There’s also the “Can I read it on the toilet?” factor, which print lovers argue is irreplaceable. “If it’s really good artwork, there’s only so much you can get out of looking at a computer screen,” says Frederick. “You’d rather own a nice book or a nice bound zine rather than a stack of printouts.”

Rowe agrees: “There’s something about being able to hand somebody a copy of your zine. There’s more of a personal interaction. When I ask people what they love about reading zines, they mention that it’s not just getting the zine, it’s getting this note from the person who made the zine. It became a personal correspondence.” Think people will be saying that about a MySpace profile 10 years from now?

Neurological study has lately shown that memory, imagination, and consciousness itself is stitched, quilted, pastiched. If we cut-and-aste our selves, might we not forgive it of our artworks? (Lethem 68)

I just finished February 2007′s Harper’s and there was a series of great essays on copyright, citation, and appropriation. If you’re not a Harper’s reader, they’re worth checking out.

The image above, a photo by Susan Meiselas of Nicaraguan Sandinista Pablo Arauz in 1979, is the central image of concern in the article “On the Rights of Molotov Man: Appropriation and the Art of Context.” Meiselas took the photo and found that it has been appropriated by a variety of groups, but she found it objectionable when artist Joy Garnett appropriated the work for a painting. Garnett argues that she owes Meiselas nothing more than a citation, but Meiselas’s argument is that Garnett has decontextualized the Arauz and the act — “converted [it] into the emblem of an abstract riot” (58).

This “conversation” between Meiselas and Garnett got me thinking quite a bit about context and copyright before moving into Jonathan Lethem’s amazing essay “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism,” where Lethem argues for a more open public commons where works are more easily appropriated without concerns of copyright law. His argument depends on the differences between a gift exchange and commodity exchange: in a gift economy there “a feeling-bond between two people” established by the gift, whereas this connection does not exist in commodity exchange. A piece of art (a CD, a movie, etc.) can of course still be sold and have this gift quality, but if we continue this movement toward a complete commodity exchange, we’re losing the connections amongst people.

What makes Lethem’s argument even more powerful is has ability to cite, quote, and plagiarize, and at the end of the essay is a “Key” in which he lists the sources for where he quoted without quotation marks, paraphrased, or altered others’ words. The essay is fantastic for Lethem’s ability to appropriate and cite in order to make such a good argument, and I have no qualms about admitting my complete adoration of it.

But then I wonder about how this essay works in relation to the prior dialogue between Meiselas and Garnett. Where does context fit into Lethem’s argument? And with that, ethics? Certainly I agree with his argument that once a work has been released into the public commons, it should be perceived as a honor to be appropriated, and that copyright should be used to ensure rights to original expressions, but not restrict subsequent re-working. But where does the ethics or this citing fit in? By this, I’m concerned with decontextualizing, with groups in power using images from other texts and appropriating those images for their own use and even domination of those not in power.

The first one, bubbl.us is great if all you want to do is make a map with text and have single authorship. It’s really intuitive, and I like it a lot for its ease and aesthetics. Here’s an image:

In this page, I’m working on ideas for my Writing 516: Advanced Composition paper, which is about secrets.

I also tried out Thinkature, where I started brainstorming and plotting ideas and questions for a paper that my friend Sarah B. and I are considering writing, on being queer and in grad school. Thinkature has more features, which makes it a bit less easy to get into, but I still found it fairly intuitive. I like that it’s easier on Thinkature to make new arrows and move boxes around than on bubbl.us, and Thinkature also allows for pictures to be imported, arrows to be created that can emphasize certain boxes for other collaborators, and you can use a pencil tool to draw directly on the surface…. oh, and you can have collaborators!!! Here’s a shot of my browser with Thinkature:

I’m pretty pleased with both of these sites, and I could see lots of potential for them. When I was in my educational technology course as an undergraduate, they had us use a similar program (the name of which escapes me), but it cost a lot of money. With these two sites up, a lot can be done in schools or just for your own self-sponsored writing that couldn’t be done on the computer before (unless you paid out your nose for it).

I’m a fan.

The biblical conception of a book was clearly far more open-ended than any notion current in our own culture, with it assumptions of known authorship and legal copyright. The very different is the technology of bookmaking is emblematic. For us, a book is a printed object boxed in between two covers, with title and author emblazoned on the front cover an the year of publication indicated on the copyright page. The biblical term that comes closest to “book” is sefer. Etymologically, it means “something recounted,” but its primary sense is “scroll,” and it can refer to anything written on a scroll — a letter, a relatively brief unit within a longer composition, or a book more or less in our sense. A scroll is not a text shut in between covers, and additional swathes of scroll can be stitched onto it, which seems to have been a very common biblical practice. A book in the biblical sphere was assumed to be a product of anonymous tradition. The only ones in the biblical practice. A book in the biblical sphere was assumed to be a product of anonymous tradition. The only ones in the biblical corpus that stipulate the names of their authors, in superscriptions at the beginning, are the prophetic books, but even in this case, later prophecies by different prophet-poets could be tacked onto the earlier scrolls, and the earlier scrolls perhaps might even be edited to fit better into a continous book with the later accretions. (xl)

I really like sefer as a metaphor for something to replace the cohesive, fully-concluded one-author text (book or essay). In a way, it’s like a multi-authored collage essay or hypertext, something that can be added to later or re-formed, the authorship not as important as the content, the voices inside. If one were to view a blog as a single text, a blog seems to work in this way as well. More later, perhaps?

Alter, Robert. “To the Reader.” Genesis. Transl. Robert Alter. New York: Norton, 1996. ix-xlvii.

Polemics and Irenics in Argument – it’s a start?

In her essay “The Womanization of Rhetoric,“ Sally Miller Gearhart writes that she believes “that any intent to persuade is an act of violence“ because the persuader has an intention of changing someone (53), and proposes that instead we should “forsake all this and think of ourselves not as bearers of great messages but as vessels out of whose variety messages will emerge“ (60). I think this is an interesting position, and the reason I bring it up isn’t because I completely agree with her. In fact, I strong believe that everything is an argument, as is often argued, which makes Gearhart’s position problematic (isn’t everything violent if these two ideas merge?). (However, if the dominant metaphor, “Argument is war,“ is a subtext to our lives [Lakoff and Johnson, right?], then perhaps this idea of everything being violent is something to pursue?) I am interested in this because I feel it gets at a very important question about arguments, and that is how aggressive or violent should they be? Perhaps another way to look at this might be how much is the arguer collaborating with the audience and those with different opinions, and how much is the arguer working against the audience and those who disagree.

In Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness, Walter J. Ong writes:

Contest is a part of human life everywhere that human life is found. In war and in games, in work and in play, physically, intellectually, and morally, human beings match themselves with or against one another. Struggle appears inseparable from human life, and contest is a particular focus or mode of interpersonal struggle, an opposition that can be hostile but need not be, for certain kinds of contest may serve to sublimate and dissolve hostilities and to build friendship and cooperation. (15)

Johan Huizinga adds, “All knowledge…is polemical by nature“ (qtd. in Ong 45). At this time, I am inclined to agree, that all of our knowledge is created out of struggle and conflict. However, to what degree can this struggle be too aggressive or violent? I know this feels vague at this time, and I’m looking for some sort of guidance (both from myself by writing this out, and from you).

Another valid concern is how we might become too irenic. Ong believes that we have become “unabashed irenicists“ (24). Here I am inclined to agree. Americans tend to fear conflict, viewing it as something that must cause separation. While we often value differences (or is this merely lip service), we don’t really value differences in ideas. This is true from the introspective (how many people struggle to dispel conflicts within themselves?) to the large scale (you’re either with us or against us – a minimization of choices, of differences). In groups, we try to dispel conflict through means such as voting, consensus, and compromise, all of which I believe just serve to mask conflict (voting hides the needs/wants of the minority who has lost; consensus is more a contest of who can last the longest; compromise masks the fact that neither party actually got what they wanted).

Which brings me to polyphony (multivocality) and collage in texts, including hypertexts and multigenre essays. I like these texts because they don’t mask conflict – in fact, it is usually right there, in multiple voices and from multiple pints of view. In fact, an author can be upfront about his/her/hir own conflict within the self; the author doesn’t have to take a singular view on an issue, but can rather express all the voices in his/her/hir head. Additionally, I like these texts because of their potential to be, in my own made up phrase, “texts that listen.“ By creating this term, I am drawing on my belief that we often do not listen to texts or to people, but rather wait impatiently to “counter-argue.“ If a text has multiple viewpoints, perhaps it can quell this urge to “read“ with an eye for what you can attack in a counterargument.

Some ideas that I would like to intersect as I research and write include gender, aggression, verbal and psychological violence, polyphony, polemics, irenicism, collage/montage/bricolage (sp?), hypertext, texts that “listen,“ and the metaphor “argument is war“ (Lakoff and Johnson). Questions I have at this time include:
1. Does this make sense at this time?
2. I know this is a huge topic – does anyone have suggestions for ways to focus?
3. What suggestions do people have for sources? I am considering Barthes and Bakhtin, but would love more ideas.

Works Cited

Gearhart, Sally Miller. “The Womanization of Rhetoric.“ Feminism and Composition: A Critical Sourcebook. Eds. Gesa E. Kirsch, Faye Spencer Maor, Lance Massey, Lee Nickoson-Massey, and Mary P. Sheridan-Rabideau. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003.

Ong, Walter J. Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1981.