(new!)10/22: Poe, Dibbell, and the “touch” of Interfacing

Dibbel’s “A Rape in Cyberspace” and Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher”

First some definitions of “interface”: (from the Oxford English Dictionary)

“A surface lying between two portions of matter or space, and forming their common boundary.
2. transf. and fig. a. A means or place of interaction between two systems, organizations, etc.; a meeting-point or common ground between two parties, systems, or disciplines; also, interaction, liaison, dialogue.

962 M. MCLUHAN Gutenberg Galaxy 141 (heading) The interface of the Renaissance was the meeting of medieval pluralism and modern homogeneity and mechanism”

“The Virtual” in Poe

Imagination and the imaginary

The “echo”

The connection between words, things, and action

The image and reflection of the house as the sublime (caught between a vast, natural awe-inspiring beauty and terror); the after-dream of a reveler on opium.

“The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature . . . is Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other.” [Burke, On the Sublime , ed. J. T. Bolton. 58]

(177): certain natural objects have an artificial power

The vision of the house itself begins as a virtual image – he sees the landscape and the house by looking down in the tarn.

The more he becomes conscious of the fact that he is imaginatively participating in the image of the house, the more his fears and superstitions increase – for him the very basis of all “sentiments having terror as a basis.”

(185); an odd mixing of history, future change, and the virtual

What is betwixt and between Poe’s virtual worlds?

Male and female progeny and the continuation of the “race” of the Usher family

Nature encroaching upon the fantasies and structures of “ancient families”

Female and male legacies and power – the power to re-animate the self

Classical, western spaces connected to and confused with “oriental,” eastern imagery: Arabesque internal/external spaces; the “dropping of the veil”

History: an old world is giving way to the force of a new one – the shift is made inevitable in this story by the magical connection between words and action; a “force of nature” that defies cultural and social permanence

The story ends with an expansive demonstration of the “magic word” in Dibbell.
Words and actions inseparable (this is the heart of Poe’s story; there is an addictive draw and terror associated with this in both texts)

We can begin to draw out some implications surrounding virtual worlds and techne/technology

The virtual is a space that negotiates “violent” transitions: social, cultural, material

Embodied power is reflected in the play with the natural, artificial, and the real

Stable paradigms have heavily codified systems for how words (or representations) and actions are separate (think about our discussions of the recent political cartoon crisis)

Shifting paradigms use virtual environments to experiment with the assumed separation between words (representation) and actions (magic across historical periods is central here)

My argument: Virtual environments re-imagine embodiment as a space between words, actions, the natural, and the real. The virtual is a physical and conceptual space that struggles to absorb the material traces of one history/world while another is struggling to emerge.

“Psychoanalytically, it is impossible for a person not to interact with an object that engages one or more senses. Sensory interaction with any object presupposes bringing conscious, preconscious, and subconscious to that object. If it takes the invention of so-called cyberspace to find out you are interacting with an (art) object, you are in deep shit.”

Jeanne Randolph, Randolph, Jeanne. “Curating and the Technological Ethos: A Psychoanalysis,” author’s draft, February 1995, 3-4.

Take a look and listen — Han’s new Interface (again (!) pay attention to the rhetorical scene; how does the audience repond and why? What kind of sublime is this?