Do you want some Body to love?
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.
