Reflection

“Reflection” (5 pts; 300-500 words)

1) Evaluate your project (briefly), from perspective of class topics/issues and terms:
new (or innovative) type of discourse? mode of aesthetics rather than judgment (how so?)? or, shortcomings at points in belief or rational discourse?
Unique function of expressing affect? (how and to what extent?)
Diverse composition as “assemblage,” a hybrid genre, with resonance between heterogeneous elements?

2) “Self-reflexive” knowledge, from composing and reading (most important).
Results of our experiment? (semester-long; review)
New insights? Implications?

(about humanities methodology; discourse, literature, narrative; experience, memory/forgetting, history/past; intuition, “attunement”; review blog).

Prospective application or potential: of “critical expressionism”? “assemblage” writing? — “attunement” and “resonance” modes?
Advantages or limitations of this type of work? Implications?
(recall the opposition between TV : passive receivers and Internet : active producers; also recall “critical stance” toward “inheriting” information, within our entire paradigm)
Finally, discuss the implications or obligations about the ethical aspect and specific responsibility in undertaking this work — regarding the intuition, expression, and memory/awareness of others’ experiences.

This style of discourse is unlike anything that I have ever worked with in my life. However, I think that it is useful because all of the different parts of media work together to create a more powerful affect, and to better express the experience through different mediums. There is something to be said about being able to see a photo of the people or things that you read about, and even more about being able to see into their thoughts by viewing the types of images that come to their mind and the multimedia that resonate with them. Because everyone has that one song that speaks to them above all others, and to share someone’s experience as well as their innermost feelings and thoughts is very special. While I believe that the aesthetic mode of discourse is more apt at producing affect, which is important to have when attempting to express another’s experience, like everything, it may need a factual perspective to supplement the discourse. People might wonder, if this is what abuse is like for her, what is it like for everyone else? Or, what is being done to help the victims of abuse? By combining these modes of expression, you get an assemblage that melds the best of both worlds to produce the best possible expression. In order to intuit the resonance between various pieces of the assemblage, active intuition is required. The reader does not passively have the narrative handed to them, as with a linear novel. Rather, it is up to the reader to fill in the gaps, to intuit the whole story from what is presented.

As a result of our experiment, I believe I have a better understanding of what it is like to express another’s experience, and to express my own experience. I started out thinking it was an impossible task; and while I have realized that it is not one-hundred percent attainable, there are ways in which one can come extremely close. That knowledge is good enough for me; after all, since when can anyone say they’ve done 100% of anything? I have new insights into the difference between objective and empirical expression and subjective expression. I’ve learned how these modes can be effective alone or together. I plan to employ this method of discourse in my life if I ever choose to express experience again, whether it be my experience or the experience of another. An advantage of this is that I have found a new method of writing that I like very much and that I look forward to experimenting with and further developing as time goes on. The responsibility of taking on another’s experience is quite challenging; if that person really exists, there is always the chance that they will read it and tell you that it is all wrong. The unfortunate result of this is the realization that when you are expressing someone else’s experience, you are only expressing your perception of that experience, because you will never truly know what it is like to be then. Ethically that may not be sound, since it is just your interpretation, but it might also be important to attempt to express the experience, even if success doesn’t seem viable, just to say that you tried your hardest.