Date: Tue, 25 Oct 1994 10:27:31 -0800 (PST) From: Will Garrett-Petts <PETTS-AT-CARINS.CARIBOO.BC.CA> Subject: subjectivities & collage In her last post, Anne Berkeley asked "What I don't get is collage. What the heck are we referring to? Did I miss something? Or are we trying to "invent" a definition . . .?" It strikes me that the initial cluster of comments re: subjectivities implies an answer to some of Anne's questions: that is, in an academic setting, any conversation about an observed form (or form of response) will likely begin with "disciplinary" presuppositions. And any inter- disciplinary (or multidisciplinary) conversation is likely to foster all kinds of misunderstandings. I'd like to suggest, therefore, that we "frame" the discussion of "collage" by situating it within its various and competing disciplinary incarnations. Let me begin by offering some observations about the place of collage in literary studies/theory: Generally speaking, the notion of collage has been imported into literary studies as an equivalent term for "intertextuality": as a form of allusion, citation, or echoing. Interest has tended to focus on collage as a formal strategy linked to a larger rhetorical enterprise. Eva-Marie Kroller, for example, writes of collage as a means of unsettling the prosaic: it deconstructs "hegemonies, definitions, and unities." Similarly, Manina Jones (in an excellent "literary" take on the topic: _That Art of Difference: Documentary-Collage_) sees collage as affiliated with "a group of writings Mikhail Bakhtin refers to as the 'seriocomical genres,' which bring a multiplicity of disparate styles and voices into a single contextual space." In their most overt manifestation literary collages make extensive use of "inserted genres, such as letters, found manuscripts, parodies of high genres, and parodically reinterpreted citations..." (Jones). This dual process of insertion and ironic citation emphasizes the reader's sense of "mediation" and "materiality"? Will W.F. Garrett-Petts English & Modern Languages petts-AT-cariboo.bc.ca
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