All of my formatting went crazy when I tried to paste this into my blog, so I put it in Google Docs instead.
You can access my final project here.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Final Project Peer Review Link
Here's a link to my rough draft of the Final Project. It should be open to the public. If you prefer a printed copy, just let me know.
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0BxEVPrkjqDNWOGRlN2JlNDUtZTRkNS00MWEzLWI4N2EtYmI1YTcyMmNlZmQy&hl=en
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0BxEVPrkjqDNWOGRlN2JlNDUtZTRkNS00MWEzLWI4N2EtYmI1YTcyMmNlZmQy&hl=en
Monday, April 18, 2011
Keep Austin Weird: Edbauer and Affective Ecologies
In contrast to Bitzer’s rigid model of a rhetorical situation as a “conglomeration of discrete elements” (8), Edbauer quotes Smith/Lybarger’s notion of rhetoric as a dynamic process, one in which the listener “will have a perception of the rhetor and the message in addition to a perception of the issues.” (8). This means that the exigence, rather than having an independent real existence, is “more like a complex of various audience/speaker perceptions and institutional or material constraints”, which must involve “various mixes of felt interests.” (8). It does not exist “per se”, but rather as an “amalgamation of processes and encounters” (8). Thus, the rhetorical situation is “part of what we might call… an ongoing social flux.” (9). Rhetorical discourse is conceived as an ‘affective ecology’ where discrete places and individuals are subordinated to the interconnectedness and interactions which they produce. In her example, a bad part of town is not “bad” exactly because of its location, but because of “the affective and embodied experiences that circulate: feelings of fear…” (11).
I can agree with this conception. It seems like an application of Brennan’s idea of emotional permeability to a common conception of rhetorical situation. A city, like a rhetorical situation, does not exist in a vacuum. It is “an amalgam of processes… a circulation of encounters and actions” (12): an intra-dependent and interdependent ecology. She posits that “rather than imagining the rhetorical situation in a relatively closed system, this distributed or ecological focus might begin to imagine the situation within an open network” (13).
This model seems more applicable to real rhetorical discourses than does Bitzer’s. Take, for example, his notion of exigence as a real, non-fictitious problem that is independent of any observer. Now think of the recent budget debate. There were those who said we had a spending issue (one exigence), those who said we had a taxing issue (another exigence), and even those who said that a budget deficit was not inherently problematic (thus, there would be no exigence at all). Naturally, people couldn’t communally conceive of a particular problem. For some, it was the result of careless spending on defense. For others, it was careless spending on our “safety net” of welfare programs. Every conceivable issue became involved, even seemingly minute and unrelated issues such as federal funding for planned-parenthood programs. The exigence was far from an independent and discrete problem, it was framed almost exclusively by constituents’ personal perceptions. Did we have a spending crisis? A taxing deficiency? You decide.
This example might also be helpful in assessing whether Edbauer’s model of discourse as functioning in an ecology holds water. Edbauer would hold that the constituents—audience, speaker, exigence, constraints—are not fixed and discrete, but are continually evolving and changing. As the debate over the budget progressed, new audience members were brought into the fray. Eventually, virtually every American was cognizant of an “imminent shutdown,” and further, most of us had our own ideas for how to resolve this. Our president, for better or for worse, felt compelled to chime in, adding another speaker to the mix. People responded to various utterances by changing their positions, opinions and perceptions .And the final solution was a compromise between conservative and liberal elements, delivering only $38 Billion in spending cuts compared to the conservative demand for $60 Billion in spending cuts, which reflects differences in perceptions of audience members, speakers, and exigencies. Various “riders” got dropped from the bill, an indication that the common conception of the “problem” (if there ever was any agreement) and the situation’s constraints had changed as time progressed and the level of tension increased.
I also like Edbauer’s conception because it allows me to give some legitimacy to the idea that “what’s for lunch?” could be an exigence, given force merely by my own perceptions and feelings.
In sum, I think Edbauer’s notion of situation as an affective ecology is more aligned with the realities of rhetorical discourse than a “closed system” model of discrete elements like Bitzer’s. That’s not to say that Bitzer’s model is without purpose—it’s merely a simpler model, one whose use may be less applicable when we need to consider the myriad realities of a system in constant inward and outward flux. As Edbauer put it, “though rhetorical situation models are undeniably helpful for thinking of rhetoric’s contextual character, they fall somewhat short when accounting for the amalgamations and transformations—the spread—of a given rhetoric within its wider ecology.” (20)
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Final Project Proposal
Final Project Proposal
Overview: I will develop an 8-10 page researched paper addressed to my blog audience that is designed to inform our understanding of rhetoric. My paper will focus on a specific crisis, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. I will analyze how emotions functioned (and continue to function) to unify and divide individuals in the wake of this crisis. I will distill this paper into a brief, 5-minute presentation that I’ll give to the class. Finally, I’ll post my essay on my blog, link my presentation to the essay, and link my webfolio to my blog entry.
Specifics:
1) Purpose: To inform our understanding of rhetoric by analyzing how emotions function (to unify and divide individuals) in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. In analyzing this phenomenon, the theories of various authors we’ve studied this semester (such as Massumi, Damasio, Brennan, Ahmed etc) will be brought to bear.
2) I’ll develop a claim, which will most likely be that “By looking at our response to this attack through the “lenses” of various theorists of emotions, we can expose the ways emotions function to unify and divide individuals.”
3) I’ll use at least 6 outside sources to ensure that I draw conclusions from an adequate pool of data. I’ll look at the ways that the terrorist attacks created unity among some Americans, while they simultaneously eroded the unity among other Americans. I’ll look to a variety of sources to glean this information, such as political speeches, immigration reform advocates’ materials, Muslim-American advocacy group statements, arguments from white supremacists, etc.
4) I’ll analyze the information from these outside sources using at least two (and hopefully 3) of the authors we’ve studied this semester. I won’t attempt to represent one author as more “right” or “better” than another. Instead, I’ll try and use the multiple approaches or “lenses” to create a more complete and thorough understanding of the situation.
5) I’ll distill this essay into a 5-minute Prezi presentation, which makes use of diagrams/images to convey information more efficiently. I’ll give this presentation to the class on May 3rd/5th.
6) I’ll orally workshop this project on Tuesday, April 26th, and do a more formal peer review on Thursday, April 28th.
7) I’ll link the URL for my blog post to my webfolio by May 5th.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Ahmed and the Economies of Emotions
I was pretty impressed with Sara Ahmed’s observations about how various groups use clever language in order to produce a delineation between the “us” or “in-group” and the “other” or the “threat”. In a move that was more reminiscent of a Michael Moore film than a scholarly article, she notes that the September 11th attacks have been used to justify “the detention of any bodies suspected of being terrorists”, “expansion of the war itself to other nations”, and “the expansion of the powers of the state.” (136). She also talks about how Bush’s infamous statement that “you’re either with us or you’re against us” (131, 138) works to fuse all groups of “others” collectively into one group: the enemy.
I thought that Ahmed’s conception of emotions as global economies was interesting/valuable. It’s notable that she emphasizes that emotions are not definitively “possessed” within bodies so much as they function to delineate (or perhaps solidify) the lines between bodies. Rather than reflecting that we are “bound together” (or separated), they actually produce that cohesion (or division). For example, it is my love of some common value that makes me part of a group, while it is my fear of some common threat that makes me separate from another group. Hence, they get passed around, amplified and diffused, just like commodities and currencies. Emotions, Ahmed says, “work as a form of capital: affect does not reside positively in the sign or commodity, but is produced only as an effect of its circulation” (121).
But with all these emotions flowing back and forth like currencies, we get a lot of potential for “contamination” of one sign/symbol with another. She notes that legitimate asylum seekers, like Islamic/Arabic/South Asian foreigners, are difficult to differentiate from “bogus asylum seekers” and terrorists. Thus, in these times of constant and contagious fear, we are encouraged to suspect anyone who isn’t like us (they might be a terrorist or a bogus refugee). In Bush’s words, America “depend[s] on the eyes and ears of alert citizens” to “look out for suspicious others.” (134-135).
We find ourselves in a situation where we are suspicious of far too many others. Rather than a small and determined group of Taliban operatives, we are in a war against “terror” itself. A war against all of the sources of our fear, all of the “others”.
After reading Ahmed’s article, I was most impressed with her analysis of how “the slide of metonymy works to generate or make likeness”. Simply by putting words/signs/symbols in proximity, one creates an association among them. This works fine when you’re referring to our national government as “Washington” or referring to the stock market as “Wall street,” but some of these “euphemisms” have a very powerful political function that seems to slip past our conscious awareness. In Ahmed’s example, “the asylum seeker is ‘like’ the terrorist, an agent of fear…” (137). The mere utterance of a phrase like “Islamic Terrorists” works to associate the two words, creating an assumption that “Islamic” and “Terrorist”, share certain traits, and perhaps should be dealt with similarly.
The same metonymic slide is at work in our immigration debate. Those who aren’t citizens are compared, implicitly, to terrorists, merely via the proximity of the signs(the words “illegals” and “terrorists”. For example, on www.americanimmigrationcontrol.com, the front page states that their policy is “to alert the nation to the immigration crisis”, to “stop the millions of illegal aliens who sneak across our border from Mexico” and “to secure our nation from terrorists, drug smugglers, and illegals” (emphasis added). This adds to the skewing of our judgment, blurring the lines between these different groups of others, so that we can uniformly fear them all. Outside of rhetoric, I think that one important point to take away from this is to be suspicious of metonyms and the blurred boundaries that they create.
“The only thing we have to fear, is Fear itself” -JFK
Monday, April 4, 2011
Visual Argument - Way of Life (Final Version)
Visual Argument – Way of Life
Here is the link to my presentation: Way of Life
My visual argument is essentially a juxtaposition of images of excessive American consumerism (“commodity fetishism”) and third-world poverty, followed by a visual and written suggestion about how to solve this disparity. By framing this juxtaposition with symbols of American values (our flag, the Statue of Liberty) and currencies, I hope to make a connection between our present way of life and an ideal one. My presentation as a whole strives for this claim: Those with excess wealth should donate their extra money to those in absolute poverty.
I create this claim by starting with an image of the Statue of Liberty standing below the American Flag. Having just read the title, “Way of Life,” the viewer (hopefully) feels pride and enthusiasm when confronted with these common symbols of our values. In the next slide, the presentation “zooms in” to the tip of the flagpole, revealing a hundred dollar bill. In following the previous image, the viewer then realizes that the hundred dollar bill is being presented as a value in contrast with our more virtuous ones (as represented by the flag and statue). This will somewhat dampen the sense of pride instilled by the first image, and serves as framing for the following barrage of images. Following the hundred dollar bill, the viewer sees, in succession, an iPhone, a Bugatti (one of the world’s most expensive cars) and a house in Los Angeles valued at $150 million. These increasingly extravagant symbols of status and excess wealth should bring slight feelings of resentment and agitation in those who don’t possess such superficial commodities. For those who do, it will bring either guilt or pride (depending on how shameless they are in their pursuit of commodities). The images are configured such that the viewer experiences the string of status symbols in an upward arch that twists clockwise, making clear that these images indicate a progression toward more and more extravagant and unnecessary possessions. By the last image, a level of wealth is represented that the viewer will likely never attain, strengthening feelings of aggravation and outrage.
The spatial configuration then changes, with the next image reversing the clockwise progression and breaking downward from the arch. This serves to punctuate the already astronomical difference between the $150 million house and the makeshift tent in which a homeless South American woman is sheltering her child. After seeing the progression of excess wealth juxtaposed with the absolutely impoverished woman and child in the tent, this image invokes revulsion and contempt, hopefully aimed at the people who waste money on extremely superficial luxuries while others around the world are without real shelter (for some viewers, this might be themselves). The next two images are rather disturbing (and consequently I have them scaled down so that they don’t draw such an excess of disgust that the viewer feels desensitized, or shell-shocked, and rejects the argument). The first depicts a child afflicted with Noma, an exacerbated, gangrenous facial ulcer. Alone, this image would bring unqualified disgust and pity, but in following the previous image, and keeping with the theme of disparities in wellbeing, this increases the tension, invoking torment, revulsion and outrage. Hopefully the viewer will interpret this as a result of the child not having access to medical treatment. However, even if they simply recognize that this is the kind of suffering that virtually no one in America will ever experience, the goal of instilling torment, revulsion, and outrage will be achieved. These emotions are punctuated and solidified by an image of a malnourished Sudanese orphan. The orphan is incredibly underweight, and his face is buried in his knees in a way reminiscent of dejection and surrender. This image is the third in the progression of hardship, which moved from temporary homelessness, to subjection to disease, and finally climaxed with starvation. To emphasize the common theme of these images, they all move in a steady downward progression and twist counterclockwise. This emotionally-powerful image, in the context of the previous images, should cause the viewer to feel full-blown guilt and shame. Hopefully, the viewer interprets this guilt and shame as a product of the self-centered and superficial lifestyle that the affluent enjoy while others are without food, shelter and medical treatment.
Following the starving Sudanese boy, the third and final group of images begins. These images again reverse the rotation, moving clockwise, and move upward to reverse the downward slope. The first is an image of several starving children reaching out with open hands. The image is black and white, which serves to reinforce the negative affects and the idea that they are incomplete and go wanting. While this works to increase and strengthen feelings of pity and compassion, its purpose is also to give context to the following image. In the next image, a well-dressed woman’s hands are outstretched offering shiny, brightly-colored pennies forward. The pennies are the only part of the image that isn’t black and white. This is meant to suggest that we can “fill” the outstretched hands of the previous image by giving sums of cash that are insignificant to our wealth (hence the contrast with the hundred dollar bill). This image represents a powerful emotional appeal to hope and compassion, suggesting to the viewer that they, too, can fill the starving bellies for only pennies. The final image sheds all negativity, depicting (in full color) a group of hungry Ethiopian children smiling brilliantly as they adorn nice cloths and bowls of rice. After involving the viewer in the impoverished world’s misery, emotionally binding them through compassion and pity, the final image offers a joyous and relieving opportunity: charity.
This suggestion is implicitly restated by the text, a quote from Australian philosopher Peter Singer, which states that “The problem is not that the world cannot produce enough to feed and shelter its people… [but] is merely one of distribution.” The statement that there are enough material resources that no one need experience poverty reminds the viewer of the guilt and shame elicited at the end of the first segment (when they go from the huge house to the tent). The suggestion about distribution offers a way to escape this shame and guilt by donating small sums to the impoverished. This text is embedded in the front steps of the $150 million home, suggesting that the opportunity to help is right at our collective doorstep. By suggesting that the problem is solvable, the final image and quote invoke compassion, eagerness and optimism.
The presentation as a whole is designed to create guilt that can only be resolved by embracing charity and the sense of hope and compassion that comes with it. By being forced to recognize, in quick succession, both the excesses of absolute affluence and the desolation of absolute poverty, the viewer is implicitly given a choice. They can either maintain their love of excessive commodities and status symbols or shy away from the pursuit of such possessions in favor of positively impacting the lives of the most desperate and desolate people on our planet. Taking the latter option will allow the viewer to mitigate the guilt and shame of commodity fetishism by replacing it with the hope, relief, and pride brought on by giving to charity. Two symbolic themes frame, funnel, and reinforce this interpretation. The symbols of American values remind the (more patriotic) viewer that our country may have an infatuation with status and commodity, but those aren’t the virtues we really stand for. The juxtaposition between the relatively colorless hundred-dollar bill and the shiny pennies remind the (poor or greedy) viewer that they need not sacrifice much to make a substantial difference. In sum, though different viewers will naturally interpret slightly different messages, the three progressions of images and the symbols serve to “herd” the majority of viewers into the basic theme of feeling guilty about wasting resources and deciding to be more benevolent.
I seek a change in attitude that should inevitably lead to a change in behavior. By suggesting that our pursuit of these material goods is shameful in reflection of the poverty that exists in our world, I hope that the viewer will adopt an attitude that material wealth and status symbols should be subordinated to the needless suffering and starvation of millions. Hopefully, even those who don’t abandon such commodities will still feel more inclined to help the unfortunate. The behaviors that will follow from this, if it is truly achieved, might include lessening our infatuation with luxurious commodities, offering the resulting wealth to the impoverished, and spreading the message.
Photo Credits:
1. American Flag:
2. One Hundred Dollar Bill:
3. iPhone:
a. http://images.fastcompany.com/upload/apple-iphone.jpg
4. Bugatti
5. USA’s Most Expensive House
6. Homeless in Central America
7. Child with Noma
8. Starving in Sudan:
9. Starving Reaching Out
a. http://emilytheperson.com/curtain/mt-search.cgi?blog_id=6&tag=starving%20children&limit=20
10. Giving to Charity
11. Starving Children Eat
(Accessed Monday, April 4, 2011)
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Politics
In this weekend’s reading, Executive Overspill, I was struck by one of Edbauer’s points. In point 13, on .pdf page 10, Edbauer quotes Gatens and Lloyd’s explanation of Spinoza’s “affective poles,” noting that “Joy involves an increase in activity—an increase in the striving to persist…. There is a corresponding orientation of sadness toward disengagement and isolation (qtd. in Edbauer 10). Spinoza phrased this himself, noting that when two “bodies” come into contact they can either combine or subvert each other, and that “we experience joy when a body encounters ours and enters into composition with it, and sadness when, on the contrary, a body or an idea threatens our own coherence.” (10).
This all happens almost in ignorance of the literal or understood “meaning” of the encounter, the “semantic” and “semiotic” components that tell us how words literally form ideas that we may agree with or not agree with. This is offered to explain why Bush Jr.(and Reagan) were so appealing to voters in spite of having incoherent sentences and frequent verbal fumbles. Think back to the story Massumi offered of the German short film about the man building a snowman, then it melting, and them him taking it to the mountains. The kids actually rated the original wordless version as the most “sad” version but also as the most pleasant. The absence of words creates a temporary “jerk” or “point” in Massumi’s lingo that peaks intensity by making meaning unknown or ambiguous. When the narrative is suspended, our interest is peaked (whereas having a narrator explain everything leaves no ambiguity, no pause in the narrative).
So while our conscious minds are in an endless struggle to follow a linear narrative and “make sense” of things, our affective selves are simultaneously only stimulated by the “superlinear” inconsistencies that allow us to, sort of, fill in the blanks (here, our propensity for rationality and the reality of affective existence seem to butt heads). That the German children felt pleasure at the sadness, the “body or idea threaten[ing] [their] own coherence” finds its parallel in the American public’s affinity for fumbling, incoherent politicians. It is the tension, the arousal, the “intensity”, created by the suspension of the narrative (be it in a German short film, a political speech, or that moment in the horror flick where everything stops for just a moment before the killer strikes) that so arouses us.
This helped me understand such paradoxical realities as Bush and Reagan’s popularity and my own attraction for horror films. To reuse Edbauser’s example, if Bush, in response to the legitimate question “do you still think we’ll find WMD’s in Iraq?” were to have answered coherently, “yes” or “no”, he might have satisfied the “qualified” need for coherence and narrative continuity that we seek on the conscious level, but he wouldn’t have created the “intensity” that our affects need in order to be engaged, to form a decision. To Bush’s credit, he was successful in this regard, always sacrificing true meaning and semantic/semiotic coherence for that “Good ‘ol boy” feel of someone who you could relate to by “filling in the gaps” in the suspended narrative. And many people could relate to him, after all, he seldom said anything so comprehensible that it permitted dissent.
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