Eric Reid Hamilton is a PhD candidate in the Rhetorics, Communication and Information Design (RCID) program at Clemson University. He teaches first-year composition, technical writing, and business writing. His research ranges from classical to digital rhetoric with focuses on composition pedagogy, virtue ethics, theology, and multimodal communication. His recent publication, “What Wants to be Said (Out Loud)?: Octalogs as Alter/native to Hegemonic Discourse Practices,” can be found in Xchanges [Fall, 2018].

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Instructor's (in structures) note: This is an attempt [a temp. (temporary / temperature reading) or tempt(ation)] at re-collecting existing objects to disseminate an electrate lecture.

*Be sure to check for para/cites

Intro

The following… Is applied [plied] from [/through] Gregory Ulmer’s “The Object of Post-Criticism”

KNOWING

Derrida as Aristotle of montage: links between [couplings among] their theory & method

• Aristotle: theory on tragedy (mimesis) & method (formal analysis)

• Derrida: theory of montage (grammatology) & method (deconstruction)

“In the same way that Aristotle provided at once a theory of tragedy (mimesis) and a method (formal analysis) for the study of all literary modes, Derrida in a text such as Glas (identified as the ‘exemplary’ text of poststructuralism) provides a ‘theory’ of montage (grammatology) and a method (deconstruction) for working with any mode of writing whatsoever. Derrida is the ‘Aristotle’ of montage” (87).

Ulmer's brilliantly succinct breakdown of Derrida's Grammatology

• takes fullest significance via collage

Poststructuralist

Grammatology replaces sign w/ (more basic unit) gram

 “In spite of its associated complexities and controversies, Derrida’s basic formulation of the nature of language is relatively simple, a formulation which, placed in the context of the collage paradigm, takes on its fullest significance. Grammatology is ‘poststructuralist’ in that it replaces the ‘sign’ (composed of signifier and signified--the most basic unit of meaning according to structuralism) with a still more basic unit--the gram” (88).

Derrida's 'differance' / 'gram' rests on difference

• elements function according to their reference of that which is not present

“Whether in the order of spoken or written discourse, no element can function as a sign without referring to another element which itself is not simply present” (88).

DOING

Derrida's reading effect ('double-science')

• oscillation btwn presence & absence

“This undecidable reading effect, oscillating between presence and absence, is just what Derrida tries to achieve at every level of his ‘double science’” (88).

1. Derrida's working against logocentrism (western insistence on fixed meaning btwn signifier & signified] by suggests couplers/coupling instead [person/thing that couples/links together]

“The tendency of Western philosophy throughout its history (‘logocentrism’) to try to pin down and fix a specific signified to a given signifier violates, according to grammatology, the nature of language, which functions not in terms of matched pairs (signifier/signified) but of couplers or couplings--‘a person or thing that couples or links together’” (88-89).

post-structuralism/postmodernism as narrative allegory for finding truth inherent in the words themselves

• puncepts: meanings found in etymologies & puns

• more concerned w/ signifier than the signified

“‘Narrative allegory’ (practiced by post-critics) explores the literal--letteral--level of the language itself, in a horizontal investigation of the polysemous meanings simultaneously available in the words themselves--in etymologies and puns--and in the thrings the words name. The allegorical narrative unfolds as a dramatization or enactment (personification) of the ‘literal truth inherent in the words themselves.’ In short, narrative allegory favors the material of the signifier over the meanings of the signifieds” (95)

Making

superimposing (superimprinting one text on another)

• breaks conventions/assumptions of criticism & pedagogy

“His solution is to ‘endeavor to create an effect of superimposing, of superimprinting one text on the other,’ the text as ‘palimpsest’ or ‘macula,’ a double band or ‘double bind’ procedure which breaks with the conventional assumptions of criticism and pedagogy” (91).

taking ready-made work and producing differences/new meanings w/ it

“Levine, that is, de-monstrates the grammatological writing appropriate to the age of mechanical reproduction in which ‘copyright’ now means the right to copy anything, a mimicry or repetition which is orginiary, producing differences (just as in allegory anything may mean anything else)” (96).

Benjamin's breakup procedure/montage

• juxtapose two extremes of an idea; dialectic at a standstill

• found it historically relevant since it represented the crumbling of civilization in modern world

“Benjamin’s procedure was ‘to collect and reproduce in quotation the contradictions of the present without resolution’--‘the dialectic at a standstill,’ juxtaposing the extremes of a given idea. This collage strategy was itself an image of the ‘break-up,’ the ‘disintegration’ of civilization in the modern world” (97).

Schonberg (who influenced Adorno): knowledge exists outside the outside, w/in the material

• artist as craftsmen discovering through the material

“‘Schonberg rejected the notion of the artist-as-genius and replaced it with the artists as craftsman; he saw music not as the expression of subjectivity, but as a search for knowledge which lay outside the artists, as potential within the object the material...The method is objective because the ‘object’ leads, criticism being a translation into words of the inner logic of the object, thing, even text itself” (98).

will the academy accept this new form of criticism (collage/montage)?

“Will the collage/montage revolution in representation be admitted into the academic essay, into the discourse of knowledge, replacing the ‘realist’ criticism based on the notions of ‘truth’ as correspondence to or correct reproduction of a referent object of study?” (86).

Works Cited

Ulmer, Gregory L. “The Object of Post-Criticism.” The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, edited by Hal Foster, Bay Press, 1983, pp. 83–110.

Derrida, Jacques. Right of inspection. Monacelli Press, 1998.

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