Defamiliarizing Whitman

There is a total of 5084 non-word occurrences in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, that is, the poet punctuates himself in one way or another 5084 times. This is not research I have conducted as painstakingly as one might think. In this same edition the poet exclamates by use of various manifestations of the almighty exclamation point 218 time, and he questions, by use of the enigmatic and compelling question mark, 345 times, suggesting that the poem posits more questions than it exclamates assertions.

In this same edition the poet uses the noun "grass" 24 times, the pronoun "I" 747 times, refers to his country "America" but 5 times; the poet employs (deploys?) the pronoun "you" 397 times, the pronoun "they" 231 time, the pronoun "us" 24 times (putting it right there with grass), and that powerful verb loafe but 4 times (could he use it more without diluting its potency, without suggesting some labor in the act?). Again this is not research I have conducted as painstakingly as one might think. Rather, I owe these statistics to TokenX, a tool used on the Whitman archive, and am putting my utmost faith in the tool's ability to perform these ancient mysteries of arithmetic.

But what is the point of offering these staggering statistics? Why do I so flamboyantly flash these impressive numbers around? To affect wisdom? To suggests knowledge? To help myself and those around me familiarize themselves with the poem? Let's take the latter as a point of departure...

I take the question of familiarization as an important one because only in understanding what it means to be familiar with a work of art can one begin to comprehend the inverse of that action. In other words, familiarization is a prerequisite of sorts to defamiliarization. The Whitman archive is a testament to the immensity of the familiarization process. How many hours have been put in to compiling the archive? How many minds hard at work researching, digging, scanning and posting? How much thought and artistry in the construction of the poems themselves? TokenX has no answers, but one can begin to speculate by taking on the prospect of familiarizing themselves with the vast body of work the archive exhibits. One can read every line, scrutinize every manuscript, attempt to decipher every note, analyze every image, evaluate aesthetic congruities and incongruities in cover design, typeface, contemplate the aesthetics of the text as a product of not only a poet but a printer (an art in and of itself). In short the familiarization process is a lifetime endeavor. The Whitman archive, it seems, is one way to begin engaging this endeavor.

On the other hand, the Whitman archive also provides a few tools that might allow for outside manipulation of what otherwise might seem to be an untouchable work of art. This is not a new idea, nor does in reside solely in digital and virtual realities. The urban and graffiti artist Banksy has taken it upon himself to remix, so to speak, formerly untouchable works of art. For example he has taken the image of the Mona Lisa here: and added some flair. He has also taken canonical works of art and pop-culturized them with things like ipods:. In effect, though, what Banksy has done is not so much defamiliarize a particular idea or work of art but rather taken a familiar work of art and employed (deployed?) it in an unfamiliar way. Some might call it a misappropriation of the artist's intentions, and some might call it brilliant. Either way, familiarity seems to be a requisite to reinterpretation.

Obviously the Whitman archive does not allow such creative reinterpretation to take place within its pages. What it does offer, however, is a place to gain familiarity with the poet's work and unbiased access to the information that might engender familiarity. What we might do once that familiarity is gained is indeed limitless.

Backdoor to Vonnegut

If this isn't too much information already you can check out an archive of Vonnegut's out of print and online publications here. The site isn't particularly exciting but it does provide links to seemingly obscure articles Vonnegut published in Rolling Stone, Playboy, and The Nation, just to name a few.

SDSU Englush Department? An Archive?

When one visits the SDSU English department website what does one expect? Think about that for one moment, conceptualize and visualize what sort of site the university might have, keep something concrete in mind. Then, if you have the time, take a peep at the sight: http://literature.sdsu.edu/englmain.html. Does it live up to your expectations? Is it more than what you had hoped for? It is less? Could it be considered a type of archive?

Taking a moment to search the site will reveal links to authors such as Silverstein, Sontag, Twain, and Murakami, just to name a few. In the site you will also find essays by Vonnegut and Derrida. There is a link to other English departments world wide. There are lengthy, though not pretentiously lengthy, faculty bios complete with photos, art, and sometimes notable quotes or theoretical synopsis. And there is a link (and some might call this meta-archival) to past manifestations of the English department website.

Is this an archive? Well if it's not it sure is a lot closer to something of the sort than say SFSU's English department website, and it's certainly something of a joy to look around.

The Mark Twain Project

Mark Twain on Humor: "The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven."

Mark Twain on Existentialism: "Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought--a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"

Mark Twain on Jane Austin: "Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death."

Mark Twain on Pragmatism: "Put all your eggs in one basket and--WATCH THAT BASKET."

Marl Twain online: http://www.marktwainproject.org/

backward design

Backward design implies that teaching and learning are both a means to an end. In rhetoric that would appeal to backward design theorists, this end ought to be the generation of inquiry (broadly) and the generation of inquiry based on the preoccupations of a particular field or area of study (more specifically). I can't say I disagree, but I have some fundamental, or you could say philosophical, issues with anything functioning as a means to an end. Cannot learning be an end in itself? Cannot teaching, too, be and end in itself? That is not to say that the act of teaching and learning can be a one time engagement with the end resolving within that engagement, but rather cannot learning and teaching result in their own fruitful ends? More importantly, can teaching and learning be both and simultaneously a means to an end and an end in themselves?

Backward design is difficult because it forces a consideration of results. If we think of a teacher as say an artist working from backward design, we end up with an artist who necessarily places the implications of his completed work, and the effects of those implications upon the beholder, before the form. Is there anything at stake in this way of thinking? It is obvious that something is to be gained, but is anything lost? Is what is lost justified in the end result? Maybe so and maybe not, but it must be considered that classroom time belongs not to the teacher, nor to the student, but to the collective of those present. It is not your time, nor my time, but rather, in the words of that great philosopher Jeff Spicoli, "our time." Should our time be spent as a means to an end, or as an end in itself? Can it be spent as both? And is there anything wrong with a little snack on our time?

The (New)Americans

In 1958 Robert Frank, a Swiss photographer, published a book of photos that he called The Americans. The book offered snapshots, often gritty and at times subversive and racially charged, of his 18 month journey through the U.S. In the world of fine art photography the book is a landmark piece (indeed a friend of mine called it the Grapes of Wrath of photography), and for a country with an ongoing identity crisis the book represents a seminal glimpse of an ongoing attempt to define, or at least suggest, what these people are, these Americans. Jack Kerouac, suffering from a similar identity crisis, and therefore a similar preoccupation, offered to write the introduction to the book, sealing the deal with an unassuming "Sure, I can write something about these pictures."

Fifty years later the identity crisis persists and the fiscal state of affairs that was bludgeoning The Americans seems to be taking a second swing in a new, twisted manifestation at The New Americans. The New Americans is a project that Edurne Diaz, a Spanish photographer, has undertaken as both a tribute to Robert Frank and as a quest to attempt to articulate these peculiar people, these Americans.

Together with the young writer Blair Mardian, sometimes passing as legendary icon Claude Winters, Edurne Diaz has embarked on a peculiar but important project. An ongoing blog of this concerted effort can be followed here:http://claudewinters.blogspot.com/2009/08/made-up-dreams.html

But the question to ask in this world of digital immediacy is, why publish the book at all? Why wait for the culmination of the 18 month project when one can simply blog along, archive digitally, create the artifact of art virtually? Of course the answer is both obviously implicit and impossible to articulate. Perhaps The New Americans will present an argument of its own if we still have the patience to let it state its case.

Amen

I had originally posted this youtube clip to the class ning site, but decided to take it down and put it here so as not to impose on prof. Hanley's e-space.

The video, I think, responds via a real world scenario to some of the issues that The Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0 addresses.

The clip essential deals with a six second drum break that has become a "ubiquitous piece of the pop-culture sound-scape." My initial inclination to post this clip came from the notion in Digital Humanities that "intellectual property must open up, not close down the intellect and proprius."

As the digital world opens up what might be called digital venues, cultural landscapes, sound-scapes, and intellectual niches, have become available to such a large audience that appropriation of certain clips of those scapes is inevitable. This leads, of course, to a great deal of interaction between art, ideas, and culture, and the consumers of those things. As the video suggests, this sort of interaction and appropriation is an essential part of the creative process, and, one could argue an integral part of the intellectual process as well.

Indeed, one could even suggests that this type of appropriation is the precise type of "curation" Humanities 2.0 is advocating. In the case of the Amen Break, a piece of music history from 1969 was taken, sampled, interacted with, presented to people and made new. The prolific remix of the break into hiphop and other electronic music forms was in fact a sort of interactive curation, with producers acting as both curators and artists. Nate Harrison's video is another type of interactive curation, one that considers the break being curated from social, fiscal, political, and historical points of view, and this interaction was written down, videoed, pressed onto a dub-plate, and so on. One could even say I am actively curating all of the above information by posting it on this blog, by writing and thinking about it, and by sharing it with you.

I suppose an interesting question might be: Who, in terms of the rhetoric of Humanities 2.0, was the initial curator of the break? Was it the Winstons, who, by their initial creating of the song Amen Brother, initiated the curation project that would not interactively be taken up again until the sampling culture of hip hop and electronic music hit the scene? Was it the first hip hop producer the actively sample the break? Was it Nate Harrison who put all the pieces together?

And what does this mean for intellectual landscapes? Does this appropriation of received ideas really lead to something new, or is it mere exploitation? Is the type of curation done by Nate Harrison, in which he acknowledges the Amen Break as part of the "cannon" of the pop-culture sound-scape, any different from a university that acknowledges say Pamela as an integral and essential part of what we now call the novel? Is Humanities 2.0 anything more that a rhetorical slight of hand which is merely sampling tradition Humanities ideologies? Is it something more?