Plato, Missouri

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I’ve already discovered Columbia, Missouri (my current residence) in the Columbia Records archives. That placement prompts me to think spatially about where I live as itself living within popular culture. In the age of new media, Manovich writes, layering is a principle feature of an emerging rhetoric. I try to write with such layers in my research. Indeed. chapter four of the Detroit book is about the Michigan Central Station and layering (as network response).

Missouri feels very layered to me (though, I am sure, any place would feel that way to me since I see all places as networks). An office conversation today revealed an additional layer in Plato, Missouri.

Plato, Missouri. Who knew of such a place? If there is a rhetoric of place, I wondered, it must be found in Plato. Located east of Springfield, Plato is an allusive space. Google searches reveal little about the town other than its placement within various Missouri portals and listings.  Even Wikipedia has little to say.

Such is my typical exigence. If I wonder about assessment as the capture of the allusive (or punctum) in a variety of writing situations, I often feel the same about research. That I cannot find much about Plato at first strikes me. This feeling runs counter to typical research pedagogy which asks students to have a “restricted” idea or topic or thesis in mind when setting out on the path of research. In my case, as typical researcher,  I have nothing in mind other than a name: Plato. Its convergence with my area of study is accidental yet striking. Its feeling is mythical, or as Barthes writes, a “subtle beyond.”

That subtle feeling, no doubt, is encouraged by The Phaedrus and Plato’s description of Socrates travelling outside of the city. Plato is canonically tied to place. What Missouri place is outside of the city (Springfield, let’s say)? Plato.

I feel a need to write.