Clinamen

I’m currently at work on an essay that works through some ideas that emerged awhile back and that addresses the same question I took on during my CCCC presentation. I thought I'd post a chunk of that essay here, and I'd love some feedback from readers.

My question is one of speed and composition. How has English studies (or the humanities more generally) dealt with questions of speed? Are we wedded to processes that aim to slow things down? If so, how well do these practices address the quickness of what Paul Virilio calls the dromosphere, an environment of globalized networks that continues to speed up. The essay I’m working on examines the compositional modes of two DJs – DJ Spooky and Girl Talk. These two address the problem of speed very differently, and a close examination of both can offer our discipline some different ways of thinking about writing in the dromosphere.

The essay begins (and began) in two places, 15 months apart:

Beginning 1 (February 15, 2009):
I’m sitting in the Alamo Drafthouse Move Theater in Austin, Texas. I settled in for Rebirth of a Nation. The film was billed as a remix of the influential and wildly racist film, The Birth of a Nation. The director/DJ of this remix was DJ Spooky (a.k.a. Paul Miller, a.k.a That Subliminal Kid), an artist who does much more than just spin records. Spooky is also an academic, and he is often in conversation with theorists such as Baudrillard and Deleuze. Spooky very much straddles the line between the academy and the messy “out there” of the “real world.” In many ways, Spooky brought DJ culture to the theoretical jet set, and his book Rhythm Science both describes and enacts the DJ remix by combining personal anecdotes and theoretical reflection. Spooky’s Rebirth of a Nation is an attempt to use the DJ method in a new medium. What he often does with sound (remixing various songs to create new soundscapes), he attempts to enact with film. By remixing the video, adding new visual elements, composing an original soundtrack, adding intertitles, and adding a voice over, Spooky reexamines The Birth of a Nation.

***

Beginning 2 (November 4, 2007):
I’m standing at the outskirts of mass of people. Part moshpit, part dance floor, this group has gathered around (and on) a small stage in Austin’s Waterloo Park. It is FunFunFun Fest, a small outdoor music festival. This group is moving to the music of Greg Gillis, a.k.a Girl Talk, a DJ who specializes in the “mash-up.” Girl Talk’s mash-up tracks are comprised of dozens of songs. Mashing together ‘N Sync, Genisis, Ludacris, and Eminem (as he does in a track called “Once Again”), Girl Talk is a pop music enthusiast who uses a laptop and AudioMulch software as his instrument. Taking slices of songs, changing pitch and beat, and mashing them back together, Gillis transforms pop music. Night Ripper, one of Girl Talk’s albums, “contains about 6,250 variations on samples from 167 different artists” (Ian M.). In an advertisement for Microsoft (part of the “I’m a PC” campaign), Gillis succinctly explains the goal of his performances: “I’m a PC, and I make people sweat.” In this same ad, he expresses a preference for “raw expression” over “formalized training.” This “raw” approach is evident during the Waterloo Park. During the performance at Waterloo Park, a sweating and shirtless Gillis screams a command that he repeats at many of his performances: “Let’s move together!”

***

Globalization and a networked society mean that distance and time have collapsed, and this collapse means that textual transmission is speeding up at a staggering rate. In response to this predicament, Paul Virilio calls for a better understanding of our contemporary environment of speed. Virilio describes our environment of speed as the dromosphere, a word derived from the Greek dromos meaning a race, a racetrack, or the rapid delivery of speech. Virilio asks us to become dromologists in our attempts to understand speed and the accident, and this is where our inter-disciplines should be most questioning traditional practices. Many of our disciplinary practices are not dromological. In fact, one antonym of dromos is scholê, which can mean leisure, rest, ease, or idleness. And, as you might have guessed, scholê is the root of a word near and dear to our hearts—school. If the “dromologist” is “the analyst of the phenomena of acceleration” (The Original Accident 11), then scholars are often focused on slowing things down.

If dromos evokes speed and races (as in a hippodrome or a racetrack) then scholê evokes a leisurely stroll around the peripatos (as in Aristotle’s Peripatetic School, where Aristotle and his students would take leisurely strolls while discussing philosophy.) But Virilo’s description of the dromologist is telling: ”the analyst of the phenomena of acceleration.” Could we not rethink the dromologist as a practitioner rather than an analyst? Rather than critiquing speed, might we think of ways that the dromologist could make use of it? DJ Spooky’s film (and his book Rhythm Science) reveal that he has a great deal of faith in critique, in slowing things down, and in the practices of scholê. The voice-over in Spooky’s film is a perfect example of this approach. That voice-over slowly guides the viewer through the film. Girl Talk takes a very different approach. Never slowing down to explain himself and urging his audiences to get as out of control as possible, Girl Talk offers a more dromological approach. But what would such a dromological approach offer English studies? This is the question I am asking and (possibly) answering.