ENGL 505B

Groan... It was supposed to be a pun, but I think that term is already in play... What struck me most about Stroupe's article was his refiguring of space and time in composition, from the representation of the textual space of Dublin in Joyce, to the representation of home in Moeller's Meet My Family, ads on Amazon, etc. Stroupe is drawing on the form-content relationship in aesthetic theory and certainly homing in on one of the major revolutions of the cyber era; that of the contemporary chronotope. Space (form) is no longer a simple shape to be filled, but a complex relationship with a medium that may (or may not) help dictate the space to be (or to attempt to be) filled. When we consider the chronotopes relation between space and time, and consider that not only have technological innovations revolutionized space in composition, but also our relationship to time, the issue that we are facing seems to loom gigantic. (At least to me). If cyber space is space that is ultimately formless (and thus contemporary composition is at least also somewhat formless by extension) or privy to a myriad number of forms, and if the temporal dimension is either immediate or effaced, what then do we do for our composition students to teach them to compose effectively in this era? What is the appropriate textual relationship to this media, to space and time, in basic terms of texts? Is this a function of postmodern, high capitalist urges for the "new," for the unexpected, both in space and time? Is innovation of form as well as content (parody here would seem to be the perfect genre for this, and Stroupe makes saavy use of Jameson and others for that end) expected? Is that why we stress the multimodal, non-prescriptive writing methods that seem to be in favor now?

Stroupe's article just made me pause and reflect and try and see a connection between the form of space and time in the new media and what the effect would be on composition studies implicitly, how our own relationships to that particular chronotope would then lead us to a certain set of basic assumptions and expectations...