If literacy, as Ulmer and others have said, gave us the ability to recognize a “self” then it seems that electracy has given us the ability to recognize the ways in which everything in the world can be related to the self and to each other. Electracy shows us that everything is interrelated. Ulmer best described this phenomenon in his discussion of the “Y” in previous chapters. Rather than asking “why” and thus separating events, we should find out “Y” by taking two seemingly unrelated events and bringing them together. This is, ultimately, the idea behind the MEmorial.
Though Ulmer discussed the Why/Y concept in previous chapters, one of the most interesting examples of this concept was discussed in part four (“Soft Justice”) and more specifically in the chapter titled “Justice Miranda (A Conceit).” In this chapter, Ulmer connects two seemingly unrelated things (as is his way) to show that electracy is, at least in part, a new way of thinking that can show these interconnections—this is aided primarily by the Internet which has become a civic sphere. Ulmer explains: “in the same way that alphabetic literacy made conceptual thinking possible, electracy requires another means for arranging diverse particulars into classes, sets, and categories. The new arrangement has to be invented out of the old one, involving a new form and a new style of reasoning” (185).
In chapter seven, Ulmer follows the “Y” path in order to connect Carmen Miranda and Miranda rights. He explains how Miranda rights came to be—a synthesization of four separate trials in which the accused needed a “shield” that protected “the ignorant or, more significantly, the ‘illiterate’” (197). Ulmer then gives the backstory of Carmen Miranda: a young Latina woman made famous by her dancing and appearance in what Ulmer describes as campy films. One of the interesting ways that these two things come together (though they seem to have little in common besides name) is that they are both, in a way, epitomes of American culture. They represent the values of our way of life. (Innocent until proven guilty, sexualized Others, etc.) Ulmer describes the way these two come together (Carmen Miranda Rights) and the ways literacy and electracy are related: “I have two metaphors now, two scenarios, two series producing a gap: In the scenario of literacy, finding out something, doing research, learning the truth, is like giving someone the third degree (putting him or her in the hot seat). In the electrate scenario, learning the truth is like dancing the samba during carnival” (191). Ulmer seems to be looking for an electrate truth—one that comes about through the Y. Further along, Ulmer notes that truth, according to the Greek idea of the concept, is something “hidden, buried, a secret, a secret at first associated with the slave’s body and then with a woman’s body” (191). Truth, in the instances of the Mirandas (Carmen and Rights) exists somewhere inside the person/concept in question. Truth, in regards to Carmen, is, as Ulmer explained, embodied by her actual body which is hiding a truth. Miranda rights are supposed to be a means for us to locate the truth when a question of crime comes up. Oddly enough, neither actually occurs. In terms of Carmen Miranda, the truth that is supposed to be hidden by the woman’s body cannot exist because her personality is so easily reproducible by cross-dressing men (because, Ulmer notes, she is so campy). Ulmer also points out that the Miranda Rights often lead to protection of the guilty party rather than the innocent (especially when the person in question isn’t “ignorant”).
I think that all this relates back to Ulmer’s understanding of ATH. He explained in the introduction that “The aspect of tragedy of most interest in our context is (in Greek) ATH . . . which means ‘blindness’ or ‘foolishness’ in an individual, and ‘calamity’ or ‘disaster’ in a collectivity” (xxiv). This directly relates to Carmen Miranda Rights—at the point where individuals believe that Miranda rights could uphold truth, we have foolishness, but when it becomes a part of our culture as a whole, this foolishness turns to tragedy. Ulmer writes “the basic insight of ATH—that a seemingly inconsequential detail of behavior may have unforeseen and immense consequences for the community—is echoed in chaos theory (the butterfly effect)” (xxv). Once again, we see that everything is interrelated, as chaos theory posits. It is through this notion that we can say “Carmen Miranda Rights” and have it become a meaningful concept rather than a string of similar words.
Questions:
In what ways are our notions of gender undermined throughout chapter 7?
Was Pappenheimer’s MEmorial useful in “the real world” or more so on the Internet/in the civic sphere?
How do tragedies explore the way individual foolishness or blindness produces collective catastrophe?
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