A rhizomatic approach to fashion

As part of the performances, concepts and ideas being explored as part of the Fashion Continuum event, I want to ask – and suggest answers to – three questions central to the theme of 'A Rhizomatic Approach to Fashion'. These observations offer an introduction to, and contextualisation for, 'The Fetish Moment' live performance by Gary Needham and Amelie Duchow, which will follow immediately afterwards

Digital Funds of Identity: Funds of Knowledge 2.0 for the digital generation?

This paper is a theoretically orientated analysis that synthesises the literature on Funds of Identity with the literature on digital identities. It makes the case for considering Funds of Identity as more than just an enrichment of the Funds of Knowledge approach by suggesting that it is in fact a development. This article also extends the concept and methodology of Funds of Identity by situating identity within a digitised interpretation of social interaction. It does this by exploring the role that avatars and virtual learning environments could play in the development of online identities and their potential application within the classroom. The literature on funds of identity is then synthesised with the literature on new technology, identity and digital literacies This article also explains how digital funds of identity could be used in relation to domain specific knowledge which is illustrated by focusing on English literature and secondary education

Beyond the Single Story: How Analog Hypertext Facilitates Representation of Multiple Critical Perspectives in an Art Museum Object Study Gallery

This project utilized a form of arts based educational research described as analog hypertext to develop interpretative material representing multiple critical, theoretical, and disciplinary perspectives on objects in a university art museum’s object study gallery. Drawing on scholars’ recommendations for postcolonial interpretation of non-Western art, the project created a web of information, which simultaneously revealed and critiqued the underlying ideologies and power structures shaping the museum’s display in an effort to change existing interpretive practice. The project developed five color-coded thematic self-guided tours—art as commodity, spiritual practice, technology and cultural evolutionism, mortuary rituals, and postcolonial perspectives—presented to the public as an interpretive exhibition invited visitors’ contributions. This paper explores how the analog hypertext functions as both a research tool and a content delivery device for the representation of multiple critical perspectives, fostering interdisciplinary perspectives and visitor meaning-making in the process

Wreading, Performing, and Reflecting: The Application of Narrative Hypertext and Virtual World Experiences to Social Work Education

In this dissertation I propose the use of a new media composition of narrative hypertext, performances in a virtual world, and a dialogic process of writing to provide a continuum of learning opportunities in social work education. I suggest that the structure of the hypertext narrative, embedded with hypermedia, mirrors the dissociative aspects of traumatic memory. I argue that work with the multivocality and multisequentiality of narrative hypertext emulates the process of discovery in the clinical interview. The immersive component of work in a virtual world deepens the realism and affective impact of simulations and creates opportunities to practice and demonstrate engagement, assessment, and intervention skills. The writing component of the new media composition actively engages students in a dialogic process that hones the development of self-reflexive practice and a professional social work identity. In developing the project, I enlisted the input of two groups of key informants. Content experts provided background that informed the narrative and scripts. A second group of faculty, students, and practitioners provided input on project design and identified potential barriers to success and anticipated outcomes. Informants suggest that the continuum of media engages students with a variety of learning styles, offers safe ways to practice skills as a precursor to interviews with actual clients, and allows for exploration of diverse identities as an avatar. Potential barriers include the time and resources required to learn new technologies and the potential for students to be triggered by trauma content. Informants offered recommendations to address the barriers. Three changes were immediately incorporated into the structure and content of the project to address these concerns

Interactivity - Hypertextuality - Transversality. A media-philosophical analysis of the Internet

My considerations are organized into three parts. In the first part I expand upon the influence of the Internet on our experience of space and time as well as our concept of personal identity. This takes place, on the one hand, in the example of text-based Internet services (IRC, MUDs, MOOs), and through the World Wide Web’s (WWW) graphical user-interface on the other. Interactivity, the constitution characteristic for the Internet, stands at the centre of this. In the second part I will show how the World Wide Web in particular sets in motion those semiotic demarcations customary until now. To this end I recapitulate, first of all, the way in which image, language and writing have been set in rela-tion to one another in the philosophical tradition. The multimedia hypertext-uality which characterizes the World Wide Web is then revealed against this background. In the third, and final, part I interpret the World Wide Web’s hypertextual structure as a mediative form of realization of a contemporary type of reason. This takes place on the basis of the philosophical concept of tranversality developed by the German philosopher Wolfgang Welsch

What is anarchism? A reflection on the canon and the constructive potential of its destruction

Contemporary debates in anarchism, particularly the conceptual debates sparked by the development of post-anarchism and those surrounding the emergence of the anti-globalization movement, have brought an old question back to the table: what is anarchism? This study analyzes the canonical representations of anarchism as a political movement and political philosophy in order to reflect on the ways in which that critical question, 'what is anarchism?' has been answered in mainstream literature. It examines the way that the story of anarchism has been told and through a critical review, it discusses an alternative approach. For this purpose, two seminal canon-building texts, Paul Eltzbacher's The Great Anarchists, and George Woodcock's Anarchism have been identified and their influence is discussed, together with the representations of anarchism in textbooks describing political ideologies. The analysis shows how assumptions, biases, and hidden ideological perspectives have been normalized and how they have created an official history of a political movement. In challenging the official account, this study highlights the exclusions and omissions (third world anarchists, women anarchists, queer anarchism and artistic anarchism) that have resulted in the making of the core. The question of how to tell the story of anarchist past carries us to the shores of postmodern history where theoreticians have been discussing the relationship between past and history and the politics of representation. The anarchism offered in this study demands an engagement with a network-like structure of information rather than a linear, axial structure. Consequently, this study aims to show several layers of problems in the existing dominant historical representation of one of the richest political ideologies, anarchism; and then to discuss ways of representing the past and especially the anarchist past, to seek an answer to a principal question: what is anarchism

(Generic Pronoun) Creates: Anarchism, Authorship, Experiment

My work develops a postanarchist literary theory that repositions the reading and writing of experimental texts as activist practice. Following the most recent trends in anarchist theory and political philosophy, postanarchist literary theory merges the primary concerns of classical anarchism with shifts in the conceptions of power and the State born out of poststructuralism. Focusing specifically on the ways that the experimental text complicates the traditional relationship between author and reader, my project emphasizes how these experimental texts make manifest the role of language in a radical conception of the common. The concept of language as a part of the common is one shared, implicitly, by all the poets in my project, in some form or another, and to account for both the aesthetic and political anarchism of their experimental approach to authorship and readership, my dissertation takes on an experimental form. As both an insurrectionary tactic and a means of navigating the potential limitations of a more traditional dissertation form, my project was first produced as a series of short single-author chapters linked through hypertext, and these were distributed via an open-access blog that invited reader contribution. My project sees a theory of alternative and experimentation in action in experimental poetic texts that are concerned with an anarchist activist practice on the level of the disruption of the author-function. We can see the intersection of postanarchism and poetry in the way John Cage reappropriates source texts in “62 Mesostics re Merce Cunningham” (1973), or the way Jackson Mac Low writes to and rewrites Gertrude Stein in The Stein Poems (2003). This intersection is represented differently in Denise Levertov’s call for reader responsibility in The Jacob’s Ladder (1961), or in Robert Duncan’s call for reader community in his Passages sequence (in Bending the Bow [1968] and Ground Work [1984,1987]). It becomes radically feminist in the experiments with authorship seen in the revisionist appropriations of Susan Howe (Eikon Basilike, 1993), the indeterminacy of Erin Mouré (Pillage Laud, 1999), the racialized Language work of Harryette Mullen (Sleeping with the Dictionary, 2002), and communal politics of Juliana Spahr (Response, 2000)

PANOPTIC TENSIONS ON RHIZOME: UNDERSTANDING THE IDEOLOGICAL MODEL OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Among many different views and interpretations on the socio-technical underpinnings of social media in new media literature, clarifying two specific standpoints is important for the understanding of ideological model peculiar to social media. As a social phenomenon, the function of the social web, which encompasses social media, has two major concerns. While it is identified through the lens of egalitarianism as ever democratic media, which facilitate decentralized power dynamics and resistance to the dominant hierarchy, it is recognized that social media strengthen the centralized control by facilitating the surveillance of authority along with the technological advancement. Applying the methods of concept analysis, this paper first identifies three basic assumptions -social media, rhizome and panopticism- which are related to the said phenomenon. Then it critically scrutinizes how the concepts of rhizome and panopticism feature in the key facets of social media and their paradoxical functioning in the social media sphere. Dissecting the governing and end-user sides, it finally attempts to reveal the dyad and enigmatic ideological model of social media. KEYWORDS: social media, rhizome, panopticism, surveillance  Among many different views and interpretations on the socio-technical underpinnings of social media in new media literature, clarifying two specific standpoints is important for the understanding of ideological model peculiar to social media. As a social phenomenon, the function of the social web, which encompasses social media, has two major concerns. While it is identified through the lens of egalitarianism as ever democratic media, which facilitate decentralized power dynamics and resistance to the dominant hierarchy, it is recognized that social media strengthen the centralized control by facilitating the surveillance of authority along with the technological advancement. Applying the methods of concept analysis, this paper first identifies three basic assumptions -social media, rhizome and panopticism- which are related to the said phenomenon. Then it critically scrutinizes how the concepts of rhizome and panopticism feature in the key facets of social media and their paradoxical functioning in the social media sphere. Dissecting the governing and end-user sides, it finally attempts to reveal the dyad and enigmatic ideological model of social media. KEYWORDS: social media, rhizome, panopticism, surveillanc

Trials of the rhizomatic learner

How should educators respond to the whole phenomenon of ‘digital learning’? This question has been in vogue for the past twenty years or more and there is a need for a regular renewal of this question as societies change. This article will draw on some post-structuralist writing, particularly Deleuze and Guattari, to try to understand better the divide between the optimistic account and the pessimistic account of the effect of ICT on teaching and learning. It argues in particular 1) that ICT in its current form signals a paradigm shift in education—but this thesis is difficult either to prove or disprove; 2) that Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome provides us with a theoretical tool for understanding the pedagogical nature of this shift; 3) that this change is wider than literacy itself and announces posthuman elements in the socio-cultural environment of learning

Textual Assemblages and Transmission: Unified models for (Digital) Scholarly Editions and Text Digitisation

Scholarly editing and textual digitisation are typically seen as two distinct, though related, fields. Scholarly editing is replete with traditions and codified practices, while the digitisation of text-bearing material is a recent enterprise, governed more by practice than theory. From the perspective of scholarly editing, the mere digitisation of text is a world away from the intellectual engagement and rigour on which textual scholarship is founded. Recent developments have led to a more open-minded perspective. As scholarly editing has made increasing use of the digital medium, and textual digitisation begins to make use of scholarly editing tools and techniques, the more obvious distinctions dissolve. Such criteria as ‘critical engagement’ become insufficient grounds on which to base a clear distinction. However, this perspective is not without its risks either. It perpetuates the idea that a (digital) scholarly edition and a digitised text are interchangeable. This thesis argues that a real distinction can be drawn. It starts by considering scholarly editing and textual digitisation as textual transmissions. Starting from the ontological perspective of Deleuze and Guattari, it builds a framework capable for considering the processes behind scholarly editing and digitisation. In doing so, it uncovers a number of critical distinction. Scholarly editing creates a regime of representation that is self-consistent and self-validating. Textual digitisation does not. In the final chapters, this thesis uses the crowd-sourced Letters of 1916 project as a test-case for a new conceptualisation of a scholarly edition: one that is neither globally self-consistent nor self-validating, but which provides a conceptual model in which these absences might be mitigated against and the function of a scholarly edition fulfilled