedagogy? Which is to ask: it may be of interest to see how Jack White can be connected to Plato, but how is that of value to us? The recognition itself is not enough, is it? That’s where I get stuck with box-logic/mystoriography–tracing the connections is interesting–fun, even–but I can’t seem to move past that to the stage where the connections mean something. Of course, I haven’t really done a mystory as such–perhaps the form itself provides the structure for the next level to become evident? Which is to say: running around in a field is fun, but it’s not a game until there’s rules.
