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06/23/2004 Archived Entry: "The Rhetoric of Cool"
Maybe file this in the "not that anybody really cares" department:
One of the problems I've encountered in writing (and consequently publishing) The Rhetoric of Cool is organization. The original organization of the book divided chapters into those 1963 moments I draw upon in order to create the rhetoric of cool, moments which come from literature, film, cultural studies, music, and technology. All are areas (with maybe the exception of music) important to English Studies. But as a few publishers have told me: that kind of text is difficult to market. Make it more composition-oriented, how the rhetoric of cool informs composition of a new kind of practice.
So that's the new task. My thinking now is to organize around rhetorical moves cool creates: chora, juxtaposition, non-linearity, commutation, and imagery, and problematize these gestures for the teaching of writing. Of course, I'll throw in some pedagogy to compliment the theory - but I'm hoping that a more general node to the textbook I wrote (which has all the assignments) will satisfy the desire for making too much practice visible.
But even within all of this I see problems which I cannot solve (and I will be forced to ignore). For, if chora, for instance, is so vital (since I compose using three distinct meanings of cool from 1963) then chora also challenges the very nature of organization, no? It is not a place holder (topos) but an open container (for want of a better metaphor) which allows for movement. As Ulmer states, chora is in "the order neither of the sensible nor the intelligible but in the order of making, of generating." The logical arrangement of ideas around referentiality and representation is a literate practice (put this here cause it makes sense!). The choral move is not literate, nor is cool literate. We are beyond literacy, as I have heard VV say, whether we call what we are experiencing electracy or another name.
Replies: 5 comments
But even within all of this I see problems which I cannot solve (and I will be forced to ignore). For, if chora, for instance, is so vital (since I compose using three distinct meanings of cool from 1963) then chora also challenges the very nature of organization, no? It is not a place holder (topos) but an open container (for want of a better metaphor) which allows for movement. As Ulmer states, chora is in "the order neither of the sensible nor the intelligible but in the order of making, of generating."
It's a similar problem for people writing about affect. I know you're not all that wild about Massumi's book, but he addresses the difficulty of writing about affect (which is non-cognitive, non-representable, non-conceptual) in a book format, which demands representation and concepts. He writes via exemplars and refuses application. You might just check out the intro again, which actually has a lot to say explicitly about writing in the humanities.
Another good resource is Avital's _Stupidity_. She talks about stupidity as a non-concept. You can't pin stupidity down as a concept before it slips loose. You can't represent stupidity (without making the representation itself "stupid.") Actually, all of Ronell's books tackle this problem. How to present that un(re)presentable? She has a great way of asking people to be patient with her. The "solution," I suppose, is that the writing you/we do can't be an expository writing. You can't re/present cool. So it has to be evocative writing that aims to evoke, not represent or conceptualize.
Posted by jenny @ 06/24/2004 12:55 PM EST
On the one hand - I get excited thinking about a new organization (I'm sketching it all out now) and how to rearrange what I've already written.
On the other hand - frustration because I probably knew all along I was going to have to drop the structure I had going for so long.
Posted by j @ 06/24/2004 10:38 AM EST
See, even on a weblog, I can't do this right. I meant to say "the editors suggested the last half would be better as one section."
This is how the computer tells me I've worked enough today at putting my two sections back to one.
Posted by cbd @ 06/23/2004 07:44 PM EST
When is organization not a problem? I'm finishing an essay now where I drafted the last half as one section, then revised to break it up into two sections. After review, the editors suggested the last half would be better as two sections. Whee....
Posted by cbd @ 06/23/2004 07:41 PM EST
Ya, I hear ya. It is a paradox that is tough to get around. I hate to say that I've tended to err on the conservative side--put it here because it makes logical, argumentative sense--but for the most part that decision has come from my assitant prof status. My book is so linear that it is sad, but I think all the attention to linearity and clarity will help it get published because that's what I have to do to get tenure. The main paradoxical problem for me is that I tout a more complex historiography but find my self falling into a good old historiogrpahy of dates and names. Bummer. We'll see if I can fix that some during revisions but I'm not sure any amount of minor tinkering will undo it completely. The phantasy I keep telling myself is that the post tenure book will be different. We'll see :)
Posted by B @ 06/23/2004 05:25 PM EST