E-Crit: Digital Media, Critical Theory, and the Humanities

by Marcel O'Gorman

In E-Crit , Marcel O'Gorman takes an ambitious and provocative look at how university scholarship, pedagogy, and curricula might be transformed to suit a digital culture. Arguing that universities were founded on the logic of print culture, O'Gorman sets out to reinvent the academic apparatus, constructing a hybrid methodology that draws on avant-garde art, deconstructive theory, cognitive science, and the work of painter and poet William Blake. O'Gorman explores the ways in which digital media might help to restore the critical, intellectual purpose of higher education, which has been repressed by the technocratic structures that dominate the modern university. He argues that the revolutionary, socio-critical impetus that spurred deconstructive theory and transformed the humanities was lost in the initial attempts to digitize the literary canon and demonstrate the convergence of critical theory and hypertext. Humanities disciplines, he argues, must reposition themselves through the invention of humanities-based interdisciplinary programs capable of adapting to the post-print vicissitudes of a digital culture. E-Crit is thus essential reading for anyone concerned with the practice - and future - of the humanities in higher education.

200 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Jessica Gordon]

Marcel O'Gorman suggests that scholarship and academia were founded and grounded in print culture, and as such, he argues that we must reconsider the way the "Republic of Scholars" think and write for 21st century digital culture. Using a wealth of interdisciplinary research spanning literary theory, art history and psychology, O'Gorman makes a case for using what he calls, "hypericons": images that capture the essence of an argument or idea. He proposes that these "hypericons," in conjunction with "Mystory," should be a major part of a new method for crafting scholarship that he believes is more conducive to new media culture than the traditional formula through which most academic work is written. Mystory is his method of putting 4 types of discourse in conversation within one piece of writing: the personal, historical, pop cultural and educational. He argues that this "cross-breeding" of discourses, when used with his hypericonomy, will create a new language for scholarship that will be more functional in the hypertext environment. He says that this new language will include no in-depth analysis of thoughts, arguments that rely on terms that are not explained, lots of graphs and pictures without explanation, and no clear rules of usage for language. And he does acknowledge that this future language probably won't be "coherent."

While I think the style he proposes is interesting and could make for an intriguing pedagogical experiment in an upper-level writing class, at the same time, I think most students would produce incoherent work that would be difficult to grade. O'Gorman's solution for this is to have students write a traditional, linear essay in which they explain their work. He doesn't think this is ironic though, as he immediately acknowledges that this is just further evidence that the new form won't ever replace linear writing and that it can simply exist along side of it. Again, I could see this new method making for an interesting upper-level writing class, and having it accompanied by an analysis, an artist's statement of sorts, would help students to truly think about their work and teachers to assess it.

He provides a few interesting assignments that he has tried out, mostly using Blake's illustrations as a springboard or focusing on Blake's work as a whole. I didn't say much about Blake here, but he's a big part of this book.

[Randy Nichols]

If you've found postmodernism to be so tired and 20th century - here's an author that understands your boredom with the monolithic extrusion from the sytematic funneling of the Republic of Scholars. This book may not be for everybody - but if it's for you, cool.