Prezi Project (with additional shot)

Binary Metalepsis on Prezi

Prezi Project

Binary Metalepsis on Prezi

Trope Diagram

The review last week in class was very helpful in that it led me to diagram the operative slots of my Prezi in relation to Kovitz's project. 

Kovitz 

Tenor: utopian social planning 

Vehicle: pig farming 

Trope: evokes the horror concentration camps 

Contaminates the Tenor: The conceit-link between utopian social planning and pig farming renders the former grotesque, especially in the instances where the material signifiers of pig farming (eg., barbed wire) correspond with the stuff of concentration camps.

My Case 

Tenor: standardized testing based curriculum 

Vehicle: the Jacquard Loom (first machine reader) 

Trope: evoke a sense of Derrida's theories of writing and his critique of metaphysical hierarchies 

Contaminates the Tenor: The metalepsis of the tenor and vehicle should emphasizes the ontological import of technics (ie., machinic reading) on the conception of knowledge in contemporary K-12 education policy. 

In pataphysical terms, I'd like my Prezi to--if nothing else--"exhaust the imaginary potential" of standardized testing as a practice for learning via machinic reading. The trope then should at least open a space for considering modes of learning/writing with machinic reading other than the literate metaphysics of standardized testing.

Creating Creations

One of the more relevant and provocative ideas presented in Bok's book on Pataphysics comes in the later pages in his chapter about the Oulipo group.  The oulipo writers, says Bok, were trying to make "creating creations" rather than "created creations" -- texts that act as "a catalyst rather than an artifact" (79).  In other words, such a text "is not a message produced by a person" but rather a "program produced by, and for, a device...designed to make its reader become a writer" (77).

Though I'm making no formal attempt to do so in my Prezi, perhaps this notion of the creating creation bears some application on the potential uses of Prezi.  Since Prezi does allow (if you keep your project public) anyone to copy and then manipulate any published Prezi, one could approach a Prezi project less in terms of classical rhetoric and more in terms of procedural rhetoric -- with the aim of creating a Prezi to act as a platform for other people write in network with one another (networked by the fact that they share your initial Prezi as a creating creation with which to generate writing).

Playing with Utility

In his examination of the four types of games, Caillois indicates the importance of acknowledging non-productive and non-useful forces at work in any event.  Of the four attitudes/games, we saw that game theory based its theory of human behavior exclusively on the competitive, win-at-all-cost drive assumed in games of agon.  In the objections to game theory, we can see that part of its failure to recommend sound strategy in every situation lies in the fact that not all situations/games are based in agon.  Driven by alea, mimicry, or illinx, players will willingly resign themselves to fate, non-rationality, and vertigo.

Relevance to my project: Education reform based in the measure of standardized testing sees the problem-solution entirely in terms of agon.  They point to a lack of motivation -- they say a competitive, performance-based salary will push teachers to "win" the extra money by going the extra mile for their students.  Standardized tests act as the figure of the official/referee and --true to the spirit of agon -- it is regarded with the utmost authority and respect.  The test is also the stadium where students are judged against each other, ranked based on their individual, indisputable (lack of) achievement.