Illegal Tender

Bob Dylan, well known music troll, trolled the Nobel Prize committee by barely accepting his award for literature and then delivering a speech quite late that was nearly as odd as the speech Donald Trump gave on innauguration day. The two speeches are odd because they seem to get that there are expectations for the speech – all speeches have this. By expectations, I mean that for audiences is it way more important that a speech do things with words rather than say particular words or make particular claims. This is how you can tell the difference between a journalist and a rhetorical scholar: Journalists always talk about what was said, what they should have said, and what’s really going on. Rhetorical scholars talk about what the speech did or didn’t do, and how it was crafted to do something. We’re not that interested in the particular truth or factacity of the content, mainly because it really doesn’t matter compared to the relationship of the rhetoric to the audience, and vice versa. 

Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent. I’m not going to compare Dylan’s speech to Trump’s anymore than that. The point is that speeches are meant to do things, to meet particular expectations, and when they don’t do that, people get really upset no matter how true, factual, or good the content might be.

Bob Dylan has been accused of plagiarising or at least getting the major content of his Nobel speech from Spark Notes on the different literature he was praising. The Slate piece does a good job of lining up the suspicious passages with the original Spark Notes’ content (seems reasonable to think that Slate writers would have their old Spark Notes still readily available) to create a case of circumstance. 

The best part of this article is the bottom section where Slate asks some professors what they think of Dylan’s speech. These professors happily contribute to the increasingly present and popular attitude that college, and professors, are fairly irrelevant to the world by pointing out that Dylan would get no credit for turning something like that in as an assignment.

Really? It’s Bob Dylan first of all. Secondly, he has a Nobel Prize for Literature. Thirdly, what he says, whatever inspired it, is going to reach a massive audience of people that will be interested in his assemblage of things regardless of where he found them. Perhaps the fact that these professors so easily strip away context, ethos, situation, and exigence is the root of the sentiment that professors are not in touch with society, or are eccentric, or what have you.

Rhetorically, the speech is pretty brilliant for a couple of reasons. First is this great rhetorical device Dylan uses by praising the literature he likes in these very simple sort of terms. So simple in fact, they take on the rhetorical valence of synopsis, or summary. This is the connection to Spark Notes right here – he sounds like he’s giving a short summary, because he is. 

Dylan is quite brilliant in this address not only because of the content but because he’s turning it in “late” – this is also a part of the performance. It comes when he wants it to arrive. He provides his own views of “literature” that are limited and over simplistic. But the part that the professors miss in their comments is the part that should be front and center: 

By listening to all the early folk artists and singing the songs yourself, you pick up the vernacular. You internalize it. You sing it in the ragtime blues, work songs, Georgia sea shanties, Appalachian ballads and cowboy songs. You hear all the finer points, and you learn the details.

Here Dylan makes a direct case for what the professors consider plagiarism. He picks up the songs and plays them himself, as if they were his own. Such a pedagogy is not unfamiliar to the university (except for the professors-as-cops who absolutely love nailing students for plagiarism) where even in things like music or art students are encouraged to copy. 

More importantly, borrowing is a mode of rhetorical invention that Dylan considers to be literature, or responsible for the texts that he created that are now being termed “literature.” In his letter of acceptance delivered to the Nobel Committee by the U.S. Ambassador to Sweden, Dylan makes the point that he had never asked himself the question “Is my music literature?” until after he received the notice of the award. 

The major point here is that Dylan’s rhetorical mode is that of combination, collage, sampling, and retooling – it’s always been that way in his music. Instead of meeting the demand of the “fans” of the Nobel Prize by crafting some new and independent thought about the brilliance of global literature, music, or something, he provided what he has always done, recast and rework the sounds that are already out there. Dylan is very much aware of the impossibility – and the horror – of the “new thing.” The English professor, limited to the classroom, a space where she or he can use power over others to discipline them into modes of writing and producing, valorizes this “newness” to the point of pursuing students who plagiarize to the point of expulsion. 

The metaphor of disciplinary plagiarism reminds me of countries that have unstable currencies and pass laws banning the use of foreign, stable currencies for transactions. Nobody listens or cares, and it just winds up hurting the government. In most daily interaction, people will use the foreign currency because it has value. Only in official circumstances will they follow the rules. Such a situation has a very large risk of further declining the value of the local currency, at least attitudnally, since now there is another reason to discount it.

Plagiarism is the most limited mode of engagement one can have with a text. In the university it is seen as little more than arbitrary discipline at best, and at worst is seen by students as an impossible demand to create something new. If “newness” was the academic standard, we’d all be unemployed. But the thrill of enforcing rules and demonstrating power is pleasurable and addictive. 

Instead of this mode of engagement, it would have been nice to see some deeper, more critical response with Dylan’s speech “as literature” or “as exemplar of the literature that Nobel is honoring him for making.” instead, professors seize the opportunity to display their irrelevant power instead of perform the important academic mode of “professing:” “Here is, in passionate detail, why intellectual work matters.” Instead what we get is “rules is rules.” Pathetic. 

Plagiarism, if taught at all, should be taught as a rhetorical mode of the academy, where one tips one’s hat to those who have inspired her. This is the opposite of hip-hop or other sorts of musical sampling where the onus is on the listener to be conversant enough with the literature to “get it,” to smile and nod when the sample appears, understanding what the rhetor/rapper is doing. Academia is the opposite, where the audience smiles and nods when they see the blatant footnote, or the citation marring the fluidity of the text. It can also be thought of as cooking, where at some restaurants the list of ingredients and their sources are provided (the vegetables come from such-and-such farm in this nearby city; the beef is grass fed from this ranch, etc.)  Such “sourcing” builds credibility for sure but more importantly it provides the aesthetic boundaries for the joyful and valuable experience to occur – nobody would want to attend a football game where there were no lines painted on the ground or goal posts set. Without those things, the experience is not apprehended, cannot be apprehended as such and the joy, the value, is an impossibility. This is why plagiarism is punished, because it makes the value, the joy, the benefit of the work an impossibility. 

But so many professors love to be cops it will never be taught this way. The near sexual thrill of “nailing students to the wall” for challenging the authority of the professor is too much joy to give up, especially if it means spreading that joy around. Professors are special; they won’t let you forget it!

 

 

Blood Diamond

 

 

Responses to violence against government officials are perfect opportunities to recast the violence of the normal political process as peaceful, non-violent, productive, natural, and normal. Paul Ryan’s response to the shooting of congresspeople engaged in baseball practice is a masterful example of the power of rhetoric to craft a world where there is only one possible response to the event, and that response reifies a world where politics, as they appear in material and social form, are the inevitable natural extension of oh-so-good-and-noble humanity. Such moves risk Burkean debunking. But Ryan, by “converting upwards” is able to transform the normal legal violence of the House of Representatives and the U.S. Government into the only possible oppositional stance toward violence that caring human beings can take. 

Examining the situation with some loose Burkean terms, we can see the scene and the event are perfect for Ryan’s task. Arguably nothing is more perfectly American than Members of Congress practicing baseball at sunrise for an upcoming charity game. The shooter believed he was attacking corrupt elements of the government, eliminating a disease. By choosing this scene and event for his attack, he was obviously attacking America. Scene is an easy one for Ryan to use for his defense of House-based violence as healthy and normal, as opposed to shootouts on baseball diamonds. 

This is seen as not only a national site of amusement, but not a political scene at all – never mind that a former staffer of a congressman who is now an executive for Tyson Chicken was present at the practice. He certainly wasn’t playing baseball. His presence suggests the “normal” operation of the political system, with “insider baseball” present at actual baseball without any sense of irony whatsoever. Ryan points us to a photo of Democrats praying as important for his thoughts today – and why not? The other “team” – literally and figuratively – has put aside its differences in order to support those who were attacked. It’s just a game after all; there are more important considerations than politics/baseball here. 

The agent, another easy pitch across the plate for Ryan. The shooter, we were quickly told, was a rabid supporter of Sanders (who quickly denounced all violence within politics in a nested debunking move par excellence) as well as someone who turned to abuse as a problem-solving tool in his own life. Such a figure is unsympathetic, and clearly not a political radical, a critic of the system, or anything like that. As an opportunist, he believed that if the government would not “listen to reason” they were a problem and should be wrangled into submission. This agent is easily sub-human. Ryan uses this context in order to construct this as an attack on a family, something that we might be able to call the “national family” or “the family members that represent us.” It is brilliant to gesture toward the agent’s history as an abuser toward his family and this attack as automatically casting the congresspeople as “family.” He strongly and persuasively suggests that the House is our family as well.

This is bleeding into purpose now, which Ryan calls “a test.” The purpose of the attack was to test our basic humanity. Are we going to remain human, or strip that humanity away? This brilliant move begs the question of the presence of human caring within national politics, the House of Representatives, or the government: What would such caring look like? Would it be a bill? A rider? Does it leak out of the restrictive formal rules on debate? Ryan is persuasive though because he transcends all of that through the metaphor of “family.” He also puts the congresspeople in league with those who might have suffered from a home invasion. A criminal barged into our home, attacked us, and wants us to respond with violence, or perhaps celebrate violence.

Notice there is no discussion of the agency – a powerful rifle which the video of the shooting indicates – this is no normal hunting rifle. Not much discussion about the weapon has emerged beyond the predictable and over-simplistic smug “I told you so’s” by the NPR liberal set. It is not to Ryan’s advantage at all to discuss this as a shooting – it is an attack. It is a violent attack. In this chamber, we neither use violence, nor do we attack. These are anathema to the work done in Congress. The video captured by mobile phone linked above provides a very convincing account of the attack as being primarily about agency – about guns. The “brave” capitol police engage in a shootout with the perpetrator, and it sounds as if they are losing.

This weapon is a very powerful one and might raise questions about how it was obtained, how someone who had a history of violent behavior obtained it, and what sort of system supports such a combination of events. Instead of a speech about how we must forbid violent people from access to weapons (agent-agency) or how violent people are disturbed and require our sympathy and help (agent-purpose) we get an attack on a family that forwards the best of human feeling and thought (act-scene). All other considerations (agency, agent, etc) fall by the wayside – which allows Ryan and his colleagues conduct their own “smuggled in” violence by the normal, textual means of legislation. 

But Ryan’s simplification into this as violence – pure and simple – is all he needs in order to convince us that we have been attacked, or that our family has been attacked. This is a test. Will we pass the test? Will we continue to hold on to our humanity?

Ryan says that nobody loses their humanity when they step into that chamber. A cursory view of American legislation might confirm that its a humanity-stripping chamber for others around the world. Perhaps it is the only safe spot in order to protect one’s humanity. Perhaps they know what humanity should be?

Ryan does not really escape the problems of debunking here. If politics is the polar opposite of violence, that violence has no place in the political in any conditions (a sentiment supported by Bernie Sanders in his comments as well) then those who are not served by political discourse, or who perceive themselves excluded from political discourse, have a self-completing alternative: Violent action. This is rhetorically justified by the violent revolution this country cites as its founding moment. This is the inevitable price of smuggling in violence under another name while denouncing violence of one flavor as violence in toto. 

Ryan’s debunking of violence opens up a very clear and distinctive spot for violence in politics, especially when laws and policies are violent – from subsidies to health care to military spending, we see Foucault was right, “Politics is war by other means.” Without that admission, violence must be smuggled back into the House chamber under other terminology, further fueling a narrative of violent action. If the political system is violent but lies about that; if it won’t listen; if it has no place for those who perceive this as the truth, they will happily don the jerseys of “team violence” and engage in acts like we saw yesterday. We have a “home grown terrorist” problem, as the liberals like to call it – but this problem is one of a rhetorical relationship to violence. We must come to terms with speech as violence, with politics as violence. Ryan bought us more time to delay this confrontation, or perhaps he made us all feel comfortable in the burning building. After all it’s only a dry heat. Let’s continue or work as a family to perpetuate the best humanity has to offer. 

 

 

 

A Gaming Course

Easing my way into summer often comes with a return to PC gaming. Been spending a lot of hours messing around with various games, graphics settings, and improving my machine here and there to make everything work the way I want. 

There’s also a bit of thought or a suggestion that perhaps we should offer a gaming course in our department. There are a bunch of them out there, and they look pretty good. 

There are a few different ways to think about gaming from an academic point of view. The most obvious (that is the ones that don’t need a lot of articulation in the defenses) are for computer science departments, graphic design, programming, and the like. The other would be to use games for economic or sociological/anthropological work. For example, studying the “gold farmers” in World of Warcraft has been done many times and intersects this video games and their transformative impact on society bit. Psychology would fit into this as well. 

But there are some other perspectives that we are just now starting to articulate and take in which sound to me like good course orientations:

1. Video games as literature

2. Video games as culture

3. Video games as argument

The first one I don’t have a lot of interest in, and I wonder if English departments will take on. I know there are a couple of books out there that try to develop the video games as literature point of view, while bending a lot of the assumptions about what literature is/can be. They take inspiration and some approaches from the move to “film as literature” that most English departments have accepted. I think the burn is slow on this one. 

The second and third are the rhetorical perspective. If culture is considered to be a worldview that is sustained through performances and practices, articulated and re-articulated by the participants, then I think you have a nice rhetoric course. The rhetoric of video games would investigate how games present themselves, how players present themselves to one another and themselves, and how games function to hold up a certain approach to other worldviews (such as when a game is blamed for inspiring a violent act in the world). 

The third interests me the most and I think that very little has been said or investigated on how games function as arguments or at least as persuasion. Not totally distinct from the second approach, but distinct enough to warrant some comparison and contrast with the argumentation literature out there. Argumentation studies is far too formal in their approach to be a total buy-in from me, but it might open up a lot of different ways of thinking about games as more than consumer entertainment objects. 

As far as what would be covered, there are a lot of readings that could be assigned. There are a couple of documentaries on video games that would be good to watch, pointing out to the students how the films define or “place” video games by how they treat them in the film. Then there’s playtime. I feel like it wouldn’t be out of the question to have students open Steam accounts and have to buy and play through a few games as coursework. Playing through the games and experiencing them seem necessary. Not sure how you would get around it. Science needs a lab, literature needs texts, and we’d need to have games. The sum total of games that need to be bought would be under the cost of most textbooks for a typical course, so I don’t feel too bad about such a requirement.  The question is which ones should we take on? 

This course might be fun to design, but this summer I’m working on another course project as well, actually perhaps two courses, so this is just starting to incubate. I think that as video games become more and more a part of daily life their inclusion in the curriculum will be a certainty. What won’t be certain is the amount of thought or consideration teachers have put into such courses.