Secondary Mnemonics

As part of a small thread about MEmorials on Invent-L, Greg Ulmer reminded some of us that choragraphy includes commemoration as the frame for e-mnemonics. He nudged us to look at "Yellowstone Dessert," the final chapter in heuretics, which I hadn't looked at in a while, and indeed it is a coal mine of ideas.

Heuretics offers up ideas like:
--"learning in hyperrhetorical is conducted more with memory than with argument or narrative" (189).
--"The Greeks developed mnemonic picture writing as a supplement to the alphabet in order to deal with the information overload that resulted from manucript culture" (Bolter 56) (191).
--mnemonics formalized in Rhetorica ad Herennium; St. Martin's Guide the print culture equivalent. "Heuretics is part of a movement that will be to the St. Martin's handbook what the handbook is to the ad Herennium. To adapt a phrase from McLuhan and Ong, electronic is not secondary orality but secondary mnemonics" (191).
--"the electronic citize may negotiate the data environment of cyberspace the same way an orator memorizes immense quantities of written materia, or the way an actor learns a play. The difference between chorography and oratory or acting is that what the latter two memories suppress (the performance of a tour through the places) is made manifest in the former. A more obvious difference is that in chorography the mnemonic scene is entrusted to writing, where it may be manipulated critically, not kept in the head (and body)" (192-93).

I was also reminded of Basho: "Do not follow in the footsteps of the master, but seek what the master sought." In working on my MEmorial project, I was aware that I was not using the popcyle as a tool for invention, although I have already composed a MYstory shaped by the popcycle (at least partially) that clearly informed my MEmorial project. Although a MEmorial, the "ME" for me was present in the linking of Sudanese Lost Boys and Roger Maris--no one else was suggesting that connection, no one else I am aware of is living in Fargo, working with Lost Boys, visiting the Roger Maris museuem. Just as students ignore the St. Martin's Guide or the Call to Write or whatever textbook we assign when we assign composing, I started from but also significantly ignored Ulmer's advice in composing my MEmorial. A good lesson in patience to me as assigner of writing.