English Composition As A Happening

Geoffrey Sirc

Publication Year: 2002

<DIV>What happened to the bold, kicky promise of writing instruction in the 1960s? The current conservative trend in composition is analyzed allegorically by Geoffrey Sirc in this book-length homage to Charles Deemer's 1967 article, in which the theories and practices of Happenings artists (multi-disciplinary performance pioneers) were used to invigorate college writing. Sirc takes up Deemer's inquiry, moving through the material and theoretical concerns of such pre- and post-Happenings influences as Duchamp and Pollock, situationists and punks, as well as many of the Happenings artists proper. <BR><BR>With this book, already a cult classic, began a neo-avant-garde for composition studies.<BR><BR>Winner of the Ross W. Winterowd Award for most outstanding book in composition theory.</DIV>

Published by: Utah State University Press

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0 THE STILL-UNBUILT HACIENDA

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pp. 1-32

I suppose the reason none of us burn incense in our writing classes anymore is because of the disk drives. Smoke’s not supposed to be good for them, right? But what about the sounds, the candlelight, the studentson the floor, the dark? What about that other scene of writing instruction? Where has that gone, the idea of the writing classroom as blank canvas,...

1 “WHAT IS COMPOSITION . . . ?” AFTER DUCHAMP (Notes Toward a General Teleintertext)

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pp. 33-68

English Composition as a Happening (as all composition that followed him does, consciously or not) begins with Duchamp. When Richard Kostelanetz interviews Allan Kaprow, who coined the term Happening, “the conversation opens with Kaprow speaking of Marcel Duchamp” (The Theatre of Mixed Means 102). Calvin Tomkins calls the...

2 THE AMERICAN ACTION WRITERS

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pp. 69-120

This morose remark was made by a compositionist who’d neared the end; whose theories, forms, processes, relationships, even his own body—all had entirely worn down. His very life, in fact, as this speaker was to die about a day after he articulated this stark vision. This comment...

3 SCENES FROM LATE SIXTIES COMPOSITION

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pp. 121-184

Washington, D.C., April 1966, at a six-day arts festival (designed to be an extravaganza of the most progressive work in theater, dance, and film, and given the suitably pop title of the NOW Festival). Over those six days, festival-goers saw performances by John Cage, the Velvet Underground...

4 WRITING CLASSROOM AS A & P PARKING LOT

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pp. 207-234

Happenings came about, in large part, because Allan Kaprow realized that Jackson Pollock had exposed the central lie of composition. Jackson, Kaprow had understood, realized that traditional notions of form had become entirely beside the point. In Jackson’s art, “the confines of the rectangular field were ignored in lieu of an experience of a...

5 NEVER MIND THE TAGMEMICS, WHERE’S THE SEX PISTOLS?

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pp. 235-262

Our story begins, as always, with lack and desire. It’s 1975, the year On Righting Writing: Classroom Practices in Teaching English 1975–1976 appeared, in answer to the “great concern for the quality of student writing” (Clapp vii) expressed in an open meeting on classroom practices at the 1974 convention of NCTE. The preface to this the thirteenth report from the...

6 ENGLISH COMPOSITION AS A HAPPENING II

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pp. 263-294

This book has shown my interest in work that explores practice: workthat can be used to think about pedagogy, texts, materials, issues of production and reception, and particularly issues of form and content (what’s used in Composition, what’s not, and what other fields with the idea of composition at the center are using). I’ve especially been inter-...

Geoffery Sirc works in composition at the University of Minnesota,...

E-ISBN-13: 9780874214635
Print-ISBN-13: 9780874214352

Publication Year: 2002