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08/18/2004 Archived Entry: "Grammatology - Otis Style"

Grammatology - Otis Style

Otis Redding
Dictionary of Soul
Maybe not the strongest of Otis' pre-death albums. But let's explore its grammatological potential here - the motivating factor coming from the title: dictionary. Dictionaries hold prominent places in the popular consciousness of literacy studies. The example I often draw upon in my work is Malcolm X studying the dictionary while in prison, a moment which I, at 14 or 15, found inspirational enough to consider as well as an act of literacy acquisition: knowledge of words equates power. It's also a moment I draw upon in my article on cyborgography. Of course, literacy is more than the accumulation of words. Still, we cannot ignore the relevance of literacy studies to new media - even as the terms of literacy are drastically altered.
Dictionary of Soul is a record, a material artifact relevant to the emergence of what Lhamon calls "the deliberate speed" of post World War II America. Because of its post War-technological origins (and it is a Stax product - I'm thinking of Tom Dowd bringing technology into the Memphis studio in the early '60s by refiguring its recording board), I consider Dictionary of Soul as a potential lesson for new media literacy. But what kind of lesson?
Mood. Ulmer identifies mood as an electrate grammatological principle (funk is one example in Internet Invention). What can we do, though, with soul?
From the album, lesson #1. Try a little tenderness.

You know she's waiting
Just anticipating
The thing that she'll never, never, possess,no,no
But while [all the time] she's without it
Go to her and try just a little bit of tenderness
[That’s all you gentlemen gotta do]

From the album, lesson #2. Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song).

All my life I've been singing these sad songs
Trying to get my message to you
But this is the only song [y'ALL] I can sing
And when I get to singing my message to you

Ulmer draws attention often to the Brazilian word saudade as he works through mood and electracy. Saudade has a sense of the word "sad" to it. So does Dictionary of Soul. To read this dictionary, and thus, to write from it, to be empowered by it (as Malcolm X is empowered by the English dictionary in his fight against racism), is to evoke the sadness invested in one aspect of soul music and conveyed by Otis into the world of new media. To write sadness...an act of melancholy? Maybe not. An alternative to the upbeat tone of many comp textbooks or the "fairness" lessons driven home in argumentation assignments (find the counter position/create a reasonable position/use logic)? Oh yes.
Then the analogy:
What fairness and rationality are to literacy/ sadness is to new media (?)

Ties nicely into exile pedagogy of course....Choral move: Otis covering the Stones' "Satisfaction" early in his career. What if he had covered "Tumbling Dice"? Any reason to suggest it couldn't have been included on a Dictionary of Soul Part II - an imaginary record which pushes the exile/sad aspects of new media further....