More Real...Less Normal

Upon first glance of the exhibit by Edouard Duval-Carrie, the only opinion that came to mind was, “this is a beautiful chaos.” Sounds crazy I know, but that was how I felt because I knew what I was looking at was beautiful, however, the message a bit unclear or chaotic. I knew and felt that I needed a more in depth and observational glance. I think I started with the title itself even though you can not SEE it in the exhibit (because it is just the title). “Decolonizing Refinement” was an interesting way to give a “heads up” to what was going on and personify the art pieces that would be included in the exhibit. When you hear refinement, other words and actions involved may be purification, improvement, elegance, etc. That right there implies the “sublime” that Longinus talks to us about. Sublime deals with excellence and elevation of morale and spirit. Furthermore, if you are following the 5 sources of sublimity that Longinus gives us, the exhibit pretty much hits on all of them. "Great thoughts, strong emotions, certain figures of thought and speech, noble diction, and dignified word arrangement" all play a role in the exhibit.

[reposting] "Who decides what genre is?"

In analyzing the exhibit by Edouard Duval- Carrie, it was very interesting to see how different these exhibits really were. Most of the exhibits really did go outside of the usual genre conventions. Often, I found myself not really knowing how to dissect the images in the sense of characterizing them in a certain way, which in a way was a good experience for me considering I shouldn't necessarily go into a piece, assuming that there is a whole conventional genre collection present. After attending the exhibit and being able to read Bawarshi article about genre function, it definitely opened my eyes more to the altering ideas of what genre really is and entails. Bawashi breaks the article into the different types of genres can act as- genre as site of literary action and genre as site of social action. This is interesting to see that genre can have more of a usual definition in terms of interpreting a text based on other literary texts that you have experience with; however, with genre being a form of social action, this shows how texts can be interpreted based on ones social aptitude and that ones life can alter the interpretation and translation of a piece into a different genre. Bawarshi says that “when writers begin to write in different genres, they participate within these different sets of relations, relations that motivate them, consciously or unconsciously, to invent both their texts and themselves.” (17). C. Miller responds to this point by proving the social function in a way by saying that, genre function is “an aspect of cultural rationality”. I saw in the art exhibit that the lines and colors of the art was very simple and streamlined and really made me think of Longinus’s idea of the sublime. He talked a lot in his article about how beyond all of the hype and galore of glamorous of some art forms or of texts that use a lot of words to tell a story that can be understood and translated with fewer words because it is the soul that is supposed to interpret, according to him.

Dialogue with the Past, Present, and Future: the Benefits of Creating Across Genre

Beginning the unit on Text(uality), I was skeptical that theorists spanning such long ranges of time could all be connected to the idea of “the sublime” when they were all so radically different. However, in one week’s time I have been able to create a more nuanced, personal definition of what “the sublime” can mean and how challenging genre can really connect writers from all areas and experiences.

At the start of the week I was presented with Longinus' On the Sublime, William S. Burroughs' The Future of the Novel, and still was recalling back to my visit to the exhibit Decolonizing Refinement by Edouard Duval-Carrié. My brain was swimming with questions and contradictions that now highlight just how narrowly I was thinking. One hesitation I had was that while postmodernism seems as confusing as it is engaging with the intention to frustrate the reader, I thought Burroughs and Longinus could not be farther apart from one another. Or at least postmodernism attempted to communicate a different message than sublimity does with nature pointing to a transcended more orderly ideal. Moreover, I understood the exhibit was taking a new look at colonialism but I was not sure if that meant it was “sublime”?

Hybridity and Its Function!

Lloyd Bitzer tells us that discourse “comes to have a power of its own—“ in response to any situation. (Bitzer 13) Susan Delagrange’s Wunderkammer, Cornell, and the Visual Canon of Arrangement wondrously exemplifies this statement in that one might feel guided or even controlled by the form of the genre when trying to navigate it. Though I was physically in command of my fingers to move forward, my thoughts and interpretation were fully directed by the arrangement of the text. One might argue that, generally speaking, digital texts are far more directive than that of their printed predecessor, insofar as one is capable of digital comprehension. This is especially true for Delagrange’s text, as it is comprised of several genres and forms.

Delagrange’s Vehicle to the Sublime

When viewing a piece of art or reading a selection of text, one typically does not have the piece’s creator standing over their shoulder explaining to them what they should get out of the work. Instead, the viewer interprets the piece in their own mind, building off of previous knowledge and understanding to develop meaning in the piece. In this way, the consumer of the piece is actually the author in a sense according to AnisBawarshi. The Author who originally penned or created the piece is still forever tied to it as the creator and is due that credit, but as time goes on, that connection loses its meaning and they are demoted to merely part of the literary text.

Genre Changing with Time

Conventional definitions of genre tend to be based on the idea that they constitute particular conventions of content (i.e. themes or setting) and/or form (i.e. structure and style) which are shared by the texts which are regarded as belonging to them. However, with the development of new technology and social media, the distribution of media has changed dramatically and scholars/critics cannot ignore that the conventional definition of genre was not good enough anymore. For example, letters and newspapers were not only getting distributed by mail, but electronically as well. This change in distribution changed one of the five canons of rhetoric, delivery, what is delivery, and how we define delivery. Therefore, we see Amy J. Devitt, an English professor at the University of Kansas, take on the challenge of redefining genre. She begins to develop her genre theory "with rhetorical situation and expands it to encompass a semiotic situation and social context (Devitt, 576)." By including semiotic situation and social context, she not only looks at form and context to define genre, but also the environment and social situation the work was written in. By doing this, Devitt conveyed that genre is not a static concept, but always changing because genre is constantly responding to, as well as constructing recurring situations. We see genre change with society because "situation is inherently social as well as a rhetorical concept (Devitt, 579)."

Walking Backwards into the Sublime

Ye Mimi’s video project, “Was Being Moved” combines animation with real film images and brings together two forms of art expression: poetry and film. This project appears to be something different than two genres being expressed at once, and rather combines poetry and film into creating its own, single genre.  

“Was Being Moved” depicts animated postcards to a Mr. Parade, the author telling him about feeling a man push them to move or walking backwards to be able to see further. These postcards are interspersed between images and videos of crowds and strangers in busy cities. These images express just as much thought as the words do, and they eventually come together when the postcard writer shares a song she wrote. Most of the words and the video seem to be almost random, not really supporting each other but providing something new to say. As she sings, different images flash through, mostly out of focus or distorted in some way. We are not exactly sure what we are seeing, but this works perfectly as these phrases in Mimi’s poem also do not seem to be perfectly clear in their meaning.  

"Was Being Moved?" A Hybrid Text: Where Mixed Genre Meets Sublime

Bawarshi begins by extending Foucalt's idea of author-function to help us understand genre. He argues author-function is a subgroup of genre function. Genre function, according to Bawarshi, "constitutes all discourses' and all writers' mode of existence, circulation, and functioning within a society"(22). We see genres coming together in poets, Ye Mimi's "Was Being Moved?" video. She uses the power of hybrid text, as defined by Katherine Hayles, and mixes two mediums and, in that way, two genres into one cohesive text. In Ye Mimi's "Was Being Moved?", she mixes vignettes from film with the poetry genre to "erase the border", as mentioned by the producer on Vimeo -- Rhizome, between the individual genres and create one single genre.  Without a border between the different genres, the hybrid text genre that she molds through this film, becomes its own singular genre: one "that does not simply regulate a pre-existing social activity", but instead "constitutes the activity by making it possible by way of it's ideological and discursive conventions"(Bawarshi 24).

Genre and Subversion: A Crucial Balance

When I consider my own life and those things in it that I have read, watched, or heard that greatly affected me, I find a common thread between them all: they surprised me. I should clarify, because surprised can mean a wide array of things. I am not referring to the surprise you might find in watching a horror movie, the sudden shock of a scream sound effect or the visuals of the monster jumping into frame. Nor am I talking about the surprise one might feel when they expect to see or hear something, but they are unsure of when. The cameo appearance of a classic character in a sequel for example, or the known catch phrase of a hero in a book. These types of “surprises” are closer to a secret, one kept from the audience and known only by the author until the moment they finally decide to share it, the goal being to garner a fleeting emotional response.

Genre Theory

According to "The Genre Function," Bawarshi argues that as an author beings to write in various genres, they start to "participate within these different sets of relations" within the genre that can work to influence their writing, either consciously or unconsciously. Genre acts as a site of action that helps the writer to articulate motives to write, serving as "an aspect of cultural rationality." Genre theory, in turn, seeks to explain the actions of the writer in creating their works rather than just acting as a description of the works, investigating the "linguistic, sociological, and psychological assumptions" that work to shape these text-types.

Bawarshi & Delagrange

Analyzing Susan Delagrange's "Wunderkammer, Cornell, and the Visual Canon of Arrangement” we understand her focus on digital media work that emphasizes areas of embodied digital representation and the cannon of arrangement to discover ethical bases for action. Through her projects and acts of remediation, she constructs a hybrid genre to create an epistemological act and determine meaning. This techne (productive art) is interactive digital media that involves both abstract and applied knowledge for viewers to manipulate and learn from material evidence. Working against traditional print, this rhetorical art opens up new opportunities for emotional response, as it arranges and articulates visual evidence, artifacts and links for audience engagement. Upon entering this website, one views a closed wooden cabinet that can be opened by clicking the doors to reveal small tile graphics of Delagrange’s art, in which the viewer can navigate across. She uses "Wunderkammer” to argue the 16- century cabinet as models of visual provocation, to manipulate objects to create and discover new meaning. The concept of this project makes it a productive thought engine that allows viewers to reflect on abstract thought through tangible visuals. This framework bridges the gap between the mental and physical, enabling rhetorical practice and discovery.

The Breaking of Genres and Waves

Ye Mimi”s “Was Being Moved?” is a very interesting piece of work that uses images, videos, written letters, and read/sung poems to bring forth emotion and ideas from viewers. This is a very unique piece of work as it bends the notion of genre that we have previously come to understand. In the piece “The Genre Function,” Anis Bawarshi states that “Genres are discursive sites that coordinate the acquisition and production of motives by maintaining specific relations between scene, act agent, agency, and purpose” (17). “Was Being Moved?” lies within multiple grand genres like film, poem, and letters, while still finding a way for those mediums to relate. She has, in a sense, created a new genre that allows poetry and film to be united for her cause. By erasing the boundaries between film/images and poetry, Ye Mimi has a chance to reach the viewer in a whole new way.

Edouard Duval Carrie: Reflecting the Sublime

Like art, more specifically the concept of what is good versus bad, the sublime can’t be calculated, imitated or measured. In his piece, “On the Sublime” Longinus makes several assertions regarding what he considers to be the sublime as well as the necessary steps for one to achieve it. I found several instances where the installations in the Edouard Duval-Carrie were reflective of ideas concerning the sublime and claims made by Longinus.  One of Longinus’ major claims is that in order for one’s writing to reach the sublime, the writer must possess and exhibit what he considers to be “moral excellence.” One of the major aspects of Edouard Duval-Carrie’s exhibit, and perhaps my favorite aspect, was his critique of colonization through art.  I would argue that this is a position of “moral excellence” as Carrie is criticizing a moral wrongdoing and further strengthening his path to the sublime.   

Can a Writing be both Sublime and Construct Genre?

Many linguistic and rhetorical theorists have attempted to answer this question over time. We will now attempt to answer it for ourselves by using concepts of two respected authors that have touched on the topic of genre in writing as a lens: Amy Devitt, and the ancient philosopher only known as "Longinus". Although the subject matter that they touch on in both of their writings is varied, certain parallels can be made between the two pieces that state that writing can both construct genre and be sublime. However, there are several conflicting concepts in each of their philosophies that point to the answer that says no, a writing cannot both construct the genre and be sublime. I may not have a definite answer, but just as in writing, there is never a definite answer. In this blog post I will explore both sides of the argument; but, for the most part, it does seem like a piece of writing does have the ability to construct genre and be sublime. 

Achieving the Sublime is an Individual and Dynamic Quest

To start, we must understand what the sublime is in it broadest sense. Through understanding it's basic definition in regard to aestheticism, we will be able to better understand the fluidity of the term. In the most general form of understanding, the sublime is the magnitude of greatness something achieves through thoughtful craft. Longinus' thoughts on the sublime suggests that he thinks of it "as a quality that has a powerful emotional impact on its audience, or, more specifically, an impact that awakens the audience members to their higher nature" (Longinus pg. 354). Nonetheless, this is just one classical interpretation of the sublime that differs from more modern definitions. The diverse nature of ideas regarding the facility of the sublime themselves prove that the term is quite progressive. The essays we have discussed in this course focus on reaching the sublime in a literary sense.

Duval-Carrie's Approach to Sublimity

Edouard Duval-Carrie’s “Decolonizing Refinement” features a collection of artifacts that tell the story of African diaspora through the usage of different art mediums (sculptures, window frames) and photographs. The exhibit not only features art from Duval-Carrie but also historical photographs from local slave plantations throughout north Florida. The different “genres” used in the exhibit are not literary genres but instead genres of art varying from oil paintings, plexiglass frames, sculptures, and actual tools and replicas of slave ships used during slavery in the 19thcentury.

Devitt, Bawarshi & Wunderkammer Constructing a New Meaning of Genre.

The work of Susan H Delagrange, Wunderkammer, Cornell and the Visual Cannon of Arrangement, is a perfect example of a dynamic genre that is fluid not rigid according to Devitt (579). This fluidity and non rigidness is what makes this project a "Hybrid genre", mixing many genres into one and intertwining them to make new episteme through different modes of delivery. This shift in rigidness of a structured genre allows for a more open interpretation of the information. The project by Delagrange is an interactive multimodal "cabinet" that uses both written passages and pictures forming a process to map and re-map our physical and conceptual worlds in order to determine their meaning.

The Wunderkammer as a Hybrid Genre

It is safe to say that the writers of the 21^st century have all the access in the world to new and unique ways of expressing their works, access that writers of yesteryear could have never imagined. Yet, these programs and new scientific breakthroughs do not make writing effectively easy, it does not mean that beautiful poetry is going to come flowing out of you; the tasks of a writer still remain daunting; however it is comforting to know all the help that we have. Yes, writers can do marvelous things with their poetry, whether it is through a special computer program or simply a small distinct feature, writers have the ability to make their works complex and one of a kind like never before, such as Susan Delagranges’s Wunderkammer piece, exhibit, catalog; I don’t even know what to call it. From the moment I opened the webpage I was intrigued how it was set up almost as if it were a menu for an online catalog site; which in a way it was yet just not what we are used to. Something I did not realize until I read a fellow classmates response was the fact that when you opened the webpage it came up as a “closed cabinet”, but once you clicked on the page the cabinet opened up, serving as the perfect analogy for the “closed cabinet” idea that is presented immediately. 

Edouard Duval-Carrié, The Sublime, and Genre

Edouard Duval-Carrié's collection of art, collectively known under the title "Decolonizing Refinement," is a breathtakingly vibrant collection that, according to the artist himself, aims to shed light on a history “often untold. This history has, indeed, masked slavery, racism, and economic injustice with the ornamentation of of genteel society." In this exhibit, it seems that Duval-Carrié wishes to draw attention to a type of expression that was historically repressed as well - the notion and practice of "Black Art."

Through his use of bright colors, multiple mediums, an affinity for sparkles, and the use of many materials that once were symbols of black suppression (sugar, turpentine, etc.,) he manages to break through genres and offer genre an unique challenge: to redefine itself. Devitt tells us that "Genres develop, then, because they respond appropriately to situations that writers encounter repeatedly. In principle, that is, writers first respond in fitting ways and hence similarly to recurring situations; then, the similarities among those appropriate responses become established as generic conventions. In practice, of course, genres already exist and hence already constrain responses to situations" (Devitt 576).

Duval-Carrié's Sublimity Through Genre Construction

Edouard Duval-Carrié’s exhibit is a phenomenal representation of how intertextuality is translated into multimedia art. It excels in Longinus’ definition of the sublime but raises interesting questions about Devitt’s concepts of genre. According to Longinus, one of the key elements of rhetorical sublimity is visualization. Rhetorical visualization is most effective when it accurately involves engaging, factual arguments. Undoubtedly, Duval-Carrié masters this concept because of the complexity of historical truth that brings his works of art together, including the colors utilized, artifacts displayed, religious/mythical connections, and so forth. For example, in his series of the Caribbean mythical creature Soucouyant, Duval-Carrié depicts the vampire-like creature in different “moods” through colors and uses marine objects to symbolize Caribbean life as well as the sea that represents exportations of goods and slaves alike. 

Use of Genre in Wunderkammer

First, when looking at Susan Delagrange’s Wunderkammer I’m instantly reminded of the cut-up technique that William Burroughs’ expounded upon in his The Future of the Novel. Burroughs explains that his fold-in method, in which he folds a page from a text down the middle and places it on another page to form a composite text. He argues that his “From two pages an infinite number of combinations and images are possible… the method could also lead to a collaboration between writers on an unprecedented scale to produce works that were the composite effort of any number of writers living and dead.” Burroughs intended for his works to be read a certain way. He seemed to have the idea that his composite works would still all have their pages related to one another to create something that was still a narrative with a notable order. Wunderkammer seems to take Burroughs’ technique steps further as its pages are more loosely connected. And the reader is prompted to go through them in order but may choose several more different ways to read through the slides of information. 

Genre Theory v. Subjective Sublimity

Edouard Duval-Carrie’s exhibit goes out of its way to deconstruct the sins of colonialism and highlight the culture and splendor of a victimized indigenous people. Most of the works in the exhibit gain their emotional power, or sublimity, through the genre in which they are viewed in. And while Bawarshi adamantly draws from various literary and rhetorical theorists to assert that genre as a concept is “constitutive rather than merely regulative,” meaning that it is not solely a means to classify discourse, I do question how relevant his theory of genre is when faced against the inherently subjective concept of sublimity (Bawarshi 24).

Duval-Carrie's Redefinition of a Genre

According to Bawarshi, “genres are discursive sites that coordinate the acquisition and production of motives by maintaining specific relations between scene, act, agent, agency, and purpose.” (Bawarshi, 17) In the literary world, genre ultimately provides us with conventions and standards by which we compare and categorize all texts. Edouard Duval-Carrié’s exhibit is a vivid display of colors and photorealistic images that culminate to provide perspective into the arts of the African Diaspora and perhaps challenge genre conventions with his use of multimedia. 

Duval-Carrie’s exhibit challenges notions of genre that we’ve been conditioned to, most specifically as they pertain to what can be defined as an artistic work.  “The genre function, thus, constitutes how individuals come to conceptualize and act within different situations, framing not only what Foucault calls a discourse’s mode of being, but also the mode of being of those who participate in the discourse.” (Bawarshi, 23) The artwork truly sets itself apart not only with its use of vibrant color and translucent surfaces, but with it’s ability to draw together separate images and allow them to work as a whole. Duval-Carrie makes use of realistic visuals of black and Caribbean people alongside images that are hand drawn and painted, ultimately challenging the constraints of what defines an artistic piece.

Susan Delagrange's Wunderkammer and Amy Devitt's Genre

Susan Delagrange's "Wunderkammer, Cornell, and the Visual Canon of Arrangement" is à prime example of à hybrid-genre. Susan combines the two genres known as digital media and traditional writing. Upon clicking the link from the blog site, the viewer is introduced to cabinet doors that lead to rows of tiles. When one clicks on one of these tiles, they are exposed to slides that showcases ideas and their explanations. All thirteen of these tiles, include àn image on the left and writing in à box on the right. The images are there to help the view better visualize what the author of this project is trying to explain. Including images along with the explanation makes it less likely that the reader will misunderstand the what is being described.

A Sublime Hybrid of Bawarshi and Longinus

In Ye Mimi's "Was Being Moved?", we are introduced to a hybrid text of words and moving imagery. Typically, poetry is presented in a stationary format to be read, but Mimi's video incorporates her words into motion, including background images to help illustrate her words. While combining two different styles of text, video and words/poetry, this breaks the boundaries of genre that normally follow these texts, creating a hybrid genre or the hybrid texts. Bawarshi describes the change in how genre is perceived and represented when he says it, "has helped transform genre study from a descriptive to an explanatory activity, one that investigates not only text types and classification systems, but also the linguistic, sociological, and psychological assumptions underlying and shaping these text types," (17). This essentially means that we longer have to view genre as just something to classify texts under, but can use it to reveal the deeper meanings behind these textual conventions and why they are in place. Mimi's piece is an example of why these conventions should be broken, to blur the boundary between genres, and making it a sublime project.

Art and Genre

Amy Devitt in her article Generalizing about Genre: New Conceptions of an Old Concept she lays out the ground work for the new concept of genre. "Genre is a dynamic response to and construction of recurring situation, one that changes historically and in different social groups, that adapts and grows as the social context changes," (Devitt 580). The idea that genre changes constantly and adapts to the new social movements and changes of the period is one that is important when thinking about Duval-Carrié's exhibit in the Tallahassee Arts museum entitled "Decolonizing Refinement: Contemporary Pursuits in the Art of Edouard Duval-Carrié". In this exhibit we can see the work from the Haitian-born artist who lived in Miami. Duval-Carrié's works take on their shape due to his Caribbean roots. The exhibit was driven by ideologies in North Florida as well as the southeastern United States and had traces in plantation agriculture, race, and slavery. His pieces show a uprising of art that has been historically ignored, Black art. The notion of genre shaping situation is one that is prevalent in this collection do to it being art work that depicts the notions of the white man from the perspective of the slave.

Longinus, Devitt, and Duval-Carrie

As I tried to figure out yesterday, Longinus has an interest in language, whether he dances around it using audience as a form of language or not, I'm still unsure. However! I have come to some realizations that help us understand both Longinus and Devitt (funny to put these two in the same post), and in turn put them in some sort of relation to Duval-Carrie. With Longinus he wants us to understand the specificity of the sublime, I mean the sublime of his time period, not the artistic 18th century sublime. Longinus's sublime that refers to "the echo of a noble mind" (pg. 350) Which could be better said as the sublime can only be reached under certain circumstances of clarity, and I guess, for lack of better words, a powerful mind.

Genre and Wunderkammer

Susan Delagrange's digital media project, "Wunderkammer, Cornell, and the Visual Canon of Arrangement," takes the form of an interactive wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities. The new media project transcends the genre conventions of traditional academic works, functioning instead as a hybrid genre. 

When you navigate to Delagrange's project, you immediately see a closed cabinet. Clicking on the cabinet opens the drawers and allows audiences to see the culmination of Delagrange's work in the form of tiles that fill the cabinet. Clicking on any of the tiles will take you to a screen that is half text and half moving image. You can interact with the tiles in any order and still get the overall meaning of Delagrange's work (which is what she encourages); however, I chose to follow a linear progression by navigating through the project via the line of tiles along the top of the screen. 

An Exhibit is a Real Life Genre (Sort of?)

In Edouard Duval-Carrié’s exhibit Decolonizing Refinement, the artifacts were either abstract configurations of the artist’s own making (sculptures, paintings, and other physical art forms), photographs that captured moments during slavery (the focus of the exhibit), and actual findings from the time period the exhibit commented on.

The main piece that stood out to me, and vividly so, was his work titled the “Metamorphosis”. This piece was meant to explain the severing of culture from origin that occurred during the slave trade and the forced adjustment, including the family histories that were lost, that slaves had to encounter as their homelands were left in shambles. The image depicts a tree with branches that are made to model the prototype of a family tree. The roots of the tree are shackled to America as to symbolize involuntary restraint. A smaller detail that I caught was the depiction of a small island, in what I presume to be the West Indies (maybe Jamaica), set to fire. I believe the entire image comments on the destruction slavery brought onto the traditions of other cultures as well as long lasting effects of poverty and delayed economic development, as the thinkers and innovators of these countries were stripped away.