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Subject: [CTHEORY] 1000 Days of Theory: Algebra of Identity
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CTHEORY THEORY, TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE VOL 28, NO 3
*** Visit CTHEORY Online: http://www.ctheory.net ***
1000 Days 017 12/10/2005 Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker
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1000 DAYS OF THEORY
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Algebra of Identity:
Skin of Wind, Skin of Streams, Skin of Shadows, Skin of Vapor
==============================================================
~D. Fox Harrell~
1. Introduction & Braiding
--------------------------
Here, I braid three cords together, identity, algebra, and poetry.
Identity is the subject matter, algebra is a tool for representing
sign systems of fluid identity, poetry is used as the enactment of
the view of identity described with the algebra. I also use algebra
to aid in the development of computational techniques for
implementing a system that generates prose poetry in response to a
user's prompts -- a call and response form which is thematically
fixed but variable in particular expression and metaphor.
The subtitle of this paper: "Skin of Wind, Skin of Streams, Skin of
Shadows, Skin of Vapor" is meant to evoke a restricted notion of
identity, and the insubstantiality of that notion. A focus on skin is
obsessive and solipsistic. I am expected to write about it in a paper
on identity. When ethnic identity is made binary and colorized, we
talk in bodily terms, of skin. It is evocative -- it is a membrane,
protecting, projecting, coating, an exterior, a superficial, obvious
and immense organ. I shan't disappoint these expectations of skin
obsession, but when I write of the traits of ethnic identification
these are just symbols for a classification based conception of
social identity.
Wind whips, shrieks, or is unnoticeable. Streams bears small
creatures below rocks, rush with energy and transparency. Shadow
obscures, cools, relaxes. Vapor moistens, hides, causes ships to
crash, is fluid but hangs in the ether. If we can imagine these four
skins, we can also imagine skin of tangled roots, illicit love,
unscratched itches, crossed senses, angels, or demons. I shall get
back to this later.
What I wish to conjure is a sense of the fleeting nature and
contingency of classification based identity as it is typically
conceived of. I propose why some current notions of identity seem
damaging, and discuss alternative ways to address it. My belief is in
internalizing and exposing this very contingency, accepting this as
the reality in how we perceive ourselves, others, and the concept of
identity as a whole.
In the beginning I would like to motivate the discussion of identity.
2. Identity
-----------
Jacques Derrida's version of deconstruction is one of the most
influential schools of thought among young academic critics. It
is salutary in that it focuses on the political power of
rhetorical oppositions -- of tropes and metaphors in binary
oppositions like white/black, good/bad, male/female,
machine/nature, ruler/ruled, reality/appearance -- showing how
these operations sustain hierarchical world views by devaluing
the second terms as something subsumed under the first.
-- Cornel West, "The New Cultural Politics of
Difference," _Out There: Marginalization and
Contemporary Cultures_, 1990.[1]
...black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and
Catholics -- will be able to join hands and sing in the words of
that old Negro spiritual: 'Free at last! Free at last!
-- Martin Luther King Jr., "I Have a Dream," August
28, 1963.[2]
It is crucial to be cognizant of the network of forces determining
your identity. Though it is not possible to regulate one's identity,
it is necessary to be one of the forces contributing to its
expression. Since even "objective facts" can be viewed from
innumerable perspectives we can utilize so-called "objective"
historical knowledge and its impact upon identity formation in ways
that supports self-empowered living, this a functional view of
identity. Functionalism means fluidity in a world where dualist
classification systems inhabit even oppositional strategies to
prejudice such as Aime Cesaire's seductive song of negritude[3], or
Judy Chicago's well-appointed "Dinner Party."[4] A functional view is
inherently going to be assailed as constructionist fiction, and yet a
view that intends to transcend the quagmire of dualist identity using
a strategy of essential "sameness" is going to be assailed equally:
An example:
Alison Saar, Sam Gilliam and Martin Puryear are three artist found in
the same categorized section of _ARTODAY_[5], a book on contemporary
art. Regarding Alison Saar, the author writes:
...Alison Saar has also looked at African fetish statues as a
source of inspiration. ... The problem with all these attempts
to make a new Africa in America is that the spectator is aware
of the artist's self-consciousness, of an attempt to create a
kind of 'primitivism' which doesn't come into existence
spontaneously.
Of Sam Gilliam, the author writes:
Gilliam is, and has always been, an abstract painter, whose work
eschews overt symbolism. ... Gilliam has caused considerable
irritation amongst African-American militants, and has sometimes
been accused of 'Uncle Tom-ism' because of his insistence on
being judged purely as an artist, not as a generic
representative of minority culture.
Of Martin Puryear the author writes:
Martin Puryear, now perhaps the most celebrated African
sculptor, is similarly insistent, despite the fact that he is
one of the few African-American artists who has direct
experience of Africa ... Attempts to align his work with African
artifacts have been made by enthusiastic critics, but seem
fruitless in the face of Puryear's own statement that, when in
Africa, he felt like an outsider -- not part of the customs of
the people among whom he lived.
This collection of statements, representative of a tendency in art
critical writing, promotes the stance that the racial identity
assigned to the three artists takes precedence over the content and
formal issues of the work by placing these artists all in the "Racial
Minorities" section in the book (which happened to be the second to
last section, the last being "Feminist and Gay"). The organization of
the book indicates the author's hierarchical view of the relative
importance of different groups of artists. New York artists deserve
their own section (which does not include artists from New York that
happen to be of racial minority groups), and British artists are
important enough to be segmented by content, hence a section on
British Figurative Painting, as opposed to ethnic identity.
Curiously, contradictorily, the author simultaneously racially
classifies these artists, emphasizes racial debates surrounding the
artists, and denies the artists self-determination in assertions of
heritage. The African American artist cannot be seen non-racially,
but can only be seen as an African American artist who wishes to be
seen non-racially. At the same time, the African American artist
cannot be seen in connection with any ancient historical tradition or
culture, as such attempts are "self-conscious or tenuous."
With such forces seeking to constrain social and individual
conceptions of people, it is imperative to seek techniques and
perspectives capable of disarming such constraints. The dominant
categories such as "white" are unmarked, invisible, in their
dominance in the _ARTODAY_ example above. But reliance upon the
binary relationships imposed by marked versus unmarked categories are
not used only from the top of the hierarchy down. Many times even
socially aware and proactive groups define themselves and their
relationships to others in binary terms. Black, white. Majority,
minority. Patriarchy, oppressed. White-privileged,
affirmative-actioned. A world of binaries is concrete and actionable.
Humans have a need to classify, yet when it comes to identity
politics binary and discrete classification reinforce systems of
social oppression. Sociologists Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star
emphasize this point in their 1999 book _Sorting Things Out:
Classification and its Consequences_[6]:
Each standard and each category valorizes some point of view and
silences another. This is not inherently a bad thing -- indeed
it is inescapable. But it is an ethical choice, and as such it
is dangerous -- not bad, but dangerous. For example, the
decision of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service to
classify some races and classes as desirable for US residents,
and others as not, resulted in a quota system which valued
affluent people from Northern and Western Europe over those
(especially the poor) from Africa or South America. The decision
to classify students by their standardized achievement and
aptitude tests valorizes some kinds of knowledge skills and
renders other kinds invisible. ... For any individual, group or
situation, classifications and standards give advantage or they
give suffering.
Aside from the problems introduced via the marked/unmarked dichotomy,
we are also always left with phenomena that fail to be classified
when subjected to discrete measures. In the racialized world of black
vs. white, the catch-all category of "other" is typically understood
in terms of whether the current person under consideration is more
black-like or white-like, or as an Indian-American colleague
encountered while traveling through rural Colorado "you ain't black,
you ain't white, so what is you?"
Dualities carry power and have long informed diverse agendas ranging
from the software/hardware split in the von Neumann architecture in
computer science[7] to anti-racist ideology in groups like the Black
Panther Party (Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panther Party
described the strategic use of essential classifications, black
nationalism as a necessary political response to oppressive social
conditions, as a stepping stone on the path toward a society
embracing broader humanist values[8]). While illuminating "possible
origins of cybernetic theory in African culture, ways that Black
people have negotiated the rise of cybernetic technology in the West,
and the confluence of these histories in the lived experience of the
African diaspora," Professor Ron Eglash notes that:
Opposition to racism has often been composed through two
totalizing, essentialist strategies: sameness and difference.
For example, Mudimbe (1988) demonstrates how the category of a
singular "African philosophy" has been primarily an invention of
difference, having its creation in the play between "the
beautiful myths of the 'savage mind' and the African ideological
strategies of otherness." In contrast, structuralists such as
Levi-Strauss have attempted to prove that African conceptual
systems are fundamentally the same as those of Europeans (both
having their basis in arbitrary symbol systems)." [9]
Aligning under binary banners makes the power struggle very clear,
though it is disenfranchising for those who seek a sensitive
expression of personal identity. A mathematical analog to binary
thought, Boolean logic, is quite powerful, in its limited domain
[10]. It is sound. Anything that you can prove in a reality described
by Boolean logic is entailed by that reality. This means that in any
possible world it is true if you can prove it ('possible worlds' here
means being able to look at all of the possibilities for what is true
and what is false). Furthermore, it has the converse property that
anything you can say in Boolean logic that is true in all worlds, can
be proved. It is complete.
Of course, this line of thought is metaphorical, but it has
interesting implications when we indulge this thought experiment.
This type of binary thinking leads toward finality of thought,
imperial statements, and reification of ideas. There is no way to
express a concept such as she is "woman and not a woman" so that it
is true, though socially it is perhaps possible to think of
situations where such a statement might pertain. An interesting note
is that as soon as logic is expanded to include generalizations, with
statements such "for all women who are sports fans," the logic is no
longer complete. The comfort provided by its restrictions is taken
away.
There is a non-metaphorical component to inquiry involving
mathematics and identity too. Aside from exploring African influences
upon computer science, Ron Eglash also notes traditions of novel
technical cultural practices within the African diaspora. An example
of such a practice, the GRIOT computational system[11] (discussed
below in section 5), which I programmed at the Meaning and
Computation Lab at the University of California, San Diego, has been
used to output prose poetry about a girl with skin of angels and
demons in response to user input about domains such as Europe,
Africa, girls, whiteness, devils, and seraphs. The system's output
represents a subjective and transitory notion of identity. The system
is equally based in mathematics (algebraic semantics and
specification) as it is in semiotic theory and cognitive linguistics
approaches to identity.
Thus, I invoke mathematics here as a device to, metaphorically and
literally, allow us to move away from the standard binary way to view
identity. I seek new blends involving identity, new ways to combine
thoughts, without deviating from the subject matter. Discussion of
algebra provides a means to do so.
3. Algebra
-----------
Algebra may be considered, in its most general form, as the
science which treats of the combinations of arbitrary signs and
symbols by means defined through arbitrary laws.
-- George Peacock, _A Treatise on Algebra_, 1830. [12]
'Watch out, men! You are not so pretty that you can handle a
woman's blade!' But as Raven turned the blade by the lantern
(Bayle squinted because two threads of light lanced from the
gnarly hilt), she was still grinning. 'Ah, you men would take
everything away from a woman -- I've been in your strange and
terrible land long enough to know that. But you won't have this.
See it, and know that it will never be yours!' She laughed. (It
wasn't one blade on the hilt, Bayle realized, but two, running
parallel, perhaps an inch apart: as she brandished it, the
lantern flashed between either side.)
-- Samuel R. Delany, "The Tale of Potters and
Dragons," _Tales of Neveryon_, 1978. [13]
In the Delany quote, the sword, a violent and masculine symbol, has
been transformed into a vulval feminine symbol in a matriarchal
mythology, no less violent. It is a combination of signs and symbols
defined through (seemingly) arbitrary laws of culture. Algebra deals
with the rules for how things can generally be combined. Since I
often work using this framework, these days I am sensitive to
blending in many domains[14]. The blending of concepts is contingent
and fleeting[15]. The national obsession of the U.S.A., identity, is
no exception. One obvious breakdown in traditional notions of
identity is creation of new ethnic identities by merging. Identity
also occurs in peculiar ways in different contexts, for example in a
market economy it is treated often as a commodity as we encounter
phenomena such as identity theft. It is important and crucial to
recognize and challenge inequitable power structures. One way to do
so is through understanding identity as a dynamic network as opposed
to a system of binary relations. The challenge is to do so within a
social context based upon the binary relation of standard versus
other.
In computer science, definitions from algebraic semantics are used
describe how information behaves purely based on syntactic
properties[16]. An algebra consists of a set of values and operations
defined on those values. For example, you could have a set of
"people," and a set of relations describing who "rules over" whom.
There is a great deal of flexibility and nuance that can be captured
in even a simple algebra that is difficult to represent in terms of
simple inclusion or exclusion of people in particular levels of a
social hierarchy. We can also define semantic equations which
describe equivalences between syntactic elements. This means that we
are able to describe how elements are equivalent even if they are
named differently, we can translate between different syntactic forms
of the same thing. The real advantage of using algebra as a metaphor
for fluid notions of identity comes from the fact that the names used
to describe elements are arbitrary, the system of rules is what makes
the difference, not particular classifications. Formal notation such
as algebraic semantics is no more than a useful tool for precisely
describing a set of concepts. Reality does not conform to the
language of mathematics. Still, within its limited range of
application, formalizing ideas can be used more casually and
intuitively to add to analyses grounded in lived experience and
social context.
Far from using algebra as merely an evocative metaphor, in the
research of the Meaning and Computation Laboratory at UCSD we use
Joseph Goguen's algebraic semiotics, an approach to meaning and
representation that combines algebraic specification with social
semiotics, to represent sign systems[17]. We also use it to implement
construction of metaphors using ideas from conceptual blending theory
in cognitive science. We construct blends of concepts. Ideas such as
identity now can be blended with ideas such as commodities (in
identity theft), screen based icons (as avatars), and where identity
is blendable itself (concepts such as Hispanicity, whiteness, or gay,
lesbian, transgendered unity). Identity of one individual can be
blended with identity of another. For example the infamous American
football star O.J. Simpson was often referenced in news reporting on
the American basketball player Kobe Bryant's trial for rape because
both are African American sports figures. Note that this analogue
between sports figures is the result of a blend: Ishmael Reed notes
in a recent article from his ~Konch Magazine~[18] that the music
mogul Phil Spector was accused of murdering a white woman, the same
Phil Spector who reputedly rescued Tina Turner from the abusive Ike
Turner, but Spector has not been often compared to Ike Turner.
A feature of blending is compression, humans want to reduce concepts
to human scale in order to comprehend them better. Compression[19]
often occurs in blending where the blended space is used to visualize
something of a large scale in terms of a smaller one. In service of
this goal, pressure is exerted on the blending process in order to:
compress what is diffuse, obtain global insight, come up with a
story, and go from 'Many to One'[20]. In these terms, even a cursory
and ad-hoc analysis can prove illuminating regarding racism: in the
Kobe Bryant/ O.J. Simpson example, two individuals are taken to be
analogous because they represent the larger group, black male sports
figures (reduction of many to one). They are identified only because
they are used as representations of a larger concept -- the violent
black male. The "white" Phil Spector (also accused of murder) could
not show up in the compressed blend in this case, because he is not a
representation of that group. Tokenism can be seen in these terms --
one individual is used to represent the many.
It is important to remember that blends are often created on the fly;
they can constantly change; they are active. They execute and allow
for thought experimentation. They exist in larger networks and are
extremely dynamic and contingent. This contingency seems especially
relevant for discussing identity concepts. When we encounter others,
our conceptions of their identities are composed as blends. When
someone says "well I am really not that into sports," or "my mother
is Asian," or "I have converted to Judaism," our conception of that
person is transformed on the fly. The network of concepts that make
up the perceived identity of that person is changed. Currently I am
working on an algorithm to explore the construction of blends on the
fly for generating media. It is possible to imagine how such work
could be used to inform precise discussion about identity concepts.
4. Poetry
---------
If anything my desire here has been to demystify the curious
notion that theory is the province of the Western tradition,
something alien or removed from the so-called noncanonical
tradition such as that of the Afro-American.
-- Henry Louis Gates Jr., _The Signifying Monkey: A
Theory of African-American Literary Criticism_,
1988.[21]
Since the products of blending are ubiquitous, sometimes
spectacularly visible, it is natural that students of rhetoric,
literature, painting, and scientific invention should have
noticed many specific examples of what we call blending and
noticed, too, that something was going on. The earliest such
observation that we have found comes from Aristotle.
-- Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, _The Way We
Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden
Complexities_, 2002.[22]
Blending and metaphor are conceptual tools that can be used to
address this fluctuating view of identity. New views of an identity
can be introduced using metaphor and taken through transforming
phases with evocative effect. For me, the use of exaggerated
metaphors in poetry and literature can illustrate this idea. In my
own work this is a central device that I use. In my novel, a fantasy
entitled _Milk Pudding Flavored with Rose Water, Blood Pudding
Flavored by the Sea_[23], characters constantly change identity and
metaphorically transform. The fantasy in the tale arises from
elaborating these metaphors more than any other type of magical or
paranormal effects. For example, in the first half I describe the
tale of a type of black knight youth traveling from city to city.
Metaphor is used to describe the view of him through the lens of that
particular town.
In one example, Jal-R takes on a new role in the chapter "Men and
Mothers," his description is established and transformed as the
passage progresses. After this passage he transforms further:
The voices were indecipherable. The number of people from
far-away and near-away lands was greater than in years past. The
effect was disorienting as he walked through the market. Many of
the strangers shrank from him. His was a stark figure; black
silhouette with a flowing shadow cloak slipping behind him.
Despite recent sneers from his compatriot Black Riders, most
townsmen and women treated him with grand respect. The
strangers' fear came from the clear bearing of power and battle
with which he carried himself. He was a warrior, there was no
doubt. All talk of the diminishing public regard for the riders
was moot in the wake of his heavy black boots. He was an
undeniable force, a Black Rider. He was the essence of a rider,
he walked and a thunderhead-ominous threat surrounded him. Today
his merchant friends knew better than to approach him or joke at
his expense. He walked as if on a mission. The hilts of two
daggers swung at his sides. Knives formed delicate decorations
on the calves of his boots. There was no color on him besides a
touch of pink in the embroidered rose at his chest and
reflections in the hints of silver at his feet, waist, and cowl.
He opened the door to a nondescript long hall and stepped inside
to crying and a sanitary aroma.
A bit later:
Jal-R rocked the infant against his black padded breastplate. It
had been a trial to coax the baby girl to sleep. He often felt
ill at ease here and his queasy heart surely passed its
vibrations to the children. The other professional mothers felt
threatened by the alien image of brutality nursing their
charges, muscling himself into their world. All in the longhouse
felt as if their hearts beat through black gauze when Jal-R was
there...a dark sense of roles askew. Jal-R was unaware of many
of these perceptions of him, but the cloud that gathered each
time he walked in there was impossible not to notice. It
mattered little, he told himself, he had resolved to learn at
least some of the arts of the mother to provide for Ayoli.
My engagement with the idea of unstable, metaphorical, and
transforming identity did not begin with the Jal-R Black Rider
character. Reconnecting this poetry to the subtitle of this talk, I
also wrote of an expansive view of skin. My concern with my society's
obsession with skin peaked when I was around nineteen years old. I
created more than thirty types of skin and imagined life in each of
these[24].
These were skin such as: the skin of the man whose skin turned to
paper, the man whose skin was made of everything funny, the
balloon-skinned girl, the man whose skin was made of sexual
experimentation, the girl with noisy skin, the man whose skin was
pink but people called him white but didn't mean the color of pure
driven snow, the man whose skin was brown but people called him black
but didn't mean evil.
One such poem follows:
Skin normally has thin blue veins in it
But the man whose skin turned to paper
Knew that the thin blue lines on his skin
Were made from ink and not the flow of blood.
The lines were parallel to each other,
Yet because his skin curved
It was hard to tell whether the lines
Were standard or college rule,
And due to the fact that the man whose skin turned to paper
Had skin that was not a chalky white,
The thin red vertical line that ran perpendicular to the blue
lines
Was difficult to see.
One hole through his head
One through his duodenum
One through his tibia
So that although the size of a normal man
He fit in a three-ringed folder.
One pencil in each hand
So that, enabled by ambidexterity,
He could twice as quickly write and record
His thoughts and ideas
Images called doodles or tattoos.
Writings, poetry, and self-indulgence
Make a set of verse, a body of work
That begins: skin normally has thin blue veins in it.
For me, exaggerated, densely metaphorical, and shifting views of
identity traits have a liberating effect. It expands a sense of
possibility for self-identification. It also stimulates a skeptical
view of social identity politics in that it engages the inherent
limitations of hierarchical classification based identity, but also
declares its divergence from functional reality.
5. Call & Response, Improvisation & Conclusion
----------------------------------------------
But so often identity is forcefully, painfully imposed upon us
despite our agitation against its confines. A dynamic identity must
take into account immediate social context. In the African diaspora
there are many artistic traditions that negotiate the disjunction
between self-identity and social identity, between historical,
traditional identity, and identities of resistance. Dynamic
improvisation and call-and-response structures are familiar aspects
of pan-African narrative forms as diverse as the delta blues, Charles
Mingus's calling-out of the segregationist Governor of Arkansas in
"Fables of Faubus[25]," the penetratingly satirical fiction of
Ishmael Reed, hip-hop freestyle rhyming, and the African Brazilian
martial art and dance Capoeira Angola. The capoerista provides a good
example of shifting identity, he or she was originally a participant
in a multiform art that functioned as a ritual, game, martial art,
sacred space, and more, but that identity transformed as capoeira was
outlawed beginning in nineteenth century Brazil. Capoeiristas were
cast by the government as dangerous miscreants, potential
revolutionaries, or thieves and punished with imprisonment, lashings,
naval service, and even death. The identity of the capoeirista was
forced toward multi-veilance and malicia (deceptive trickiness).
Concurrently the capoeirista enjoyed respect and admiration of the
African identified populace, and the simultaneous demonization as
"primitives" and valorization as effective soldiers by the public
authorities and the Portuguese descended tourists, aristocrats, and
upper-class they intended to "protect." Recall for illustrative
example the War of the Triple Alliance (1865-1870), the bloodiest
conflict in Latin American history, during which Brazil's front line
consisted of mostly conscripted capoeiristas, enslaved Africans sent
across the Parana river to Paraguay to fight with the promise of
freedom [26]. Some of the most melancholy capoeira songs recall this
river as a soloist calls out and hears responses in the words "E
Parana":
E Parana
Eu nao vou na sua casa, Parana
E Parana
Pra voce nao ir na minha, Parana
E Parana
Porque voce tem boca grande, Parana
E Parana
Vai comer minha galinha, Parana
E Parana
Puxa, puxa, leva, leva, Parana
E Parana
Parana esta me chamando, Parana
E Parana
Me chamando pra jogar, Parana
E Parana
Minha mae esta me chamando, Parana
E Parana
Ve que vida de moleque, Parana
E Parana
The song translates in English roughly as:
Eh, Parana
I do not go in your house, Parana
Eh, Parana
For you go not in mine, Parana
Eh, Parana
Because you have a great mouth, Parana
Eh, Parana
You will eat my chicken, Parana
Eh, Parana
Pull, pull, take, take, Parana
Eh, Parana
Parana is calling me, Parana
Eh, Parana
Calling me to play, Parana
Eh, Parana
My mother is calling me, Parana
Eh, Parana
I see that hustler life, Parana
Eh, Parana
The repeated invocation of an historic place in the "New World" is a
common theme in African diasporic call-and-response lyrics. When
these songs are sung, new lyrics are often spontaneously improvised.
The creation of traditionally structured songs with new meanings,
especially layered meanings as in capoeira songs (the songs often
have double and triple functions within the art form) also serves to
create new identities for postcolonial contexts.
Written prose poetry[27] and its more recent descendant flash
fiction[28] ("short short" stories that encapsulate full narrative
arcs within extremely abbreviated word counts), traditionally have
not incorporated these techniques. On-the-fly improvisation has not
been incorporated for the simple reason that the nature of medium of
printed text is not dynamically reconfigurable. Computational media
have dynamic information structure and feedback loops built into the
nature of the medium. The output of my recent research combines this
type of prose poetry, dynamically reconfigurable and founded in
African and African American vernacular traditions of
signification[29], with the use of algebraic techniques to construct
imaginative metaphors on the fly. I have written a computer program
(in the LISP programming language), called GRIOT, that uses algebraic
semiotics as a foundation to generate poems line by line in response
to user feedback, poems that can be reconstructed on each reading
algorithmically, while maintaining core concepts and themes. I think
of this work as development of improvisational texts (active media).
The metaphors are fluid. From my vantage point, the cultural objects
of most interest are the GRIOT and ALLOY systems themselves and the
variability of the output in response to user input, not the
individual instances of output as cultural objects on their own.
The GRIOT system actualizes the winding together of the separate
cords of algebra, identity, and poetry in a cultural artifact. The
following text completes the braided cord with a series of
call-and-response poetic output in the same mould as those I created
many years ago. I conclude with a sample of output from the poetic
system entitled "The Girl with Skin of Haints and Seraphs" (the
user's input follows the ">" prompt, the italicized system's response
follows; the appendix below contains several more examples in detail
and a brief description of how the system works):
>Europe
europeans and beauty relish, create entitlement and cool ringing
in the ears of the girl with skin of smugness and kindness
blended with neck, red
>Europe
she worked raising imperialist, cherub children of her own
>Europe
death was better
>Europe
her spirit trusts that a nordic-beauty or epidermis arouses,
provokes awe desire
>Europe
a spectral tone pervaded
>Europe
sunbather and first-born envies and is now melaninated and
impoverished-elder, causing her eyelids to droop
>Europe
she knows that childish reverence of contradiction days will
fall further and further behind
Appendix
--------
The following is a brief description of the functionality of the
GRIOT system. Initially a poetic system designer inputs a set of
poetic narrative templates (clauses with wildcards that will be
replaced on each execution), a narrative structure that defines how
clauses can be composed, a set of theme domains that provide
information about a set of concepts, and list of keywords that access
each theme domain. The "Girl with Skin of Haints and Seraphs" system
works by establishing a set of theme domains such as skin, angels,
demons, old Europe, and old Africa, composed of sets of axioms.
During the execution of GRIOT, each time the user enters a term it is
scanned for relevance to the domains and a response is produced as
output to the screen. The system constructs conceptual spaces, using
the algebraic semiotic framework, and blends these to construct
metaphors using a conceptual blending algorithm. These are then
combined with narrative templates, in the case of "The Girl with Skin
of Haints and Seraphs," these are based on a model from
socio-linguistics research, a formalization of William Labov's
structure of narratives of personal experience[30]. This narrative
template is integrated with metaphors generated on-the-fly. The core
of the work is an algorithm called ALLOY that I wrote to model
conceptual blending, not natural language processing. What comes out
of it are conceptual spaces and axioms, not English sentences. For
the purposes here, I use the GRIOT system as a front-end to construct
a type of poetry, but in particular the guided combination of
concepts is the focus of the work. My longer term project involves
the generation of new metaphors driven by user interaction with a
graphical or game-like interfaces, resulting in blends of graphical,
audio, and textual media.
Three samples of poetic output follow:
(1) The first sample poem and a detailed description of its
generation follows. User input is differentiated by being preceded by
a '>' prompt. The system output is italicized. My commentary on how
some of the content of each line of text is generated follows the
system output. LISP code for an axiom describing subjective
information about the domain follows my commentary.
her arrival onto this earth was marked when first-born and
charcoal-girl
transforms to impoverished-elder or charcoal-woman
she worked raising snow-queen original-lady children of her own
the young lady would prevail
a caress across her skin scares up demon black
her failure was ignoring her wings and original-lady nature
and she felt glad
as she grew older she saw entitlement defiance wrinkles upon her
face
ebony-wood-like brimstone defines fetish bedrock,
the sign that let her know she finally really alive
>Africa
(her arrival onto this earth was marked when first-born and
charcoal-girl transforms to impoverished-elder or charcoal-woman)
The concepts of first born people, the impoverished elder, and
charcoal skin are selected from the 'Africa' domain in this opening
clause. The LISP axiom selected for blending is:
(axiom "is-now"
((constant "first-born" "person" afrika-space)
(constant "impoverished-elder" "person" afrika-space)))
>Europe
(she worked raising snow-queen original-lady children of her own)
The concept of the snow queen is selected from the 'Europe' domain in
this narrative clause. The LISP axiom selected for blending is:
(axiom "wears"
((constant "snow-queen" "person" europe-space)
(constant "wintery-skin" "object" europe-space)))
>demon
(the young lady would prevail)
The 'Demon' domain is selected, but not used in this evaluative
clause.
>demon
(a caress across her skin scares up demon black)
The concept of a demon is selected from the 'Demon' domain in this
narrative clause. The LISP axiom selected for blending is:
(axiom "stokes"
((constant "demon" "person" demons-space)
(constant "hate" "emotion" demons-space)))
>angel
(her failure was ignoring her wings and original-lady nature)
The concept of wings is selected from the 'Angel' domain in this
evaluative clause. The LISP axiom selected for blending is:
(axiom "covered-with"
((constant "wings" "person" angels-space)
(constant "feathers" "object" angels-space)))
>black
(and she felt glad)
The 'Africa' domain is selected, but not used in this evaluative
clause.
>white
(as she grew older she saw entitlement defiance wrinkles upon her
face)
The concept of entitlement is selected from the 'Europe' domain for
use in this narrative clause. The LISP axiom selected for blending
is:
(axiom "experiences"
((constant "european" "person" europe-space)
(constant "entitlement" "sensation" europe-space))
>juju
(ebony-wood-like brimstone defines fetish bedrock, the sign that let
her know she finally really alive)
The concept of an ebony wood fetish is selected from the 'Africa'
domain in this closing clause. The LISP axiom selected for blending
is:
(axiom "constructs"
((constant "ebony-wood" "object" afrika-space)
(constant "fetish" "object" afrika-space)
(2) The following is output produced when user input selects the use
of the 'Europe' domain for constructing conceptual spaces for
blending.
>Europe
her tale began when she was infected with white female-itis
>Rome
she worked raising bullet, spiked-tail children of her own
>Norway
in the shadows
>Greece
when she was no longer a child peasant, august-being marks
streaked her thighs
>Europe
her barabarian, impoverished-elder spirit would live on
(3) I conclude with a poem with generated content derived from
blending concepts from the 'Skin' domain with concepts selected by
the system.
>skin
she began her days looking in the mirror at her own pale-skinned
death-figure face
>skin
she peeped out shame, hate
>skin
finally she fell from a cloud and skin and black drenched days
were left behind
Notes:
------
[1] Cornel West, "The New Cultural Politics of Difference," _Out
There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures_, edited by Russel
Ferguson, Martha Gever, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and Cornel West. Cambridge:
The MIT Press, 1990.
[2] Martin Luther King Jr., "I Have a Dream," speech delivered
Washington D.C., August 28, 1963. Source: Ed Clayton and David
Hodges, _Martin Luther King Jr.: The Peaceful Warrior_, New York:
Pocket Books, 1968.
[3] Aime Cesaire, _Lost Body_. New York: Braziller, 1986.
[4] Judy Chicago, "The Dinner Party," mixed media, 1979.
[5] Edward Lucie-Smith, _ARTODAY_, London: Phaidon Press
Limited,1995.
[6] Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, _Sorting Things Out:
Classification and Its Consequences_. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1999.
[7] John L. Hennessy and David A. Patterson, _Computer Architecture:
A Quantitative Approach_, 3rd edition, San Francisco: Morgan
Kaufmann, 2002.
[8] Bobby Seale, The Black Panther Party, Cambridge: Alternative
Radio, originally broadcast February, 2, 1995.
[9] Ron Eglash, "African Influences in Cybernetics," _The Cyborg
Handbook_, edited by Chris Hables Gray. London: Routledge, 1995.
[10] Herbert B. Enderton, _A Mathematical Introduction to Logic_.
Boston: Academic Press, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,1972.
[11] Joseph Goguen and Fox Harrell, "Style as Choice of Blending
Principles," _Style and Meaning in Language, Art, Music and Design_,
Proceedings, Symposium at 2004 AAAI Fall Symposium Series, Technical
Report FS-04-07, edited by Shlomo Argamon, Shlomo Dubnov and Julie
Jupp. Arlington: AAAI Press, 2004.
[12] George Peacock, _A Treatise on Algebra_, 1830., from K. Meinke
and J.V. Tucker, "Universal Algebra," _Handbook of Logic in Computer
Science: Volume 1_, edited by S. Abramsky, D. Gabbay and T.S.E.
Maibaum. London: Oxford University Press, 1993.
[13] Samuel R. Delany, "The Tale of Potters and Dragons," _Tales of
Neveryon_. Hanover: Bantam Books, 1979.
[14] Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, _The Way We Think: Conceptual
Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities_. New York: Basic Books,
2002.
[15] Joseph E. Grady, Todd Oakley, and Seana Coulson, "Blending and
Metaphor," _Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics_, edited by G. Steen &
R. Gibbs, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1999.
[16] Joseph Goguen and Grant Malcolm. _Algebraic Semantics of
Imperative Programs_. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1996.
[17] Joseph Goguen. "An Introduction to Algebraic Semiotics, with
Application to User Interface Design," Proceedings, _Computation for
Metaphors, Analogy and Agents_, edited by Chrystopher Nehaniv.
Yakamtsu, Japan: 1998.
[18] Ishmael Reed. "CNN's Ku Klux Feminists Unleashed On Kobe,"
online, ~KONCH Magazine~, 2003.
[19] Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner. "Compression and global
insight," _Cognitive Linguistics_. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000.
[20] Ibid 14.
[21] Henry Louis Gates, Jr., _The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of
African-American Literary Criticism_. New York: Oxford, 1988.
[22] Ibid 14.
[23] D. Fox Harrell, _Milk Pudding Flavored with Rose Water, Blood
Pudding Flavored by the Sea_, unpublished.
[24] D. Fox Harrell, _Conceit_, unpublished.
[25] Charles Mingus, "Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus,"
compact disc, Candid Records, 2000. Original session, November 1960.
[26] Maya Talmon Chvaicer. "The Criminalization of Capoeira in
Nineteenth Century Brazil," _Hispanic American Historical Review_,
82.3, pg. 525-547, 2002.
[27] David Lehman, editor, _Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to
the Present_. New York: Scribner Book Company , 2003.
[28] James Thomas, Denise Thomas, Tom Hazuka, editors. _Flash
Fiction: Very Short Stories_. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992.
[29] Ibid 21.
[30] William Labov. "The transformation of experience in narrative
syntax." In _Language in the Inner City_, Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania, 1972.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Fox Harrell is an artist and author pursuing new forms of
computational narrative. He currently is a Ph.D. candidate in
Computer Science and Cognitive Science at the University of
California, San Diego. He earned an M.P.S. in Interactive
Telecommunications at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
He also earned a B.F.A. in Art, a B.S. in Logic and Computation, and
minor in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He has
worked as a game designer and animation producer in New York City. He
is a practitioner of Capoeira Angola. He recently completed his first
novel, _Milk Pudding Flavored with Rose Water, Blood Pudding Flavored
by the Sea_.
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