TOWARD ELECTRACY -- a conversation : Ulmer

Let's begin with some definitions...
Within your rich pool of neologisms there are two terms that I am immediately drawn to -- emerAgency and electracy. Would you define these for our readers? I am interested in how you see these concepts working in literary hypermedia and the Net in general.

Just a comment to get started, addressing first not the terms you mentioned, but just neologism business. We need a term for people who are excessively neologistic, people who overdo it and don't know when to stop or who otherwise abuse the neologism. Such a person is a "nomopest."

;)

Have I become a nomopest?

Rationale? A name provides a handle with which to drag some phenomenon into phenomenality, to make it thinkable, accessible. The German word for concept is appropriate: Begriff (the metaphor is: to grasp and to hold). Deleuze and Guattari in their final book, WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY, state that the function of the philosopher is to make concepts. This function is a return to the invention of philosophy by the Ancient Greeks, and by Plato specifically, who (as Eric Havelock argued) invented the first concept. That concept was "justice." Plato was the first to ask, "What is justice, all by itself, in its essence?" To think in this way, to ask this question, to categorize the world by means of the properties or features of an entity, and then to classify everything according to whether or not entities share certain necessary properties, is to think and reason in a literate way. Havelock's point is that this new way to reason about the world was made possible by alphabetic writing, and it took several hundred years to develop, from the time of the invention to Plato.

Literacy is an "apparatus," which is not a neologism but a common term given specialized meaning in media studies. I borrowed it from media studies to name the matrix of a language machine, partly social and partly technological, that operates in a given epoch. An apparatus is not only a technology (e.g. the alphabet, paper, ink etc) but also an institution and its practices developed along with the technology (Plato founded the Academy, the first school, and invented "method" -- the PHAEDRUS is the first discourse on method in the Western tradition -- and pedagogy -- the dialogue form -- and of course the categorical system of "concept."). One of Plato's inventions was to take the verb "to be" which served only as a copula at the time (helping verb to link subject and predicate: "Achilles is angry"), and add to it the function of ontology: asking after the "being" of a thing ("What IS justice?"). Aristotle gave the title METAPHYSICS (a neologism) to the book he wrote after his PHYSICS, in which he developed further this practice of defining entities in terms of their properties.

Language is the material of theory, to be worked and pushed as far as it may go, to make meaning.

"Electracy" is a neologism, then, to give a name to the apparatus of the emerging digital epoch. The nice thing about having such a term is not only the efficiency, but the categorical effect it produces. For one thing, it helps us see the difference between "media literacy" (whose goal is to protect from or defend against electracy by means of forms and practices specific to the previous apparatus; the equivalent for an oral person calling literacy "alphabetic orality"). It also is generative in that, knowing by analogy with literacy that digital technological shift is just one part of an apparatus, we may notice that the other parts of the apparatus shift are also well under way -- for example that a new institution has emerged within which is being invented the set of practices that will be to electracy what schooling and all that goes with it are to literacy. This institution is Entertainment.

An interruption and then I'll let you continue...

By no means would I call you a nomopest. Though, in my own work I am not sure I am beyond such a tag. To a certain extent, in my work the neologism is thoughtful play.

I am happy to hear what you've said, read what you've written here about electracy, because I now know that my own reading of the term is not so far off. I think that one reason that many web artists and hypermedia writers spend so much time these days talking about "reading" and "the page" is that they are positioned at something of a fulcrum between the literate and the electrate. Essentially, playing to both camps.

Many of the current concerns about readability in hypermedia work will fade over time as the notion of reading itself makes the shift, the scope of what we mean by "text" expands, and the expectations of hypermediated "intertainment" are realized as something other than a continuation of the literary institution. Of course, this is rather specific, whereas the term electracy has implications that reach beyond this context. But, this is one way I experience the shift to electracy in my own practice.

One of the problems I see with the notion of "media literacy" is that while this is worked out, while the new apparatus is wedged, squeezed and reverse engineered to fit into an already-existing box, the new apparatus continues to move, to advance itself. My concern here would be that the program is always a step or two behind and produces an obsolete set of values.

Please, continue...

The next term you asked about is "emerAgency." The emerAgency is a virtual distributed online consultancy, whose purpose is to deconstruct instrumentalist approaches to applied problem-solving by placing them in the context of electracy.

This agency began its existence as an animated .gif I made for a graduate seminar: I was learning how to create the "neon" effect. We were working with Walter Benjamin's argument that the time of criticism has passed, because the distanced "objective" position that it assumes is no longer available (if it ever was). Rather, Benjamin says, we live in the time of advertising, when it is not important what the moving red neon sign says, but the reflected glow it makes in sidewalk puddles (or words to that effect). The task of the seminar was to develop a neon method, a REASONEON to supplement the reasoning of literacy. Benjamin also stated that we live in an era of emergency. The result of that seminar (a few years ago now), was the formation of the emerAgency, to be consultants without portfolio, to develop a way to use the Internet to deliver Arts and Letters knowledge to public policy formation, specifically (to partcipate in community problem-solving).

This project is still underway and we are looking for partners and collaborators. I will have more to say about it as we go along. For now I'll just add a couple of points about what the agency has to offer. Actualy, the main thing it has to offer so far is its name. This name packs a lot of context. For example, it condenses not only emergency and agency, but also emergence, emerge, merge, urge, urgency. The "A" alludes to the methods of Derrida (differAnce), Lacan (Autre), Brecht (Alienation Effect), Hawthorne (the scarlet letter), Cixous (the ladder of writing). Just packing all that method into one little portmanteau exhausted by inventive powers for quite some time. The neon .gif is posted at www.elf.ufl.edu/ and is working its magic on cyberspace (You may have noticed some slight improvements in the world recently?).

First, I think the name; emerAgency alone is a grand offering. And, I think the .gif image is doing wonders in the world. :)

I have to admit I have played around with the particular Benjamin quip you mention. I see that it is posted at the emerAgency URL you mentioned.

"What, in the end, makes advertisements so superior to criticism? Not what the moving red neon sign says -- but the fiery pool reflecting it in the asphalt..."

In art school, when I first came across this it was related to me that this was a statement not only about the loss/lack of an objective position but that criticism was just not sexy enough to hold much weight with the masses. This sort of leads back to electracy, in that I see that reading of the Benjamin quip as making it clear that entertainment is an apparatus with seemingly more "oomph". In Benjamin's statement I see some correspondence with notions of allure and desire, as well as a further mediation between subject-message and subject-observer. A mediation that is additive -- an amplifier with reverb of sorts...

I think that the term emerAgency packs a punch for me because its allusions are so rich. I had thought of a few you mention -- primarily Derrida and differAnce, the Lacan and Cixous references. Plus, of course, the plays on the term emergency itself, which I make use of in LEXIA TO PERPLEXIA. At various points in that piece I use emUrgency, *.mergency, and plain ol' agency, and transmissive agency. The discussion there has much to do with user attachment to the network, or any "communifying" device really, something I have been calling technontology.

You mentioned public policy and community problem-solving. How would emerAgency work in this context?

The "emergence" in emerAgency suggests the approach to public policy formation, and to problem-solving in consulting. The apparatus of literacy from Plato through Descartes to contemporary consultants relied on the method of analysis and synthesis: Break the object of study down into its constituent parts and reassemble according to the principles of logic in order to make something intelligible. This method is powerful of course and resulted in treating the world in terms of "elements": Euclid's elements of geometry, the elements of the periodic table; the elements of writing.

The weakness of literate method, however, is that many "problems" are holistic or emergent, existing in the tangle of reality, but disappearing when reduced to elements. Theorists of identity today have discovered this limitation of dealing with subject construction in terms of one category or another of ideology (gender, race, class). They often state their understanding that individuals occupy different positions in each of the categories, and that to treat a subject in terms of one or the other category leads to contradictions. However, they are helpless to do anything about it in practice, since "method" as such is analytical, and the whole is something other than the sum of its parts.

"Emergence" takes into account the emergent character of "problem." I have been working with the Florida Research Ensemble on a prototype for a consultation, based on one of the most problem-ridden areas in Florida -- the Miami River. This 5.5-mile river that originally drained the Everglades into the bay is now a port. In downtown Miami, it is the site of the original city of Miami, and has been occupied by native peoples as long as there have been people on the continent. More than 34 agencies have responsibility for various aspects of the area, and every public policy issue there is and some not yet named are manifest in the daily life there -- pollution, drugs, crime, immigration, poverty, race...

The approach we are taking to the river is "choragraphy" -- another term that needs to be defined at some point. The basic idea is that choragraphy is electrate, and the first task is to explore the possibilities of a classification or categorization (a metaphysics) that is native to electracy. Most commentators on problem formation and policy politics note that problem- "finding" is as important as "solving," and that the finding or "invention" of problems depends upon the categorization system of the culture or community. A different understanding of "category" will alter the policy landscape of the river, beginning with the very category of "problem" itself. Instrumental reason experiences the world as a set of breakdowns that may be fixed. Unfortunately, given the limitations of analysis, each solution contains an emergent set of unforeseen consequences.

Choragraphy (whose principles I introduced in HEURETICS, 1994), applies Arts and Letters practices to the river, beginning with the use of arts photography as a means to make the site thinkable as a whole. I won't go into this experiment at the moment, but we can come back to it later. Suffice it to say for now, in the context of the theme of this post, that "emergence" and "chora" involve an arts exploration of "quantum" consulting. My immediate project is to write a rhetoric for electracy.