FoolsCap

I think it’s well understood.

I wish I could take my own frustration and anger more seriously, but I realize what a. . .I dunno–failure? joke? stooge? creep?. . . it would make me if I took it seriously.  Hence the ironic distance btw what I think and feel.

A friend once asked me if I ever felt depressed because I always seemed so cheerful.  I laughed in her face; I’m hardly cheerful.  Life’s a bad joke with no punchline, no gag, no payoff.  The only response to the arrogant presumption that my life (or anyone’s really) has any significance beyond daily toil is to recognize the absurdity of human endeavor and take delight in it–to champion the absurd fact that we exist in the first place.  It’s not cheerfulness, see–it’s desperation.

Recently, someone was alarmed by a playful little cartoon about suicide I posted here.  Hm.  Why?  That is, what would it matter to that reader, or to anyone, if I were to snuff it?

Some admittedly melodramatically grim thoughts tonight in part due to frustration with the Erb paper, but also in light of the VTech shootings.

I hate to blog about them (it seems like a cliche’–much worried hand-wringing about how I’m supposed to treat students and their writing after recent horrors).  Yet it prompts writing nonetheless, though not of the sort I imagine is being posted on other blogs.

I sympathize with Cho Seung-Hui.  This is not to say I valorize him or think of him as some martyr, but at darker periods of my life, I’ve been prone to the sort of dissociation that his writings and video suggest (and, in younger days, wrote similarly gruesome things).  I like to think that I wouldn’t go to the extreme that Cho did, of course–but who’s to say that until some strange confluence of events Cho didn’t also think himself capable of those deeds he has since committed?  Why does Cho become a killer and I don’t?

Because:

• I recognize as I’m not really as tormented as I sometimes make myself out to be.
• My rampant ego would never let me do it knowing that the names of massacre killers like Cho are quickly forgotten.  In two years’ time we’ll ask: remember when that Asian kid shot up that school?  Hence the enduring appeal of such colorfully named killers like Son of Sam, the Boston Strangler, or Jack the Ripper (my personal favorite).  Although none of these matched Cho’s body count, their work seemed personal, driven, motivated, in a way Cho’s random kill-crazy rampage can’t replicate.  It’s quality, not quantity, folks.
• Although I gave up religion a decade ago and profess to be agnostic, I can’t surrender the idea that such actions would mean damnation for a soul I’m not sure I believe exists.
• As silly as this sounds–I wouldn’t want my mother to be ashamed of me for doing it.
• It seems so juvenile, as though one is so weak and possesses so little control of one’s emotion that there is ultimately only one violent choice left.

None of the points above simply says: "Because it’s wrong."  Why?  An intentional omission?  A sop to moral relativism?  I suppose that the third point implies a moral judgment, but it’s the punishment I’m afraid of, not the transgression itself.

There are already two wikipedia articles about the VA Tech shootings.  It already has an official name: "The Virginia Tech Massacre;" Cho has been dubbed "The Question Mark Killer"–which sounds like a particularly redundant Batman villain to me.  But, putting the scholar hat on for just a moment (which means removing the lonely, angry, heartbroken stooge one) there is something to think about here–but it’s not (just) the role/duty of comp or English or whatever profs to catch these people.  Rather, it’s a matter of the need to label something, to give it a title and impose a narrative.

This week’s tragedy (a word I’m sick of hearing (both in light of VTech and in general) because it has a very specific meaning in literary study that almost never applies to the way it’s used in the news) is insensible if it is left to be understood and puzzled over as raw fact: a man shot and killed 30+ other human beings on a college campus.  But with a title, with nomenclature–"A Massacre!"–it’s easier to digest; we can assign roles to heroes and villains ("Boo!  It’s Question Mark!") and then claim to have learned something from this little morality play ("Don’t ignore the crazy desperate loner!").  Really, though, what lesson is to be learned from Cho’s rampage (another representation–Cho as bloodthirsty, insatiable madman)?  Be nice to people?  Hug your students?

I’m sure that the students and faculty and staff at VTech have some long and troubling weeks ahead of them.  I refuse to end this little screed with any call for resolution, healing, or (god forbid) a coming together in a shared renewal of our sense of human brotherhood.  Let’s do something wild–let’s deny any effort to make this event a story, a parable, a fable.  Let’s not learn from it.  Let’s let it linger and fester in the back of our consciences until we can’t tolerate its stench anymore–then, we’ll have learned something.  I don’t know what it will be, but it won’t be the tidy moral platitude that I’m sure we’ll soon see being attached to these events.

So I have a possible line on joining a 4C’s panel submission with some colleagues from Fresno (some of whom will be joining MSU in the fall).  The theme of the panel is "Writing the Material(ity) of the Body: Inscribing Change through Rhetoric(s) of Corpo(reality)."  I think this might be a good place to use the Lennon project–I’m thinking now of using the Lennon project to investigate the role corporeality (in this case, the celebrity body) in persuasion and rhetorical critique–and I could even do some new media work here by focusing on the role not just of Lennon’s body but specifically of his mediated body as the site for rhetorical critique–what Lennon does with his body should be what the reader-viewer does with his or hers . . .

Feedback from the unusual suspects is welcome–er, usual suspects.  That’s the ticket.

As a post script to an as-yet-unscripted post: the Lennon project is proving suprisingly versatile.  I’ve been able to think about in at least several dimensions thus far:

• as protest rhetoric
• as material/embodied rhetoric
• as mediated rhetoric
• as celebrity rhetoric
• as site of rhetorical critique
• as pop cultural rhetoric
• as entry into looking at historical rhetorical scholarship
• as avant-garde-influenced rhetoric

On one hand, I think it’s great that one project has proven so copious in terms of possible scholarship . . . maybe, in this instance, I can (finally) say I’m thinking rhetorically?

On the other . . . I don’t want to get known as "The John Lennon Guy" and have this one (versatile) project define my early scholastic career.  Similarly, I don’t want to get too absorbed in Lennon and lose sight of my other interests in metaphor, psychogeography, new media, and technology.  So, things to keep in mind.

Rejected!

I would like to thank you for submitting an abstract to the rhetoric panel of the 2007 conference of the [Name Deleted to Protect the Innocent].

The year’s pool of abstracts was large and extremely competitive. Your submission was strong, but the committee had the difficult task of selecting only four panelists in the end.  I am sorry to inform you at this time that your abstract was not selected.

Again, I would like to thank you for your submission.

At least it was polite.

So, astute readers will notice, I’ve deleted a recent post.  Why, Mitch? I expect those same astute readers to ask.

Some bits of my rationale:

1. I want to note it wasn’t a political decision.  That is, I didn’t remove the post because I was fearful of rubbing someone the wrong way or because I felt I was crossing some line I hadn’t intended to.  In turn, I’m not stressing this point in order to make myself seem like some fearless crusader for grad student autonomous speech or anything like that–’cos I’m not.  The post in question was carefully composed in order to show respect and appreciation for those faculty and colleagues to whom I made reference–so what I’m saying now is that I don’t think I crossed any line.
2. Faithful readers will no doubt recall the early days of FoolsCap when every other post was devoted to self-pity and professional anxieties.  Although I maintain that neither was my goal in the deleted post, several responses to that post felt like–and that’s my own feeling about them, not the authors’ intentions nor their motives–I had been reduced to a blubbering sop and needed consolation.  Having said that. . .those who responded to the post (all both of you), your words of encouragement etc. are greatly appreciated.
3. Nevertheless.  Grading student papers, I came across a fascinating typo that’s been stuck in my craw: "I happened to me."  There’s something there that I find compelling–that subjectivity/selfhood is an event that befalls us.  Heidegger writes: "A mood assails us."  I think there’s something like that Heideggerian moment happening here: there are times when, despite our best efforts to maintain whatever composure we fancy, moments of blatant self-concern and self-involvement and self-interest overwhelm us.  I think that is what sort of got reflected in the deleted post: I happened to me.
4. And, finally: I have sort of a fatalistic outlook on things: que sera, sera and so on.  Yet although I feel like our control over our fates and destinies is somewhat limited, one thing I think we have some control over–or at least I like to think we do–is how we represent ourselves.  And, in the end, that’s the most important reason behind the deletion: I just didn’t like the image of Mitch that post presented.  Two thoughts connected to this: First, a return to earlier comments about Meish.org … the blog is me(ish), it’s sort of me, parts of me etc.  And I want to control how much of me it is.  Second, and connected to that, the blog–or any writing space, really–is thus a metaphor for the writing subject.  Writing is the space where I am (me)diated.  Now there’s an idea to dig into.  There’s a potential something there, right, yo?  Assuming noone’s beat me to it.

Oh, and a shout-out to Rice: My copy of More than Cool Reason is on its way from the friendly folks at Amazon, along with Of Grammatology and A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds.  I’m planning a very theory summer reading list.

Is it too bold a claim that mediation and metaphor overlap?

I’ve been thinking about Kant, despite my earlier avowals to never again do so.  In particular, I’m thinking about a phrase I wrote for one of the Flatley papers, "the apparatus of subjectivity," to describe Kantian subjectivity.  To whit, a vastly reductive diagram:

sensory impressions  —> subjectivity (imagination/reason/understanding) —> cognition

As Flatley points out (in lecture, although if I bothered I’m sure I’d find some official reference to it somewhere), the Kantian subject’s experience of the world is always mediated by the processes necessary for the cognition of experience (what I called the "apparatus" for shorthand reference).  So a little extrapolation  generates this model of mediation:

information/data —> media (however you choose to understand that) —> subject

And after some thought, metaphor is starting to seem like it works like mediation too; yes, it’s comparative, but can we also say it works like this,

object one —> object two —> reader

such that the first object is understood through a mediated relationship to the second?  Let’s tak every third grader’s favorite metaphor, "cotton-candy clouds," and apply it to this model:

clouds  —> cotton-candy —> reader

If this model works and holds true, then metaphor is mediation, or at least analogous to it: we can understand the first object through the way it is mediated through the second. 

Okay, so something to think about.  But what do I do with this?  First, read more.  Then, think more.  And after that, write more.

And think rhetorically too, dagnabbit.

Later. . .thoughts on deconstruction and metaphor.

The strip is originally titled "Million Dollar Question" by an anonymous author.  Although I’ve found I like teaching–and if Dr. Gorzelsky’s evaluation is to be trusted, have some skill at it–there are still moments, of course, when one reconsiders.

Okay, so it’s not quite that bad.  But I’m having a Dickens of a time deciding what to take in Fall.  Here’s Dr. Pruchnic’s course description:

When Aristotle defined deductive reasoning as "the body of persuasion" in the Rhetoric he largely purged the discipline of its preexisting concern with the connection between physical embodiment and forces of persuasion. During the past decade these repressed elements — and their related structures of affect, performativity, materiality, and sensation — have returned with a vengeance to rhetorical studies. In this seminar we will examine both the importance of embodiment to the origins of rhetoric as well as its more current return(s): how the body has emerged as a problem for critical thought in the past and the questions it provokes for rhetoric, politics, and ethics in the present. Though grounded in current and emergent rhetorical theory, this seminar will draw on an interdisciplinary range of critical studies into embodiment and its relation to persuasion (including literary and cultural studies, film, neuroscience, and psychology). Our tentative list of readings includes texts by Bataille, Jonathan Beller, Kenneth Burke, Judith Butler, Derrida, Mladen Dolar, Richard Doyle, Epictetus, Foucault, José Gil, Guattari, Kafka, Brian Massumi, Mario Perniola, Plato, Elaine Scarry, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Michael Warner, and Elizabeth A. Wilson. 

So, cool, right?  There’s all sort of people listed there whose work I know I should read and many of them I want  to read.  And, given my interest in affective rhetoric–which is still nebulous and undirected, but it’s floating around–this definitely sounds like something I should take.  In fact, I’ve already registered for it in advance, but there’s still time to change.

And change I might.  Dr. Watten hasn’t given me a formal course description yet, but informally (in the lobby of the Maccabees, no less), he said the course is going to be based in research and poetics, and how the two have developed in recent years.  So, this too meets my interests: one thing I find so compelling in both Barthes and Ulmer (and Sirc and Rice and and and) is how research can be aesthetic, and then (in turn) how we can use that realization to create a poetics (which is described in TextBook as a heuristic approach to the creation of a text).  So a class (led by the respected Dr. Watten, no less) about research and poetics seems like it too is something I should take.

Now, the final contender: Dr. Shaviro’s Intro to Film and Media Studies.  This was the first course for the fall that I really wanted to be a part of, but given the potential value to my studies of JP’s and BW’s classes, I don’t really know which to enroll in.  I’ve (finally) finished Shaviro’s Connected and really enjoyed it, and I was looking forward to studying with him (like JP’s class, I’ve already enrolled in SS’s.) 

I think for now, until I get Dr. Watten’s promised course description, I’m sticking with Shaviro and Pruchnic.  But if Watten’s decription seems to cater to the sort of Ulmer/Barthes direction of research/poetics/aesthetics, I’ll probably end up moving from Shaviro’s class to Watten’s.

Ah, hell.