Thursday, March 8, 2018

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.

"In sum, 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). Delagrange portrays the improvement and development of what society or the modern world has seen to be dramatical changes towards human life. At the start of the Wunderkammer Delagrange depicts what were to be huge scientific developments that changed the way most of humanity sees and interpret life to be. Devices that facilitate life, such as tools for measuring, weighing, lifting, balancing, cutting and crushing. The genre of inventions and improvements is one that changes in every situation, thus not all improvements and innovations can be produced in the same format. Genres are developed after writers come in contact with the same situation repeatedly and then respond in fitting ways. After these response are compiled similarities are found and then the similarities are made into generalized conceptions.
"Genres maintain the desires that writers acquire, negotiate, and articulate- how that is, genres locate writers in relation to desires that inform they make when they begin to write" Bawarshi (39). Thus socially we manage to relate genres to everything in every society. We structure social interactions based off previous structured genres, ways in which people perceive the right or wrong way to interact with others. This structured genre of sociality is linked to exigence, an event or situation, exigence compels us to respond or act, Barwashi (41). But rather of most instincts being purely instinctual they are learned behaviors that we have seen repeatedly and have learned to adjust accordingly.  Thus genres act accordingly to pose a certain way on how to act and react and then push for action from the writer to act in such structured way. Genre has articulation and effect in regards to social situation and rhetorical action that work as motive and action.  This creates a re occurring theme of recognizing then identifying and knowing. Thus how the process of a structured genre both generalizes and constricts new knowledge if it is solely based on past situations and forced to be structured in the same past ways.
In summarization, Delagrange uses the multimodal cabinet is a hybrid genre by mixing both the old and the new. The cabinet itself is an old artifact that seems to be made of wood, a cabinet not know to be of contemporary style. But she surely mixes in the fact that it's a virtual cabinet that serves as a hyperlink to a world of moving/expanding pictures and interactive passages that serve as a new form of reading and interpreting text. Delagrange relies on social media as a practical inventions that amplifies, magnifies, multiplies and mirrors precisely how she arranged the pictures and passages in her cabinet. Then she uses this to her advantage to give us insight and knowledge in the objects that are being explored. Through this new way of presentation a wider array of perspectives are produced thus giving freedom to the information to be interpreted in many ways. In my eyes the open interpretation of hybrid works is the biggest and most important part of these new works, it allows for more people to look at re occurring events in different ways and use the past as a way to make a new future.

In
sum,
genre
is
a
dynamic
rsponse
to
and
construction
of
recurring
situ- geas
historically
and
in
different
social
groups,
that
adapts
and
grows
as
the
social
context
chan

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