Think Electrate: Inventing Electrate Thinking Practices

Richard Smyth, C.M.Full DigressorUnderAcademy College 5 May 2013

Week 2: Orientation

Week 1 Review

--Introduced ourselves in Google Community--Orientation to electracy--Forum discussions about “decepts” and

“infinition”--Google Hangout discussion

Week 2 Preview

--Continue Week 1 discussions--read Jeff Rice “I am McLuhan”--Week 2 discussion questions in forum--launch discussion of key questions--Google Hangout: time to be determined

The Rhetoric of Cool

Jeff Rice proposes six strategies for making meaning in electronic environments:

use of chora appropriation juxtaposition commutation nonlinearity imagery

Appropriation

--collage/montage--writing as theft (Rice 57)--“The mix speaks to you of the bricolage of place where the ‘self’ exists as a deployed network of personae” (Rice 69)--“We often appropriate new identities and alter-egos to parallel the rhetorical moves we make…” (Rice 70)

Creating Deceptacles

--on developing alter-egos--Ulmer's “Mr. Mentality from Bang Pot” as

conceptual persona --Jeff Rice's out-of-control academic “Dr.

Fabulous” and forgotten rap star “Pelzure” (Rice 163, n. 7)

References

Rice, Jeff. The Rhetoric of Cool: Composition Studies and New Media. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007.

Ulmer, Gregory. “Mr. Mentality.” 3 September 2009. Viewed 5 May 2013. Youtube video. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwI-2agKOng>

Contact

Richard Smyth, Ph.D.rsmyth1964@gmail.com