Figure Poetics

Lecture Notes — toward composing final project (see below)

Read / review: Apparatus shift: table/summary (Ulmer).
       –Note: I refer to concepts from this table throughout lecture and these notes.

Read: Ulmer’s blog, “Heuretics”
    –“browse around,” navigating the pages, tags, and/or categories; or in reverse-chrono.
    –Also see (models for layout/organization and navigation):
Ulmer’s current grad students’ projects, analysis of “blogging the disaster”.

Read (for Friday): MyStory project page (tentative; will finalize on Friday)

M 20-Apr     “Para-doxa studio” day. (praxis, poetics, troubleshooting)
    Due: Stage 1 of Project (see below)

W 22-Apr    Due: Final Project (complete) Due by: 9pm

Invention: Para-doxa

“The project is to learn to write with patterns that function more like music than like concepts.” (91)

“…bring directly into the invention process the metaphor for research that has been the unacknowledged support of a certain feeling of thought. What is this feeling–the one guiding the judgments upon which invention depends?” (169)

– Gregory L. Ulmer, Heuretics: The Logic of Invention

M 13-Apr
Read / review: Apparatus shift: table/summary (Ulmer).

Read / review: excerpts from Ulmer about Mystory (PDF on e-learning).

Due: extra credit work for Response 6
        (e.g. response to classmate’s entry; analytic response to Slaughterhouse Five)

W 15-Apr      Vollman: “Red Hands” (3233-9)

Read: Ulmer’s blog, “Heuretics”
    –“browse around,” navigating the pages, tags, and/or categories; or in reverse-chrono.

Relevant / related (potential contrast/lesson?):

“Facebook fans do worse in exams.” (Leake and Warren) The Times 12-Apr 2009.

// “Does Facebook Lower Academic Performance? It’s Still Too Soon to Say.”
(Jefferey R. Young) Chronicle: Wired Campus. 13-Apr 2009

F 17-Apr     Spiegelman: excerpt from Maus (3091-3108
        & Optional — Carver: “Cathedral” (2828-38)
        Due: any remaining extra credit work (e.g. analysis of “blogging the disaster” project)

M 20-Apr     Due: Mystory Project

So It Goes

Note: CATTt page updated (04-Apr)

(Have you been keeping “inventory” from respective readings?
Likely need to update your CATTt-egories and poetics, from past two weeks.)

M 6-Apr Vonnegut: Slaughterhouse Five (through Chapter 5)    (George Carter)   W 8-Apr Slaughterhouse Five (Chapters 6-7)     (David Lewis)   F 10-Apr Slaughterhouse Five (Chapters 8-10)    (Carter Louv)     Due: Response 6 (updated)

Mystory Proposal

Project Proposal: Mystory

Post on your blog; flexible deadline — tentatively due Friday. However, contact me if you need to post yours later; I will reply in order received.

Reminder: blog entry for this week (due class-time Fri) should address one of the CATTt-egories (for “recipe”) from Anzaldua, Cisneros, Kingston, Silko, or Momaday. Be sure to discuss specific lesson derived from their poetics, whether formal (stylistic/composition) or conceptual (content).

Proposal Guidelines and Qs — see below.

lineage poetics

Revised Schedule (23-Mar – 3-Apr)

M 23-Mar     Due: Response 5

W 25-Mar      Ellison: Invisible Man (2298-2316) (Kola Akinduro)
         & Walker: “Everyday Use” (3010-6)    (Ray Southern)
 
F 27-Mar Lorde: “Poetry is Not a Luxury” (2501) & 3 poems (2781-4)
         & Morrison: “Recitatif” (2685-97)     (Clark Roland)

 
Read / review: (over weekend) Plot Against America Notes & Lessons (poetics)
 
Read: (over weekend)     Mystory.pdf — on e-learning

 
M 30-Mar Anzaldua: excerpts from Borderlands/La Frontera (2935-59)     (Katelyn McDonald)
        & Cisneros: “Woman Hollering Creek” (3164-72)    (open)

W 1-Apr Kingston: excerpt from Tripmaster Monkey (2874-2900)    (Lauren Conway)

Project Proposal — post on blog any time by Friday (class time).

 
F 3-Apr Momaday: The Way to Rainy Mountain excerpt (2766-75)
                    and web version of section 1     (Ryan George)
         & Silko: “Lullaby” (3083-90)     (Andrea Morgan)

Fallschirmjäger

15 January 2009
Method: Para-doxa

“para-doxa” // “paradox”

“para-” :
1) beyond; beside
2) guard against²

“paradox” (see multiple)

para-² 
“a combining form meaning “guard against,” occurring in loanwords from French, or, via French, from Italian: parachute; parasol
Origin: < F < It para, 3d sing. pres. of parare to prepare against, ward off”

 
 
     Q. potential figure: the Fallschirmjäger?

Even more specifically: these para-troopers were literally “beside” the Wehrmacht, some comprising the Fallschirm-Panzer-Division 1 Hermann Göring — Göring’s distinct (“private”) army.

Q. Obvious task, historical parallel: “guard against” the Luftwaffe (against the blitz; premises: London 1940-41) — but how to go beyond? How to re-deploy history toward unconventional expression of unique{affect, experience, identity}?
 
 

C(onc)ensus Broadcast System

“People want to produce ‘consensus’, but consensus is an ideal that guides opinion, and has nothing to do with philosophy.” (152)

 
““TV is, in its present form the ultimate consensus: it’s direct social engineering, leaving no gap at all between itself and the social sphere[;] it’s social engineering in its purest form.” (74)

–Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations: 1972-1990

 
 
Q1. Potential shorthand for us? {“Census+Consensus”} Con-census Broadcast System (“CBS”)
 
Q2. Do you recall the “crazy quilt” in Ragtime?

Note: Worth reviewing Ragtime notes,
particularly regarding historiographic fiction, for discussion of The Plot Against America.

 
 

Relevant Recent Articles (apt for blogging this week)

“The Humanities’ Value” – Geoffery Galt Harpham (President, National Humanities Center)    “Glenn Beck Recycles X-Files Plot to Spread Fear of Obama” – Jeffrey Feldman A plot against America (!!?) — The X-Files was a documentary, right? Like Henry Ford’s factual publications…?   “The Roar of the Crowd: Sports Fans’ Primal Behavior” – David P. Barash

Never Before

“History is everything that happens everywhere. Even here in Newark. Even here on Summit Avenue. Even what happens in his house to an ordinary man — that’ll be history too someday.” (180)

“I wanted nothing to do with history. I wanted to be a boy on the smallest scale possible.” (233)

M 16-Mar Roth: The Plot Against America Postscript; Chapters 1-5 (Saudia Ally & David Korman)       W 18-Mar Plot Against America Chapters 6-7 (Amanda Stipe)       F 20-Mar Plot Against America Chapters 8-9 (Kristin Zemina)     Response 5: Due M 23-Mar (updated)

 
 
 

Breaking (from? toward?)

 
 
During Spring Break…

Weekly blog entries not required (optional / extra credit toward participation).

More significant extra credit opportunity of an additional response
(see details below).

 
 

Moving on (in the middle)

 
 
M 2-Mar      Essay 1 workshop
(Read/review notes)

– Note: Post one question or specific topic for discussion in thread below.

Read: (over weekend)
         Text for analysis; resources: notes; sections in Gardner; Purdue OWL pages (see below).

 
 
W 4-Mar                   Due: Essay 1
(on e-learning)

Extra Credit: (optional)          Process Memo (see below)
 
 

scene from Good Bye Lenin!