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.

Bawarshi cites Foucault's definition of author-function from "What Is An Author?" and comes up with his own concept of genre-function, which "constitutes how individuals come to conceptualize and act within different situations," (23). This illustrates how words can act in different genres, the way Mimi's words act as aids to her visuals in "Was Being Moved?". The way we respond to Mimi's project depends on the genre in which she presents it, as the poetry would not have had the same effect on its audience had it been presented simply in print. Over time, poetry has grown as a genre, with some styles using the words themselves to create images, but images accompanying the words in a video project is new to the genre, further breaking down the borders of the genre and emphasizing the weight of genre-function. This is further proven when Bawarshi says, "genres shape us as we give shape to them, which is why they constitute our activities and regulate how and why we perform them," (25). Because we define genres ourselves, we also have to power to redefine them, As Ye Mimi did in this piece. Because the genre has been rewritten, we have regulated how the poetry is being "performed."

Viewing "Was Being Moved?" as sublime comes with the impact it has on the audience based on its genre-breaking composition. Longinus describes the sublime 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 natures,'" (345). Mimi's piece certainly has the power to move an audience, which is only amplified by the images and voice-over accompanying them. The philosophical use of terms such a nihilism multiple times lends support to higher natures being awakened, as the piece most likely had the purpose of making the audience think beyond themselves. Sublime pieces produce certain emotions, and make one think, which is achieved in this project, which bends the molds of genre to get its message across.