This post is a failure.
Perhaps more accurately, it’s a description of a failure.
At first, I didn’t think there would be much to say about the horror at Virginia Tech from a communication/rhetorical perspective. Perhaps down the line, some sort of analysis of the media coverate might be interesting and important. Already, some have discussed how new forms of media like Facebook and Myspace played a role in disseminating information during and after the murders. But nothing substantive came to my mind.
As the week has worn on, though, certain bits and pieces suggest that ideas of communication, and its limitations play a role.
I’ve tried to formulate coherent thoughts on this, but I’ve failed. I’ve started this post in a number of ways, and deleted them all. All I have are fragments of ideas, loose threads that I can’t tie up, at least not yet.
If I was able to, I’d want to say something about how the killer’s, Cho Seung-hui’s, unwillingness or inability to communicate played a role in the tragedy. If one believes the scraps of reporting that people have put together on him, he didn’t speak much even as a child.
Classmates, roommates, and teachers all describe attempting to enter into dialog with him, only to be met by silence.
When asked to write his name, he wrote a question mark.
He majored in English, wrote plays, and used instant messaging, but rarely spoke directly to anyone.
A roommate described getting called on his cellphone by him, who insisted on referring to himself as “Question Mark.” While on the phone, the roommate tracked him down in a dorm lounge. When faced with a physical presence, Cho denied that he had been talking to his roommate on the phone at all.
If I had the ability, I’d say something about all of this, suggesting something about Cho’s relationship to communication and what it might say about what he did.
I’d say something about how the plays he wrote for class (made available on the internet—itself an ironic communication-related event), as execrable as they are in all sorts of ways, both turn on the malignant use of the spoken word—the ways language can be used to misrepresent the truth to attack or punish someone.
I’d note that the description of Cho turns him into an odd, malignant version of Bartleby from Melville’s story “Bartleby the Scrivener.” Bartleby, a copyist for a financial company, refuses to take direction from his employer, simply saying “I prefer not to” to any request. His apparent lack of life (he actually sleeps at the office) and unwillingness to express himself in any meaningful way makes him an object of both frustration and pity to his employer, who remains helpless to get Bartleby to engage with him, or anyone else, in even the most rudimentary ways.
Cho seems to have caused similar feelings in those around him. They attempted to engage with him, help him, understand him, but were ignored. Unwilling or unable to participate in dialog, he became a cipher, an absence of meaning. Yet, unlike Bartleby, his refusal to engage in dialog turned into an act of unspeakable violence, turning Bartleby’s “I prefer not” with the ultimate “You will not.” Rather than simply keeping his silence, he silenced others.
I’d try to use this comparison to make some sort of sense of things, but I can’t.
Bartleby brings to mind a work by one of my mentors, John Durham Peters, who notes in his wonderfully humane work on communication theory, Speaking Into the Air, that Bartleby represents the way in which imagining communication in terms of dialog is limited. To engage someone in dialog, you implicitly make a demand of them that they return the favor. It is an exchange. Bartley is unwilling or unable to participate in this exchange.
Peters suggests “dissemination” is a better model: spreading the seed of words without necessarily asking for or expecting anything in return.
Could this explain Cho’s angst in any way? Could the attempt by others to engage him in dialog, no matter how well intentioned, have reinforced the notion of being demanded to speak, of being asked—even commanded—to perform? For someone unable or unwilling to perform, did this simply deepen his alienation? And what would communicative “dissemination” looked like in this case? Would it have mattered? Or was Cho simply broken in mind and spirit from the very beginning? Is it accurate to write him off as a malevolent psychopath? Is it morally correct to do so? Or do we deaden ourselves to something important if we deny his humanity, no matter how twisted a form it took?
And what of Cho’s multimedia suicide note, sent to a broadcast network? Is this the dark side of dissemination? Is the suicide note the ultimate form of dissemination—of speaking into the air without hope or expectation of a reply? And is the package Cho sent, complete with video and audio, and broadcast across the airwaves of the world, the ultimate example of the ultimate form of dissemination?
I don’t know. I don’t have answers to any of these questions. If I were a more able thinker, I’d be able to assemble these shards of meaning into a coherent whole of some sort and make an argument for a way of illuminating at least one small part of the abyss last Monday opened in front of us. But I’m not able to do that. Certainly not yet.
If there is a more archetypal form of dissemination than the suicide note, perhaps it is prayer—a speaking into the air, this time with hope but still no assurance, that our words will find an audience.
And it is all I have to offer.
Perhaps more accurately, it’s a description of a failure.
At first, I didn’t think there would be much to say about the horror at Virginia Tech from a communication/rhetorical perspective. Perhaps down the line, some sort of analysis of the media coverate might be interesting and important. Already, some have discussed how new forms of media like Facebook and Myspace played a role in disseminating information during and after the murders. But nothing substantive came to my mind.
As the week has worn on, though, certain bits and pieces suggest that ideas of communication, and its limitations play a role.
I’ve tried to formulate coherent thoughts on this, but I’ve failed. I’ve started this post in a number of ways, and deleted them all. All I have are fragments of ideas, loose threads that I can’t tie up, at least not yet.
If I was able to, I’d want to say something about how the killer’s, Cho Seung-hui’s, unwillingness or inability to communicate played a role in the tragedy. If one believes the scraps of reporting that people have put together on him, he didn’t speak much even as a child.
Classmates, roommates, and teachers all describe attempting to enter into dialog with him, only to be met by silence.
When asked to write his name, he wrote a question mark.
He majored in English, wrote plays, and used instant messaging, but rarely spoke directly to anyone.
A roommate described getting called on his cellphone by him, who insisted on referring to himself as “Question Mark.” While on the phone, the roommate tracked him down in a dorm lounge. When faced with a physical presence, Cho denied that he had been talking to his roommate on the phone at all.
If I had the ability, I’d say something about all of this, suggesting something about Cho’s relationship to communication and what it might say about what he did.
I’d say something about how the plays he wrote for class (made available on the internet—itself an ironic communication-related event), as execrable as they are in all sorts of ways, both turn on the malignant use of the spoken word—the ways language can be used to misrepresent the truth to attack or punish someone.
I’d note that the description of Cho turns him into an odd, malignant version of Bartleby from Melville’s story “Bartleby the Scrivener.” Bartleby, a copyist for a financial company, refuses to take direction from his employer, simply saying “I prefer not to” to any request. His apparent lack of life (he actually sleeps at the office) and unwillingness to express himself in any meaningful way makes him an object of both frustration and pity to his employer, who remains helpless to get Bartleby to engage with him, or anyone else, in even the most rudimentary ways.
Cho seems to have caused similar feelings in those around him. They attempted to engage with him, help him, understand him, but were ignored. Unwilling or unable to participate in dialog, he became a cipher, an absence of meaning. Yet, unlike Bartleby, his refusal to engage in dialog turned into an act of unspeakable violence, turning Bartleby’s “I prefer not” with the ultimate “You will not.” Rather than simply keeping his silence, he silenced others.
I’d try to use this comparison to make some sort of sense of things, but I can’t.
Bartleby brings to mind a work by one of my mentors, John Durham Peters, who notes in his wonderfully humane work on communication theory, Speaking Into the Air, that Bartleby represents the way in which imagining communication in terms of dialog is limited. To engage someone in dialog, you implicitly make a demand of them that they return the favor. It is an exchange. Bartley is unwilling or unable to participate in this exchange.
Peters suggests “dissemination” is a better model: spreading the seed of words without necessarily asking for or expecting anything in return.
Could this explain Cho’s angst in any way? Could the attempt by others to engage him in dialog, no matter how well intentioned, have reinforced the notion of being demanded to speak, of being asked—even commanded—to perform? For someone unable or unwilling to perform, did this simply deepen his alienation? And what would communicative “dissemination” looked like in this case? Would it have mattered? Or was Cho simply broken in mind and spirit from the very beginning? Is it accurate to write him off as a malevolent psychopath? Is it morally correct to do so? Or do we deaden ourselves to something important if we deny his humanity, no matter how twisted a form it took?
And what of Cho’s multimedia suicide note, sent to a broadcast network? Is this the dark side of dissemination? Is the suicide note the ultimate form of dissemination—of speaking into the air without hope or expectation of a reply? And is the package Cho sent, complete with video and audio, and broadcast across the airwaves of the world, the ultimate example of the ultimate form of dissemination?
I don’t know. I don’t have answers to any of these questions. If I were a more able thinker, I’d be able to assemble these shards of meaning into a coherent whole of some sort and make an argument for a way of illuminating at least one small part of the abyss last Monday opened in front of us. But I’m not able to do that. Certainly not yet.
If there is a more archetypal form of dissemination than the suicide note, perhaps it is prayer—a speaking into the air, this time with hope but still no assurance, that our words will find an audience.
And it is all I have to offer.
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