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

M 20-Apr     “Para-doxa studio” day. (praxis, poetics, troubleshooting)
Due: Stage 1 of Project
Criteria:
        Note: must be online, “in progress,” by class time to avoid penalty (“late” / point deduction from final project).

“Research” is complete; definite/revised topic/issue; sources and “materials” selected.

Literary: 3-4 (from class readings); Scholarly ~2 (McMahon/chpts; Barthes)
List either in “materials” page/section or in an entry (“post”), tagged with “research,” “notes,” “draft,” etc. (i.e. clearly tagged to differentiate as not part of the project proper.)
Prospective: provide brief rationale/strategy, for how to use or what they contribute (if you’ve not “employed” these materials in composing entries, yet.) So, these are the “plans” for composing later — as your earlier entries might imply (review your semester-long “research”!)

Layout / ORG: Blog modified to assignment guidelines.

Static home page.
“Posts” or “Entries” page created.
New title (creative / applicable, re: “critical expressionism” of your project)
        example: “MyOptica“
(New “theme”/template? Optional)
Required Pages created (content optional for Monday): Home, About, “Materials,” Poetics, Reflection, “Posts” (Entries)
Categories and Tags (create, relative to topic)
    – note: categorize and tag old entries (e.g. “research” + authors/readings + topic) Required
Widgets: “Categories” and “Tag Cloud” (minimum / req’d)

Note: Review Ulmer’s blog and/or his grad. students’ projects for model layout/organization (especially tags/categories).

“Multimedia”

Be sure to embed images and audio/video clips (even if you change/delete them later).
We’ll want to troubleshoot practical issues like this during Monday’s workshop — please attend/arrive with specific technical questions/issues.

Content

5-10 entries (min.)
    – reminder: entries are fragments, 100-200 words.
Flexible poetics: might be single topic/vignette (for emphasis); also, remember our poetics/logic: juxtaposition (“sterographic plurality,” heterogeneous writing).
    – Example of “stereographic” fragment: heterogeneous relation between image and text.

Figure: must have at least one specific instance/example posted by Monday; (you will further develop/refine/expand this later, particularly using image software.)

Lecture Notes (M 13-Apr & W 15-Apr)

Read / review: Apparatus shift: table/summary (Ulmer).

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

Facebook –> Internet as “Institution” of Electracy
– detrimental to students, in view of Scientific-Literate-Rational (school/discipline)
Ours = “participatory” role, within changing (changed?) milieu.

We are working in a different mode.
         – Not writing narrative (e.g. short story); not writing argument (e.g. essay).

Toward composing Figure — blog project will serve overall as figure for experience (affect: subjective dimension).
         Distinct: overall “figure” (blog) from particular figures (e.g. images).

Output / result = “expressive” (poetic = figurative = indirect); more like music (or a painting?).
         Reminder: music = pure expression/affect (narrative and argument infrequently employed; not dominant modes)
or, “style = mood/attitude”

Ulmer: “The project is to learn to write with patterns that function more like music than like concepts.” (91)
          Barthes: “Third meaning” (signifiance) = neither denotation nor connotation; expressive, oblique.
         – 3rd sense = hearing; avatar = cochlea (inner ear)
         – Not “auto-biography” but “oto-biography” (Ulmer)

Not employing rhetorical strategies toward audience (e.g. narrative = evoke sentiment; argument = persuade).
         Not trying to change others’ minds — but to demonstrate that a change in our own thinking.

Compose in “Middle voice” = “self-address” (neither active nor passive).

Toward identifying and refashioning figures: explore our own “paradigm.”
         Three levels or areas of discourse: family, school, culture (pop and high).
          Ulmer: “write with the paradigm” (Heuretics 88)

         Logic of abduction (inference); insight through associative thinking.

         e.g. identifying figure in element that connects or appears across all three levels of discourse.

Reminder: project must be “grounded” in experience — not abstract or generalizing (stereotype).
         Concrete figures help accomplish this.

Review: “ground” = “premise(s)”
Ammons’ “Corsons Inlet” = my premises (island/inlet/beach)

         Need specific / concrete setting.

Likewise, need to employ / “re-deploy” figures from culture:
         * “Re-fashion” / “re-purpose” e.g. Kiefer, Roth re: Wagner

“Entertainment” (institution/discourse) = doxa (consensus, myths)
— and yet, site where electracy emerges.
         Interrogate (“attitude” / approach is always critical, never passive receives watching television)
         “Participatory” role now, in “internet society/culture” — not our parents watching TV/films.
         We might contribute another understanding, simultaneously taking responsibility…

(Wednesday 15-Apr)

Organization (blog / layout) / Formal features

Not linear (e.g. essay) — all elements present at once, simultaneously; more like anagram.
– Pages, categories, tags

– Navigate Ulmer’s blog and grad. students’ projects (models).

Composing figure (final project) in non-linear, simultaneous, and connected organization.
         Not relying on conventions of narrative and argument, for organization (e.g. manipulating readers).

Mode: Narrative   |   Argument  |   Figure

Axis: Right/Wrong    |   True/False    |   Joy/Sadness (Affect)

“Heroes” / “Villains”    ::   Pro / Con    ::    ______ ?

“Frequency” / “Mixing Board” (EQ):
Narr. | ARG | FIG (levels?)

“Formal logic (organization/composition): juxtaposition.

“Blindspot” — what is overlooked (ignored?) or excluded by the doxa, consensus discourse?
         (examples in Vollman “Red Hands” ?)

Premise: if doxa involves (requires?) excluding and forgetting, then we will act as the para-doxa to this.

Part of the implication and responsibility in taking up experience to inscribe (express) through our projects is that we are not excluding, and thus not forgetting.
         Distinct from “personal memory” or cliche memorial.
         We seek to counteract (remedy?) the collective forgetting by the doxa{consensus, census, conventional}.
         – we have agency, as participants and producers of our culture.

This is the ethical component to our project, “taking responsibility” in “taking up” this experience — not to forget, ignore, neglect the blindspots (lived experience), in that we are (self-)aware of our discourse{thought+expression}.
          (Note: not morality or ideology, which are conventional modes involving judgments; but “virtue,” “duty” or “obligation.”)
         
In other words, a virtue of empathy is implied in this refusal to forget the experience that we take up.