Research Essay #2

After reading the entire book, and discussing it in class, I have realized that O'Gorman was leading his readers by the hand and guiding them, with baby steps, through his theory. I thought this was funny, since the book was written for scholars, but O'Gorman knew that some scholars could not be trusted to make it to the end of the book with an open mind. So instead of presenting his theory outright, he hid it in the chapters, only allowing it to be shown a little at a time. However, this approach made reading E-Crit more enjoyable for me, because it isn't an easy read, and the baby steps allowed me to follow along with his theory by taking in a little at a time and understand it.



In Chapters 1, which was one of the hardest chapters for me, O'Gorman talks about the repressed remainder. In this sense, "the remainder is the 'other' of academic or scholarly language. It is deemed as nonsense or rubbish, classified as cute or juvenile, the stuff of children's literature, fantasy, and folklore, and, lately, unstylish poststructural writing" (O'Gorman 4). The remainder that O'Gorman is talking about here are words and phrases that evoke textual imagery. Words that are often seen as frivolous by the Republic of Scholars, and therefore not recognized, but in his opinion they shouldn't be and can't be ignored anymore. He described these types of imagery as hypericons, which he describes in further detail in Chapter 2.



Chapter 2 was another confusing chapter for me, but not as confusing as Chapter1. In this chapter of E-Crit, O'Gorman talks about the hypericon. A mental image, both visual and textual, that encompasses more than one idea. Here is where O'Gorman really starts making his case about academics needing to change. He is posing the theory that what was once just a pretty image is a whole world in and upon itself, and that this world does indeed have a place inside the University, and its high time that was recognized.



Now for my favorite chapter, Chapter 4. I was able to follow along with this chapter much more than the previous chapters. Perhaps this is because the information itself was not entirely new. We have talked about what effects New Media has on society in several classes, and I have watched T.V. shows, an influence in and of itself, about just this. When I read this chapter, I was aware that the idea of how New Media is changing society and therefore needs to academics was the crux of what O'Gorman is writing about in E-Crit, but to take this theory out of general society and resettle it inside the classroom is not a notion that I feel has been discussed in as much detail before. Sure, I have used New Media techniques inside the classroom, much as I am now, but I have never really thought about how it has changed the way in which I learn. For instance, right now I am sitting on my couch typing this blog. Sure it is a research paper, but its not the typical research paper. There are as many strict guidelines that my blog has to be constrained by. This allows more creative freedom which makes it more enjoyable to do. The more enjoyable something is, the more I want to do it, and the more I'll remember it.



In the last chapter, O'Gorman pulls together all of the baby steps that he has uses to bring the readers to the end into one hop. Here O'Gorman proposes that there should be a happy medium between New Media techniques inside the classroom and traditional teaching methods, such as the essay. It wasn't until it was pointed out to me that this is what, as seniors, we are doing. We have to write a twenty page essay that follows strict guidelines, but we also get to use our skills in a practical way too. We get to create some sort of technical aspect that represents or sums up what we have chosen as a topic. In the paper I have limited creative leeway, but with the technical aspect, which I have chosen to do a film that is riddled with hypericons, we get almost total creative reign. Which do I like better? Why the technical aspect of course, but I don't completely not like the essay portion either.



My film is visually representation of the five stages of grief. Without the research, I can't represent it accurately. So do I necessarily need to write a paper? I think that I do. If I wasn't writing the paper, I wouldn't have stumbled across the five stages of grief in the first place. To me essay writing is not so much busy work, but rather a way to get students to think and to expose them to new ideas. So perhaps a balance between New Media and tradition is a good idea.

Works Cited

O, Marcel. E-Crit: Digital Media, Critical Theory, and the Humanities. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press Incorporated, 2006.

Note: I have not finished with this yet. I know it was due today, but I really don't like the way it flows and so I will be changing it on Friday.