General

Started by TCU's ENGL 80703, Seminar in Digital Rhetorics, this wiki comments on Greg Ulmer's Avatar Emergency. While there is some (limited) summary, this wiki is devoted to furthering the concept avatar through rereadings and recontextualizations. Not to follow in Ulmer's footsteps, but to seek what he sought.

This isn't just an informative wiki; it's a conversation. So you'll often see us all working ideas out. Sometimes there will be questions waiting to be answered. Feel free to offer an answer or ask another question.

In the spirit of Avatar Emergency, we are allowing our avatars to emerge across the wiki. So, while individuals are responsible for individual pages, each page is written by many people, maybe even you!

Organization
Why 13 chapters?

Why a series of short chapters? Is his organization electrate (is that a word?)?

Chora
Chora (13, 28, 54, 91-95, 110, 114, 117, 130-133, 142-146, 155, 159-162, 166, 169, 171, 174-178, 192-3, 207-8, 246-252, 256) is a term taken from Plato. It means space or place, but really stresses the space between (queue DMB) subject and object, life and death, knowledge and ignorance, etc.

Per our class conversation around approximately 5:50 p.m. on April 24th, 2014, Chora is going to be something different in every chapter. This is an inductive approach to explaining chora and it's messiness is to be appreciated because it presents possibility.

Flash Reason
Ulmer defines Flash Reason (7-8, 12-17, 24, 28, 30, 33, 42, 46-9, 54, 56, 73-80, 86-8, 93-8, 100-1, 113, 117, 121-3, 128, 132-4, 138, 141, 145, 146, 151, 160, 164-5, 168, 173, 180, 190, 195, 197-8, 203, 209, 212, 216, 227, 234, 236, 238, 242, 249, 254) as "a deliberative rhetoric for public policy formation, making democratically informed decisions in a moment, at light speed, against the thread of a General Accident that happens everywhere simultaneously" (ix).

Multitude
Multitude (11-13) See chapter 1 Prudence. Ulmer works from Paolo Virno, but Hardt and Negri would be appropriate interlocutors as well.

Problem
Problem (5) Ulmer says prudence is another name for problem. To my mind, this links to Deleuze[ and Guattari]'s use of the term problem in What Is Philosophy? Deleuze says philosophy is about articulating problems. Every concept is an articulation of a problem. Once you have the problem, the concept falls into place. What's the avatar analogue here?