25 Cents/Sense: a Popcycle on Objectivity, Subjectivity, and Arcade Games

Schumacher 2

Owen Schumacher

Professor Sarah J. Arroyo

English 671 (Digital Rhetoric)

16 December 2015

A statement on…

25 Cents/Sense: A Popcycle on Objectivity, Subjectivity, and Arcade Games

“…[T]he popcycle is adapted from a general observation in the history of discovery that when someone invents…it is done not only by means of a specific disciplinary knowledge, but also and irreducibly by means of elements from public and private stocks of stories and images.”

—Gregory L. Ulmer, Electracy

Before detailing the thesis and rhetorical moves made in this video presentation, 25 Cents/Sense: A Popcycle on Objectivity, Subjectivity, and Arcade Games—whose content and the explanation thereof will form the basis of this paper—perhaps first in order is a brief overview as to the form and function of the popcycle, an exercise in invention as proposed and put forth by Gregory L. Ulmer. Ulmer relates some telling insights as to the application and possibilities of this exercise in “The Making of ‘Derrida at the Little Bighorn,’” a chapter from his book, Electracy: Gregory L. Ulmer’s Textshop Experiments. Here, Ulmer delivers some helpful explanations as to the popcycle’s aim, which is to be understood as inherently heuristic and interdisciplinary in nature. Indeed, seeing it as a discourse-crossing means of generating and synthesizing either rhetorical or theoretical content, Ulmer describes the popcycle as “a circulation of ideas through the principal discourses and their institutions organizing our culture” (Ulmer 199). For Ulmer, then, the popcycle is characterized by an oftentimes free-associative “circulation of ideas” as drawn from “the principal discourses,” by which Ulmer means the topoi grounded in anywhere from academic to cultural to even personal and experiential knowledge. Specifically, Ulmer goes on to qualify such “principal discourses” at play within the popcycle—four in total—as “expert knowledge (institutionalized in university disciplines), explanatory knowledge (the level of Hirsch’s cultural literacy, already institutionalized in K-12 schooling), everyday life common sense (family discourse), and myth (entertainment industry, popular culture)” (199). Thus, the popcycle is by its nature intuitive, lateral, and combinatory in approach, simultaneously acquiring and amalgamating content from all discourses, academic or otherwise. That the popcycle is initiated and composed by such electrate logic—i.e. a logic of sometimes sideways semantic connections, as made possible through puns and wordplay, for instance—per se makes it an exercise demonstrative of how one’s own mind idiosyncratically forms connections, be they logical or not so logical. Ulmer speaks to this phenomenon when he states that “[t]he mystory,” another invention of Ulmer’s which is incidentally informed and propelled by the logic of the popcycle, “show[s] its author the direction of his or her personal inventio” (200). Thus, in practice, i.e. by performing and engaging in the interdisciplinary exercises of the popcycle (or mystory, as the case may be), one is at the same time necessarily made aware of his or her “personal inventio”—that is, how one’s mind arrives at associating and synthesizing semantic content. In sum, the popstory is a heuristic exercise at once interdisciplinary and synthetic, electrate and generative. Its findings are arrived at directly and indirectly, with neither means privileged over the other. “[L]ike a compass that always points north,” as Ulmer says of the popcycle-driven mystory, “it can be used to go in any direction, to assist in the solution of any problem” (200). Ultimately, the popcycle is both a heuristic process and a rhetorical means of, as Ulmer says, “assist[ing] in the solution of any problem.”

Consequently, the so-called “problem,” to again quote Ulmer, placed at the center of my video presentation, 25 Cents/Sense, is perhaps best described not so much as a “problem” as an age-old source of controversy—both in and outside the academy—and that is the apparently oppositional relationship between science, with its emphasis on discovering and verifying that which is objective and knowable, and the arts and philosophy, which often in turn aim to register and make sense of more subjective phenomena, as in matters of perception and being. It is the thesis of 25 Cents/Sense, then, to—in the Derridean spirit of post-criticism— “trace” the text of this objective-versus-subjective controversy and thereby uncover its “openings of joints, articulations…[and] where the text might be dismembered,” as Ulmer recommends (174). Furthermore, again calling on Ulmer’s Electracy—a book whose techniques in many ways provided the impetus and groundwork for 25 Cents/Sense—my video is one which aims to harness, closely read, and reimagine the language of its host text, whose substance is drawn from the apparently competing vocabularies and agendas of science, the arts, and philosophy. In other words, 25 Cents/Sense aims to derive meaning from the grammatological stuff of its host text—specifically, science, the arts, and philosophy—by in effect, as Ulmer might say, “touching [its collective] language” (174), i.e. by considering and repurposing the very words, the very vocabularies of these disciplines. Indeed, to analyze one’s host text “in its own words,” so to speak, is according to Ulmer vital to post-critical theory and practice:

[D]econstruction is accomplished in fact by borrowing the very terms utilized by the host work itself—“difference” from Saussure, “supplement” from Rousseau, and so on—and motivating them, detaching them (following the principle of the gram) from one conceptual set or semantic field and reattaching them to another (but always with the most systematic attention to the potentials or materials available in the word itself). (Ulmer 174)

Here, Ulmer stresses how “accomplish[ing]” a post-critical analysis by necessity involves the “borrowing” of “the very terms utilized by the host work itself,” with the relocation of such “terms” to a different and even seemingly opposed “conceptual set or semantic field.” Thus, in the spirit of this deconstructionist technique, 25 Cents/Sense likewise calls on and closely reads the words of its at once physical-objective and metaphysical-subjective source text, whose verbiage of science (“practical,” “knowable,” “empirical”) and philosophy (“ontological,” “khôric,” “Derridean”) are, as Ulmer might say, playfully “detach[ed]” and “reattach[ed],” i.e. deconstructed and repurposed in novel ways, ultimately with the aim of tracing the apparent dichotomy between these two disciplines. Thus my popcycle, by actively drawing upon and demonstrating the post-critical techniques of “touching language” and “borrowing” from “the host work” (174), has been composed with the intention of “go[ing] in [a] direction,” to again use Ulmer’s compass metaphor, toward “the solution of” (200) some kind of reconciliation or “truce” (Schumacher 10:43) between science, the arts, and philosophy.

As to the maneuvers and authorial decisions made in service to such a reconciliation, 25 Cents/Sense electrately arrives at many of its observations through many forms of wordplay, including and especially Ulmer’s “puncept,” which Ulmer tells a bit about in, again, “the Little Bighorn” chapter of Electracy. According to Ulmer, the puncept may be seen and employed “as an alternative way to bring items into a set—alternative to the concept which gathers items based on similarity of properties” (206). Thus, itself a play on the logic of the concept, the puncept aligns “items into a set” not by banding together such “items based on similarity of properties” (as does the concept) but rather by laterally uniting “items” based merely on the homophones or cognates of a given word. Speaking to the creation of his own mystory, for instance, Ulmer attests to the “luck[y]” “connection[s]” and “cloud of possibilities” made possible through punning on the word “gall,” by which he uncovers the otherwise unlikely connection between “the Frenchness of Derrida” (France was formerly called Gaul) and “‘gall’ as an emotion of bitterness” (207). While Ulmer concedes the puncept does not always produce rational or helpful results—he is “still curious,” for instance, “what [his gall puncept] might mean” (207) —this “experiment in invention,” as Ulmer calls it, pervades and is instrumental to the logic of 25 Cents/Sense, right down to its title. Indeed, the very organization of my video—and how it by design arranges an “interchange” (4:46) between notions of objectivity and subjectivity—is derived from a puncept on the quarter dollar, as there is “25 cents,” that hard asset with a numerical designation which very practically enables you to play an arcade game (styled as scientific-objective, allied with science), and then there is “25 sense,” a phrase which suggests hyper-sensorial awareness and personal perception (styled as metaphysical-subjective, allied with philosophy). Moreover, in service to my popcycle’s thesis of unifying these seemingly antagonistic forces, I further pun on the tension between “cents” (objective) and “sense” (subjective) by arguing these phenomena are ultimately “just two sides of the same coin” (5:52), with the implication that science, the arts, and philosophy are complementarily needful of each other. To put it succinctly, Ulmer’s puncept is indispensable to the flow and organization of 25 Cents/Sense. Without it, my popcycle would not only be shorn of its title but also its characteristically electrate and lateral logic, and by extension the conclusions which necessarily arise from this logic. However, with it, Ulmer’s so-called “experiment in invention” (207) is consciously and demonstrably pushed to its limits.

Ultimately, this popcycle’s fast-paced editing and at once humorous and serious manner are carefully choreographed to mimetically enact, i.e. to perform, the electrate and free-associative movements of one’s mind. Thus, not unlike the personal, ontological experience of brainstorming or thinking more carefully or single-mindedly, there are passages in this popcycle which speed by at a rapid-fire clip (0:13-33) and others which slow down to a pace of thoughtful reflection (7:32-58). Further, perhaps the pithiest explanation as to the stylistic agenda of 25 Cents/Sense—how and why it moves the way it does—may actually be found in its primer regarding the mechanics of the popcycle, a portion comprising the first third of the video: “[T]he popcycle as an exercise may be…understood as a performance,” it states, “a demonstration of how the mind synthesizes and forms meaning, be it by means sometimes rational and sometimes irrational, and yet always in that way inherent and distinct to the mind” (3:16-34). Likewise, 25 Cents/Sense is styled and edited with the intent to “demonstrat[e],” i.e. to mimetically enact and dramatize, the electrate manner in which “the mind synthesizes…meaning,” a curious and beautiful process as “rational” as it is “irrational.” My popcycle’s editing and delivery, then, is consciously fashioned after the mentality, the psychic nature of how the mind in stops and starts arrives at its connections and conclusions. Thus, in my presentation of 25 Cents/Sense, I hope to in both form and content, as Ulmer encourages us in Electracy, “show the direction of [my] personal inventio” (200) and put on display, least in part, the workings of my mind—for all its curiosity as an at once interdisciplinary, manic, and logical organ.

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