The PreText Conversations held a Re/In/View
with Greg Ulmer about his Heuretics: The Logic of Invention
during September, October, and November of 1994.
=====================================
_____What was the genealogy, the genesis, of
HEURETICS?
I am going to twist Collins question a bit,
with an eye toward Victors question as well,
about the Making of HEURETICS. Because I
want to identify what for me is the hardest
part about using the CATTt as a generator--
the TALE. The other aspects of the genesis I
can mention briefly: the CATTt itself
appeared over the course of a number of years
teaching the history of method in graduate
courses. I started designing my own courses
using the CATTt When it came time to
synthesize that experience in a book three of
the four categories were pretty much set, as
I explain in HEURETICS. The breakthrough for
that part was when Jeff Kipnis gave me the
gallies of a book that still has not come out
yet though it has been done for years--about
the process of designing the _folie_ for Parc
de la Villette. This ms includes verbatim
transcripts of six sessions in which Derrida
and Eisenman talk about the design problems.
Derrida posed to Eisenman an impossible
problem (the unrepresentable as a model for
an architectural production). I always try
to work from a problem provided by a
theorist, and here it was: the
unrepresentable (chora) as the instructions
for a rhetoric.
To be a well-made discourse on method,
HEURETICS had to show to some extent what it
was saying, to do what it theorized: the
research materials had to be represented in a
form that demonstrated how to use them. So
the struggle in writing HEURETICS--one that
did involve many false starts--was the
finding of the tale.
The first problem with the tale was
understanding how much dramatization was
enough. For the longest time I tried to
compose the book as a script for a video. I
was working with the lessons of TELETHEORY,
to which one common response was, why not
drop all the explanation and just DO IT. In
TELETHEORY itself it was easy enough to
answer that question: do what? The IT had
to be invented and the invention was itself
the point in a way. the lesson of method and
vanguard poetics is that a new form has to be
accompanied by a handbook, a users manual.
What I learned from _Derrida at the Little
Bighorn_ about TALE was that the mystory was
not specific to any genre, but could
appropriate any genre that might help display
the pattern (be the chora in which the
makers' beings and becomings could interact).
I used the vita, the minor vita, to exploit
the fact that later achievements are
dependent upon earlier ones. The CV of the
child. The CV is a masculinist genre, in any
case (gendered for achievement), anticizxpating
the patriarchal superego that clarified
itself in YELLOWSTONE DESERT.
I am no longer sure about the sequence of
invents leading to the decision to use the
remake as my tale, but it begins logically
with my desire to extend the parts of the
mystory to complete the popcycle (the four
institutional discourses of the learning
subject). The mystory worked with three--
family, discipline, and public sphere
(manifested as local history). I split that
public sphere category into School
(institutionalized representations of the
collective story of the makers' locale--the
history of the place as studied in
textbooks); and Entertainment (media
identifications showing the makers'
positioning in the ideology). This
Entertainment discourse was missing in D at
LBH and I wanted to fill that blank in
HEURETICS. A more or less circular path led
to Gary Cooper, partly paths of research and
partly memory. Once I had Gary Cooper the
idea of embedding the theory in a Cooper film
presented itself.
In thinking about what to do with Cooper I
read up on Method acting and that was a
eureka in itself--the recognition that Method
acting is the heir of the mnemonics of the
orators (the memory palace is a central
feature of grammatology, signifying the
principal pedagogical practice of a
manuscript schooling). Method acting was
perfect for my Analogy because it constitutes
an established practice for doing what the
mystorian must do, which is to link their
personal story to the collective texts. The
rehearsal rather than the performance was the
relevant part for choragraphy.
The next step was to figure out how to usethe
analogy as the tale, as the way to bring
into coherence the disparate parts of the
popcycle. The idea for putting on the
performance as part of the quincentenary or
centennial came from thinking about the theme
of the book--invention--with Columbus as the
icon in school discourse of "inventiveness."
The frontiers of knowledge. You can see how
the trail leads to ever more specific
details: what form would a performance take
that revisited the frontier moment of local
history (as a way to examine the metaphor of
invention)? The still life or tableau vivant
emerged in the research. Such tableaus were
performed in the original saloons of MIles
City. Although to perform BEAU GESTE is
anachronistic, a tableau about the foreign
legion is not, since it existed since the
1840s or so. Moreover, the U.S. cavalry had
been characterized as a kind of foreign
legion since it included in its ranks so many
immigrants.
Another false start was that I kept trying to
include my own version of chora as local
sacred place, as in PHAEDRUS.The local place
that I have done quite a bit of work with in
psychogeographical terms is the giant
sinkhole just outside of town, named Devils
Millhopper. I finally dropped all that and
it became the essay called _Metaphoric
Rocks_.
In the finished book, as Collin notes,
everything seems to fit. Perhaps it is too
neat. Part of my justification for this
effect is Eureka: you have to try this
procedure yourself to experience the uncanny
effect of the pattern that binds your mystory
together. It is an aesthetic pattern to be
sure and is manipulated by the author, but
there is no shortage of repetitions to use.
Then after all, however dispersed our
activities, to the extent that we feel our
identity as a kind of unity, we should expect
to find a pattern that repeats through
whatever we do or think: it is our style.
Our signature. The electronic apparatus is
starting to dissolve this too-neat condition
of selfhood, or at least dissolve the
conceptual exclusionary structures of
binarism that force experience into much more
sharply delineated categories than is
necessary (eg men/women; African-Americans,whites)
etc. Now there is a controversial matter, hey?
The other questions Collin asks I will get to
in a separate post.
GREG ULMER
=========================================
_____What is the relation of heuretics to the notion of the
Impossible?
This question from Victor covers some of the other outstanding
questions. I will reply to this query in several steps, addressed to the
different correspondents.
_____Is it possible to explain anything at all?
The heuretic turn in theory, working with an _inventio_ organized as
_chora_, adds to critical discussion an aesthetic dimension.
Communication becomes indirect. Why? It has to do with the search
for an alternative to interrogation. Victor noted my reference earlier
to the book _Truth and Torture_ (?). I deferred going into that link
and alluded to the forthcoming chapter (*the MIranda Warnings*) in
George Landows _Hypertext and Theory_ (out in December from Johns
Hopkins). The point of departure for the article is an ad, placed by
Digital Corp in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, showing a still from a film
noir, with a man undergoing the third degree. The caption refers to
the computer as an easier way to get the information you need.
_____What is the feeling of knowing the truth?
The interrogator is a terrorist. The history of truth evolves
continuously from the torture of slaves in the Greek courts to the
diagnostic quiz conducted by AI expert systems. School and critique
have a place in this history. Knowing the truth yet not being able to
convince or persuade others--that drives persons and civilizations
crazy. Is it Platos fault? He demanded the separation of dialectic from
rhetoric. How much of the torturers emotion carries over into
critique, which characterizes reading as *interrogation*? The
(un)popularity of critique. The desire for truth in popular accessible
forms.
_____What is the feeling of composing in the middle voice?
In the middle voice the interrogator experiences the interrogation.
The interrogation is reflexive. When this event happens, the result is
death. The philosophers death. I have been puzzled by this experience
of death at the heart of writing, thinking. The Shaman could write, in
that s/he alone had the power of a round trip to the afterworld. The
position of knowing the truth is the position of being already dead. The
living dead. Socrates taught the achievement of this point of view. The
existential philosophers communicated the lesson with such analogies
as the power of the terrorist (of course) who has decided to die and so
has power over the living who are not philosophers (Camus). To
enjoy living to the fullest one was supposed to continue the state of
mind that existed during the resistance, the underground war against
the Nazi occupation, to maintain that point of view after the war even
when nothing was any longer at stake in the mundane moment
(Sartre). Lacan explained that for the transference to function
therapeutically the analyst must play dead. Batailles impossible is in
this tradition. Along with most religions of the world.
_____How is it possible to teach Batailles general economy?
It does no good to explain truth as thinking dead to the students. I tried
this assignment: Design a handbook for tourists instructing them how
to use videos or photography of a vacation in a way
that would produce an understanding of General Economy. We read the
_Accursed Share_, a book about Aboriginal Dreamtime, saw some
films and tapes. In figuring out how to make such a handbook the
students hit upon the fundamental difference between the existing
economics of tourism and Batailles economics. The insight only
requires applying Batailles own critique of capitalism--a limited
economy of accumulation--contrasted with the General economy whose
point of view is that death (expenditure, waste) is necessary. The
entire bourgeois ideology is devoted to saving, survival, accumulation,
acquisition, achievement while repressing the necessity of death (you
cannot take it with you), ignoring the evidence that suggests that a
consumer civilizaiton is the most wasteful (the best?) that has ever
existed. The guidebooks taught the tourists to shift the point of view
from which the pictures were shot--from that of the absolute
autonomous unique isolated individual saving up experience to have
them later, to the point of view of the whole, the history of everybody,
including the coming future generations. Such tourist albums are
conceptual. It does not matter if a single photo is taken. After this
assignment I decided that explanation may work but only in the middle
voice.
_____What is the pedagogy of the impossible?
Mourning. Learning a language is an experience that formats the body
and mind. Once formatted, once children have learned a language, they
have lost something and gained something (theorized in psychoanalysis
as castration). They have given up immediacy for mediacy (the
symbolic order, the negative, death). We continue learning
languages--school, entertainment, discipline. Heuretics assumes that
the original experience of the entry into language repeats in each of
the others and is fashioned into the feeling of judgment. That feeling is
the latch, hook, couple, hitch linking the inner to the outer world that
every act of persuasion attempts to buckle on to. The feeling of truth.
Propaganda aims directly for it. Science pretends it is not there.
_____What is the practice of a pedagogy of mourning?
In the pedagogy of mourning students experience the teacher as a troll
or magic dwarf encountered by chance on a path through the woods.
This troll, whose powers and moral status are never entirely
determinate, demands of the students the completion of several tasks,
each more impossible than the other.
GREG ULMER
==============================================
A brief excerpt from yesterday's Edupage speaks ironically
to glue's project. I have not seen the BW but might seek it
out for more of its occasioned pleasure here.
**************************************************************************
From: edupage@ivory.educom.edu
BIG, DUMB TV SET SALES ARE BOOMING
Move over, multimedia computers -- sales of non-interactive tv sets (and
the bigger the better) are booming. "We're in the midst of a record year
for the industry," says Zenith executive VP. One person (probably someone
a little strange) calculated that the number of TV screens purchased by
Americans would fill 750 acres, the size of Montana's Little Big Horn
Battlefield. (Business Week 11/1/94 p.46)
***************************************************************************
I have enjoyed and admired Greg's work in the PTc Reinvw and am a bit
saddened by its quieting here. I especially appreciated the slow and
contemplative pace of the interaction and the thoroughness, patience,
and thoughtfulness of the responses. I would like to hear from Greg
his thoughts about PTc Reinvws.
_____ What can you teach us now about our format? Is there anyway
we could have been more helpful/interesting/questioning? Does the
technology impress upon the discussion restraints or considerations
we might further address in our protocals?
______ Does a Reinvw ever approach closure in a rooming house of
perpetual foyers?
______ Would you please stay with us to help us greet new guests?
I find that listserv technological capacity tends to hurry
correspondence. I often feel guilty when I do not respond to
email as immediately as the technology implicates (as it were).
But I have appreciated the pauses in the current reinvw because
of the quality, depth, and clarity of the discussion but also
because I took time with the posts between posts.
Editing duties at PTc though limited further the amount of time
I could spend reinvwing with Richard Smythe. I also found that
learning to write in the manner of the protocals is time consuming
as well. The concurrence protocal advises I write through my
social location rather than from it, for example. That folding
of thought, in a post-mystory manner, makes the lists and
the reinvw speak in the manner of that Columbus thrown to the
floor in Minnesota rather than the manner of the explorer at the
head of Europe.
Thanks for all your instruction/discussion Greg.
I hope the Reinvw never closes.
I look forward to reading
your project as it progresses
over the years.
Jim McFadden
Offlist: jmcfadden@miavx1.muohio.edu
===========================================
_____How has the _Heuretics_ discussion advanced the
understanding of the reinvw?
Thanks Jim for the wonderful statistic about the TV screens filling the
Little Bighorn battlefield. I am designing an online version of my
mystory--for folks to consult who are working with mystory for
research or teaching--and I will include that bit in the weave.
The first question is about pace. I like very much the protocols about
composing offline. I know someone on PTissues complained about long
posts in general, saying that this was E-MAIL after all, as if the
rhetoric of e-mail were already set. The way I worked was to print
out the questions, think about them for a while, draft an outline of a
response, compose the response offline, and send it. I spent about a
day on each response. The questions were similarly thoughtful and
extensive, for the most part and so took time. That is the material
limitation on this process--time.
Like Jim I enjoy presentations that leave me time to reflect. I
remember when the Tarkovsky film _Stalker_ came to the art
cinema in Gainesville. A philosopher friend of mine and I went to it
and the theater was full. When the characters enter the Zone
(brilliant device for saving money on special effects: the forces
articulating the Zone are invisible) they stop to rest every so often
(stations of the cross?). During these rests they have conversations
of a metaphysical nature. There is time to think about these
conversations as the characters make their way to the next stations.
Watching this film made me realize that most Hollywood films allow
no time for thinking, whereas Tarkovsky is the master of this effect
(_Nostalghia_ is one of the most beautiful films I can think of). Near
the close of the film we realized that the theater was nearly empty.
Almost everyone had walked out, leaving in small groups, a few more
each time these conversations started.
So I wrote these long explanations. Was that the right thing to do
(people leaving in small groups saying
_____What did I expect from the reinvw before having participated
in one?
I expected the reinvw to be a hybrid--part review and part
interview--which it was. Some of the questions included discussions
that constituted the review element before posing the questions that
represented the interview element. Still, I expected more reviewing.
The review would in a sense be the question. In a print review a
reader puts the book into his/her own context, recontextualizes the
book. The authors frequently think this recontextualizations is a
misreading. Brunette and Wills in their _Diacritics_ review of
_Teletheory_ advised the readers to ignore the experimental mystory
at the end. Now if that had been a reinvw.... In that gap is the zone of
conversation.
At the same time, a hybrid often is a third entity in which the
features of the two composing units disappear in a new set of features.
How might such a hybrid reinvw work? It might be something like
Wittgensteins *meaning is the use*--the reviewer might ask: how do
I go on from here? Now I see how to go on. Not to cover the same
ground again, to get it right, but to consider what follows from that
line of work. In this case, what are the instructions in _Heuretics_?
_____What is the challenge that _Heuretics_ poses to disciplinary
discourse?
_Heuretics_ is an experiment. We are not used to experimenting in
the Humanities. All around us, at the extremes of natural science on
one side and the avant-garde on the other, we observe
experimentation. I just returned from a visit to a university at which
a graduate class was reading _Heuretics_. They were concerned that
only tenured faculty could write choragraphies. It was too risky to
work in an aesthetic way. I tried to persuade them that it is equally
risky to continue working in the conventional way, for at least two
reasons. 1) The editors of university presses that I have spoken with
indicate that the specialized kind of research that leads to the kind of
book that used to get people tenure is rapidly becoming unpublishable
for marketing reasons: libraries no longer do blanket purchases and
individuals have never bought such books. Universities are going to
have to find another way to assess research ability, other than the
gauntlet of that first university press book. 2) Which brings up the
second reason to experiment, having to do with electronic writing--
one obvious answer to the marketing bottleneck for publishing. The
basic rationale for choragraphy is that writing online is evolving into
something quite different from writing for print. Playing its safe
(sticking with the conventions of academic form) is a bad strategy
since these conventions are not functional for learning in MOOs or for
composing hypertexts for Mosaic. Why is _Heuretics_ being
reinvwed on a rhetoric list? Because rhetoric-comp is more in touch
with writing as a technology than are most lit people.
_____What is the special difficulty of understanding _Heuretics_?
I am not sure that I understand _Heuretics_ myself. I wrote it to test
the CATTt: I pushed the CATTt as far as I could in order to find out
what could be said in that way. Problem: the instructions are
indirect. I have been trying to design assignments in which the
instructions are posed aesthetically: they have a status similar to
*art* texts (no univocal meaning). _Heuretics_ says that
choragraphy as a method is *like*
I am trying to answer this question for myself by my work-in-
progress. The theoretical question is: how does *home* function in
the design of the home page for mosaic, or the home place that one logs
into in a MOO. My graduate seminar this spring will explore how to
teach MOO and Mosaic writing, using choragraphy (but not
_Heuretics_). At the same time, it should be possible to do research
for print using choral rhetoric (it is not medium specific in that it is
a mode of reasoning).
_____Keeping posted?
The few folks who participated in the reinvw have been insightful,
generous and supportive. The protocols do create a sense of dialogue
(a cooperative atmosphere) distinct from the eristics that destroy any
sense of trust or community in much academic communication. I look
forward to continuing with the PT process. I will post some URL
edresses in the spring when there is some work to look at, to see how I
try to follow my own instructions. And while this post concludes the
official reinvw of _Heuretics_ I will be pleased to reply to further
questions. Thanks for giving me this opportunity.
GREG ULMER
=============================================
copyright 1994 Victor J. Vitanza, James J. Sosnoski, and Gregory Ulmer.
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Gregory L. Ulmer, English & Media, University of Florida
Gainesville FL 32611. gulmer@english.ufl.edu
http://www.ucet.ufl.edu/~gulmer/
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