On Interdisciplinarity

These notes were produced in conjunction with Dr. Karsten Piep's seminar Interdisciplinarity, in Union Institute and University's Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies program during the Spring 2012 semester. 

***

What’s in a name? The naming of an intellectual movement may best be known through its means than its ends; perhaps that’s a kernel of debate within this larger redefinition of academic pursuit. Tracing a history of the term interdisciplinary, Klein seeks to establish a theoretical grounding for practice and work between disciplines—and how institutions may embrace such weaving of departments, faculty, and research methods. Using the “swift embrace of Lyotard, Derrida and readings in American humanities” (p. 2) as an entry to distinguishing types of interdisciplinary work, Klein’s definitions seek to name something he speculates may be the “model of an organic society of the past, when culture and society were presumably joined” (p. 2). Disseminating terms, the integrity of any one discipline may appear to be questioned, through a truly interdisciplinary lens: Klein praises Rorty for ‘working within the system,’ as it were, in that his critiques of analytic philosophy “from within the discipline, from arguments advanced by mainstream philosophers” (p. 3). Without descending again into a linguistic battle of prefixes to denote differences in the sharing of knowledge, I am interested to know more about what this acknowledged system to work within, or betray, by way of inventive inquiry?

Following an introduction that includes examples of interdisciplinary practice, Meyer discusses characteristics of the framing of knowledge, including its heregenousity within specific worlds and spaces, its necessity, its practice “within discourse” (p. 204),  its reliability and the establishment of boundaries (p. 205) and, simply, its problematic nature. Interdisciplinarity “in essence aims to avoid partial framings of problems” (p. 205), seeking to more fully conceptualize knowledge beyond application in specific disciplines. Meyer’s conclusion returns to the importance of the action of knowing and using what one knows: because of the complicated nature of our geographic, historic, and cultural “framed place[s]”(p. 209), “translating across disciplines, across academia, across the frame of our empirical data, is always a difficult enterprise” (p. 209)—almost an act of ‘translation,’ between parties that view “representation [as] a key element” (p. 210). Klein uses the term “accommodation” (p. 62) to describe liberal academics’ “contest of definition” amongst “institutional hierarchies.” Acknowledging “institutional culture,” Klien characterized the early 1990s’ culture surrounding interdisciplinary through borrowing George Levine’s comment that a “quiet scandal” existed, regarding the ‘borrowing’ of sources—a situation that may no longer be exactly the case, given our new accessible climate of information.

As presented in this unit’s video example from the University of Wisconsin, interdisciplinarity may be best applied to study and research related to environmental and sustainability initiatives: the physical conditions of our environment, and the preservation of the existing condition of our collective water, air, and earth may serve as a good example of disciplines’ uniting around a common (imperative) principle.

Klein, Julie Thompson.  “Forging Theory, Practice, and Institutional Presence.”  Humanities, Culture and Interdisciplinarity .  Albany:  State U of New York Press, 2005.

Meyer, Morgan. “Increasing the Frame: Interdisciplinarity, Transdisciplinarity, and Representativity.” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 32.3 (2007): 203-12.

***

One of Jacobs’ biggest charges in his 2009 Chronicle of Higher Education article may come in asking, “is an interdisciplinary structure likely to overcome division and provide a more synthetic understanding of our natural and social world?” Perhaps, in practice, this synthetic understanding, is less useful—as Dr. Piep noted, many “complex issues […] necessitate sub-specialization that perforce leads to academic fragmentation.” Were we to, in theory and reality, “overcome division” through interdisciplinarity, the framework for specialization across disciplines in higher education might upend and transform traditional notions of vocationalism at work at colleges and universities.

Is Interdisciplinarity a banner beneath which the liberal arts and technical-trade communities of educators at work in post-secondary institutions may rally, in theoretical solidarity? Cook-Sather notes Harvard’s 1972 “divorce” of anthropology, psychology, and sociology from a larger ‘umbrella’ Department of Social Relations; as a faculty member in Vermont Technical College’s Department of English, Humanities, and Social Sciences, such streamlining of material not included in any one student’s major (at my school, anyway) can be important and useful, but must be supported by an institution’s administration. My department is responsible for supporting students’ skills of written expression, through flavors of Freshman Composition and Technical Communication, but through offering a diversity of electives as well. Together these academic engagements sum to no “synthetic understanding” of the world, but an application of what our students’ employers have named “soft skills:” the ability to talk about what one has accomplished, its context, history, and to guess at its legacy and impact. Cook-Sather’s work is interesting for its interplay with and statements from “information technologists” and librarians during the 2004 syllabi-revision collaboration that she recounts, finding  that “[…] even if we were to move to a world in which the academic discipline that is assumed to be crucial to the interdisciplinary space is replaced by a wider conception, we are still left with the fact that knowledge production remains in the hands of a like-minded faculty” (Cook-Sather, p. 2). The schisms that exist between disciplines are essential, it seems, in Cook-Sather’s characterization, to interdisciplinarity: we must exist as separate that we may work together. After recounting dictionary definitions of discipline, Cook-Sather notes the challenge at hand for the contextualization of this field of study to be larger than language alone: “there are more than linguistic issues that stand between the interdisciplinarity of today and the way we would like to see it conceptualized” (p. 11).

I concur with a previous metaphor for interdisciplinary collaboration: as water, formless but for its environment, and the nature of its use. The willing and able application of work between disciplines—from one's  work on the environmental legislation to  discussions surrounding the renewed value of visual and creative art to medical doctorate candidates—is useful to discerning the theory of this established academic movement. Jacobs notes nanotechnology, homeland security, and American studies as examples of interdisciplinarity at work in institutions, but stops short of giving  any more claim to “a more unified vision of American culture than those of its closest neighbors, history and English.” An academic pragmatism may question students’ actual use of the “more unified vision” Jacobs sees interdisciplinarity as seeking; the unification of academic realms to achieve a common goal, over the accumulation and re categorization of knowledge, may be a useful criteria for identifying interdisciplinarity. I agree with Cook-Sather, in that this realm of academic study, research, and collaboration, may challenge the common language we use to describe the nature of our work.

Cook-Sather, A. (2007). "Breaking the Rule of Discipline in Interdisciplinarity: Redefining Professors, Students, and Staff as Faculty." Journal of Research Practice.  Retrieved from http://jrp.icaap.org/index.php/jrp/rt/printerFriendly/101/93

 Jacobs, J. (2009). "Interdisciplinary Hype." Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/Interdisciplinary-Hype/49191/

***

There’s something important about Foucault’s rationalization, and how a decentralization of our strata of economic class became more evident in the tragedy that was the federal response to Hurricane Katrina: “something more systemic and deep-rooted was revealed in the wake of Katrina—namely, that the state no longer provided a safety net for the poor, sick, elderly, and homeless” (Giroux, p. 175). Through Giroux’s interdisciplinary lens, the inequities in the delivery of aid to victims becomes a clear characteristic of the federal and state response. Framing criticisms of the Bush administration, Giroux’s portrait of human rights is as dire as possible: “excommunicated from the sphere of human concern, they have been rendered invisible, utterly disposable, and heir to that army of socially homeless that allegedly no longer existed in color-blind America” (p. 175). The group most affected by Hurricane Katrina  was subject to what Giroux called a “new biopolitics of disposability” (p. 175). Do the machinations of our modern industrial complex welcome such disasters; are they profitable?

Foucault presents here not a “theory nor a methodology [but] to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects” (p. 777). Foucault identifies a “general theme” (p. 778) in his research: the legitimization of power, as the subjectification of humans continues across multiple axies. Foucault fears a generalized culture of rationalization, as Carmelita noted, but calls for the analysis of “specific rationalities” (p. 780) in the study of power relations and behavior. In Foucault’s discourse on the “struggle against the forms of subjection—against the submission of subjectivity” (p. 782), I first thought of the subjectification of identity, and perhaps the truly interdisciplinary nature of popular reality television shows like A&E’s Hoarders, Fox’s Cops, and the relic of my youth, America’s Funniest Home Videos. In these, the viewer is made witness to Foucault’s general theme, as the subjectification of the individual in mass media becomes the function of entertainment; a larger study may identify where, within our reality television culture, lies Foucault’s pastoral vision (the “modern matrix” he describes on p. 783). The value judgements that may be assigned to characters help frame and evolve our relationship to media, and how we are collectively willing to make a spectacle of ourselves, or be witness to one.  If subjectification of the individual—a repression of the spirit of not-harmful human expression—is determined by the nature of our participation in society, what we do with and how we apply this, Foucault’s lens of power dynamics becomes ever important.  

I appreciate the description of Foucault as empowering, and I would let Foucault’s phrase “a critical investigation into the thematics of power” to thread through my teaching and curricula. I find Foucault guilty of a selectivity in his argument; his disclaimer as to his intention—not a theory, not a methodology—is important, as Marsha’s discussion and contextualization of the civil rights movement in terms of Foucault’s three types of subjectification highlights the application of a theory as a pragmatic criteria. May us interdisciplinarians—those who seeks to conference-hop, who draw pedagogy from unexpected sources, or who provide new contextualization for important moments in our human history of ethics—maintain a more pragmatic place than any heightened philosophers. It is in our practice, our interactions across traditional structures of disciplines, that we might define how scholarship, and higher education as a whole, may invite and give voice to new paradigms of knowledge, understanding, and power.

M. Foucault (1982). The subject and power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), 777-795. 

On Memoir, Identity, and Narrative Representation of the Self

These notes were produced in conjunction with Dr. Shelley Armitage's seminar Memoir and Identity, offered during the fall of 2012, in Union Institute and University's Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies program.

***

In my view, identity may extend above and around any individual, an umbrella of how we’ve spent our time, whose flexible metal frame is our understanding and interpretation of those experiences—as best as we may recall and recount. Stuart Hall asks, “what is this never-ending theoretical work which is constantly losing and regaining concepts?” (42). An elusive answer to this dilemma of self-determination and representation comes in assessing modern mechanics of identity creation, of how and where we state and make known our unique abilities, insights, and narratives.

Hall’s discussion descends into semiotics, and spirals into discerning the meaning of Derrida’s elusive ‘a’ implanted into the word “difference,” seeking to prove that the paradox of our meaning becomes (according to Hall), the lack of human certainty, to any facts at all: postmodernism seems to have rendered our abilities of representation somewhat null, as “meaning is in that sense a wager” (p. 51), our best individual and collective guesswork, as to who we are and what we do. For Derrida (in my interpretation), the ‘difference’ of our individual existence becomes penultimate to a collection representative of the subtleties and nuances between us. For Hall, the question of individual self-determination becomes representative of “a change of consciousness, a change of self-recognition, a new process of identification, the emergence into visibility of a new subject” (p. 54).

This action of transformation and emergence may be the result of acknowledging a Derridadian ‘difference,’ which Morrison describes eloquently: it is the close and trepidations relationship between the author and their representational narrative she seeks to represent in her works, as well as the histories she may encounter and, by necessity, represent: “when you kill the ancestor you kill yourself” (p. 497). When one seeks contextualization for one’s own life experience, a keen sense of precedence, and what has come before, is essential.

In April of 2012, Bruce Springsteen delivered the keynote address at the Austin, Texas music and arts festival South By Southwest. As a springboard to his remarks, “The Boss” used music critic Lester Bangs’ grave characterization of creativity and a solipsistic climate of representation and identification within the genre, following the untimely death of Elvis. Bruce Springsteen cited Bangs’ final paragraph, which appears here unabridged, published originally in the Village Voice on August 29, 1977:

If love truly is going out of fashion forever, which I do not believe, then along with our nurtured indifference to each other will be an even more contemptuous indifference to each others' objects of reverence. I thought it was Iggy Stooge, you thought it was Joni Mitchell or whoever else seemed to speak for your own private, entirely circumscribed situation's many pains and few ecstasies. We will continue to fragment in this manner, because solipsism holds all the cards at present; it is a king whose domain engulfs even Elvis's. But I can guarantee you one thing: we will never again agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. So I won't bother saying good-bye to his corpse. I will say good-bye to you (Bangs, 2003).

As we seek to create new methods of self-identification and representation, to what extent are our narrative impulses influenced by others in our intellectual environment? Have readers, listeners, and viewers’ expectations of representation in art changed since Bangs described a culture of fragmentation and solipsism; do we expect to see ourselves when we read, watch, or listen? Or, have we come to expect creative expressions of self-definition, across genres, to resemble each individuals’ coming-to-realization story of their connectedness? If we do have such expectations, Bangs’ comment on how culture may come to nurture a “contemptuous indifference to each others’ objects of reverence” remains, unfortunately, salient. Hall describes a “profound historical decentering in terms of social practice” (p. 43), in part because the “individual or collective subject [is lodged] always within historical practices, as we individuals or as groups cannot be, and can never have been, the sole origin or authors of those practices.” Acts of self-definition, identification, and the explanation of narrative are, according to Hall, to be eternally linked, traceable, in tandem with other individuals, moments, and works of expression that have come before: regardless of whether or not anything exists in our culture that we may have previously agreed upon. According to “The Boss,” our aims of expression and individual narrative come amidst a “post-authentic world. And today authenticity is a house of mirrors. It’s all just what you’re bringing when the lights go down. It’s your teachers, your influences, your personal history. And at the end of the day, it’s the power and purpose of your music that matters” (Springsteen, as cited by Powers, 2012).

Bangs, L. (2003). Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader. Ed. J. Morthland. Random House: New York.

Bangs, L. (29 August 1977). “Where Were You When Elvis Died?” Retrieved from http://josephwaldman.livejournal.com/43782.html

Hall, S. (1997). "Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities." Culture, globalization, and the world system; contemporary conditions for the representation of identity.41-68.

Morrison, T. (1994). “Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation.”The Woman That I Am, ed. D. Soyini. Madison: St. Martin’s.

Powers, A. (15 March 2012). “Bruce Springsteen on the Meaning of Music.” NPR.org. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/03/15/148693171/bruce-springsteen-on-the-meaning-of-music

***

Vizenor’s “Crows Written on the Poplars: Autocritical Autobiographies” experiments with narrative voice and the genre of creative non-fiction, to recount both his father’s death, as well as grapple with both his abilities and shortcomings of memory. Does Vizenor’s promise—to refer to himself in both the first and third person—complicate, or help achieve, his essay’s goal? Is this solipsism—the celebration of one’s own perceptions, as ultimate and central—or, does Vizenor’s essay seek to reflect an understanding of the world beyond, a history of the connectedness the author has accomplished?

The author’s sense of identity seems confused, for his choice to employ both first- and third-person: “who would he be now in his autobiographies, he wondered, if he had stayed in Japan?” (p. 429). Frankly, I am less interested in individuals’ narratives (including memoir), if review of such past-tense possibility is established as an overriding theme. Citing Georges Gusdorf, Vizenor’s theoretical embrace of autobiographical tasks becomes itself an uphill battle: as “autobiography becomes possible only under certain metaphysical pre-conditions” (Gusdorf, as cited by Vizenor, p. 432), the fragmented glances into the author’s life provide the reader traces and threads of comprehension. According to Vizenor, is an autobiographical author specifically fraught with the task of becoming his or her own subject? Should Vizenor, whose writing is replete with as many quotations on the craft, accept George Steiner’s characterization of the genre (“we speak first to ourselves, then to those nearest us in kinship and locale” (p. 432-433)), this essay seems to seek entry into the academic realms of the late 1980s , when ‘mixedbloods’ may have been as understandable as the essay’s elusive title phrase (I do not like poplars—one of the weakest trees, and no good for winter burning). Perhaps the role of the memoirist is, to Vizenor, like that of a poet: to wrangle with the concrete images until some novel and perhaps salient account is rendered, however comprehensive and comprehendible. Preferring prose accounts (Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London; Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name), or even Ferlinghetti’s autobiographical and remarkable attempt at poetry (Americus, Book 1 (2005)), I suppose Vizenor—in part because of the composition of his being, in part because of his life experience—ascribes beyond genre to the aim of what “poetry” once meant. From W.H. Auden’s “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”:

for Poetry makes nothing happen: it survives

in the valley of its saying where executives

would never want to tamper; it flows south

from ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,

raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,

a way of happening, a mouth.

Vizenor, G. (1987). “Crows Written on the Poplars: Autocritical Autobiographies.” In Native American Autobiography: An Anthology. Ed. A. Krupat. University of Wisconsin Press.

***

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982) represents a critical, reflective, and personal narrative: a work of memoir organized through moments of enlarged sensual and physical experience, in which the storyteller illuminates key moments of her understanding. Facets of Lorde’s identity—as a woman, a lesbian, as well as a member of the groups that occupy and reside in specific locations—evolve, threaded by her patient, reflective, and self-effacing tone. How does Lorde’s work (subtitled “a biomythography”) define, or provide contrast to, a more traditional definition of first-person non-fiction narrative?

Lorde’s experimentation in what psychology may name transactional analysis riddle each of the interactions she cites: be them with her mother, her father, her high school classmates, or the “beautiful young women whom [Lorde] was sheltering like a wounded banshee” (p. 119) at Hunter College. Raised in Harlem, her relationship with her mother characterizes her earliest years, spent upon an “unfriendly firmament” (p. 34); in both Catholic school as well as at home, Lorde’s “ability[ies] had nothing to do with expectation” (p. 24). Interactions are key to each event Lorde describes, from chanting collective Hail Marys with her classmates following Pearl Harbor (p. 54), to the patient sensuality expressed in her first physical encounter with a woman (p. 40). Relationships of many types remain Lorde’s central theme; beyond the historical significance of her accounts of community amongst lesbians during the late 1940s and early 1950s, the nature of deep and shared experience between women evolves and progresses throughout Lorde’s narrative, each instance increasing in complexity. For this reason, as well as for the time period it seeks to depict, I was reminded of the development of fraternity and the nature of male association and exchange through the endlessly-reflective narratives of Jack Kerouac . The prefix bio- Lorde applies to the subtitle of her work of memoir may represent her focus on relationships between the humans she encountered during a specific period in her life.

What of the characterization, then, of memoir being “mythography”—the tracing of a path upon some sort of map, upon which explanations for natural or social phenomena are represented? Some of the parental advice she mentioned: “Mistakes could mean exposure, maybe even annihilation” (p. 58). Following Audre’s disappointment, in the school election she had “cared about so much […],” her mother tells her, “‘Child, why you worry your head so much over fair or not fair? Just do what is for you and let the rest take care of themselves’” (p. 65). Lorde describes that “[she] was supposed to know without being told” (p. 69), about matters of inequality, racism, and the “new and crushing reality” surrounding her family. She is making dinner for her mother, smashing garlic with a mortar and pestal (p. 78-79), when she becomes further aware of herself as a physical, sensual, and sexual being—and, forgetting dinner, fails to meet her mother’s expectations. These pieces of wisdom sum to convey little sense of authority and autonomy to the author; rather, Lorde’s ethereal presence amongst these individuals seems to drive the narrative forward, as a procession of events leads her deeper into an understanding of one’s impact upon the world.

In describing the diversification of her experience at Hunter College (“each part of my school life was separate from the other, with no connection except through me” (p. 86)), her friend Gennie’s suicide attempts, which end in tragedy (p. 106), and her abortion, described graphically, and with a terse emotion (p. 110), Lorde’s narrative continues to bear a kind patience to its subjects, including her central character, herself . Later, following a variety of industrial jobs in and around Stamford, Connecticut—and after having gained confidence, understanding, and terminology for dimensions of her identity—Lorde is keen in assessing interactions within a specific community, however clandestine and taboo:“Lesbians were probably the only Black and white women in New York City in the fifties who were making any real attempt to communicate with each other” (p. 179). Perhaps the ‘myth’ inherent in Lorde’s “mythography” comes in her true assessment of her impact on others’ (and lovers’) lives: largely unknown, uncovered, and unresolved. Her path of knowing—first characterized by her utter blindness, and the enablement she feels upon getting glasses as a child—may be the result of her heightened social, sensual, physical, and sexual experiences. “I soon discovered that if you keep your mouth shut, people are pat to believe you know everything, and they begin to feel freer and freer to tell you anything, anxious to show that they know something, too” (p. 129).

Lorde, A. (1983). Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. Freedom CA: The Crossing Press.

***

To what extent may one show “love” for an aspect of one’s identity, however construed or contrived by society? hooks’ students, in a course on black women writers in the early 1990s, “wanted to talk about black self-hatred, to hear one another confess (especially students of color) in eloquent narratives about the myriad ways they had tried to attain whiteness, if only symbolically” (p. 10). The circumnavigation of her students, around and about their race, is characterized by hooks as “self-hatred,” “so intense that it silenced any constructive discussion about loving blackness” (p. 10). hooks uses the ideas of James Cone to assert how “moving away from the notion that an emphasis on sameness is the key to racial harmony” (p. 13), and towards not a culture of ‘racial erasure,’ but a full embrace of difference, as a “basis for solidarity.” While hooks’ theoretical context for race as a component of identity remains important, I found her quote from Jonathan Rutherford especially interesting, if increasingly outmoded: “advertising thrives on selling us things that will enhance our uniqueness and individuality […] cultural difference sells” (p. 17). If we consumers were still seeking technologies that, beyond their practical purposes, specifically deepen and enliven our identities and our connection to people like ourselves, a greater diversity of fair-trade products may have become available by now, twenty years after hooks’ original writing. What assessment of saleable cultural difference might be made, based on cellular phone carriers’ marketing, of the latest pocket computers? It seems more important now (than ever?) that corporations’ advertising—from Wal-Mart to Verizon, Toyota to IBM—feature individuals from a diversity of racial backgrounds.

hooks inquired as to why black students sat separately from white students, in the Yale University cafeteria: “we sit together with folks with whom we share common interests and concerns” (p. 16). To what extent may this criteria represent a new construction of ‘love,’ for not specific aspects of one’s own identity, but the acceptance and endorsement of such, in full? The differences between us are essential to our understanding of “our uniqueness and individuality”; in their acknowledgement comes a more complete understanding of who we are: “we cannot value ourselves rightly without first breaking through the walls of denial which hide the depth of black self-hatred, inner anguish, and unreconciled pain” (p. 20).

Since the time of hooks’ writing, the United States gained new extrinsic enemies through The War on Terror; we have elected a black male for President; a successful black entrepreneur sustained (however briefly) a campaign for the Republican nomination; military campaigns were launched and sustained, based on theological and political difference; the intrinsic and national demonization of racial difference Michael Jackson’s skin tone changed, literally from black, to his own unique shade of flesh. I am interested in how the “love” hooks describes might be applied to the widening economic disparity in this country, and wonder how might we come to love being part of “the 99%”?

***

Based in Damasio’s theories of connectedness, Eakin(2005) seeks connections between the actions of the mind and the synchronization of the body: “is it fantastical to align the events of our emotional, intellectual, and spiritual lives on a continuum with the micro-events of our physiology” (p. 4)? No greater error than the autobiographer’s assumption that their audience has gathered with a similar and unifying expectation, and await a writer’s “recovery of the past” (p. 5)—for this reason, Eakin focuses on a definition of “narrative duration: it too has a trajectory stretching across time, such that the present of the autobiographical act in these cases is not a present of the present moment but rather a recent past, the history of the autobiography’s composition” (p. 5). Hinting that our conception of time and chronology may be one of our largest stumbling blocks in accurate portrayal of our complicated lives, Eakin’s essay surmises new and inventive use of our memories.

Our lives are made different by our retelling: “not due only to the remodeling of the lived past that takes place consciously and unconsciously, but also to the laying down and remodeling of the anticipated future” (p. 6). I find this comment intriguing, as our political system might bemoan its morning-after, post-Convention hangover: viewing rhetorical synopses posted on factcheck.org and elsewhere, one may find interesting trends in the extent to which Republican (and Democrat) politicians have been willing to ‘look back,’ and the extent to which loud voices advocate for “remodeling of the anticipated future.” Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush remarked on his brother’s Presidential administration, in a rare and partisan moment of reflection: "Mr. President, it's time to stop blaming your predecessor. You were dealt a tough hand, but your policies have not worked […] A real leader would accept responsibility for his actions, and you haven’t done that” (Bush, August 30, 2012, as cited by Mascaro).

To what extent is the action of ‘remembering remembering’ a feature of a writer’s Romantic sensibilities? Eakin characterizes Wordsworth and Whitman in this respect, likely to be emotionally attached to their action of memory: as we recall our biographical details at different points in our lives, we are subject to the distortions of our present-tense conditions—and perhaps, specifically, those among us who may identify ourselves as poets (I once helped a friend with a poetry manuscript titled “The Comedy of Memory”). Eakin is preoccupied with the fallacies, incongruences, and the comedic that may come in our action of looking back at our lives, not only because our bodies as well as our minds maybe seeking to understand that rhythm, but also because we have endured these physical, visceral experiences.

Eakin, P. (2005). “Living Autobiographically.”Biography, 28,1. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.proxy.myunion.edu/docview/215618822/fulltext?accountid=14436

Mascaro, D. (August30, 2012). “Jeb Bush ad-libs about brother George W. Bush at GOP convention.”Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-jeb-bush-george-bush-20120830,0,2837646.story?track=rss

***

Patricia Hampl’s memoir Blue Arabesque is a personal narrative focused on the author’s conception of leisure and indulgence, a search for distinction and calm The intersection of art, spirituality, and sensuality are key to Hampl’s memoir. Her childhood initiates her story, and much attention is paid to the formal and structured setting of “pre-Vatican II” Catholicism. The advice she receives from a “sixty-year-old cloistered nun” (p. 9), regarding leisure and the rare ability of just taking our time, propels her interpretation of great artists, including Cezanne (p. 73), Matisse (p. 72), and filmmaker Jerome Hill. “Like all true memoirists, Hill is drawn more the shards than stories, images rather narrative” (p. 102). Hampl embraces these ‘shards’ of lives in her patient yet sweeping account of her own, and others’ lives: for this reason, and for his work Film Portrait, Hill is important to her evolving definition of memoir. “A man hidden behind the scrim of his easeful life and obscured identity. Is it because of his essential shyness in the face of the personal genre he has chosen? Because he can’t tell all or even indicate much about himself? And does this reticence convey a greater, more enduring human truth than disclosure ever can?” (p. 107). This “reticence” is critical: as one assesses and explains one’s life and work, the narrator’s choices in omission and inclusion become themselves defining, to the listener or reader.

Hampl’s Blue Arabesque is interesting for its sequence: not specifically arranged by critical moments in the author’s life, but rather by the important encounters with narratives of other artists and scholars. Anais Nin’s search for “perfect indulgence and unbroken leisure” (p. 114) fascinates Hampl, and introduces themes of eroticism and sex into her discussion of leisure—interestingly, as she reviews her own sensuality as well as the artists that fall within her gaze, her retelling increasingly cites the Oxford English Dictionary, seek etymological roots of terms. From Nin and others’ sensual and sexual escapades, Hampl declares “the fountain of youth [to] not to be a gushing elixir but its opposite—the willingness to take in nothing, to starve and eliminate, to attenuate” (p. 117). This Zen-like stance carries the second half of Hampl’s memoir—she calls Matisse’s words of description of his model “strange bondage language” (p. 135), amongst much else—before discerning her relationship with her ultimate foil and inspiration, Katherine Mansfield: a writer who, according to Hampl, “exposed the membrane between self and art, the porous fiber that transformed a raw girlish ambition and overheated poeticism into the remorseless assurance of fiction” (p. 159). While Hampl appears unsettled about Mansfield’s lack of extended works of fiction and novels, she seeks to further understand the writer’s unique ability to simultaneously write and assess her own life, while maintaining a clear and poignant—yet emotionally uninvested—stance. My favorite passage in Blue Arabesque came as Hampl sought to understand artists’ relationship to their human subjects, their models: her description of Matisse in this regard echoed some of the more sordid biographical details of two of my favorite painters, Maxfield Parrish and Andrew Wyeth. While I found Hampl’s organizational technique at times challenging, I appreciate her aim to collect and interpret moments in which her definitions of specific universal concepts—here, leisure—became more clear.

***

The comic book form harkens deeply to my soul; a fan of the sanitized color visions of Archie, Jughead, Veronica and Betty, Richie Rich, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and—in high school—Mad and Cracked magazines, as well as the extensive and prolific work of Robert Crumb, a contemporary and peer of Art Spiegelman. MAUS II is a rich and comprehensive retelling of the author’s father’s narrative, of struggling to exist, amid one of the most horrific environments humanity has ever known.

How does the comic book form work to convey elements of the environment in this work? Actual photographic depictions within the walls of Auschwitz, Dachau, and other nefarious locations are few; Speigelman’s drawings may provide visual representation in a way few other documents may. While Raul mentioned that “using a graphic novel to tell a horrible story of the Holocaust is not the most enjoyable way to read a book,” I am challenged to invoke a different creative genre that provides the reader both visual and linguistic immersion, as well as establish and maintain resonant themes associated with the form. A great deal of literature and historical narrative exists regarding the Third Reich, yet few (in my estimation) achieve the level of engagement and playful chronology of Speigelman’s efforts across Maus I and Maus II. Elie Wiesel’s Night is a perennial choice for high-school summer reading lists; an argument might be made to support Speigelman’s Maus II as a viable, and far more graphical, endeavor of historical engagement.

Maus II is important for its leaps in time: the narrator, Speigelman’s father, appears in the author’s present tense, as fulfilling stereotypes surrounding the elderly (the complete narrative’s inciting incident comes as the father claims to have had a heart attack, to garner his son’s attention). As the narrative’s Holocaust thread is sandwiched between moments of interaction within a more ‘civil’ society—including a trip to a grocery store, the illicit occupation of a backyard patio within a gated community, and an incident with a black hitchhiker—the reader is challenged to anticipate characters’ reactions and responses to their world. Glenda poses an important question in her commentary: After the events of September 11^th, 2001, how close did US constituencies come, to victimizing ‘the other’ as a result of a collective pain and mourning? My answer would be: as close as Speigelman’s father came to having empathy or tolerance for the black hitchhiker. The vilification of Arab-Americans following September 11^th, 2001 may have helped establish new themes of distrust in our society: not unlike Vladek’s fear, that the hitchhiker would have stolen their groceries from the back seat, some outlets for allegedly “fair and balanced” journalism devoted an abundance of airtime to the discussion of a mosque, to be established within blocks of Ground Zero, in the decade following the events of September 11^th, 2001. A similar distrust might be identified in the relationship between Mitt Romney and the Occupy Movement; certainly, the media and Presidential administration’s vilification of those questioning the cause and true nature of those events became a national pastime. A “9/11Was an Inside Job” bumper sticker is likely to be deemed unpatriotic by many demographic groups and political organizations; similar characterizations may come in examining Joe Arpaio’s political movement regarding Barack Obama’s citizenship, or even the beleagured supporters of Ron Paul’s “End the Fed” movement (not to mention the excised Maine delegates at last week’s GOP Convention). Because of Speigelman’s careful and earnest portrayal of his father’s narrative and tribulations in Maus II, I feel as though a more clear portrait of the mechanisms and personalities at work our divisive political climate may come into better focus.

Spiegelman, Art. Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began. New York:Pantheon Books, 1991.

***

Art Speigelman’s graphic memoir MAUS II seems a historical and personal representation of the extent to which humans have treated each other badly: chapter six in Watson and Smith’s Reading Autobiography seeks to understand how visual and graphical representations may perform these tasks differently than prose alone. Citing Jared Gardner’s definition, Watson and Smith discuss how MAUS is constructed of “the particular tension and dissonance it generates by mixing codes from juvenilia into autobiographical narratives of history and trauma” (p. 169), themselves asking “how can there be “art” after such events?” (p. 170).

Speigelman’s embrace of the visual, comic-book form, establishes expectations within the consumer: depending on one’s background and history of comics (I mentioned my fascination with Archie in my previous post), such embrace may invoke a traditional paradigm of good and evil, as we wait for any or all superheroes to descend, to valiantly rescue all those persecuted, from the forces of oppression and death. Of what use is art, in a world so cruel? The suspension of reality supports Watson and Smith’s “recursivity,” in which the consumer is challenged to face “the crossing and ultimate confounding of boundaries in visual-verbal narrative” (p. 171). If we are to depict ourselves as comic—in caricature and exaggeration—the relationships that are forged both inside and outside of the creative work may bear unique and mysterious rhetorical powers: rendering daily editorial cartoons about our own lives’ successes and failures may offer more challenge than daily journal-writing. If we were able to imagine the names and powers held by the superheroes, that could descend and repair all of our social and non-human environment’s problems, the nature of our self-reflection may be forever skewed. Perhaps such invention—of the supernatural entities that may swoop in and rescue us from ourselves—may help us intellectuals cure our postmodernist hangover, and proceed boldly into an acute and reflective 21^stcentury rhetoric: Wonder Woman for President.

I am interested in Watson and Smith’s assumptions about YouTube and Facebook (p. 185), as they note the potential within both platforms (“will YouTube self-performance, with its instantaneous circulation and global audiences, become an occasion for sustained and introspective self-narration or signal its impossibility?”). I am glad the authors conclude their discussion of visual, virtual, and graphical memoir with avocation for “new notions of subjectivity through the effects of automediality” (p. 190), and their acknowledgement that new representations of self-reflection and narrative may “render certain stories intelligible, others unintelligible.” While my own YouTube presence compiles personal effects, photographs, and music, no ‘particular tension’ is represented or intended, but rather a fragmentary portrait of a chronology, juxtaposed automatically into one “channel”; taken as a memoir itself, this compilation might signify interests and moments of creative expression, but may predispose the viewer to a specific relationship with the discourse at hand. Unlike readers of MAUS II, those seeking to indulge in others’ narrative representations across virtual platforms may self-select the extent of their engagement—and, through frameworks of response and criticism, provide feedback and critique. While Watson and Smith’s discussion identifies the importance of new and virtual platforms for the elaboration of memoir and self-narrative, one may wonder: without individuals’ commitment to specific values of aesthetics and rhetoric, how will “art” exist online?

I’m interested in more in-depth discussions of what one may consider to be aesthetic and utilitarian, and the extent to which one’s creative expressions of memoir and recollection may be considered by groups and individuals to be ‘art.’ Somaly Mam’s work of written expression represents her experience and interpretations of what she’s seen and where she’s been; my disqualification of her efforts as ‘art’ renders my judgment supreme, the dictate by which others may establish preconceived notions. One literary example of this comes from a famous William Carlos Williams poem, its text derived in full from a note he affixed to a friend’s refrigerator door. Because it was pulled down by his friend and deemed by scholars to be ‘art,’ fine poetry, newly representative of his and others’ experience, how may I—not a professional art critic, but an interdisciplinarian—seek to better frame Williams’ words?

As a culture, we may thirst for definitions of art beyond the traditional: as noted in a recent Wall Street Journal article by Camile Pagila, revolutions of postmodernism that swept through galleries in the 1960s may have been rooted in viewers’ connection to mechanical trades, that we were once a society that worked in the factories that produced the soup cans Warhol depicted, once was able to have a different perspective of the mammoth fabric-and-framework sculpture of a cheeseburger Oldenburg revealed in 1962. The new art is the iPhone, claims Paglia, and is representative of an aesthetic that appeals to a culture that needs no gallery visits, no populist canvasses, but also no works of repugnant criticism (she cites Serrano’s infamous “Piss Christ” and Cavallaro’s “My Sweet Lord,” a full-scale chocolate Jesus). As “the art world, like humanities faculties, suffers from a monolithic political orthodoxy—an upper-middle-class liberalism far from the fiery antiestablishment leftism of the 1960s” (Paglia), industrial design, including the ever-more-sleek iPhone, is Paglia’s suggested as being the next realm for the employ of our artistic aesthetics. She declares the avant-garde in fine art essentially dead, strangled by our own technologically-enabled hands, before calling for a return to the acknowledgement of the spiritual in the creation of art. “There is no spiritual dimension to an iPhone, as there is to great works of art,” she writes.

 

Evaluations and comparisons between Mam’s work of recollection and Apple’s latest incarnation of their device may yield further insight into the nature of memoir, and its viability as a work of fine art; I believe one’s personal expression of life events is an important genre, one that may become more important (“Piss Christ,” in all its symbolic minimalism and social commentary, may be less effective in conveying one’s own biographical and spiritual narrative, that was Mam’s work of nonfiction, or is my own Facebook timeline, website, or blog). As technology allows for an increased automation in the way we account for our lives, and the way our stories will be told in the future, the power of our sustained written narratives may only increase.

 

Paglia, C. (5 October 2012). “How Capitalism Can Save Art.” Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444223104578034480670026450.html

 

 

On "The Art of Protest"

These blog entries were produced in conjunction with Dr. Toby Jenkins’ seminar The Art of Protest, offered during the fall of 2012, in Union Institute and University’s Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies program.

***

 

Steinem's essay “Women Voters Can't Be Trusted” appeared in the July 1972 Ms. magazine; the image of a concerned Wonder Woman rescuing a city block from the madness of war with her golden lasso appears on the magazine’s cover. Steinem’s enumeration of assumptions men make about trends in women as a voting bloc reflects the dramatic comic book image, published months before the Democratic National Convention would endorse both George McGovern as a candidate for President as well as an Equal Rights Amendment, as activists including Steinem, Germaine Greer, Shirley MacLaine and others supported Feminist candidate Shirley Chisholm. Tonight, forty years after the publication of Steinem’s essay, First Lade Michelle Obama will appear and speak onstage, in support of her husband; over the past year, Michelle Bachmann ran an unsuccessful campaign seeking the GOP nomination for President; four years ago, former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin was selected as John McCain's Vice President; last week, former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice appeared before an envigorated crowd of Republicans, while this week’s Convention will be presided over by Debbie Wasserman-Shultz: during this year’s election, evidence of the increased political participation of women identifies some of the progress made since Ms. magazine’s publication of its ‘Wonder Woman for President’ cover, and Steinem’s description of assumptions.   

 

During this down-and-dirty election season: may a specific group of people still adhere to a candidate’s views because “[...] they fit our popular image as nonpolitical, limited people; an image we have internalized so well that we may accept it as true of women as a group, even though we have disproved it in our individual lives”(Steinem, 1972)? To what extent do we—across demographics of gender and age, income and race—consider ourselves a “nonpolitical, limited people,” willing to adopt one party’s set of political, social, economic, and ethical beliefs?

 

And how might we gather such critical information? If assumptions are to be made about any specific political demographic, evaluation of the mass media and news networks’ portrayl of that group may be useful. Do women vote differently than their husbands? I’d love to ask Roger Ailes, longtime political strategist and creator of the ‘fair and balanced’ news network: Ailes' ability to present political viewpoints as entertainment began during the Nixon administration; beyond helping devise a plan to televise the lighting of the White House Christmas tree, some allege the full conception of FoxNews as a machine of propaganda and media control took place in the Oval Office during the early 1970s. Ailes is important to a modern characterization of women’s role in politics, as his network consistently beats all competitors in monthly ratings. Ailes also claims Sarah Palin as his own creation: after the former Governor’s unsuccessful Presidential campaign alongside John McCain, Ailes’ network had a small studio installed in Palin's Wasilla, Alaska home. Her tenure with the network did not last as long as some had hoped; in a recent speech, Ailes admitted that he “hired Sarah Palin because she was hot and got ratings” (Ailes, as cited by Moore, 2011).

 

Steinem’s assessment of women as a voting bloc came at a time when chauvenism was probably more acceptable, but also when the mass media was in its infancy, and populations may have expected less interpretation of events from their newscasters. One quote from Steinem’s essay rings with the charged and staunch rhetoric of last week in Tampa: “Culturally, women tend to think like conservers of life. Sometimes that makes us conservative in the conventional sense, and sometimes it pushes us to the left, making us very radical indeed” (Steinem, 1972). What modern political party seeks to be “conservers of life,” and to what extent may this phrase be taken as an idenfitication of viewpoint on Roe V. Wade? Has our political language—the wearing out of terms and phrases, including conservative­—weakened our abilities of political representation?  

 

Actions may forever speak more loudly than words; according to a number of accounts, the Republican National Committee surprised those protesting their convention by providing boxed lunches to all those on the sidewalk.  Actions within realms of creativity appear mutually exclusive to those of media and politics; while Ailes’ criticism of his network news competition extends into aesthetic set design, the artistry involved in the cover of Ms. magazine may today be relegated to museums, over publications that reflect national concerns and culture (a recent comparison of Time magazine European and American editions reflects poorly on our national obsession with ourselves). But magazines, news networks, and political parties are inclusive organizations; the potential for individuals to express opinions and views, as artists, may still exist.

 

While Faith Ringgold’s 1988 story quilt “Tar Beach” extends an “angry, critical reappraisal” (Spector, 2012) of urban life and the possibility of experience through a vibrant, inviting and historic form, her 2000 project “Racial Questions and Answers” may be one of the Internet’s first examples of participatory asynchronous representation through art. While her history of political activism fed her experience in quilting (the most famous result of which hangs today in the Guggenheim), her website devoted to the collection of demographic data and speculation on racial identity reads like the registration page of an early social networking hub, as Ringgold’s collection of identifying data is followed by prompts of individual reflection, on an assumed racial identity: “Imagine Waking up One Morning Black in America!” reads part two, of her “Questionnaire A for White People.” A separate questionnaire, for “all people of color” proposes one wake up “One Morning White in America!” (Ringgold, 2000).  Ringgold’s latest creative efforts include a host of childrens’ books, for which she has received many accolades. How might Ringgold assess Steinem’s 1972 charge, that a specific population may not be trusted, relied upon, to support a politician’s set of values and social policies? Perhaps we may all strive to be like the child in her “Tar Beach” quilt, mid-flight and hovering above the stoic symbols of the most oppressive groups we know, together forging a voting bloc that is unfixed and critical, and cannot be trusted. Roger Ailes’ characterization, however, of the voting public’s likely behavior is probably honed in on populations within a few ‘swing states,’ while maintaining a widespread support for individuals’ participation as a “nonpolitical, limited people.”  

 

Hale, C. (2012). “Masterpiece Activity: Faith Ringgold’s Tar Beach.” Retrieved from http://www.scholastic.com/librarians/programs/tarbeach.htm

 

Gawker.com. (2012). “Roger Ailes' Secret Nixon-Era Blueprint for FoxNews.” Retrieved from http://gawker.com/5814150/roger-ailes-secret-nixon+era-blueprint-for-fox-news

 

Moore, R. (October 5 2011). “Roger Ailes: I Hired Sarah Palin Because She Was Hot and Got Ratings.”  Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/05/roger-ailes-sarah-palin-fox-news_n_995691.html

 

Spector, N. (2012). “Guggenheim Collection Online.” Retrieved from http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/show-full/piece/?search=Tar%20Beach%20%28Part%20I%20from%20the%20Woman%20on%20a%20Bridge%20series%29&page=&f=Title&object=88.3620

 

Steinem, G. (1972). “Women Voters Can’t Be Trusted.” Ms. [magazine]. Retrieved from http://www.msmagazine.com/spring2002/steinem.asp

 

***

 

“[…]making the same mistakes we swear we’ll never make again/we’re gonna sit and grin and tell our grandchildren […] the answer my friend/is pissin’ in the wind/the answer is pissin’ in the sink”

 

--Jerry Jeff Walker, “Pissin’ In The Wind”

 

“How many roads must a man walk down before he admits he is lost?”

 

--David Lee Roth, from Strummin’ With the Devil: the Southern Side of Van Halen

 

Two revisions of Bob Dylan’s famous lyric provides context for this brief survey of social, political, and rhetorical statements, made within the genre of popular and commercial song: since Dylan’s gravely-voiced premonitions and dreams gave flight to all manner of recorded psychedelic statements in the early 1960s, artists’ abilities to foster social and political movements within music have come under scrutiny. How are songs of critique and protest received by the public, and to what extent do record labels—themselves commercial entities serving to preserve corporate interests—seek to control artists’ lyrical and rhetorical messages?

 

Tupac-Ressurection.com leads to Paramount Pictures’ main site, and the parent company—Viacom—promotes Jersey Shore, a remake of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Comedy Central’s recent sweep of the Primetime Emmys, garnering awards for The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and Futurama. Through the Internet’s Wayback Machine, one may access ‘snapshots’ of what the Web—including this site, promoting a 2003 MTV documentary about Shakur’s life, the “only film made in collaboration with Shakur’s mother, former Black Panther Afeni Shakur” (“TUPAC: Resurrection,” 2003). The film’s producer, Lauren Lazin, has continued work for MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1, as well as on films including The U.S. vs. John Lennon. The transitory nature of fame, within genres of pop music, may create a difficult framework for artists’ sustained work toward social justice: Lennon may have penned “Imagine” and other notoriously popular anthems of change, but the extent to which his political idealism has been embraced and lyrically ratified by the succession of songwriters in his wake may actually illuminate a grim situation of rhetorical representation on MTV, VH1, and other celebrity-obessed channels. These networks are corporate, seek profits, and are interested in selling entertainment, not inciting riots. Lady Gaga’s meat dress may represent an individual’s unique embrace of their fame, and will no doubt be discussed as part of her VH1 Behind the Music documentary, but to what end? As Blake Wilson pondered in the New York Times, reviewing Dorian Lynskey’s 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, “can pop music change the world?” (Wilson, 2011).

 

In seeking to define this relationship, between a performer and their effect on the views and actions of a self-selected audience, one may consider the actions of the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation (tasf.org), its arts education programs, and performing arts center, on the outskirts of Atlanta, founded by Tupac’s mom: to what extent might popular musicians’ actions of protest and justice promote a legacy of change, establishing new traditions of community and music? Does the strategic placement of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” in all-too-many filmic depictions of the Vietnam War and a domestic culture of protest elevate this pop-radio hit to a new level of success? The slew of comments on the brief New York Times review of Lynskey’s compendium to pop protest music may sum to characterize the fragmentation of a previously-commoditized market: most of those choosing to comment on the review seem to do so, in order to promote their own favorite protest song, from artists we’ve never heard of, recordings that may or may not have been made widely available for public sale. Is it by accident that Country Joe and the Fish’s studio recording of their popular Woodstock sing-along “Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin-to-Die-Rag” has fallen off our informal map of cultural and musical history, half a century after half a million people covered in mud all knew the words on a field in upstate New York?

 

There is an absurdity to protest in pop music: to what extent may one protest the system within which they work, or, as Sean Wilentz described in his review of Lynskey’s book, where “simple outrage surpasses ideology” (Wilentz, 2011). While CSNY’s song “Ohio” may represent one of the most expedient and effective embraces of the genre of popular recorded music, Neil Young’s work as a lyricist and songwriter extends far beyond his reaction to the shootings of students at Kent State University in Ohio: promoting energy efficiency and sustainability through his tour to support his 2005 Greendale album, Neil Young continues to serve as an example of sustained inclusion of political and social lyrics within the genre of popular music.

 

Like the situation described in Neil’s early 1980s lyrics, many celebrities within popular recorded music have found it “better to burn out/than it is to rust” (Young, 1983, “Hey Hey My My”): many rhetorical heroes  have expired all too soon, including Tupac, Lennon, Hendrix, Morrison, and others, from dangerous mixtures of idealism, substance use, and toxic interactions. The state of protest within popular recorded music is, for all purposes, too transitive to define: the end of commercialization, and the rise of downloadable product and musicians’ self-representation, may continue to characterize songwriters’ predicament. “Occupy This Album,” a February 2012 compilation featuring tracks from over fifty artists, was produced by an organization (Music For Occupy) that stands “in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street” (“About,” 2012), and while these efforts are noble in helping redefine the genre’s rhetorical abilities, I wonder if any modern recording artist would dare to perform public relations antics like renting hotel suites in Montreal and Amsterdam, and surrounding themselves with comedians, musician friends and the press, and call the set of stunts a “Bed-In” for Peace?  John Lennon explained himself to the press in 1969 as such: “It’s part of our policy not to be taken seriously. Our opposition, whoever they may be, in all manifest forms, don’t know how to handle humour. And we are humorous” (Wiener, J., 1991, as cited by Wikipedia, 2012). Do we, consumers of recorded music, expect—or even want—such humor from our entertainers and American idols?

 

“Bed-In.” (2012). Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed-In#cite_note-4

 

Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation. (2012). “About TASF.” Retrieved from http://www.tasf.org/the-foundation/about-tasf/

 

Wilentz, S. (29 April 2011). “A History of Protest Songs.” New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/books/review/book-review-33-revolutions-per-minute-by-dorian-lynskey.html?pagewanted=2&_r=4&src=rechp

 

Wilson, B. (27 April 2011). “Is The Protest Song Dead?” New York Times. Retrieved from http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/is-the-protest-song-dead/?ref=review

 

***

 

The rhetorical capacity of the camera has changed both the way social protest is captured by onlookers, but has also helped to establish a means by which statements of political, social, or economic activism may help determine its efficacy—a new criteria was established during the twentieth century, of what “looks good” for the television and still cameras. From red carpet celebrity appearances to network television anchors to filmmakers and politicians, one’s own appearance and voice transmitted across electronic means has become a new and fluid form of rhetoric. When Nixon sweated and stammered his way through televised, live, and unedited Presidential debates in 1960—and went on to lose the race to Kennedy—he hired a young and aspiring production assistant to help him “look good” on television, to present himself as newly calm and clear, stern and thoughtful. Within a decade, Nixon had an effective public image, the sum of the rhetoric crafted by a careful team (Joe McGinnis’ The Selling of the President 1968 is a fantastic description of this transformative process)—and the young production assistant, Roger Ailes, would go on to create and head Fox News, on behalf of the Murdoch empire. How does the action of “looking good” take place today, in films, news, and on the wild and wicked web?

 

Context for Valerie Smith’s work regarding the contextualization of films that appeal to specific racial groups is useful in understanding the lineage and evolution of our collective on-camera rhetoric. Since the time of her writing, some of her presumptions regarding the efficacy of documentary film may be challenged by the popularity of artists like Michael Moore, and the continued and heightened high regard for the works of Spike Lee. While “documentarians [still seem] unlikely to achieve the popularity of directors of fiction films” (p. 62), Smith’s (1992) assumptions about the commercial viability of “nonfiction films” (p. 61) may have been unseated by a recent trend in nonfiction television, film and culture: reality television, now clearly established as a genre of popular entertainment, seeks the presentation—however awkwardly rendered—of individuals’ narratives, without the façade sought by the rhetorical cameras of the twentieth century. Do reality television programs, from Hoarders to Hardcore Pawn, represent the “intimate, if not contiguous, relation to an externally verifiable reality” (p. 60) Smith identifies in the movies of the early 1990s? If Andy Warhol was correct, that we may all be delivered our requisite fifteen minutes of fame within the corporate portals of reality television, are producers interested in making individuals and their narratives ‘look good?’ What is the “intimate [and] externally verifiable reality” that can help define this emerging realm of nonfiction narrative?  

 

If Smith’s characterization of the import and reception of black feature films in 1992 was critical to the development of rhetoric and representation in film, James Allen’s website Without Sanctuary serves as contrast: without the expectations of a manufactured plot, a rising action, and a benevolent resolution sandwiched between segments of corporate commercials, Allen’s work in compiling images, and their presentation on a web page, helps establish a genre technologically unavailable at the time of Smith’s writing. Self-described ‘picker’ James Allen, narrating the short film declared that, “in America, everything is for sale, even a national shame” (2005). He describes how his collecting and presenting photographic postcards of lynchings across the United States during the early 1900s has “engendered” in him a fear of “the majority,” and how a specific “image layered a pall of grief over my fears.” Those who peruse his site are witness to scenes of horrific and public death; the viewer endures “the endless replay of anguish,” as Allen ruminates and speculates about the motivations of those depicted as watching the hangings and swaying bodies. Is such a website—a work of visual rhetoric, devised specifically to represent moments when citizens have looked far from ‘good’ but perhaps at their most reprehensible and repugnant—effective, as an act of protest, of representation long after the grave facts? Does the visual representation of individuals or groups looking ‘less-than-good’ at moments in history constitute an act of protest?

 

Websites may have helped reinforce Allen’s notion that “in America, everything is for sale”; a published collection of his images remains available, though their representation online may have undermined his profits. Allen’s website includes an active and public forum, in which comments on the lynching photographs from educators, students, and web users at large have sought to make meaning of and increase understanding of what Allen described in his short film as “the cold steel trigger in the human heart”—what drove these crowds to these terrible moments. Discussions found on the forum provided unique and fluid contextualization for the collection. One participant, username ansar1013, posted on August 11, 2011, under the “Where Was God?” thread on the Without Sanctuary website: “I am here to establish a system of justice in this world and replace this current system of injustice. These lynchings that were done can only be blamed on the cowards and punks in the crowd that lacked the testicular fortitude to fight for right. People know what is right from wrong. We just lack the balls to do something about it. So instead of getting bogged down into some GOD talk we should discuss strategies and tactics to completely destroy this current system of injustice” (ansar1013, 2011). Theological arguments, pedagogical applications, and individuals’ constructive criticism all aid in making sense of Allen’s photographic documentary; perhaps the site remains proof that we, as a culture and population, are still seeking full context for the rhetorical abilities of the camera. The creative genre that accommodates the compilation and distribution of images (of others, taken by others) may still be evolving. Perhaps we are still trying to understand what it means to ‘look good’ on film, and in the digital age. The choices in ‘looking good’ that are ours and in the present-tense are not the same as the choices made by those in the past: be them crowds gathered around trees for nefarious and horrific reasons during the first decade of the last century, or the populations represented by filmmakers twenty years ago.

 

Allen, J. (2005). Without Sanctuary [film]. Retrieved from http://withoutsanctuary.org

 

Ansar1013. (11 Aug. 2011). “Where Was God?” [forum post]. Retrieved from http://withoutsanctuary.org/main.html

 

Smith, V. “The Documentary Impulse in Contemporary African American Film.” In Black Popular Culture: A Project by Michele Wallace, ed. Gina Dent. Seattle: Bay Press, 1992.