Issue 1: Texts, Technologies, and Remediation

Textual Overtures
Texts, Technologies, and Remediation

April 2013
Issue 1 Volume 1
A Journal Encompassing the Teaching, Interpretation,
and Production of Texts
Textual Overtures
A Journal Encompassing the Teaching, Interpretation, and Production of Texts
Courtney King, Editor
Jennifer Lin OBrien, Tech Editor
Kerry Clark, Assistant Tech Editor
Lindsay Williams, Literature Editor
Thomas Pickering, Rhetoric and Composition Editor
Catherine Tetz, Communications Editor

Washington State University
http://textualovertures.wordpress.com/
Editorial Board
Benjamin Carlton, Aminah Barnes Cannon, Aree Metz, and Lindsay Williams.
About Textual Overtures
Textual Overtures is dedicated to creating a space in which rhetoric, composition,
and literature can coexist, and further, create a harmony of textual explorations.
We are a coalition of graduate students at Washington State University
committed to promoting a community of graduate scholarship and discourse. We
envision Textual Overtures as a cacophony of scholarship which forms a stage for
interdisciplinary and multi-perspectived inquiry. We invite graduate students from
a variety of settings to submit their work for consideration by their peers.
Authors retain publication rights to their work, as well as the right to copyright
their materials or licence them under Creative Commons. Textual Overtures
publishes all texts with the permission of their authors. Texts may not be
published, printed, edited or otherwise used without the permission of the
author. The work in Textual Overtures, however, may be read online, downloaded
or printed for personal use. Textual Overtures publishes material under a non-
exclusivity policy (so that authors can retain the right to submit their work
elsewhere) and accepts simultaneous submissions.

Statement of Copyright
Design, layout, and cover illustration by Jennifer Lin OBrien.
Textual Overtures
Volume One Issue One April 2013
1
15
38
47
57
Crucial Convergence: Scott Pilgrim as Transmedial Test Case
Kyle Eveleth
5igniBcant Intervals Between Print and Video Poetry
Rachael Sullivan
Using Facebook Within a Composition Course to Promote
Ira 5hor's "Liberatory Learning"
Gina Marie Giardina
Negotiating with an Imaginary Audience: Limitations
of Social Constructivist Notions of Ethos for First-Year
Composition
Katrina L. Miller
Review of Reading, Writing, and the Rhetorics of Whiteness
||st| |c|oe
Textual Overtures 1.1 | April 2013
1
Crucial Convergence: Scott Pilgrim as
Transmedial Test Case
Kyle Eveleth
I hear the book was better than the movie.
Comeau, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
Henry Jenkins claims that the entertainment industry in the West
these days is horizontal (Jenkins 1). Entertainment companies
like Warner Brothers have begun to expand their holdings outside
of lheir lradilionaI heIds, in lhis case cinema, lo olher media forms
like comics and video games, creating a distribution network that
can turn intellectual property from a single text into a sprawling
franchise. In the case of Warner Brothers, concerted distribution
through its holdings allowed for the systematic release of single-
franchise oerings Iike Batman: before lhe hIm comes a backslory
comic, a fealure hIm reIease foIIovs, and afler lhe hIm comes a
video game that expands on the story. This kind of cross-media
enlerlainmenl goes by many names, bul lhe hrsl and erhas
most appropriate is Henry Jenkinss transmedial storytelling. Carlos
AIberlo ScoIari dehnes lransmedia sloryleIIing as a arlicuIar
narralive slruclure lhal exands lhrough bolh dierenl Ianguages
(verbal, iconic, etc.) and media (cinema, comics, television, video
games, etc.), but is careful to note that this storytelling is distinct
from simple franchise merchandising in that
TS is not just an adaptation from one media to another.
The story that the comics tell is not the same as that told on
leIevision or in cinema, lhe dierenl media and Ianguages
participate and contribute to the construction of the
transmedia narrative world. This textual dispersion is one of
the most important sources of complexity in contemporary
popular culture. (587)
Very dierenl from lhe age-oId raclice of adaling a slory from one
narrative medium to another, transmedial stories are stories told
across multiple media (Jenkins 2003, emphasis added). Instead of
1
The author is a graduate student
at the University of Kentucky.
attempting to retell stories as similarly as possible despite mediary
dierences, lransmediaI slories bolh reIy and cailaIize on lhe
inherenl dierences belveen media forms, meaning lhal
each medium does what it does bestso that a story might
be inlroduced in a hIm, exanded lhrough leIevision, noveIs,
and comics, and its world might be explored and experienced
through game play. Each franchise entry needs to be self-
contained enough to enable autonomous consumption. That
is, you don'l need lo have seen lhe hIm lo en|oy lhe game
and vice-versa. (Jenkins 3)
Transmedial stories represent a kind of ideal outcome for
contemporary convergence culture. In part a logical extension of
the Bakhtinian and Todorovian semiotic concept of intertextuality,
now a buzzword in literary and cultural studies, and Kress and
van Leeuwens educational concept of multimodality, a buzzword
in pedagogical studies, the concept of transmedialityor the
quality of a work of art of spanning multiple media platforms
in a convergent mannerties together issues of contemporary
mass-media consumption, participation, and multimodal
identity formation. By virtue of bleeding over the margins of
their harnessed media forms, transmedial stories examine both
these borders and the liminal spaces between media, such as the
dierences and simiIarilies belveen scene crealion for cinemalic
narrative and for graphic narrative. Their exploration exposes the
limits of single media forms even as they celebrate the convergence
of multiple media platforms to create cohesion in narrative, and
their example leads a generation to similar participatory and
performative gestures of exploration.
But not all texts created from (or in reaction to) contemporary
convergence culture are transmedial. Jenkins notes that not all
slories ov across media (3)in facl, mosl von'l (3)and nol
all stories that take up the reins of multiple media platforms are
indeed transmedial. He explains that though a good franchise
might be successfully generated from good characters, a transmedia
franchise is spawned from a good world (3). Transmedia
franchises encourage consumers to come to the stories through
dierenl hysicaI access oinls (games, hIms, books) by uliIizing
each medium's slrenglhs lo reach many dierenl audiences,
representing the pinnacle of convergence culture. For example, avid
readers of the Harry Potter books who have never picked up a video
game may be enticed by the possibility of taking a more active role
in lhe vorId lhrough lhe video game oerings. y focusing on lhese
dierenl menlaI slalesobserver and arlicianllhe franchise
sublIy ushes fans lo consume lhe media oerings lhal give lhem
the best opportunities to realize those states.
2
Hovever, limes have changed since Marsha Kinder hrsl roosed
the concept of transmedia in 1991, and nearly a decade has
assed since }enkins hrsl discussed delh of characler based uon
lransmedia raclices. Mosl signihcanl of lhese changes is lhe
accepted normalcy of multiple media platforms and multimodal
consumption, to the point that folks born since 1984 are often
called digital natives, accustomed more to digital forms and the
Internet than their predecessors. These digitized individuals are
beginning to craft texts in what we might call their native tongue,
the transmedial format, and these texts must be reckoned with to
more completely understand transmedial storytelling as well as the
culture that now lives steeped in multimodal access to information.
To that end, I examine the intensely Millennial text of Scott
Pilgrim. Though Scott Pilgrim is an intellectual franchise that has
indeed spanned multiple media platforms, it ostensibly falls short
of achieving vhal }enkins dehnes as lransmedia sloryleIIing.
Where it falls short, however, illustrates not a failure to achieve
lransmediaIily bul inslead a necessily lo re-examine lhe dehnilion
and current understanding of what it means to be transmedial.
Simply stated, Scott Pilgrim is an example of transmedia storytelling,
crafted by a Millennial culture that is native to these practices, but
one lhal forces us lo redehne vhal may be reckoned lransmediaI
precisely because of this acculturation to transmedial practice.
Scott Pilgrim (2005-2010), Bryan Lee OMalleys six-volume graphic
chronicle, interweaves classic manga style with popular culture
references thick enough to raise a blush in Joss Whedon, a sort of
ersatz oracle and touchstone of whatever it is that is considered the
Millennial identity, at least in terms of popular cultureWhedon
goes so far as to call Scott Pilgrim the chronicle of our time (back
cover of volume one, emphasis added). Readers follow Canadian
twentysomething Scott, a representative of the new generation
of slacker kids raised on videogames and Toonami, through his
romantic struggle to win the heart of American delivery ninja
Ramona Flowers [age: unknown]. Struggle here is not metaphorical
bul IileraI: lo vin Ramona's aeclions, Scoll musl defeal her Seven
Evil Exes, who formed a league after a drunken rant on Craigslist
by the head of the League, Gideon Graves. Along the way on his
(mock) heroic epic, Scott faces the expected trials and tribulations
that should help him mature and grow into a likeable character. But,
as we shall soon see, growing up is hard to do and Scott dislikes
trials (unless they come in quest form). Things get complicated
when Scott must tackle such issues as taking responsibility for past
mistakes and maybe not lying for once in his life. Equal parts heroic
eic, videogame lribule, musicaI Iexicon, hIm and leIevision lrivia
game, slice of life narrative, and failed-bildungsroman, Scott Pilgrim
exemIihes lhe hyerlexluaI, inler-reIalionaI media consciousness
3
lhal IargeIy dehnes conlemorary Iife for lhe MiIIenniaI generalion,
it goes so far as to proclaim its graphic representation is the late
Millennial generation readers life.
To undersland hov lhis lexl redehnes lhe conlemorary idea of
transmedial storytelling, we must examine transmedial storytelling
in the terms that its greatest proponent, Henry Jenkins, lays
oul. Lxamining and aIying lhis dehnilion is lhe hrsl sle in
identifying how Scott Pilgrim iniliaIIy faIIs shorl bul Ialer redehnes
the transmedial phenomenon. Transmedial storytelling represents
a rocess vhere inlegraI eIemenls of a hclion gel disersed
systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose
of crealing a unihed and coordinaled enlerlainmenl exerience
(Jenkins 2007 np). That is, there are three essential components
of transmedial storytelling: that the elements be dispersed
systematically and that this dispersal take place across multiple
delivery channels (which I will call condition A), that the dispersed
elements must be integral to the story (condition B), and that
lhe eIemenls creale a unihed and coordinaled enlerlainmenl
experience (condition C). Thus, for examIe, a hIm adalalion of
a book may not be transmedial because it may not meet condition
B, though it meets condition A and arliaIIy salishes condilion C.
Furthermore, Jenkins notes a fourth ideal condition (D), that
each medium makes its own unique contribution to the unfolding
of the story (ibid.). Though not necessaryand indeed one of
the trickier parts of the process of transmediationawareness of
medium limitations and exploration of them as part of the story can
make a transmedial storytelling act even more compelling. Jenkins
oers The Matrix franchise as a notable example of a transmedial act
that meets all four conditions (ibid.). I argue that the Scott Pilgrim
franchise does nol meel aII of lhese crileria (nameIy, il has dicuIly
reaching conditions B, C, and D even as it approaches them), but
further examination of the other criteria will shed light on how
and why the franchise misses these marks and what this means for
transmedia in general.
The elements of condition A are essentially cultural and economic
in nature. Jenkins explains that transmedial storytelling is made
possible in part because it is the ideal aesthetic form for a time
marked by what Pierre Levy calls collective intelligence, or new
social structures that enable the production and circulation of
knowledge within a networked society. Additionally, transmedial
roduclion reecls lhe economics of media consoIidalion or vhal
induslry observers caII 'synergy' (}enkins), a conhguralion of
the entertainment industry [that] makes transmedia expansion
an economic imperative even while it allows the most gifted
transmedia artists [to] also surf these marketplace pressures to
4
create a more expansive and immersive story than would have
been possible otherwise. Furthermore, franchises are often most
successful in coordinating synergistic releases when the same
author oversees their production and especially when divisions
of the same parent company (rather than licensing agreements to
other companies) are utilized in the production and release of the
property.
In the case of Scott Pilgrim, Bryan Lee OMalley began working on
lhe hIm (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, 2O1O) |usl afler lhe hrsl voIume
was released. He explained via interview that his publisher
[Oni Press] has a sort of Hollywood arm that passed his idea on
to producer Marc Platt in 2004 (Winning 1), noting that the time
between conception and release was due to director Edgar Wrights
intervening work on Hot Fuzz (2007), so [the delay was] just the
natural cycle of his work or whatnot (Winning 1). In addition,
production of the Ubisoft-designed game Scott Pilgrim vs. the
World: The Game (2010) was announced at the San Diego Comic
Convenlion in }uIy of 2OO9, somelime afler lhe hflh book bul before
lhe sixlh (Ibisofl n). The synergislic eecl of Iayered reIeases
drives media hype (as the book concludes, the movie is released
and the game is released shortly thereafter) even as it increases
modes of access for potential readers. This synergistic release
modeI reecls a syslemalic disersaI of roducls across media
for both cultural reasons (building readership, encouraging fan
communities and participation) and economic reasons (building on
the success of previous installments, increasing markets). In this
way, the franchising of Scott Pilgrim inlo a hIm and game as veII as
a book series salishes condilion A of transmediality.
To eecliveIy achieve lransmedialion as }enkins dehnes il, a given
franchise is released episodically (in line with the systematic nature
of transmedia) with each episode accessible on its own terms
even as it makes a unique contribution to the narrative system as a
whole. That is to say that consumers do not necessarily need to have
read the book to enjoy the movie and vice-versa, but that doing so
will enhance enjoyment or in some way alter their comprehension
of the story. To that end, transmedial extensions serve a variety
of dierenl funclions, such as roviding insighl inlo characlers'
Iives, buiIding lhe hclionaI vorId of lhe slory, releIIing gIossed-over
events in between installments in other media forms, or increasing
lhe reaIism of lhe hclionaI vorId by roviding or buiIding hisloricaI
documentation. These practices expand the marketability of the
roducl by crealing dierenl oinls of enlry for dierenl audience
segments, which may in turn lead to these consumers accessing
the product on other media platforms: gamers may become
moviegoers and moviegoers may buy books. More important than
5
the systematic and episodic manner of distributionan extension
of condition Athese products must form a cohesive product-
construct in order to be viably transmedial. Referring to Neil
Youngs concept of additive comprehension, Jenkins explains
that new texts should add a piece of information which forces us
lo revise our underslanding of lhe hclion as a vhoIe, ralher lhan
simply rehashing the same story in essentially the same manner
(para. 8). Some of these new pieces of information exist because of
the addition of new modalities to the product, such as the inclusion
of music or sound eecls, lhe casling of cerlain aclors lo orlray
characters, and enlightened level design that mimics themes and
motifs found in other texts. Other pieces of new information might
include dramatic reinterpretations or additions to the series, such
as the reinterpretation of the titular character of Beowulf in Robert
Zemeckis adaptation.
Though the Scott Pilgrim franchise takes part in many of these
transmedial actions, its enactment of transmedia storytelling
Iacks lhe dierenlialion lhal }enkins requires in his dehnilion. In a
way, Scott Pilgrim has dicuIly using ils muIlimedia Ialforms lo
reinterpret the story or add distinct but cohesive parts to the whole
tale. Unlike The Matrix, a franchise that Jenkins explains has no ur-
text where one can turn to gain all of the information needed to
comprehend the Matrix universe (para. 3), the Scott Pilgrim books
are arguably the only place one need go to get the entire story. The
hIm's addilion of nev modaIilies and Ianguages, nameIy audio-
and movement-based, indeed adds new layers of meaning to the
reading exerience of lhe books. The arliaIIy-honorihc, arliaIIy-
parodic relationship between Scott Pilgrim and The Legend of Zelda
that is set up and explored verbally and visually in the books is
further explored by the inclusion of the iconic Legend of Zelda: A
Link to the Past inlroduclion music in lhe oening scene of lhe hIm.
This lroe is mainlained lhroughoul lhe hIm lhrough lhe use of
sound eecls Iike lhe ule song from lhe same game and a version
of Zeldas widely-used Faerie Grotto song. The added layer of the
auditory mode to the narrative gestures widely at the same kind of
tropes in the books in a way that other viewers or readersperhaps
those most interested in the musical aspect of gameswill access
readily. In much the same way, the design of the video game, a
side-scrolling beat-em-up, plays on kinesthetic modalities through
its retrospective gameplay and the visceral act of controlling Scott
through his battles. The nature of avatardom that he takes on in
the reading becomes literalized as the player controls him in the
game, thus realizing in a manner the books various admissions that
Scott Pilgrim is in part the life of the reader who controls it. These
modal inclusions in media adaptations, while useful in constructing
meaning and changing the way the reader experiences each text,
6
are not strictly transmedial. The problem lies in the story being told,
vhich is essenliaIIy lhe same in each oering (vhelher condensed
for lime and ease, as in lhe hIm, or changed lo suil simIislic and
accessible gameplay) and which adds very little in terms of content
to the understanding of the story. No backstories are explored here,
and the world of Scott Pilgrim is rather static between media forms.
This Iack of narralive dierenlialion and vorId exIoralion seems
to spoil Scott Pilgrims claim to transmedial storytelling. As I noted
earlier, Jenkins argues that transmedial storytelling is the ideal
aesthetic for a culture of collective intelligence, where ideas and
concepts converge and are exchanged freely and openly between
intellects and media. Levy has previously argued that art in the
age of collective intelligence functions as a cultural attractor that
pulls like-minded individuals together to form new knowledge
communitiessomething Jenkins has studied at great length in
his work on fan communities like those centered around Star Trek
and Twin Peaksand Jenkins extends this argument to say that
transmedia storytelling is likewise a textual activator, a catalyst
for setting into motion the production, assessment, and archiving
information of a given product (para. 8). The actions set into
motion by the textproduction, assessment, and archivingare a
few of the roles generated by transmedial storytelling. Transmedial
storytelling incentivizes readerly participation, especially where
generation is concerned, and it is in this respectin its ability to
mobilize readers and reposition the traditional roles of writer and
readerthat Scott Pilgrim alters transmediation in an intriguing
vay. This imorlanl shifl in focus from IileraI vorId-buiIding (hIIing
out the parts of the world left open by the creators) to metaphorical
vorId-buiIding (aIying lhe ruIes of lhe hclionaI vorId lo make
inferences about that world) harnesses the kind of nuanced and
subversive treatment of tradition and convention rampant in Scott
Pilgrim. The dierence, Iike lhe avareness lhal Scott Pilgrim applies,
is besl shovn by dierence.
Jenkins maintains that the most successful transmedia stories are
based nol on individuaI characlers or secihc Iols bul ralher
comIex hclionaI vorIds vhich can suslain muIliIe inlerreIaled
characters and their stories (para. 5). A classic example of Jenkinss
kind of transmedia world is the Dungeons and Dragons franchise,
one that has widely embraced transmediality in its world-building
focus. One of the transmedial stories that is told via D&D is that
of dark elf Drizzt DoUrden. Created as a secondary character by
R.A. Salvatore in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, Drizzt
has starred outside of the tabletop roleplaying genre in a series of
novels, graphic narratives, and video games. Though Drizzts story
is iconic and provides a focal point for the series, the setting is rich
7
enough that the media accessories to his story, like the game Baldurs
Gate: Dark Alliance, which explores parts of Drizzts underground
home and the culture of his native people, or the D&D supplement
Hall of Heroes, which examines his fellow heroes and adventuring
companions, allow for greater access to the world around Drizzt
while they simultaneously improve focus on him as a protagonist.
In a somevhal dierenl vay lhan lhe drive lo buiId lhe slories lhal
take place in the multimedia Forgotten Realms settingof which
Drizzts story is but one exampleScott Pilgrim builds a story
that includes the rules of the world in which it occurs. Rather than
making characlers and buiIding slories aboul hov lhey hl inlo lhe
world, readers of Scott Pilgrim are encouraged to build connections
between the stories shown in the works by building the world
around lhem. Inslead of a vorId-cenlric viev of lhe hclion, Scott
Pilgrim embraces a characler-cenlric viev of lhe hclion. Though
lhe dierences in execulion couId be dravn oul and made more
complex, it seems more prudent to state that the processesat least
in terms of how fans partake in themare functionally similar. That
is to say that, though Scott Pilgrims world-building is sparked by
a character and not a world, the end result is the same: a complex,
arlicialion-driven hclionaI vorId lhal is made slronger by lhe
fans it attracts.
This process of world-building encourages the encyclopedic
imuIse lo knov everylhing lhere is lo knov aboul lhe hclionaI
world. We might think, for example, of those Star Wars fans who
pondered the ecology of Tatooine based on its extraordinary
solar radiationa decidedly extratextual concept, but one that is
supported by the narrative nonethelessor those who explored
the tension between Wookies and Imperial forces following
enslavement. These encyclopedic ambitions often result in what
might be seen as gaps or excesses in the unfolding of the story,
opening the way for fans to become unauthorized authors of
untold stories within the universe (para. 12). To keep track of the
worlds rulesthe understandings that drive and regulate these
unauthorized stories and underpin the authorized onesmany fans
have taken to creating encyclopedias of information. Jenkins notes
that the expansive and inclusive nature of transmedia storytelling
provides a set of roles and goals which readers can assume as they
enact aspects of the story through their everyday life,, making
transmedia storytelling a deeply fan-centric and participatory
endeavor (para. 11).
Perhaps the most compelling evidence, then, of Scott Pilgrims
transmedial nature lies in its ability to create the encyclopedic
impulse for its readers because of its ability to incentivize participation
and provide these everyday roles and goals. However, rather than
8
building a Scott Pilgrim world in which the readers can frolic and
create, the Scott Pilgrim franchise evokes many of the always-already
participatory forms of engagement that exist in the culture that not
only allows but perhaps demands transmedia storytelling. Because
(as I argued in the previous chapter) Scott Pilgrim is a pastiche
crafted from a web of references and allusions that both parody
and pay homage to their sources, the impulse for many serious
readers becomes the drive to collect and know all of these potential
references. The development of a Scott Pilgrim wiki to attempt to
catalogue all the nuances and references surrounding the work,
as well as the exhaustive fan-submitted trivia section of the Scott
IiIgrim vs. lhe WorId Inlernel Movie Dalabase age, exemIihes
this drive to encyclopedic knowledge. The drive to collect this
Scott Pilgrim trivia is extraordinary: actress Anna Kendrick, who
orlrays Slacy IiIgrim in lhe hIm, menlions in lhe commenlary lhal
her name badge is the actual name badge of the real world Stacy
Pilgrim, a fact that she notes needs to be put on IMDB right away.
The encyclopedic desire must be enormous when the actors of the
hImaclors vho are aII arl of lhe miIIenniaI generalion lhal Scott
Pilgrim depictsare aware of the depth of the fan base and the urge
to know everything there is to know about the Scott Pilgrim world.
However, Scott Pilgrim is not a traditionally transmedial case
because of its lack of traditional world-building, as explained
earlier in relation to Dungeons and Dragons. In fact, the Scott Pilgrim
franchise, with its devoted focus on Scott, appears initially not to
open the door for much exploration of the world around him. As I
noled earIier, lhe Iack of narralive dierenlialion hinders lhe acl of
world-building in some ways, but it is in Scott Pilgrims generally
subversive treatment of tradition, narration, and participation
that its distinctive brand of transmediality becomes more clear.
Scott Pilgrim questions the validity of narrative focus through its
language by tearing Scott down as a protagonist and revealing
his faults. In addition, it questions narrative focus not only by
suggesting that other stories are going on around Scottthat, by
virtue of being elevated to the level of pseudo-Grand-Narrative,
the narrative also ignores or silences other storiesbut also by
drawing attention to these side narratives constantly. Scott
Pilgrim reminds readers that Scotts friends have lives that do not
revolve around Scott, even though it initially seems as though he
is their universe. Looking just at the titles of the book series, the
focus wavers: Scott is always present, always foregrounded, but the
backdrop of each volume shifts to encompass or exclude others, and
even lhe lilIes reecl lhis narralive focus. We begin vilh his Precious
Little Life, focusing enlireIy on Scoll (indeed, lhe hrsl vords of lhe
volume hammer this focus home: Scott Pilgrim is dating a high
schooler is deemed worthy of opening the entire work). Volume
9
two raises the adversarial stakes by pitting Scott against the world.
Interestingly, the two middle volumes feature much of the side-
character building in the seriesthis is where readers learn more
about Kims past, discovering that she has a life outside of Scott, and
also where readers begin to see the cracks in Stephens relationship
with Julie and his newfound happiness with Joseph. Despite all
this, the books focus unwaveringly on Scott: on his |nniic Sc!ncss
and how he Gets It Together. Yet we never return to these important
side slories: in voIume hve, il is Scoll Versus the Universe, and our
hnaI viev of lhe series is Scoll's Finest Hour. There is literally no
room for olhers in lhis series excel vhen Scoll is hghling againsl
them (whether they are the world or the entire universe). These
titles, however, are undermined by the content they contain: in
each additional volume, Scotts worth as a protagonist is more
profoundly questioned until it becomes clear that his story is just
one of many, and perhaps not the most compelling (though it does
make for good action). The juxtaposition of absolute endearment
to Scott on the outside with constant questioning and critique on
the inside serves as yet another clue that readers of Scott Pilgrim
should also question appearances and traditions as they consume
the series.
The treatment of participation in Scott Pilgrim further opens the door
for questions and critiques of propriety and tradition. Though Scott
Pilgrim makes all of the traditional moves to encourage participation,
it breaks many of its own rules for guiding or controlling that
participation by allowing the reader to regain agency. If gameplay
is a willing surrender of agencyat least in that one must follow
lhe ruIes lo hnish lhe gamelhen Scott Pilgrim is a game vhose hrsl
rule is to argue about the rules. Similar games exist: Steve Jacksons
Munchkin is a card game that parodies many of the conventions of
tabletop roleplaying games, and many of its rules and regulations
are ambiguous or purposefully misleading. For example, to begin
lhe game, Iayers decide vho goes hrsl by roIIing lhe dice and
arguing about the results and the meaning of this sentence and
vhelher lhe facl lhal a vord seems lo be missing any eecl (1).
Further, other disputes should be settled by loud arguments, with
the owner of the game having the last word, or looked up online,
unIess il's more fun lo argue (1). Iarl of a game's eecliveness al
enforcing rules is that these rules are unambiguous and outside of
the play experiencethat they cannot be questioned. When they
can be questioned, the validity of the rules, or at the very least the
formality of the game, becomes a topic of questioning. Indeed, in
Munchkin, being too serious almost always results in losing the
game. In Scott Pilgrim, similar proceedings occur, and readers who
give too much agency away are rewarded with a boring experience.
A key example of this phenomenon in Scott Pilgrim is when the book
10
oers guides on hov lo read comics, evenluaIIy breaking dovn
into read it freestyle, a rule that lies directly at odds with both
convention (language is read directionally) and Wallaces demands
to the contrary (this is the back of the book! Go to the front!).
y oering readers lhese lvo imorlanl cIues and means lo examine
and dismantle the story of Scott Pilgrim, the series enables a very
subtle kind of world-building in the negative sense: readers may
take it apart and question its pieces. Rather than functioning as a
kind of gestalt consciousness that is beyond the realm of critique,
Scott Pilgrim opens itself for deconstruction and allows readers
to see its moving parts. It does this by harnessing the already-
participatory elements that it uses to make up its pastiche. Readers
come to the books already from a transmedial position: they bring
to the narrative the bits (and bytes) of other media knowledge and
apply them freely and openly to a narrative that is built to harness
these parts and grow because of them. In essence, Scott Pilgrim
hinges upon the readers transmedial skill to be unlocked. Built into
its framework is a network of possible layers waiting to be accessed.
Similar to how Super Mario World features colored outlines of blocks
and platforms that correspond to colored switches the player
can hit, Scott Pilgrim suggests alternate pathways and readings
with clues: movie references, gaming homages, television tropes,
musical numbers. A reader not possessing these keys can still get
through the series and enjoy the experience, but the presence of
these alternate paths just out of reach creates an impetus to come
back and try again with the keys in hand, to search for the switches
that will open these pathways.
Many of lhese lhemes are exIored more exIicilIy in lhe hIm and
video game, vhich oer slronger incenlives lo go back lhrough each
part of the franchise with a closer eye for detail. The repetition of
lhe ouIar gaming lroe Conlinue` in lhe hIm harmonizes vilh
its brief appearance in the book series and is built upon even more
strongly by the game, which features it as a part of the medium.
Similarly, the focus on doors (an inherently unstable, liminal space)
and knovIedge of secrel alhvays lhrough lhem hnds resonance
in lhe hIm, vhich focuses lhemalicaIIy on doors and vhal mighl Iie
behind them. Ramona, the American Delivery Ninja, is the greatest
representative of the common theme of liminality and instability
with a focus on movement ever forward. This theme, treated
overfuIIy in lhe books and hIm, is buiIl u concreleIy in lhe games:
moving toward many doors in the game opens them, revealing a
secret path through Subspace or a shop where powerups can be
attained. More importantly, the game is a side-scrolling beat-em-
up, in which players may only advance forward in a levelthere
is no looking back. The urge that Scott has to live constantly in his
11
past is denied, and the player, taking the role of Scott, is swept up
in the same inexorable movement he experiences in his tumultuous
relationship with Ramona. Finally, the participatory and peer-to-
peer community-building facet of the series is teased out through
the franchises systematic release. The book encourages readers
lo hnd friends lo read aIong lo heI unIock arls of lhe narralive
lhey may nol have lhe rior knovIedge lo access. The hIm does
the same on another level by adding both audio and live actors,
whose relationships to one another and their previous acting
engagements provide fodder for the viewers musically inclined
or movie bu friends. Whal lhese hIms suggesllhal lhere is
strength in numbers, so to speakthe game makes explicit: playing
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game solo is harder than playing it
cooperatively with friends, as the number of enemies on-screen
and lheir reIalive slrenglh increases vilh dicuIly and rogression
but not with the number of players. As these examples show,
lhough each media oering may nol add addilionaI informalion
to the Scott Pilgrim ur-text (that Scott must defeat Ramonas Seven
Evil Exes), it does add integral openings and intersections where
readers;vievers;Iayers can aIy lheir ovn air or knovIedge lo
the story, increasing their comprehension of the franchise as a whole
in ways that other media did not allow. In this way, the Scott Pilgrim
franchise enacts additive comprehension while functioning as a
cultural attractor for fan communities.
While it may not appear initially to be a fully-formed example of
transmedia storytelling, the Scott Pilgrim franchise does take part
in a rocess vhere inlegraI eIemenls of a hclion gel disersed
systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of
crealing a unihed and coordinaled enlerlainmenl exerience. Thal
Scott Pilgrim does this both through internal measures built into the
graphic narratives and through external marketing measures like
lhe hIm, game, and olher roducls (Iike oslers or lhe animaled
short Scott Pilgrim vs. The Animation, an animated adaptation of the
Benvie Tech incident from volume two that appeared on Cartoon
Networks Adult Swim) shovs a keen avareness of lhe inuences
of muIlimedia Ialforms on cuIluraI roduclion in lhe lvenly-hrsl
century. More importantly, that Scott Pilgrim harnesses transmedial
storytelling in such a totalizing manner demonstrates a deeper
understanding of the cultural and generational roots of transmedia
art franchises. As much as Millennial consciousness is built on
ambiguity and subtlety in language and on the premise of the world
as a series of participatory opportunities, so too is Millenniality built
on its members native relationships to multiple hyperlinked
media forms and their all-encompassing consumption of these
forms. To this end, Scott Pilgrim looks at transmedia storytelling as a
native method instead of a new development. That position allows
12
for innovation in the form as well as intriguing and previously
unseen methods of access or kinds of implementation, such as the
formal structuring of a work to be always-already transmedial. In its
purest senseharnessing multiple media platforms to cohesively
and uniquely tell a storythe Scott Pilgrim franchise is absolutely
transmedial. It is, however, a permutation of transmedia storytelling
that incorporates transmedia models intuitively into its structure in
ways that have yet to be examined fully. To better understand both
Millennial culture, which embraces and innovates on these forms,
and to understand the growing complexity of artistic production
by Millennials who have grown up with transmedia storytelling
practices, we must continue to examine and alter our perceptions of
what makes transmedia storytelling both compelling and unique
especially when it has been crafted so expertly to live inside
of transmediality, as Scott Pilgrim has. Here, as ever before, Scott
Pilgrim shows that it is a work from a culture of incredulity and
doubl: grovlh demands lhe inlerrogalion of lhe dehnilive, and Scott
Pilgrim enacts this interrogation powerfully in style (language),
form (participation), and dispersal (transmediality).
13
Works Cited
Jenkins, Henry. Transmedia Storytelling: Moving characters
from books lo hIms lo video games can make lhem slronger
and more compelling. Technology Review. Maine Institute of
Technology, 15 Jan. 2003. Web. 24 Sept. 2012.
. Transmedia Storytelling 101. Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The
O[cic| B|cg cj Hcnrq jcn|ins. 22 Mar. 2007. Web. 24 Sept. 2012.
Kinder, Marsha. Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video
Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California
Press, 1991. Print.
OMalley, Bryan Lee. Scott Pilgrims Precious Little Life. Toronto:
Oni Press, 2005.
. Scott Pilgrim Versus the World. Toronto: Oni Press, 2006.
. Sccii Pi|grim c inc |nniic Sc!ncss. Toronto: Oni Press, 2007.
. Scott Pilgrim Gets it Together. Toronto: Oni Press, 2008.
. Scott Pilgrim Versus the Universe. Toronto: Oni Press, 2009.
. Scott Pilgrims Finest Hour. Toronto: Oni Press, 2010.
Scolari, Carlos Alberto. Transmedia Storytelling: Implicit
Consumers, Narrative Worlds, and Branding in Contemporary
Media Production. |nicrnciicnc| jcurnc| cj Ccmmunicciicn 3
(2009): 586-606. Print.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game. Ubisoft, 2010. PlayStation
Network.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Dir. Edgar Wright. Universal Pictures,
2010. Film.
Steve Jackson Games. Rules Manual. Munchkin. 2010.
Ubisoft to Develop Scott Pilgrim Videogame. IGN 28 July 2009.
Web. 24 Sept. 2012.
Winning, Josh. Q&A: Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee OMalley.
Total Film. 2 June 2010. Web. 24 Sept. 2012.
14
15
Slgnlcant |ntervals 8etween Prlnt ano
vloeo Poetry
Rachael Sullivan
In a recent work, American poet Kate Greenstreets combination of
printed text and digital videos calls into question the identity of
poetry and, more broadly, the tradition of literature and memory-
making practices. The Last 4 Things (2009) reveals how technologies
of memory, from vriling lo holograhy lo hIm, change lhe vay
we record, retrieve, and remediate memories. Greenstreet uses
print and video poems
1
lo reecl on dierenl lechnoIogies of
memory in order to elucidate a common element between literary
forms (such as oelry) and nonIilerary forms (such as hIm, ersonaI
diaries, letters, and miscellaneous authors notes): regardless of the
technology used to record events, the record will necessarily be
fragmenled and incomIele, and il is acluaIIy in lhese avs lhal ve
can derive meaning.
The Last 4 Things invites readers into the intervals, the in-between
limes |.j of undelermined duralion and unsecihed signihcance,
as literary critic and media theorist Katherine Hayles puts it in The
Time of DigilaI Ioelry (2O5). Yel, lhe signihcance of lhe inlervaIs
does nol exaclIy remain unsecihed in The Last 4 Things. It is at
the moment of the cut point (see Figure 7) between print and
video, video and print, that the real work of memory happens.
Between versions of Greenstreets text, reading becomes a process
of remembering, as we constantly must recall one version when
we are engaging in the other. Thus, readers are always between
versions even when immersed in a single version.
Just as the memory of the narrator cannot be recorded clearly, the
poetry cannot be located clearly in one medium or the other. Between
medialions is a signihcanl inlervaI or lransilion, and The mosl
vulnerable moment is the moment of the change (Greenstreet 55).
The interval is charged with tension, since it is part of a reading
process that is neither reading nor viewing. It marks the point at
which we begin to realize that both versions of the text constitute the
texts identity. Poetry, as The Last 4 Things helps us realize, is in the
interval of remediations oscillation between textual technologies
at the University of Wisconsin-
Milwaukee.
16
and in lhe vork ve do as individuaIs lo hnd meaning in lhe lexl
which is to say poetry is a conceptual framework. Greenstreet
takes a radical step in exposing a vulnerable ideological cut point
between what is and is not literature. Such exposure is all the
more critical as todays electronic literature strives for validation
as a literary genre while simultaneously disrupting and even
challenging the category of literature itself.
The Last 4 Things is an ambitious project in poetry and media
roduclion. As lhe hrsl book of oelry lo be soId vilh originaI hIms
on a DVD,
2
The Last 4 Things resists a singular medium, but it also
resists a clear understanding of what counts as a poem. Greenstreet
chaIIenges readers vilh unidenlihed and Iayered voices, uncIear
poem boundaries (where does a poem unit begin and end?), as
well as jarring and sometimes frustrating line breaks. However, the
biggest challenge for literary scholars, especially those coming out
of a rinl-based dehnilion of Iileralure, mighl be lhe hybrid form
ve hnd in The Last 4 Things, both a book and video series. Such
hybridity seems to be the necessary condition of a text that is in so
many ways caught between times, between genres, and between
forms. In her poetry, primarily through the motif of photography,
Greenstreet develops an account of the complex act or process
of remembering and remediating some past event. This thread
gradually emerges from careful reading/watching, though even
it falls apart as the text tempers representation with abstraction.
In the print version, the unsystematic placement of blank pages
and the long sequences of verse with no titles; in the video version,
the decoupling of written text and spoken words and the drastic
rearrangement of the printed order of poemsthese are among the
devices that challenge the traditional boundaries of the poem and
begin to represent the disconnects between reality, occurrence, and
memory. The print text at times resembles a list of miscellaneous
fragmenls or memories uIIed from a nolebook, lhe hIms
occasionally lapse into a painterly style (Figure 1) or intentional
distortion (Figure 2). The impossibility of representing memory
without distortion, in fact, is one retrospective impression the text
leaves on the reader.
The Last 4 Things can be read as a record of fragments from the
past. These fragments refuse a stable narrative or determinate
meaning, and thus the text self-consciously questions the nature
of human memory as it becomes increasingly mediated by the
layering of old and new recording technologies, an increasingly
common phenomenon in our culture.
3
While Greenstreets print
poetry explores the process of recording memory in writing and
photography, the videos
4
introduce a third technology of memory
the moving imagewhich perhaps responds to (without answering)
17
a queslion ve hnd in lhe book: Whal vouId iIIuslralions of lhe
inner life tell? (29).
Both the DVD and the print book contain two long poems or
sections entitled The Last 4 Things and 56 Days.
5
The Last 4
Things hIm is acluaIIy an ecIeclic series of 18 shorl (one lo lhree
minute) video experiments, as Greenstreet calls them, each
created after the written poem was completed. For 56 Days,
hovever, lhe oel crealed a 1O-minule hIm, shooling video and sliII
shots while writing the poem.
6
56 Days is in a diary format, with
one poem for almost all 56 days between December 3 and January
27. Greenstreet writes that 56 Days is what a diary might be
like if one werent attempting to explain a days meaning or
describe events. Just notingsomething seen, heard, remembered
(Authors Statement). In this same statement, Greenstreet goes
on to say, That led to the kind of familiar idea of shooting one
view every day, imagining she [the central speaker in the poem] did
that. I thought Id do it for 56 days. It almost worked (Authors
Statement).
Figure 1: The Last 4 Things (2009).
Screenshot of video for page 33.
Figure 2: The Last 4 Things (2009).
Screenshot of video for page 39.
18
In the 56 Days video, shots of the same rooftop through the same
window repeat with insistent loneliness as the weather changes
and wild birdsnever peoplecome and go (Figure 3). Sometimes
the camera ventures outside, but the repetition of the neighboring
rooftop weaves a sense of time through the poems words, which
are Iikevise voven lhroughoul lhe hIm. In lhe video version of
56 Days, the viewer seems to stand in the room represented in
lhe hIm, sharing lhe sace of lhe seaker as aulhor, hImmaker,
observer. As Greenstreet puts it in an interview, In 56 Days, you
see a consciousness looking out. Its looking out and youre looking
out too, seeing what it sees. Readers see the recording process in
the making, and likewise the written poems unfold as part of that
experience.
7
The 56 Days video, then, cannot be described as
a mere supplement to the printed text; the video is a part of the
composing process and permeates both versions.
Figure 3: 56 Days (2009). Screenshot of video from 25 January,
looking out the window.
Even though the composition of The Last 4 Things is not as
inlimaleIy lied lo lhe hImmaking rocess as 56 Days is, lhis oem
is acutely aware of lens technology (photography) and also self-
reecliveIy lreals vriling as a lechnoIogy. Whal graduaIIy emerges
in The Last 4 Things printed text is an interrogation of, resistance
to, or anxiety about the process of making written and visual
records, a process that always seems to yield ambiguity more than
conclusive documentation. Similar to H.D.s Projector poems
and Marianne Moore's hImic mode of comosilion, Greenslreel
does not represent a completed record or crystallized recollection,
but rather it is the making of records and memories amidst so many
imperfections and distortions that builds the tension between time
19
as Iived exerience and lime as a medialion in dierenl lechnoIogies
of memoryvriling, holograhy, hIm. Memory is A condilion
formed/by countless mysterious malfunctions (Greenstreet 14).
The print poems together with the video poems vividly show the
reader that these malfunctions are not meaningless symptoms. In
fact, malfunction and indeterminacy, particularly in relation to
mnemonics, constitute the most fundamental unit of meaning in the
text. From within the gaps or intervals between remembering and
forgetting, presence and absence, clarity and obfuscation, seeing
and reading, rinl and video, ve acluaIIy hnd a vay lo read lhis
multi-version text without privileging one mediation over another.
Because the print and video versions of The Last 4 Things are
distributed as one work under the banner of poetry, each mediation
is given equal footing, subverting any reading that hopes to situate
print as a reference point while toggling between versions.
Mar|orie IerIo has used lhe lerm dierenliaI lexls lo reference
lexls lhal exisl in dierenl maleriaI forms, vilh no singIe version
being lhe dehnilive one (146). olh oems in The Last 4 Things are
dierenliaI lexls, since lhere is a rinl version and, for mosl of lhe
lexl, a video oem. IerIo heIs lo remind us lhal, aIlhough each
reader may well prefer one mode of production over the others
(146), each version has no inherent value over another. But what
is il Iike lo acluaIIy read a dierenliaI lexl as one lexl, hov do ve
alternate between versions of reading, and what happens between
each version? In a text that is neither here nor there, so to speak, the
intervals between the here and the there are laden with meaning and
seriously challenge traditional reading practices. These intervals,
particularly those between print and electronic versions of a text,
merit incisive analysis from Hayles.
In The Time of Digital Poetry (2006), Hayles analyzes the in-
belveen sace of dierenliaI lexls lhal have a rinl version and an
electronic version. One of her examples is Stephanie Stricklands V,
vhich has dierenl forms onIine and in a rinl book. HayIes cIaims
that when read alongside each other, the print and electronic texts
oer a remarkabIy rich malrix in vhich lo exIore lhe varying
dynamics of freedom and constraint produced/performed by
durabIe marks and ickering signihers (187).
8
Hayles then goes
on to analyze what it is like to be a reader of V, in the matrix or
lhe lerrilory signihed by lhe slash between seeing/reading,
presence/absence, stability/decay, image/word, part/whole,
time stopped/time passing [] the space between the print book
and digital Web site (204, original italics). This emphasis on
the in-between space, as well as the in-between time (205), of
dierenliaI lexls rovides an incredibIy usefuI lheorelicaI aroach
to Greenstreets The Last 4 Things. Like Stricklands V, The Last 4
20
Things has a distributed existence across materialities with key
variances surfacing in the midst. While Hayles concludes that the
suspended time/space in V [reminds] us that gaps, ruptures, and
hssures of undelermined duralion and unsecihed signihcance
puncture our reading experiences (205), such ambiguous intervals
bear even more weight in a text concerned with problematizing
memory as a sort of technology that, in the end, fails to deliver a
whole or coherent past.
If the tools we rely on to record history and memory have gaps,
rulures, and hssures, vhal sorl of record do ve have` WhiIe il
may seem problematic or restrictive to think of poetry in this way,
as a record aved by variances belveen medialions, The Last 4
Things seems to suggest a sense of contact with the past that cannot
be labeled as a conclusive testimony nor an artistic expression. As
Greenstreet writes in her authors statement, Photography can
be an art, also a form of record-keeping. By extension, The Last 4
Things dwells in a gray space between poetry and record-keeping. In
lhe hnaI anaIysis, ve confronl an aIvays arliaI and disconlinuous
archive disersed across dierenl lechnoIogies of memory.
In the following three sections, each predicated on a key passage/
screenshot from Greenstreets text, I want to explore more fully the
implications of memory as a multimodal record, and through this
exIoralion, oulIine more concreleIy lhe loII lhal dierenlialion
takes on the identity of poetry and literature as stable categories in
contemporary literature. From within the interval, that in-between
time/space that is neither print nor video, we may discover a
new awareness of the identity of the poem, and, as Hayles puts it,
extend the interrogations of the literary into the digital domain
(Electronic Literature 5).
1. Stand there. / Ill take your photograph (56).
Both sections in The Last 4 Things end with someone taking a
iclure. This hnaI deferraI lo holograhy, hovever, does nol
mean that visual records are any less ambiguous or open-ended
than writing. Photography has the last word, but ultimately the
event of the photograph (at least in the print version) is literally
and only recorded in the words of Greenstreets poems. The photo is
not an object or an image but an ongoing process of remembering.
The video version varies from the print version in this way, since
one of the videos shows old photographs, pinned like biological
secimens on a board (Iigure 4). In a signihcanl conlrasl lo lhis
shot, the print version of The Last 4 Things trades the poem-as-object
for the poem-as-process, and likewise represents photography not
21
in lhe form of reihed arlifacls bul ralher as a rocess of memory-
making.
Nev lechnoIogies have a Iong hislory of inuencing vrilers and
artists who become captivated by the functions and operations
of machines. In Cinematic Modernism (2005), Susan McCabe deals
direclIy vilh hov lhe rise of hIm as lhe dominanl melahor and
medium for cuIluraI exerience aecled oelic raclice in lhe
early twentieth century. In her analysis, which illuminates the
crosshalching (7) belveen avanl-garde hIm and modernisl
poetry, McCabe focuses primarily on how poets experienced early
cinema and then absorbed that experience, transforming it into
oelic lechniques. The medium of hIm, she vriles, oened u
a new vocabulary for modernist poets (34). Film as a machine
for representing time and movement crystallized the modernist
fascination with the past and with mechanical reproduction.
In one dimension of her study, McCabe explores how the materiality
of hIm and lhe rocess of hImmaking acluaIIy Iayed a key roIe
in the emergence of innovative poetic practice. In other words, it
was not only the completed movie that engaged poets, but also to
some exlenl lhe ammabIe maleriaIily (IileraIIy ceIIuIose nilrale)
(9) of hIm and lhe process of creating and projecting moving image
sequences that paralleled the composing processes of poets. In her
Projector poems, for instance, H.D. adopts the cinematic medium
as a material metaphor (to use a term popularized by Hayles) for
Figure 4: 56 Days (2009). Screenshot of video for page 23.
22
oelry, idenlifying herseIf as a hIm ro|eclor and imagining herseIf
behind the streaming light (50). William Carlos Williams links
Moores composing strategy to photographic development and
ro|eclion of hIm as acls of disIocalion and embodimenl (McCabe
197). McCabe cites Williams here to show how Moore foregrounds
lhe maleriaIily of vords on lhe age Iike hIm slris vashed,
dried and placed right side up on a clean surface (Williams qtd.
in McCabe 197).
In some sense, then, the physical properties of media reveal a
new aesthetic and, in turn, shed light on the printed page as a
material artifact or technology with its own conventions and
semiolic eIemenls. This media-secihc anaIysis highIighls lhe rich
inlerIay belveen age-based oelics and hIm as modernisl oels
adaled nol |usl lhe cinemalic eecls of comIeled hIms, bul more
radically the very inscription processes that record and perform
cinematic representations for viewers. As Michael OPray observes,
Modernism was not simply the organisation of certain images,
but a laying bare of the image-making process itself, incorporating
il or Ieaving ils lrace in lhe resuIlanl hIm (97). Likevise, oels
inuenced by hIm shared lhis rocess-orienled aeslhelic, a key
cultural undercurrent.
}usl as lhe emergenl raclice of hImmaking and lhe generaI cinemalic
experience gave some modernist poets a rich understanding of how
dierenl media make lransaclions in meaning, conlemorary oels
like Kate Greenstreet continue to make readers aware of literary
texts as material artifacts invested with meaning in language as
much as the inscription technology used to present the language.
Critic and new media poet Loss Pequeo Glazier argues that This
concern with the material has been a constant element in modern
and contemporary innovative literature and is highly relevant
to e-poetry (23). In Digital Poetics: The Making of ePoetries (2002),
Glazier maintains that digital poetry (or e-poetry) asks readers
to see through a new lens, one with expanded focal points (5).
His work explores the idea of the digital poem as the process
of thinking through [the electronic medium], thinking through
making (6, authors italics). Glaziers comment, including his
lens analogy, underscores the power of material metaphors for
both readers and poets. The Last 4 Things provides an opportunity
to engage the set of concerns I have articulated under the rubric
of modernist experimentsthe same set of concerns which Glazier
and other critics have aligned with todays new media poetries.
In The Last 4 Things, a material metaphor is most explicit in the 23
December entry from 56 Days. In this entry, the speaker recalls
a memory of developing photos in the tiny bathroom-turned-
darkroom of her arenls' house. My falher gave me my hrsl
23
camera. Thats how I started taking pictures (71). In the speakers
memory, what appears to stand out is not the images themselves but
the process by which the images become married to their material:
I was enthralled with my black room, and the equipment and the
chemicals. [] Shaking the tray in the safe red dark, I was happy
watching the image come upgray shapes collecting into streets
or faces (71). This narrativeatypically complete compared to the
other poems in the collectionis not a type of writing interested
in visually arresting images or presenting memories that are like
photographs. On the whole, the mode of writing is not intended
to foreground visually arresting images, but instead the process of
arresting the visual image comes to center stage. The speakers vivid
memory of the tentative, developing image in the 23 December
entry is akin to the experience we have of reading the print version
of The Last 4 Things. The process of taking pictures is a material
metaphor representing, among other things, the way that memories,
observations, and scenes actually get recorded in the mind.
Though it would not be accurate to say that we can make sense of
the poetry with this metaphor of taking and developing pictures,
we can use it to learn something about the speakers consciousness,
which is not unlike the gray image that comes up in the dark room
chemicals of her past. It is a tentative knowing; there are shadows
of narrative, but never any explanation. Narrative, writes visual
culture theorist W.J.T. Mitchell, is a mode of knowing and showing
which constructs a region of the unknown, a shadow text or image
that accompanies our reading, moves in time with it [] both prior
to and adjacent to memory (190). Throughout The Last 4 Things,
narrative moves like a shadow text or image, as Mitchell puts it,
in and out of the memories that appear, developing in the poems
dark room. Anyone who has spent any length of time in a dark room
knovs lhis haIf-Iil, quiel, cIosed-o sace lhal Greenslreel vriles
about and writes within. In this region of the unknown (Mitchell
190), the image is never completely developed, but it is necessarily
arrested in the words on the page. Like the photographic image
over time, like the distorted or shaky images in the video poems,
memory is vulnerable and ephemeral, but its ghost-narrative carries
us, And it seemed that we were held somehow, Greenstreet writes
(7). The Last 4 Things bears out the theories of OPray, Glazier, and
Hayles in exploiting its mediated condition to imbricate meaning
over and under lhe aIready rich oelichImic Ianguage and imagery
of the text.
The 23 December entry, from which I have drawn the photographic
metaphor, ends unexpectedly: Im not sure I can give you these
sentences (71). In this closing gesture, we are shaken out of the
immersive memory of the speakers past and reminded bluntly
24
that this memory is only a material inscriptionwords on a page.
The speakers hesitance to give the words to their reader shows
an ambivalence about the recording process and an awareness of
a potential future reader, someone who is another, who will come
and inherit the speakers memory through the very act of reading.
But whose memory are we really talking about? Greenstreets
narrator? A plurality of narrators? Greenstreet herself? When
someone in a poem asks, What would illustrations of the inner life
tell? (29), who or what is doing the telling? In one sense, there is
a concern with representing a human inner life (consciousness?)
or impossibly, a seen thought or a telling illustration of the self.
However, in another sense, there is a concern with the human
seIf as il is inhIlraled by lechnoIogies, in vhich lhe inner Iife of a
remembered past is more posthuman than human.
One striking instance of techno/human confusion (one of many)
comes al lhe beginning of The Lasl 4 Things. The hrsl age of
the poem, which is page 3 of the book, is almost blank save for two
Iines: The hrsl Ieaves feII lhis morning ; (my ovn eyes) (3). We
might ask, whose eyes? In the next segment of the poem, which
begins on page 5, we have some clues that this is not a world of any
known reality, and it is not a world in which sight is wholly human.
Integrating a passage from Emily Dickinson, I have had a letter from
another World... (5, authors italics), the poem signals a reality we
may not recognize, and this is a clue about how to read. The next
lines are typical of the rest of the book, and they frustrate any linear
meaning-making process:
To speak of method. Empathy. Our times, time.
Disappears with me. Sleep a minute.
Empathy is marked with
incomprehensible corrections. The camera must be open.
I know what I tell myself. Sometimes he seems to be the
camera. (lines 6 10)
In this passage, he seems to be the camera, but a few lines later,
the camera turns the corner. Were never any closer. / Sometimes
he is the camera (lines 17 18). These lines suggest a thoroughly
technologized subjectivity in the he who seems to be and then
is the camera. This is strangely reminiscent of Dziga Vertovs
exerimenlaI hIm The Man with the Movie Camera (1929), in which
Vertov enacts his Kino-Eye (camera-eye) theory of the movie
camera as the ultimate tool for vision, invested with agency as a
recording device in the city and far exceeding the human eyes
ability. Once we realize, as Hayles asserts in Writing Machines, that
consciousness alone is no longer the relevant frame but rather
consciousness fused with technologies of inscription (117),
9
the
25
heterogeneity of the speaking voice and the reality represented as
half human/half technology must be a consideration for the rest of
the book.
Stand there. / Ill take your photograph (56), writes Greenstreet
but stand where? The search for a viable subject position, a place to
stand and read the poems so that they make sense, is an ongoing
struggle in The Last 4 Things. It appears that we have no place to
sland and no cerlain meanings lo hnd. Hovever, il is reciseIy
within this uncertain intervalan echo between points in time or
Iimils in sacelhal ve have lo sland vhen ve are al a conuence
of analog and digital technologies. The condition of reading The
Last 4 Things is much like our condition of being in the world. We
are no longer in the past, not yet in the future, but never really in
lhe resenl Iong enough lo reaIize il. The signihcanl inlervaIs in lhe
text are the in-between times of turning pages, the negative space
between lines, and the suspense of the moment the camera turns
the corner (5).
2. "Yhe Bashbacks will remind us" {26}.
Figure 5: 56 Days (2009). Screenshot from the introductory sequence.
While photography is a key material metaphor in the print version
of The Last 4 Things, the presence of the moving image is always
there, in the material form of a DVD and through occasional
allusion to video in the poetry. One key allusion to video is in the
4 January entry in 56 Days: I had a few things from our life. I
had the old reel-to-reel and I thought possibly, just with things I
had, I could make a tape (78).
10
Here the representational object
26
gives way to an exposure of the backstage moments prior to the
representation. The speaker wants to preserve recollections from
lhe asl Iife vilh lhis visuaI medium of video. Like lhe hIm slris
laid out in the introduction to the 56 Days video, the speakers
process of recording memories is laid out on the page (Figure 5).
The video version of The Last 4 Things is heavily remediated, much
more so than the print version. Not only are other media (such
as books, holograhs, and hIm slris) frequenlIy shovn in lhe
videos, bul as readers, ve hnd our memory of rinl oelry (vhelher
it is of Greenstreets printed text or any other page-bound book of
poems) remediated as well. Remediation, as Jay David Bolter and
Richard Grusin formulate one dimension of this concept, is the
process by which media evolve and refashion each other. Old media
try to represent the values of new media and vice versa, so that
remediation entails a recursive cycle of improvement and change.
Remediation works through a dual logic that simultaneously wants
to make the medium transparent and also bring it to the surface to
make viewers or readers aware of the new medium as medium
(19). The oscillation between these logics of immediacy and
hypermediacy, Bolter and Grusin write, is the key to understanding
how a medium refashions its predecessors and other contemporary
media (19). Remediation, when it becomes part of the process of
recording memories, gives nev meaning lo lhe lerm ashback. In
remediated memory, the past has been inscribed on a technological
roslhesis, and vhal ve ash back lo is no Ionger our ovn memory,
but the memory as it is distributed across and at least partially
authored by a network of media. Cultural and even personal
memory necessitates preservation, but the means of preservation
becomes a way of knowing and of constantly constructing and
reconstructing memory. Remediation as record-keeping is no
passive process.
In complex and not totally explicable ways, The Last 4 Things explores
what is gained and what is lost when memory is remediated in
dierenl and changing lechnoIogies. Ior inslance, lhe 56 Days
video includes spoken and written text. The spoken words of the
poem, however, do not match the lines that appear at the bottom of
the screen. For example, in the entry for 23 January, the line Ive
seen all a heart could desire is spoken while the line You cant
ask this of me is subtitled. In another interesting pairing for 23
December (discussed previously in this essay), the line Im not
sure I can give you these sentences is spoken and subtitled with
a line that lists the names of liquid chemicals used to develop
photographs (Figure 6). One intent of this juxtaposition could be, as
I suggesled earIier, lo underscore lhe rocess of hxing memory onlo
materialspages or photograph paper. The video adds another
27
Iayer of signihcance, lhough. Il acluaIIy unhxes lhe oem's vords
from their placement on the page. We still have the diary entries
that we had in the print version, but when the poetry is remediated
in the video, questions surface about the capacity of the written
entries to remain attached to their authors original voice and what
the author (in the traditional, literary sense of author as authority)
originally intended the words to say.
The meaning found in the interval is a mixed message rather
lhan a unihed, conlinuous message. GeneraIIy seaking, lhe rinl
and video poetry, though joined under the same title of The Last
4 Things, oerale on dierenl vaveIenglhs. As in 56 Days, lhe
versions clash, derailing consistent readings. In 56 Days, the way
we read the print text silently to ourselves is disrupted by the poets
own voice in the video. What makes sense in one version does not
persist into the other. The Last 4 Things calls for a complex poetic
literacy as the reading self is remediated from print to video and
vice versa.
Figure 6: 56 Days (2009). Screenshot of the video from
23 December, page 71.
Greenstreet has commented that she had the idea for the mismatched
sublilIes afler vieving a hIm vilh lhis uninlenlionaI defecl:
The spark came from a pirated DVD one of my brothers picked
up on the streets of Beijing, a movie starring Julia Roberts,
featuring English dialogue accompanied by subtitles also in
English that had no obvious relationship to what was being
said. I Ioved lhe eecl. (Aulhor's Slalemenl)
An ambient soundtrack of lazy guitar strings and piano keys is
woven throughout the 56 Days video. As an additional layer of
comIexily, Greenslreel added audio eecls of radio luner slalic and
distorted clips from foreign language tutorial tapes. The example
of the 56 Days video, in which the poems words, movie-like
28
subtitles, and audio clips are incorporated into the video poem,
illustrates remediation. 56 Days repurposes a few media so that
lhe viever is conslanlIy reminded of lhe hIlering rocess lhrough
which video combines with audio, text, and still shots. The video
feels heavily mediated, yet as the viewer becomes immersed in
the lapse of time and changing weather or lighting, the experience
begins to feel less mediated and more immediate and realistic.
From a wider angle, this technique of remediating print poetry in
and through video loosens assumptions about poetry as an object
for analysis, since in the video, poetry is an event with duration,
unstable and changing over timelike memory:
Incident, occurrence, happening, chance: the medium of our
rogress. I see a heId and il's fuII of grain. I Iook across il,
beyond lhe reach of roads. I can see because il's al. Trees`
No, theres no edge. Yellow. Its a drawing. My sister kept it
for me. No, I drew it from memory. I meanwhen I drew it,
I had never seen a heId. (69)
What would it mean to draw something from memory without ever
having seen the thing? If we have not realized it yet by page 69,
memory is not a stable record of what really happened or what was
really there. Memory is generative, hewn out of the incidents that
constitute our lives, or formed from other representationsimages
and storiesthat we gather second-hand. In the previous passage,
lhe seaker can see because il's al, vhich aears lo reference
lhe heId unliI lhe heId becomes, imossibIy, a draving vilh no
edges. Everything is in the distance according to the entry for
16 December. There are moments when it seems we are so close
to the speakers inner life, when perhaps we can meet the request
from The Lasl 4 Things: Come lhis far. Look briey ; inlo lhe
asl (24), bul our delh ercelion is aved. The olher behind
the words, behind the camera, is still too far away. Living in a
house inside a house, // you receive a transmission of meaning
energy / you cannot decipher (24). On the inside of the inside,
vhere ve shouId be cIosesl lo hnding meaning in our brief Iook
into the past, there is only a scrambled message. We can never cross
lhe heId lo reaIIy remember what happened because mediation
sense perception, lies, material recordswill always interfere. If we
accel an eislemoIogy of sighl (The eye hIIs in vhal il knovs
[67]), The Last 4 Things in both versions will only be drawn from our
memory, aIlhough ve have never seen a heId.

29
3. "Yhe most vulnerable moment is the moment
of the change" {55}.
Figure 7: 56 Days (2009). Screenshot from 15 January,
page 83.
A new media object, Lev Manovich writes, is not something
hxed once and for aII, bul somelhing lhal can exisl in dierenl,
olenliaIIy inhnile versions (36). In lhis sense, lhen, The Last 4
Things is a new media object without a singular material identity.
More radically, the text engages in a suturing of analog and digital
to create a hybrid form that contaminates the print version with the
digital and likewise the digital with the print. The processes that
conslilule oelic reresenlalion can lhus be Iinguislic or hImic, or
even a blending of the two, as is the case with Greenstreets work
and many other forms of contemporary new media poetry. While the
print version of The Last 4 Things is not new media, it does acquire a
new media aesthetic when paired with a digital video version. Just
as the print version of the poetry is an ineradicable mark on the
videos, the videos haunt the print. It is a work that cannot be fully
experienced or consumed in one medium; the reading process is
nol hxed in a singIe mode. The Last 4 Things, taken as a new media
object, makes us into new media readers.
The lexl's dierenliaI condilion is nol simIy a maller of reference
of giving readers more options or more ways to encounter a poetic
work. Rather, as a material metaphor for the status of memory
stored and retrieved in various media, The Last 4 Things warrants
its dual identity and constitutes itself as a distributed poetic text.
Each version is traversed and informed by the other, and, as a
consequence, the reader must account for both even as practiced
methods of close reading and literary analysis begin to fail. The
moment of the change (55)that moment when we are between
media and begin to realize that the text asks us to remain thereis
indeed vulnerable. The majority of literary texts choose a primary
medium of representation, but Greenstreet does not. This fact is
30
signihcanl because il reveaIs hidden assumlions aboul lhe age.
Poetic analysis, with roots running deep in print culture, so often
bears a bias toward a texts visual identity on the page. The book
form is not simply a vehicle for poetry, but it actively helps us
delermine and read oelic unils. DierenliaI lexls Iike The Last 4
Things dehnileIy dislurb a age-bound idenlily and bIur lhe cIean-
cul codex, and lhis dislurbance haens mosl signihcanlIy in lhe
intervals between media.
A new media object, Lev Manovich writes, is not something
hxed once and for aII, bul somelhing lhal can exisl in dierenl,
olenliaIIy inhnile versions (36). In lhis sense, lhen, The Last 4
Things is a new media object without a singular material identity.
More radically, the text engages in a suturing of analog and digital
to create a hybrid form that contaminates the print version with the
digital and likewise the digital with the print. The processes that
conslilule oelic reresenlalion can lhus be Iinguislic or hImic, or
even a blending of the two, as is the case with Greenstreets work
and many other forms of contemporary new media poetry. While
the print version of The Last 4 Things is not new media, it does acquire
a new media aesthetic when paired with a digital video version.
Just as the print version of the poetry is an ineradicable mark on
the videos, the videos haunt the print. It is a work that cannot be
fully experienced or consumed in one medium; the reading process
is nol hxed in a singIe mode. The Lasl 4 Things, laken as a nev
media object, makes us into new media readers.
The lexl's dierenliaI condilion is nol simIy a maller of reference
of giving readers more options or more ways to encounter a poetic
work. Rather, as a material metaphor for the status of memory
stored and retrieved in various media, The Last 4 Things warrants
its dual identity and constitutes itself as a distributed poetic text.
Each version is traversed and informed by the other, and, as a
consequence, the reader must account for both even as practiced
methods of close reading and literary analysis begin to fail. The
moment of the change (55)that moment when we are between
media and begin to realize that the text asks us to remain thereis
indeed vulnerable. The majority of literary texts choose a primary
medium of representation, but Greenstreet does not. This fact is
signihcanl because il reveaIs hidden assumlions aboul lhe age.
Poetic analysis, with roots running deep in print culture, so often
bears a bias toward a texts visual identity on the page. The book
form is not simply a vehicle for poetry, but it actively helps us
delermine and read oelic unils. DierenliaI lexls Iike The Last 4
Things dehnileIy dislurb a age-bound idenlily and bIur lhe cIean-
cul codex, and lhis dislurbance haens mosl signihcanlIy in lhe
intervals between media.
31
In addition, this blending, hybridizing process is important because
it complicates a literary tradition that has excluded visual media,
aIigning grahic arl and hIm vilh lheir reseclive lradilions and
hislories. y resenling ilseIf, nol |usl as a dierenliaI lexl in vhich
a user can choose between versions, but more radically a distributed
text (neither here nor there), we are compelled to recognize that
the poetry is as much the visual medium as the print medium. The
Last 4 Things embodies lhe dehnilion from lhe LIeclronic Lileralure
Organization, in which Hayles proposes that literature should come
to include works that are not primarily textual. This is not a move
to increase interdisciplinarity between literature and visual arts,
drawing from each but keeping each compartmentalized. Rather,
what is implied in Hayless proposition is a move to incorporate
works that do not privilege human language. The Last 4 Things, in
oering a comosile of lvo media and exlending lhis comosile
under the rubric of poetrya traditional literary formbegins to
realize Hayless conception. As Manovich suggests in The Language
of New Media (2001), this realization is in line with a larger cultural
shift:
The printed word tradition [...] is becoming less important,
while the part played by cinematic elements is becoming
progressively stronger. This is consistent with a general
trend in modern society toward presenting more and more
information in the form of time-based audiovisual moving
image sequences, rather than as text. (78)
The word information, which Manovich uses in the previous
assage, mighl seem iII-hlling for a discussion of oelics. Ioelry
does not necessarily aim to communicate information, but rather to
represent oftentimes abstract ideas and expressions. However, The
Last 4 Things asks us to consider poetry as a record of miscellaneous
notes and bits of informationdataand in this way it allows us
to talk about how the print and video versions each convey the
same informalion in very dierenl vays. Manovich vouId argue
that our culture requires people to develop new information
behaviors; these behaviors then become part of our identity and
we use them for accessing websites the same as we would when
reading oelry or vieving hIms. In lhis sense, video oelry (as arl
of the category of new media poetry) is not just a minor, avantgarde
genre operating on the periphery of the institution of literature.
Rather, it is a response to and outcome of a larger societal shift,
one that incorporates digital technologies into the fabric of daily
life. New technologies necessitate new information behaviors;
technologies of memory and the practices of literary consumption
are no exception.
Yet, is video poetry in the current moment really something new?
32
In one sense, Iilerary and hImic reresenlalion have shared an
anily since lhe hrsl momenls of exerimenlaI cinema in Luroe
and the United States. Video poetry is not an entirely new form
the modernist avant-garde as it developed between the 1920s and
lhe 197Os oers many nolabIe exerimenls vilh moving images
and language. McCabe, for instance, provides many examples
of oel-hImmaker coIIaboralions, incIuding lhe oel IhiIie
SouauIl's cinemalograhic oems hImed by WaIler Rullmann
(1922) and the well-known Fernand Lger/Ezra Pound collaboration
on Ballet Mcanique (1924). Contemporary video poetry clearly
dravs from bolh lhe lradilion of exerimenlaI hIm and emerging
forms of digital poetry. However, in the pre-digital era, poets
rarelyif everacquired movie-making equipment and learned
lhe rocess lo creale lheir ovn hIms. Given lhe dynamic inlerIay
belveen oelry and hIm, vhy vere lhere nol more avanl-garde
oels crealing hIm versions of lheir ovn vriling al lhe beginning
of lhe lvenlielh cenlury` Comacl and aordabIe cameras, such as
lhe Kinamo movie camera for 16mm hIm, inlroduced around 1925,
made handheId hIming a ossibiIily for hobbyisls and amaleur
hImmakers (uckIand 51). Ldiling hIm in lhe re-digilaI era vas
cerlainIy dicuIl and Iabor-inlensive, bul lhere vere even sleeer
barriers facing novice hImmakers. As Ialricia Zimmerman noles
in Reel Possibilities: A Social History of Amateur Film, distribution
of indeendenl hIms vas exlremeIy Iimiled in lhe 192Os and 3Os
desile lhe deveIomenl of amaleur hIm lechnoIogy in lhe Iniled
Slales (71). This obslacIe curlaiIed hIm exerimenls, even if one
couId aord lo urchase a camera. Zimmerman aIso describes an
American lradilionaIisl ideoIogy lhal framed amaleur hImmaking
as a leisure activity and limited forays with hand-held cameras
to home movies (113). It is likely that only established or daring
avanl-garde oels vilh conneclions lo lhe hIm induslry vouId
have lried hIm exerimenls.
Today, lhe rich inlerIay belveen oelry and hIm has been revived
thanks to the widespread availability of inexpensive camcorders
and video editing software, but most importantly an array of online
distribution venues and a greater cultural acceptance of the amateur
media producer. The ideological and technological wall between
professional and amateur is crumbling. As Wired magazine editor
Kevin Kelly notes:
The new cameras/apps are steadily becoming like a word
processorboth pros and amateurs use the same one. [...]
Filmmaking gear is approaching a convergence between
professional and amateur, so that what counts is artistry and
inventiveness. (Extra-Less Films)
The proliferation of new media technologies and an aesthetic that
33
embraces these technologies has set the scene for poetry and visual
media to collide in ways no one imagined possible during the time
of modernist experimentation. During the 1920s and 30s (even
15 years ago), il vouId have been dicuIl for an individuaI oel
lo creale oelry in rinl and hIm, while also making both media
versions widely available and of equal quality. Today, however,
poets are beyond overcoming such limits and have started to create
meaningful poetry that takes advantage of digital video capabilities.
These poets use video sharing websites to give their otherwise
inaccessibIe vork a ubIic audience as lhey redehne vhal il means
to compose poetry in print. It is not just the advances in digital
technology that separate poetic innovation from that of the 1920s
and 30s. The more important change is the way that poets who are
nol serious hImmakers ul lhe lechnoIogy lo use and Ieveraged
online networks to distribute and market their work.
Greenstreet, as well as other forward-thinking video poets like
Zachary Schomburg and Joshua Marie Wilkinson, all have an
active online presence that helps build their readership. While
Schomburg and WiIkinson have formaI lraining in hIm, lhey do
nol use a hIm crev or lo-of-lhe-Iine equimenl lo creale lheir
videos.
11
Greenslreel has no formaI lraining in hIm, aIlhough she
was a visual artist before becoming interested in poetry. She learns
video and audio editing programs through experimentation and
online video tutorials.
12
What is new about the project of todays
video poetry is represented by a shift not only in the types of media
that poets use, but in the variety of media available for poets who
see value in creating multi-version work. Unlike poets who work
only in new media, Greenstreet, Schomburg, and Wilkinson work
al lhe conux of nev media and lradilionaI rinl forms. In lhis
sense, they cannot be described as adding in video, as though the
video were an extra feature or supplement. Electronic writer and
digilaI arlisl TaIan Memmoll asks, Hov is meaning made, dehed,
resisted, and sustained in the digital age, in a culture where media
technology for the production of work is easily accessible? (qtd. in
Jaszi). Memmotts question is timely, and I see The Last 4 Things as
one possible response.
Notes
1. I consider video poetry a sub-category of digital poetry.
AIlernale lerms for video oelry are hIm-oem, oem movie,
and cinpoem. Works of video poetry all use video footage as
the dominant visual element, and they all combine this footage
in some way with words. The linguistic element of video poetry
can be vrillen lexl, soken vords, or bolh. This dehnilion
34
excludes kinetic typography, graphic or Flash animation, and
photographic montage works that use still images as their primary
visuaI eIemenl. Many nev media oels use hIm eIemenls in lheir
ieces, bul video oels emhasize lhe hImic and ils inlerIay
with the words of the poem.
2. Other poetry books have included CDs or web versions as
digital variations of all or some poems. For example, Stephanie
Stricklands book of poems Zone : Zero (2008) includes a CD
with two digital poems correlating to two poems in the book.
Stricklands earlier work, V (2003), which has a print and web
version, is lhe hrsl coIIeclion of oems lo exisl as an inlegraled
work in both media (Hayles, The Time of Digital Poetry 182),
although its nonprint version is an interactive web text and not a
video poetry DVD like The Last 4 Things.
3. Consider the University of Virginias, The Valley of the Shadow, a
digital archive of records from the American Civil War, including
diaries, letters, photographs, newspapers, maps, church records
all mediated by the interface of The Valley of the Shadows website,
<http://valley.lib.virginia.edu/>.
4. There is a dislincl dierence belveen hIm and video as arl
forms. In crilicaI discourse aboul hIm and video, lhe dislinclions
incIude maleriaIily (hIm vs. lae) and dierenl cuIluraI readings.
In Paradox in the Evolution of an Art Form, Marita Sturken
noles lhal hIm evokes hislory vhereas video's conneclion vilh
television codes it as a live transmissionas continuous and
immediate (120). Greenstreet does not seem to highlight these
distinctions in her work; she calls them videos in her authors
slalemenl, bul on lhe DVD she caIIs lhem hIms. I use lhe lerms
video and hIm inlerchangeabIy.
5. Note the possible confusion between the title of the entire work
The Last 4 Things and lhe oem+hIm aIso lilIed The Lasl 4
Things. In following convention, I use quotes for poems and
ilaIics for lilIes of vhoIe vorks, so lhis formalling dierence viII
indicate when I am talking about the poem or the entire work.
6. See the authors statement, available on the website of Ahsahta
Press. I also discussed details of the dual composing process in a
conversation with Greenstreet on November 11, 2009.
7. There is a long tradition of photographers taking pictures of the
view out their windows. In fact, Nicphore Nipces view of
his French town through his window, captured with a camera
obscura in 1826, is hisloricaIIy recognized as lhe hrsl holograh
ever taken.
35
8. The hrase durabIe marks and ickering signihers indicales
lhe dierenl maleriaI embodimenls of rinl and digilaI formals,
resecliveIy. IIickering signiher is a lerm of some imorlance in
Hayless work. The phrase denotes the unstable system of signs
and referents sponsored by digital texts.
9. In one respect, this condition of fusion is applicable to any
inscription. However, in the context of a highly mediated reading
environmenl Iike lhal of a dierenliaI lexl, one is chaIIenged
to overlook the technology used to record and represent the
linguistic content.
10. While it is possible that the reel-to-reel Greenstreet mentions
is an audio recorder, it is more likely that it is a video recorder,
since the text expresses obvious attachment to the medium of
video. Reel-to-reel video recorders were widely available at the
same time that audio recorders were becoming popular. The
Sony CV-2000 reel-to-reel home video tape recorder, for instance,
was launched in August 1965. Reel-to-reel was also the standard
for artists editing video in the 1980s.
11. About his video poem 1977-2050, Schomburg has commented
lhal AII holograhy and hIm foolage vas calured on a chea
Olympus snapshot camera and edited with an outdated version
of iMovie.
12. In a poetry reading on November 11, 2009, Greenstreet spoke
about her self-education in technology.
36
Works Cited
Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. Remediation. Cambridge:
MIT Press, 2000. Print.
Buckland, Michael K. The Kinamo Movie Camera, Emanuel
Goldberg and Joris Ivens. |i|m Hisicrq. An |nicrnciicnc| jcurnc|
20.1 (2008): 49-58. Print.
Glazier, Loss Pequeo. Digital Poetics: The Making of e-Poetries.
Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama Press, 2002. Print.
Greenstreet, Kate. The Last 4 Things. Boise: Ahsahta Press, 2009.
Print.
. Authors Statement. Ahsahta Press, n.d. 13 Dec. 2009.
. Interview by Jean Valentine. Bookslut. Features, Sep. 2009.
Web. 23 Apr. 2010.
Hayles, N. Katherine. The Time of Digital Poetry: From Object
to Event. New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, Theories. Ed.
Adalaide Morris and Thomas Swiss. Cambridge: MIT Press,
2006. 181-209. Print.
. Intermediation: The Pursuit of a Vision. New Literary History
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. Electronic Literature. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame Press, 2008.
Print.
. Writing Machines. Designed by Anne Burdick. Cambridge: MIT
Press, 2002. Print.
Horak, Jan-Christopher. Lovers of Cinema: the First American Film
Avant-Garde, 1919-1945. Madison: Wisconsin UP, 1998. Print.
Jaszi, Sabrina. The Buzz on Electronic Writing: Fiction Goes
Digital. FlavorPill.com. Flavor Wire, 16 Dec. 2009. Web. 3 Apr.
2010.
Kelly, Kevin. Extra-Less Films. Kevin Kellys Lifestream.
Conceptual Trends - Current Topics, 13 Jan. 2008. Web. 23 Apr.
2010.
MacDonald, Scott. Cinema 16: Documents toward a History of the
Film Society. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2002. Print.
Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press,
37
2001. Print.
. Post-Media Aesthetics. Manovich.net. 2001. Web. 23 Apr.
2010.
McCabe, Susan. Cinematic Modernism. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
2005. Print.
Mitchell, W.J.T. Narrative, Memory, Slavery. Picture Theory.
Chicago: Chicago UP, 1994. 184-207. Print.
OPray, Michael. Avant-Garde Film: Forms, Themes and Passions.
London: WaIIover Iress, 2OO3. Irinl.
IerIo, Mar|orie. Screening lhe Iage;Iaging lhe Screen. New
Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, Theories. Ed. Adalaide Morris
and Thomas Swiss. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006. 143-162. Print.
Sturken, Marita. Paradox in the Evolution of an Art Form: Great
Expectations and the Making of a History. Illuminating Video:
An Essential Guide to Video Art. Ed. Doug Hall and Sally Jo
Fisher. New York: Aperture, 2005. 101-121. Print.
38
Using Facebook Within a Composition
Course to Promote
|ra Sbor's Llberatory Learnlng
Gina Marie Giardina
The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor
and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom.
Paulo Freire
Beneath the hesitancy, the doubt, and the rigidity of my students,
there remain stores of intellect, emotion, comedy, and Utopian
needs, waiting to happen.
Ira Shor
In his book Critical Teaching and Everyday Life, Ira Shors ideas for
critical thinking are largely based on what Shor and his mentor
and colleague Paulo Freire term as liberatory learning. Shor
states that students need to participate in not only their own self-
avareness and inlroseclion, bul in sociaI reeclion as veII. What
is gcing cn in scciciq? Ccn | jinc siu!cni} c[cci cncngc in crccs inci | cm
passionate about? But where is this knowledge coming from? Shor
and Ireire hrsl address lhe idea of Iiberalory Iearning back in lhe
late 1970s when the largest exchange of informationother than
word of mouthcame from newspapers and television. But today,
people are not limited to morning newspapers or the rush home to
catch the evening news. The image of the neighborhood newspaper
delivery boy has been replaced with the image of a businessperson
vilh a lo-go cu of coee, checking currenl evenls on a mobiIe
device. Even around Wright State Universitys campus, at least
half of the students are buried in their mobile devices. While some
are reading eooks and olhers are surhng lhe veb, il is safe lo say
that the majority are either texting friends or participating in social
networkingnamely Facebook.
According to Nielsens 2012 social media report, the use of social
networks continues to grow with advancements in mobile devices
particularly appsand Facebook remains the most popular social
in English with an emphasis in
Rhetoric and Composition at
Wright State University.
39
networking site (5). Figure 1 deomstrates how people connected
to social media from 2011 to 2012. With the plethora of devices
available and the automatic status updates and news feeds, it is
nearly impossible to be completely out-of-touch with friends and
family as well as local, national, and global news. Because of this,
media literacy is more important now than ever and this importance
will continue to grow with more and more digital communication
advancements. Shor discusses the disconnect between students and
their critical thinking skills, attributing it largely to the increasing
speed of life. He argues that critical thinking skills equip the students
with a protective lining from social and political manipulation
and lhal lhe ush lovards machnihcalion is IargeIy lo bIame for
the disjunction (48). But the speed Shor speaks of belongs to the late
1970s when this book was writtena speed that when juxtaposed
vilh lhe seed of lvenly-hrsl cenlury lechnoIogicaI deveIomenls,
makes Shors speed seem more like a relaxing Sunday drive.
Wilh lhe lvenly-hrsl cenlury vraed in keeing u vilh lhe Ialesl
technology, there is no denying the degree to which technology
becomes overwhelming. These constantly changing technological
advancemenls (machnihcalions) are cenlered on gelling lhings
completed faster and with less necessary resourceslike grocery
store self-check-outs, fast-food restaurants, eBooks, etc.and in
the modern world, faster often equates to easier. Because of this
even more increased acceleration, one might conclude that the
possibilities for critical thinking are even more dismal. I have to
admit that after my initial read-through of chapter two in Shors
bookInterferences to Critical Thought: Consciousness in School
and Daily Life it was easy to blame technological advancement
for the rushed world. Being from the working class, juggling work,
family, and the demands of my graduate coursework along with
trying to keep up with current events using the latest technology
is overwhelming. But with the increasing demand for mobile
Fig. 1 2012 Nielson Social Media Report
40
devices that can access more and more information at faster and
faster speeds, the problem lies not with the accessibility to all the
information, but in how we manipulate it. Facebook, for example,
is one of the modern day accelerations, but the problem is not
the abundance of information constantly accessible via Facebook;
The problem lies in the new variation of literacy skills necessary to
analyze and sort through information. The possibilities to extend
Shors late 1970s advocacy for student-empowered liberatory
Iearning are camouaged by lhe lvenly-hrsl cenlury's raid-hre
accessibility to Facebook status updates and news feeds. Thus,
vhal rofessors of hrsl-year comosilion courses need lo leach
their students is not how to further divide these social media from
their academic lives; students will not be receptive to separation
of university and society. Instead, professors need to empower
students by showing them how they are already building advanced
critical thinking skills by using Facebook, and teach them other
ways media could enhance their experiences with writing by
shoving lhem olher uses for nev media lhal can benehl bolh lheir
academic careers as well as their everyday lives.

Fast-Forwarding from 1978 to 2012
Along with the technologically-driven acceleration of society over
the past thirty years comes a change to the college classroom as well.
When Shor began talking about liberatory learning, the change of
the university was the expansion of the [public] community college
that largely came as a result of the implementation of the GI Bill
after WWII. What he considers the [negative] accelerations of life
were the technological advancements of elevators . . . electronic
cash registers . . ., motorized toothbrushes, food processors, [and]
electric razors (65). These made daily functions faster, and to Shor,
that speed created too much of a rush, which he concluded would
Iimil lhe lime needed for reeclion and crilicaI lhinking. ver lime,
Shor felt this would enable mental apathy.
Accelerated consciousness cannot perform rational inquiry
of reality, but it is ideal for absorbing political and commercial
slogans, for enjoying rock music, for processing headline
nevs ashes and zinging burger adverlisemenls (Shor 64).
In this passage, Shor divides the university from society, and in
the late 1970s, this divide was much wider than it is today. Part of
the ideology behind the public community college was that higher
learning did not have to be limited to just the elite; the working class
couId hl inlo and Iearn from lhe universily as veII. ul lhe daiIy
Iives of lhe vorking cIass are much dierenl from lhose of lhe eIile.
41
While students who come from more privileged backgrounds may
be free from lhe hnanciaI resonsibiIily of luilion and housing, and
only have to concentrate on their classes, working class students
not only have to acclimate to an unfamiliar environmentbeing
mosl IikeIy lhe hrsl in lheir famiIies lo sle fool on a universily
campusthey also have to juggle their college coursework with a
full-time job that is required to support both themselves and their
families.
The lvenly-hrsl cenlury academic environmenl conlinues lo morh
as society embraces even more technological advancements. Similar
to the changes surrounding accessibility to higher learning that
lhe Iale 197Os aorded, lhe lvenlielh cenlury has ils ovn breed of
changes that attempt to allow for more accessibility. The expanding
availability of hybrid and online courses, as well as entirely-online
degree programs, are now among the options for higher learning
and those online options are being used inside and outside of
academia. As an employee of Wright Patterson Air Force Base,
over 90% of my annual training is completed online. The ability
to navigate multiple online environments is now an expectation
rather than a heavily-sought-after skilllike it was back in the
mid-199Os vhen I hrsl enlered lhe vorkforce. In 2OO9, lo lhe shock
of many baby boomers that did not grow up with computers let
alone social networks, the Secretary of the Air Force decided to
allow the use of social networking in the workplace, recognizing
its improvements to community and morale (AFI 33-129). Yet in
the academic environment, many professors that I have spoken
with over the past few years continue to believe that using social
networking in the classroom could weaken students, inundating
them with countless amounts of needless information. Just last
year, I spoke to a professor about the overwhelming amount of
political information on Facebook as well as on other media. She
agreed with a sigh and quoted poet William WordsworthThe
world is too much with us.
Her and the other professors thoughts parallel Shors late 1970s
viewpointblaming technological advancement for students
inabilities to silence innovation in order to develop critical thinking
skills. But change does not come easily. Are these scholars merely
projecting their own unwillingness to plug-in to the changes of
the universityas if the university they experienced as students
just might reappear? And if that is so, would these professors not
be the oppressorstheir students, the oppressedwhen Paulo
Freire states, The oppressed, having internalized the image of
the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom
(47)? The academic environment many professors experienced
as students had less technologically-driven interruptionsboth
42
inside and outside of the university walls. Should students learn in
an environment unlike the world outside the academy? Isnt it best
that students learn how to manipulate the available communication
looIs of lhe lvenly-hrsl cenlury`
Wright State University English professor Robert Rubin supports
using Iacebook in his hrsl-year Comosilion cIassrooms. In a recenl
conversation, he explained that a few years ago, he found himself
conslanlIy chasing sludenls o sociaI nelvorking siles during
class. But while many professors complained about this disruption,
Rubin said, I decided to just use it in classya knowto kind
of beat [the students] at their own game. Rubins decision aligns
with Shors liberatory learning because it allows the students
to have more control by using a medium they are most familiar
with. In her 2010 article, Meeting Student Writers Where They
Are: Using Wikipedia to Teach Responsible Scholarship, Professor
Paula Patch (Elon University) would agree with Rubins ideology
as wellusing a medium with which the students are more
famiIiar: Wriling facuIly need lo hnd vays lo comeI sludenls lo
slow down and think critically about texts that they tend typically
to view through a decidedly noncritical lens (278). While Patch is
talking about Wikipedia, this also would apply to Facebook and any
other heavily student-traveled medium developed in the future.
Rubin also stated that his hybrid classes allow for more students
to participate in discussions. The students that are usually quiet
or more reserved in the traditional class, due to the pressure
associated with speaking in public, are usually much more active in
the Facebook discussions. He went on to say that this did not take
away from the traditional classroom discussions because those that
are more outgoing still have the opportunity to be vocal when the
class meets on campus. Rubin invited me to one of his past Facebook
classrooms and I was pleasantly surprised to see both the quantity
and quality of the comments (used for peer review in Rubins class).
He usually teaches two sections of Composition and he combines
them for his Facebook classroom in order to elicit more feedback
for the students. Aside from occasional current event postings,
Rubin participated very little in the peer review comments. This
would align with Shors liberatory learning because not only is
the professor largely removed (although the students are aware
that the professor sees their posts and comments), but this creates
a more student-empowered community. The students are free to
comment and post articles on current issues that interest them.

43
Everyday Critical Yhinking on Facebook
Critical thinking is already happeningstrengtheningglobally.
Tweets, Facebook posts, and Pinterest pins allow people to
communicate with one another regardless of time zones, and
mobile devices allow for this regardless of location. An audience
is available twenty-four hours per day and often that audience will
have diering oinions and exeriences. My hrsl drav lo Iacebook
back in 2008 was simply to keep in touch and share photos with
family and friends. I had used MySpace for this, but everyone was
switching over to Facebook so I followed the crowd. This draw,
however, changed and I attribute that mostly to the presidential
race and politics of 2008. As my liked pages expanded from
mainly hobby-related sites (i.e. writing, photography, sports) to
more politically-driven news sites, current events of the world were
suddenIy al my hngerlisIileraIIyevery lime I Iogged on lo my
Facebook account. My family, all very conservative due largely
lo lheir reIigious aIialions, conslanlIy osled vhal I considered
rather ignorant posts about homosexuality, welfare, immigrants,
etc, that my leftist sway paired with my sometimes annoying
desire to be in a constant state of teaching would not allow me
to ignore. I quickly discovered that certain levels of ignorance were
everywhere, including in my own thoughts.
In a conversation I had with a man on an August 23rd (2012)
Dayton Daily News Facebook post about ex-senator Todd Akins
ranl regarding Iegilimale rae of vomen, lhe man ied lhe
conversation and began discussing the rape of men by men in
prisons and how there is no protection for them so why should there
be so much emphasis placed on protection for women. Right away,
I vas oended and imuIsiveIy, I lried lo bring lhe conversalion
back to the topic. How dare this man change the subject from innocent
women to men in prison! ul as I sal vilh my Ialo and coee al
The Emporium in Yellow Springs, trying to decide what my next
comment should be, I began thinking more about this mans
comments. They seemed so desperate for an audience and for a
man to be discussing man-on-man rape, my immediate assumption
was that this man was speaking from personal experience. From
there, I was immediately concerned for the safety of both this man
and any olhers (i.e. oIice ocers, securily guards, elc) lhal mighl
cross his path. After all, he could be anyoneanywhere. I decided
to send him a personal message, a more private conversation to let
him know that I was paying attention; I was listening to him. As we
communicated privately, I watched the DDN Facebook page to see
if he was still having angry conversations with other commenters,
but his posts had stopped. I exchanged a few brief emails with the
44
private message option and he shared his experiences as well as
links to pages about this injustice that he was so passionate about. I
have a fev friends vho are IocaI oIice ocers, and I lhoughl lhal
one of lhem mighl be abIe lo oer some resources lhal I couId give
to this gentleman. I passed along some information for him as well
as a support group and he thanked me. That was it. Looking at my
social actions, Facebook allowed me to console the manto show
him lhal someone vas Iislening. ul Iooking al lhe dierenl slages
of my commenls as veII as my abiIilies lo hIler olher commenls, I
was using critical thinking skills to discern what my own reaction
should be to the heated conversation.
As stated earlier in this paper, Shor focuses on the need for
students to participate in not only their own self-awareness and
inlroseclion, bul in sociaI reeclion as veII. Through Iacebook,
I am abIe lo communicale vilh eoIe of dierenl genders,
cultures, races, etc.; I can recognize my own biases (i.e. a gender
bias seen above) because Facebook allows for a disconnect between
written and oral communication. In an article by Bill Anderson
entitled Writing power into online discussion, he states that
just because the student in an online environment is physically
invisible, identities (i.e. race, gender, culture, etc) can still be visible
in discussions:
You may be able to go online and not have anyone know
your [identities]you may even be able to take cyberspaces
potential for anonymity a step further and masquerade as
an |idenlilyj lhal doesn'l reecl lhe reaI, ohine youbul
neither the invisibility nor the mutability of online identity
make is possible for you to escape you real world identity
completely (my emphasis, 111).
While escaping reality is not conducive to promoting awareness,
sometimes it can get in the way. The man I spoke with on Facebook
was a loyal conservative and I was able to deduce that through his
other comments. While I am sure he assumed that I was more liberal,
he still wasnt aware of all my identities. The reality of my sexual
orientation or age might have gotten in the way of his willingness
to chat with me. And quite frankly, physical attributes also can have
an impact on willingness to communicate. My responses took all of
lhis inlo consideralioninlroseclion as veII as sociaI reeclion.
Had this conversation happened F2F, assumptions might have been
made and lhe conversalion mighl have gone a dierenl vayor
not happened at all. Knowing myself, I probably would have just
avoided the confrontation after I deduced his identities (angry male
conservative ex-con). For me, F2F conversations about controversial
topics feel more like confrontations while online conversations
about them seem to have more opportunity to just be conversations
45
vilh diering erseclivesa ossibiIily for broadening.
Basically.It's just Eposure
I have always been envious of people who travel all over the
vorId, because I lhink exosure lo dierenl cuIlures broadens
erseclives. The broadening of erseclives, in a Iarge scaIe eorl,
makes for a more informed, more peaceful society. My personal
exeriences lhrough Iacebook conversalions oer an aIlernalive lo
lhal exosure granled lhrough lraveI. Lven if I did have lhe hnanciaI
means to travel more, my shyness and introversion would most
likely silence me in unfamiliar places. Shor says that beneath the
hesitancy, the doubt, and the rigidity of [his] students, there remain
stores of intellect, emotion, comedy, and Utopian needs, waiting
lo haen, (53). To a hrsl-year coIIege sludenl, lhe universily is
an unfamiliar place and that fact alone creates such hesitancy and
doubt. Professors shouldnt strip these students of their identities by
making their writing conform only to the standards of university-
IeveI vrilingor al Ieasl, nol righl avay. AIong vilh lhal, hrsl-
year Composition professors need to be open to communication
occurring everyvhere as veII as in aII lhe dierenl forms. I lend
to be a bit of an optimist, but it is our jobs as educators and future
educators to help students build their own academic identitiesto
make lhem feeI Iike lhey |usl mighl be abIe lo hnd lheir Iace inside
the universityand I believe that begins with mutual respect and
empathy. Of course Im not nave to the reality that not all professors
truly want to help students, but my pedagogical optimism leads
me to believe that the ratio leans more towards those who do.

46
Works Cited
Anderson, Bill. Writing power into online discussion. Computers
and Composition 23.1 (2006): 108-24. Web.
Patch, Paula. Meeting Students Where They Are: Using
Wikipedia to Teach Responsible Scholarship. Teaching English
in the Two-Year College 37.3 (March 2010): 278-85. Web.
Rubin, Robert. Personal interview. 6 December 2012.
Shor, Ira. Interferences to Critical Thought: Consciousness
in School and Daily Life. Critical Teaching & Everyday Life.
Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980. 46-91. Print.
State of the Media: The Social Media Report 2012. Nielsenwire.
The Nielsen Company. Web.
47
Negotlatlng wltb an |maglnary Auolence:
Llmltatlons ot Soclal Constructlvlst
Notlons ot Ltbos tor Flrst-Year
Composition
Katrina L. Miller
Given the shared history of rhetoric and composition, the modern
tendency of mining rhetorics rich Greco-Roman traditions for
contemporary pedagogical strategies is understandable. The dual
nalure of lhe heId of rheloric and comosilion inviles such crossing
over and reaching back. However, scholars have dutifully noted
how such modern appropriations run the risk of being reductive.
For example, 21st Century composition textbooks often include
reference to Aristotles three rhetorical appealsethos, pathos, and
logos. Of the three, the concept of ethos is perhaps the most slippery.
The dicuIly surrounding elhos is crealed, in arl, by reduclive
appropriations which stem from the fact that many contemporary
rhetoric handbooks and composition textbooks reduce ethos into
lidy one-vord dehnilions Iike credibiIily. Ior examIe, a reviev of
two popular rhetoric handbooks edited or coauthored by seminal
scholars in rhetoric and composition reveals relatively one-
dimensional conceptions of ethos. The Brief McGraw-Hill Handbook,
co-aulhored by KalhIeen Yancey, arenlhelicaIIy dehnes elhos as
character, and further explains: ethical appeals present authors
as fair, reasonable, and trustworthy, backed with the testimony of
experts (Maimon, Peritz, and Yancey 122). The handbook later
inslrucls sludenls lo buiId your elhos by inuencing readers
to trust your character (128). Andrea Lunsfords Everyday Writer
handbook simiIarIy dehnes elhicaI aeaIs as lhose lhal suorl
credibility, moral character, and goodwill of the writer (72).
AIlhough lhis lhree-arl dehnilion cerlainIy hls vilh lrends in
conceluaIizing elhos, il is imorlanl lo nole lhal Lunsford hrsl
discusses ethical appeals in the fallacy section, which positions
ethos as a something students must be aware of as a rhetorical
strategy that might be used against them, or that they as a critical
reading audience must be vigilant against fallacious ethical
at the University of Nevada,
Reno.
48
appeals. In this way, ethos is something audience members must
be involved in rather than a rhetorical tool available to student
writers. When Lunsford turns to discuss a student writers own
elhos, she focuses on lhe audience's roIe in reecling an aulhor's
elhos: To make your argumenl convincing, you musl hrsl gain
the respect and trust of your readers, or establish your credibility
with them (82). Lunsford lists four ways students can establish
ethos: demonstrating knowledge, establishing common ground,
demonstrating fairness, and using visuals (82). Again, Lunsford
does an impressive job of giving a quick overview of ethos, but both
her handbook and Yanceys seem to simplify ethos into a static and
individualized concept; ethos becomes something a writer either
has or does not have, and writers construct ethos independent of
audience and prior to the actual speech event. Audiences, then,
mereIy reecl lhal inlernaI elhos.
WhiIe lexlbooks have favored such an oversimIihcalion,
rhetoricians (classical and contemporary) have honored ethoss
conceptual depth. For example, re-reading major milestones in the
rhetorical conception of ethos illuminates how ethos is a complex
social exchange between humans. Some contemporary scholars,
such as Nedra Reynolds, use the less common translation of ethos
as dwelling place to unite conceptions of ethos as something
rooted in the individual and ethos as a social action.
This article aims to continue the recent practice of recuperating
ancient rhetorical concepts for modern composition classrooms
by invesligaling hov ancienl concelions of elhosdehned as
dveIIing Iacemay be more heIfuI for lhe secihc edagogicaI
slruggIes surrounding leaching researched argumenls vilh hrsl-
year writing students. I that posit some of the common challenges of
teaching argumentation and academic research might be assuaged
with a classical orientation to ethos in addition to more modern
social-constructivist notions of ethos that rely most exclusively on
audience response to a speaker/text as the gauge which measures
a rhetors ethos. For example, although several seminal studies
have reframed ethos as a social process of negotiation between
seaker and audience (e.g. Cherry), such a oslmodern dehnilion
of elhos as uid and negolialed seems iII-hlling in lhe conlexl of lhe
composition classroom where students are often asked to write to
imaginary professional or public audiences with whom they never
actually interact. Popular conceptions of ethos as a social process
of negotiation fall short in the actual writing situations of most
hrsl-year comosilion sludenls. Relurning lo a dehnilion of elhos
as dwelling place, however, might be more suitable for teaching
hrsl-year argumenlalive research vriling, for hov can elhos
be negotiated with an imaginary audience? I propose that such
49
negotiations are realistically done between students and their peers
and instructor as members of an academic discourse community.
Furthermore, understanding ethos as a habit of mind would bolster
more common understandings of ethos as a negotiated social
quality of character.
To be clear, the approach I am recommending acknowledges that
certain social elements of writing are elided if ethos is entirely
reframed as an element quarantined internally within the writer.
Social negotiation is an important component of writing instruction
(e.g. writers must be aware of the needs of their audience, writers
can learn a tremendous amount from peer response). I am not
advocating a composition classroom that becomes entirely text-
centered rather than student-centered; I am arguing for strategic
use of one ancienl dehnilion of elhos as dveIIing Iace lo boIsler
some of postmodern social constructive trends within composition
pedagogy. Recuperating this particular ancient notion of ethos
as not solely tied to the social relationship between rhetor and
audience, is a pedagogical strategy both available to composition
inslruclors and erhas more suilabIe and eeclive in lhe conlexl
of hrsl-year vriling.
Aristotelian Ethos
Ethos as a negotiated construct of a speakers outward expression of
credibiIily is lied lo very ancienl dehnilions of rheloric. According
to Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg, Aristotle claims that ethos
depends on the personal character of the speaker (181). Looking
back from a contemporary perspective, it is natural to think of ethos
signifying the arguably stable mental, spiritual, and moral qualities
that make an individual unique. However, ethos is simultaneously
a social act because, according to Aristotle, it is constructed through
the audiences reception of the speakers words. Aristotle explains
There are three things we trust other than logical demonstration:
These are practical wisdom [phronesis] and virtue [arte] and good
will [eunoia] (112). In order to be successful, speakers must exhibit
at least one and preferably all three of these things (Aristotle 112).
ArislolIe rearms lhal a erson seeming lo have aII lhese quaIilies
is necessarily persuasive to the hearers (113). Aristotelian ethos,
then, can be understood as an embodied performance.
The audiences interpretation of the intentions of the speaker also
weighs heavily here. In chapters 12-17 of Book 2, Aristotle discusses
lhe characler of many dierenl kinds of eoIe (oId, middIe aged,
young, rich, powerful, those coming from good birth). What is
important to note about this discussion of character is that Aristotle
50
frames it as a discussion of potential types of audiences. In this way,
he is speaking to rhetors about how to tailor a speech act to meet
the expectations of certain audiences based on stereotypes related
lo demograhics. ArislolIe imIies lhal an audience's aeclive
sense of an orator (how they feel about the character and intentions
of lhe oralor) slrongIy inuences lhe rocess negolialion because
il incIudes ercelion of lhe seaker's characler (dehned as lhe
persons credibility, the ethics of the actual argument, and the
speakers intentions behind the speech act). In this way, the actual
speech plays a role in the performance of ethos. Kennedy argues
the predominant meaning of ethos in Aristotle is moral character
as reecled in deIiberale choice of aclions and as deveIoed inlo
a habit of mind (148). In Book 1, while discussing the ends of
rheloric, ArislolIe exIains rheloricaI ersuasion is eecled nol
only by demonstrative but by ethical argument; it helps a speaker
to convince us, if we believe that he has certain qualities himself,
namely goodness, or goodwill towards us, or both together (197).
As a result, in addition to ethos being related to innate qualities
comprising the character of a person or internal trustworthiness of
a speech, ethos as goodwill adds another dimension, which more
social in nature. Ethos as an embodied performance is more closely
linked to postmodern conceptions of ethos than one might expect.
Ethos in the Aristotelian sense can just as likely refer to the
trustworthiness of the speech, but for Aristotle ethos should be
achieved by what the speaker says, not by what people think of
this character before he begins to speak (Bizzell and Herzberg
182). Shifting focus to what the speaker says as opposed to
the character of the speaker marks ethos as something which
emerges from the embodied performance of the orator (i.e. level
of conhdence in seaker), yel ArislolIe seems lo hrmIy rool elhos
into the actual words and rhetoric the orators employs (i.e. the
logical argument), which signals an imbrication of ethos and logos
(Bizzell and Herzberger 182). As such, perception of the speaker
cannot be totally separated from reception of the speech; the two
are intertwined, providing at least two distinct dimensions through
which ethos can be sensed and analyzed: internal and external.
Ethos, as Aristotle explains it, is about the audiences reception of
the speakers words and embodied performance.
Such inclusion of character analysis falls beyond the scope of
Aristotles discussion of ethos as one part of the tripartite artistic
pisteis. However, there is an easily understandable relationship
between artistic and inartistic means of persuasion, and rhetoricians
should not attempt to pigeonhole ethos into one category of pistei;
ethos can easily occupy a position in each category. Aristotle
certainly does not strictly categorize it as an exclusively artistic
51
proof. In fact, he demonstrates how ethos is so multifaceted it can
easily morph from an artistic pistis to an inartistic pistis. In this
way, a positive ethos can function as both an artistic and inartistic
pistis.
Contemporary Understandings of Ethos
Despite his enormous contributions to the study of rhetoric, Aristotle
only touches on some of the complexities that are embedded within
ethos; contemporary rhetoricians have been much more explicit
about the element of social construction within ethos and the
process of negotiation between orator and agentive auditors. As
such, audience members become agentive stakeholders in rhetorical
exchanges. In his landmark essay on ethos and persona, Roger
Cherry discusses self-representation as a crucial element of a text.
AIlhough elhos and ersona are oflen conaled, Cherry arses oul
key dierences beginning vilh hisloricaI dehnilions of each lerm.
He argues lhal ArislolIe's dehnilion of elhos osilioned il as one of
the three pisteisthe methods of persuasion. In this context, ethos
communicates the rhetors moral character, knowledge, and stance
toward the audience. According to Cherry, these three elements
synthesize to construct a sense of credibility of the speaker and the
speech. Cherrys characterization of Aristotetlian ethos corresponds
with my explanation in the previous section.
However, whereas rhetorical notions of ethos originate with
ArislolIe, ersona emerges from enlireIy dierenl disciIines:
literary studies and theater. Cherry describes persona through
metaphors such as masks that authors don or roles authors create
for themselves. In this way, persona is akin to ethos since both are
conscious manipulations of self-representation on the part of the
writer or speaker. Cherry contends that the writer does not hold
aII lhe over: audiences Iay a signihcanl roIe in lhe shaing of
rhetorical situations. To help clarify this relationship between
audience and speaker/writer, Cherry proposes an ethos-persona
continuum. At one end, Cherry positions ethos as a strategy for
presenting the speaker as credible and trustworthy. Persona occupies
the other end of the continuum as the creation of a particular role in
a discourse community. By placing the two terms on a continuum
rather than in binary opposition to each other, Cherry acknowledges
the fact that there are important rhetorical distinctions between the
two concepts. These distinctions, however, are not so essential that
the two terms become mutually incompatible.
Cherrys adroit distinction between these two concepts has
52
grealIy aecled subsequenl vork by bolh Iilerary and rheloricaI
schoIars. His foundalionaI elhos-ersona conlinuum eecliveIy
brings issues of agency and power negotiation into discussions
of self-representation. However, his perspective omits some very
ancient notions of ethos; namely, ethos as dwelling place. Recent
vork recueraling lhis oIder dehnilion of elhos more adequaleIy
explains what I am characterizing as a writer-centric take on ethos.
5ocial and Individual: Ethos as "Dwelling Place"
In the introduction of his edited collection, The Ethos of Rhetoric,
Michael J. Hyde explains that the collections theme was
intended to inspire work that reached back to an older and more
rimordiaI meaning of elhos (xiii). SecihcaIIy, Hyde and lhe
other contributors work with the translation of ethos as dwelling
places where individuals come together to discuss and deliberate
particular matters. While other historians and scholars mention
lhis olher dehnilion of elhos (e.g. Kennedy in Classical Rhetoric and
Its Christian and Secular Traditions), most studies focus solely on the
more commonplace understanding of ethos. Hyde, on the other
hand, argues these places are intellectual habitats that shape an
individuals ethics and moral character. In this way, more common
dehnilions of elhos (credibiIily, moraI characler) are acluaIIy
derivative elements of the social and intellectual habits practiced
in secihc Iocalions. Relurning lo lhis foundalionaI dehnilion, as
Hyde suggests, provides a new interpretive lens for examining
ethos.
Similar to Hydes collection, Holiday uses the sense of ethos as a
gathering place (388). Relying heavily on Reynoldss work, she
cIaims lhis dehnilion aulhorizes anaIysis of elhos as a sociaI acl lhal
is simultaneously internal and external. To bolster her emphasis on
elhos as Iocalion, HoIiday dehnes elhos as a shifling sub|ecl reIalion
drawn between certain elements. Holiday extends this discussion
of ethos as dwelling places that appears in Hydes collection by
examining the linkage between the study of invention and ethos,
especially in regards to rhetorical teaching (389). Holiday includes
an in-depth discussion of ways to understand the ethical nature of
ethos. In short, she aims to examine the connection between ethics
and invenlion, vhich hIIs a gIaring ga among lhe revious research
on elhos. Ior lhis reason, HoIiday's argumenl is of signihcanl vaIue
to scholars interested in ethos because her take on ethos as a socially
conslrucled ercelion of reaIily hls vilhin common oslmodern
views. Her metaphor of ethos as a dwelling place also implies
social elements such as habititude and conversation.
53
Habititude and conversation also relate to Reynoldss contention
that speakers and writers name themselves. In her article, Ethos
as Location, Reynolds examines discursive authority through a
spatial metaphor of location. Her work on the role of location, place,
and positionality is seminal in composition. Ones ethos, she claims,
can be understood as ones place or perceived place in the world
(325). Once named, speakers and writers then position themselves
inlo Iocalions lhal aIign vilh secihc sociaI idenlihcalions. In
this way, her work seems very Burkean in nature. According to
Reynolds, ethos, like postmodern subjectivity, shifts and changes
over time, across texts, and around competing spaces (336). As
such, ethos becomes a reality that is negotiated between speaker/
vriler and audience. Her argumenl has signihcanl imIicalions
for any rhetorical study involving issues of community and
marginality. With this focus on marginality, Reynolds extends the
metaphor of location to include other metaphorical special locations
such as betweens, which is something previous conceptions of
ethos would have elided (333). Holidays piece focuses on how
contemporary rhetoricians have turned to ethos as a useful frame
for discussing elhics in silualions vhere cuIluraI slralihcalion
and inequity underwrite the majority of human interaction (389).
In addition, Holidays arguments can also be used to consider
marginality in terms of stance towards an issue or a group. For
examIe, assuming an oulsider or marginaI slance aIIovs a hrsl-
year student writer more leeway with skepticism than engaging
in an imagined stance as a full legitimate member of a disciplinary
discourse community.
Upshot for First-Year Composition
The upshot of examining the complexities of ethos is a more nuanced
understanding of how form and content, character and credibility,
as veII as inlegrily and honesly aecl hov audiences |udge vrilers.
For example, complicating ethos to include more than just credibility
could potentially aid in unraveling the paradox of expertise within
lhe conlexl of lhe hrsl-year vriling. Indergraduale sludenls are
often uncomfortable trying to demonstrate ethos through claims
of expertise. However, if instructors unwrap the neat packaging
surrounding Aristotelian ethos, new opportunities arise to
introduce students to ethos as the ethical and social creditability of
both speaker and speech.
Aristotle lays the foundation with his claims about ethos existing
both in the writer and writing, and contemporary scholars such as
Cherry, Hyde, Holiday, and Reynolds give an excellent description
of how auditors are assumed to have agencythey are not just
54
passive listeners but active participants in speech acts. Due to
elhos being dehned as a rocess vilh muIliIe arlicianls,
sociaI conslruclivisl oslmodern dehnilions of lhe concel are
often attuned to social situation of the speech act including the
process of invention and drafting prior to delivery. Melding these
two perspectives creates a layered understanding of ethos; ethos
is at once something internal (emerging from within the speaker
or speech) and external (constructed through a negotiated social
process).
Reihed concelions of elhos as a sociaI rocess of negolialion faiI lo
meel lhe needs of hrsl-year vriling sludenls because mosl rheloricaI
situations students face will include an imagined audience. As I
posited earlier, classical notions of ethos might be more suitable
for leaching hrsl-year argumenlalive research vriling. y cIassicaI
nolions I am referencing lhe oIdesl dehnilion of lhe elhos as
dwelling place explored by Reynolds and Hyde. The composition
classroom is in many ways such a dwelling place. To consider the
composition classroom a place where students not only do writing,
but also talk about writing and practice writerly identities is to
rearm comosilion's goaI of heIing sludenls eslabIish vrilerIy
habitudes.
While social elements of writing are elided if ethos is reframed as
an element quarantined within the writer, if it is seen as part of the
individual in that it is a social interaction with other rhetors, those
social elements are again highly prominent. Social negotiation is
an important component of writing instruction, including both
interaction between writer and audience as well as interaction
between writers. I am arguing for a strategic use of ethos as dwelling
place to help ethos remain relevant in contemporary rhetorical
situations.
In order lo exIore hov lhis cIassicaI dehnilion of elhos mighl soIve
some pedagogical issues, let us examine the rhetorical situation of
the academic research paper. In my English 102 course, students
are often reluctant to be assertive in their arguments because they
are not experts on their self-chosen research topics. Undergraduate
students are often uncomfortable with trying to demonstrate
ethos through claims of expertise when their actual experience
or knowledge is quite limited. However, if this more complex
conception of ethos is employed, new pedagogical opportunities to
introduce students to ethos as ethical and social creditability of both
speaker and speech arise. Perhaps this is one way to answer John
Trimbur's caII lo robIemalize exerlise, lo hnd vays lo rearlicuIale
it within the circulation of knowledge (215). Expertiseby which
I mean knowledge or practical skill originating inside the writer
as opposed to the textis as a source of ethos. The composition
55
classroom, then, can function as a rhetorical dwelling place where a
more muIlifaceled conhguralion of elhos is foslered.
Ethos is complex and as such is not easily quarantined into binaries
as something internal or external, individual or social. Recapturing
lhis ancienl, erhas anlecedenl, dehnilion of elhos as dveIIing
or gathering place valorizes the formative process of intellectual
social engagement with others, a prominent goal and modus
operandi for not only writing instruction, but also education in
general. Interaction is a formative force on the writer as well as the
writing that emerges from pre- and post-writing social contexts.
Audience agency is certainly still present, and an audiences
naluraI aeclive and evaIualive reaclions lo vrilers and lexls sliII
warrant the need for audience awareness; however, I maintain that
21st century composition pedagogy could learn valuable lessons by
re-examining ethos as dwelling place.
56
Works Cited
Aristotle. On Rhetoric. Trans. by George Kennedy. New York:
Oxford UP, 2007. Print
Bizzell, Patricia and Bruce Herzberg. The Rhetorical Tradition:
Readings From the Classical Times to the Present. Boston: Bedford/
St. Martins, 2001. Print.
Cherry, Roger. Ethos versus Persona. Written Communication 5
(1988): 251-76. Print.
Holiday, Judy. In[ter]vention: Locating Rhetorics Ethos. Rhetoric
Review. 28 (2009): 388-405. Print.
Hyde, Michael J. Introduction: Rhetorically, We Dwell. The Ethos
of Rhetoric. Ed. Michael J. Hyde. Columbia: U South Carolina P,
2004. Xiii-xxviii. Print.
Kennedy, George. Classical Rhetoric and its Christian and Secular
Traditions. Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1999. Print.
Lunsford, Andrea. The Everyday Writer. Boston: Bedford/St.
Martins, 2010. Print.
Maimon, Elaine, Janice Peritz, and Kathleen Yancey. The Brief
McGraw-Hill Handbook. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007. Print.
Reynolds, Nedra. Ethos as Location: New Sites for
Understanding Discursive Authority. Rhetoric Review 11.2
(1993): 325-38. Print.
Trimbur, John. Composition and the Circulation of Writing.
College Composition and Communication 52.2 (2000): 188-219.
Print.
57
Reading, Writing, and the Rhetorics of Whiteness is an investigation
into whiteness studies within rhetoric and composition. Written
as a diaIogue via aIlernaling chalers, Ryden and MarshaII oer
numerous critiques of whiteness and suggestions for redressing
its stronghold in our classrooms and institutions. The book begins
with a familiar trope of pointing out the inconsistency between de
facto segregation in U.S. society and colorblind ideology. Ryden
and Marshall connect colorblindness to student resistance and
antiracist discussions. Part of the introduction is a discussion
of whiteness studies, which highlight (i.e., make visible) the
normative center of racial oppression (3), and how it connects to
rhetoric and composition: [W]e seek not only to understand the
way discourses of whiteness shape our societies and permeate
our classrooms but also how to equip ourselves and our students
with the critical tools necessary to identify and confront these
interpellations (3-4). Ryden and Marshall quickly review some
of the criticisms of whiteness studies and refute that whiteness
studies still holds possibilities for social change. Overall, then, this
hrsl seclion rovides a usefuI inlroduclion lo vhileness sludies and
the way it has been taken up in rhetoric and composition.
The hrsl chaler invesligales researcher coming-oul narralives
that often begin whiteness studies scholarship. Ryden gives her
own narrative and critiques several others, putting them into
conversation with narrative and trauma theory. Ultimately, Ryden
problematizes these awareness narratives as being performances
that reify whiteness in their subject-centeredness rather than
challenge it; accordingly, Ryden and Marshall have written this
book as a dialogue in an attempt to make it more productive. The
anaIysis of lhe rheloricaI eecls of researcher narralives, arlicuIarIy
in the context of the increasing attention to researcher subjectivity,
Revlew ot Reading, Writing, and the
Rhetorics of Whiteness
||st| |c|oe
The author is a Ph.D. student at
Illinois State University.
Reading, Writing, and the Rhetorics of Whiteness by Wendy Ryden and
Ian Marshall. Routledge Studies in Rhetoric and Communication,
2011.
58
makes this one of the best chapters in the book.
The next chapter is written by Marshall and is part narrative, part
critique of his own experience not being racialized due to his not
speaking African American English. This leads him to a discussion
of African American students being placed into basic writing
because of diaIecl dierences lhal are erceived as dehciencies.
Marshalls argument about students right to their own language
is not really new, nor is the idea that basic writing is racialized,
but he does take a commendable stand in resisting the notion that
acquiring Standard English should be the goal for all students.
Marshall writes, Not only does it fail to address the economic and
social disparities (and realities) that AAL represents, but it also
refuses to address the intrinsic racism of a school system and social
order incapable of accounting for the language patterns of so many
in the U.S. today (47).
The third chapter is arguably the most compelling and holds the
most possibility (depending on ones research interests). Couched
in exploring student resistance to critical pedagogies, Ryden makes
the argument that whiteness is kitsch, or false discourse. Rydens
claim is that examining the medias liberal, multicultural rhetoric
on race and racism through the lens of kitsch reveals an alienating
and bankrupt discourse that refracts and prevents meaningful
discussions of racism in the public sphere and in our classrooms
and provides fodder for reactionary claims of postracism (73).
There is a methodological problem in this chapter, though, in the
way that Ryden is calling whiteness itself false discourse. In work
that aims to disrupt the supremacy and privilege of whiteness,
the term whiteness comes to be used metonymically for white
supremacy, white privilege, white normativity, white racism,
and eorls lo disrul aII of lhe above. Ryden's use of vhileness
conales aII of lhese lerms. And since Ryden is laIking aboul
public discourse with the aim of improving classroom discourse,
conaling vhileness ilseIf vilh faIse, racisl discourse viII robabIy
not be convincing to white students. She analyses the public reaction
to Don Imuss nappy headed hos comment to demonstrate that
condemnation of such comments does little to challenge systemic
racism that continues in more subtle ways. Ryden insightfully
shows unproductive racial rhetoric in public discourse and how
white liberal condemnation of individual racist acts does little to
challenge racism as an organizing hierarchical force in our society.
The next chapter is a list of ways that composition courses are
embedded with white normativity, including through New Critical
approaches to teaching texts, through the ideology of composition
as assimilation, and through the way that whiteness is perpetuated
59
enlhymemalicaIIy by inslilulions and facuIly in lhe heId. AIlhough
these points are valid and necessary for progressing antiracism in
lhe heId, lhere are so many oinls in such a shorl sace lhal lhey
are resenled vilhoul sucienl nuance and deveIomenl. The
claims here, too, seem uninformed by the work in composition
and rhetoric that has noted the colonizing, assimilationist teaching
and program practices. Since these practices persist, however,
Marshalls conclusion that the political and ideological context
that students are asked to produce this writing in is always already
interpellated as white since this context historically privileges white
cultural norms to the exclusion of, and in opposition to, the written
and linguistic norms of racialized others is worth repeating (103).
Chaler hve is a overfuI chaler in lhal il connecls vhileness
vilh currenl schoIarshi on lhe roIe of aecl in rheloric. Ryden
argues for the need to pay attention to emotion, to work through
emolion ralher lhan around il vhen lrying lo eecl sociaI change
by discussing whiteness. She writes that critical pedagogy fails
because it privileges logos over ethos with the assumption that if
presented with information, students will understand racism to
be illogical (120). However, scholars have found that whiteness
is ralionaIe for lhose vho benehl from il (121). To incororale lhe
roIe of emolion inlo an eeclive edagogy, Ryden recommends a
political conception of emotion that seeks to understand how
emotion shapes and is shaped through the public sphere and
hov, lhrough emolion, ve eecl sociaI arlicialion in 'common'
discourses (126).
These ideas are comeIIing and cerlainIy reecl currenl vork on lhe
role of emotion in rhetoric. Once again, though, I am left wanting
more details, such as what this pedagogy would actually look like
with students. Thus, this chapters follows a trend in the book where
Ryden and Marshall raise many questions, convincingly articulate
many arguments for particular methods and outcomes, but leave
me wanting to more fully understand how those methods work or
how those outcomes might be achieved. Ultimately, then, this text
functions as a call for more research into the important topics that
Ryden and Marshall raise.
In lhe hnaI chaler, MarshaII adds a lvisl lo lhe discussion on
whiteness narratives by discussing his experience teaching as a
black professor. Especially when compared to a white colleague
of his, he found that students expect him to talk about race while
simultaneously rejecting his views as being biased due to the way
he is visibly raced. Marshall writes that his white colleague has a
power unavailable to him: Because [my colleague] is white, he can
occupy neutral, invisible position with regard to race that I simply
cannot. When he talks about race, its not assumed that is from a
60
position of self-interest, but when I talk, subjectivity as black and
male makes me biased or so our student responses seem to suggest
(142). Marshall then talks about the strange relationship between
colorblindness and multiculturalism, and how they both provide
students with strategies for students to avoid full engagement.
He concludes the chapter by illustrating these tensions through a
student example.
Overall, this book will be most compelling for those interested in a
brief but thorough introduction to whiteness studies and the ways
that whiteness has been taken up in rhetoric and composition. This
book will also be useful for scholars looking for exciting ideas to
build upon. The largest drawback to the text is the amount covered
in such a short space; since there are so many arguments explored,
Ryden and Marshall use many sources and a handful of anecdotes
and mini-anaIyses lhal vouId benehl from more deveIomenl
and explanation. Nonetheless, these chapters initiate and continue
imorlanl diaIogues aboul secihc vays lhal vhileness has been or
should be deconstructed in rhetoric and composition in a way that
will be useful to both new and veteran scholars of whiteness and
composition.

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