Re: <eyebeam><blast> representation

[olu oguibe <ooguibe@undp.org>]

At 12:05 AM 2/8/98 -0500, Tom Mulcaire wrote:

>For Olu Oguibe, mainly.
>
>I was, and for now remain, mesmerized by your passing reference to
>'virtual narrative', which you included in your opening contribution.
>Could you expand a little on what you understand by 'virtual
narrative'?
>Surely all narrative is necessarily virtual? Have we escaped our
>condition?
>

I'm not sure I perfectly understand Tom's poser. "Virtual" may have been
a poor register for non-verbal, non-traditional, virtual-space located
or mediated, in the case in question. Beyond that hopefully helpful
clarification, let it be stated that not all narrative is virtual. The
subject of a narrative may be virtual, since it is not experienced in
the real in the instant of its recollection or fabrication, but the
activity/act/ process of recollection is quite distinct from the
subject, so much so that in its traditional form it is real rather than
virtual. It is this realness that dictated the rigidity of its frames in
the past: linearity, temporality, ephemerality, and the absence of
inherent memory, in other words, its maleability. The transit of
narrative into print, while it inserted the element of inherent memory,
also thwarted maleability, resulting in the damnable transition from
myth to dogma. In the forms now made possible by new information and
network technologies, a lot more of the original rigidity of narrative
are now mediated, and in its advanced forms it is possible now to
subvert linearity, for instance, and experience multiple other
possibilities including the palpability of the myth element. A few good
volumes have recently been published on this. The whole of my point
being that the art form of narrative utterance can be and oft is
experienced in the real, and there is no use inventing a condition of
virtuality in order to appear creative.

Olu Oguibe
Tampa, Florida


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