A Rough Start to Ulmer

I do not mean to be intentionally critical or cranky.  In fact, academic discourse too easily turns to criticism - tracks/ruts that I want to avoid getting stuck in.  Yet, I can't help but start off this reading of Ulmer with a shaking of my head.  It's going to be work for met to get on board with this one.


I will begin by saying that there are some things in his work that I personally find neat - the whole notion of "inventing electracy" for instance is pretty compelling.  The big hangup I have right now, though, is the necessity of the MYSTORY to the whole enterprise.


To be honest, I do not think that the MyStory is an essential part of inventing the internet in particular or electracy in general.  I do not.  I'll even go so far as to say "It is not."  While creating one's MyStory may very well be an electrate way of imagerically composing and autobiography, it is simply not really a cornerstone to electracy.  Does Ulmer say that it is?  Well, certainly there is LOTS of the book left to go - don't get me wrong.  At this point, though, it seems that he is setting up the MyStory to be a part of his subjective, bottom-up approach to knowledge/solutions/expression/invention.  In Electronic Monuments, Ulmer makes clear his desire to have the EmerAgency work as a challenge to artificial institutional homogeneity/limitation of choices.  Electracy ideally will afford new, unique voices to be heard.  But WHY is the MyStory a critical component for this?  I really do not think that it is.


I am not saying that the MyStory is useless.  Certainly no.  In the context of Ulmer's pedagogy, it could be seen as one of any possible number of assignments, similar to the variety of assignments one might find assigned in a traditional, literate composition course.  Write a creative short story.  Write an expository essay.  Write an autobiography.  Now, write that autobiography with your new/emerging/developing electrate knowledge.  (Oh, and this electrate autobiography should be based on images -- a wide image/emblem, etc.).  This is beneficial.  In a composition course, a major goal is teaching the students to write - and the autiobiography is a vehicle for such.  The MyStory is a vehicle for getting us into electracy (and getting electracy out of us), but it is not an essential/necessary component of electracy.


Now, one might say that the subjectivity argument made above is why the MyStory is so critical to electracy.  That seems to embrace certain philosophical paradigms that have their own set of problems (and benefits, sure).  Even if one ascribes to such a philosophical position, a robust introspective examination explained through the wide image/emblem seems like definitely one creative idea, but not THE creative idea - and certainly not one that serves as any sort of lynchpin.  Ulmer argues that "identity behavior or subject formation is as much a part of an apparatus as are technology and institutions" (7), but the examples he gives at the end of the Intro and other examples like the ByStory do not seem to indicate this linkage that Ulmer hopes for in the context of the MyStory particularly.  I suspect that is because this linkage does not exist.  It seems that the Image is an artificially necessary element of the MyStory just as the MyStory is an artificially necessary component of inventing electracy.


Will this "increase my creativity" (8)?  Perhaps.  Actually, probably.  But so would an assignment that asked me to compose a fictional short story - and do it electrately.  AND that would not run up against all sorts of problems with a MyStory - like the desire NOT to Self-Disclose.  Or the limitation in choosing a pseudo-fixed image/emblem (I KNOW I am going to have an electrate version of Buyer's Remorse at every stage of this process). Ulmer says that "the unexamined life is not worth living" (8), but examination does not require composition or broadcasting of said examination.  


A couple last thoughts - First, I may be waaay overreading Ulmer's claims.  Perhaps he is not at all saying that this is a cornerstone to electracy.  Perhaps it's just one particular assignment that he finds profitable and uses as a way to get students engaged in electracy.  If that's the case, though, I do not understand why so much of the work is devoted to the MyStory instead of looking more directly at electracy.  Is the MyStory just his excuse to do psychoanalysis?


Second and finally, Ulmer seems to speak directly to folks like me in the Introduction, saying, "Students are not asked to "believe" but only to suspend their disbelief while trying the mystory as a genre for simulating the wide image" (8).  While that still leaves my question about the image being artificial as well, I guess I'll give it a whirl.  I will suspend my disbelief - but only insofar as it prevents activity.  I will not suspend its function as critical skeptic throughout the process.  I do not think that would even be possible.