Sounds like a good title for a children’s book, no?
I write the following as a person only marginally related to what they call electronic literature. But, hey, electronic writers and electronic scholars are finally coming together in significant ways, so I write down some thoughts on a conflict.
Mark Bernstein recently resigned from the Electronic Literature Organization. ELO’s president Marjorie Coverley Luesebrink wrote an open letter to Mark in response.
Wow, the political strife. From a deeply subjective perspective, I found Mark’s letter too vague and… impolite? bitter? spatteringly spiteful? The ELO letter I found, if nothing else, rather more precise, speaking to specific issues and fully acknowledging the significant contributions Mark has made to the electronic literature field.
Part of me refuses to take an unequivocal side, though my doing or not doing so would not matter to anyone actually involved in the conflict or in ELO’s work. Besides, I am certain that my impressions have been influenced to some extent by the several friends and acquaintances I have who are active in ELO. But the whole thing strikes me as wholly unnecessary and generative of more spite than absolutely necessary. It’s been clear to me that ELO and Mark Bernstein have had different ideas about promoting electronic literature, but to promote one side by stating that the other is an active hindrance does nobody any good. People will continue to participate in ELO, and they (or other people) will continue to attend eNarrative roundtables. (That I won’t go to any more eNarratives is a matter of finances; the first two were actually quite enjoyable.) But ideology is a funny thing, prone to being expressed to the exclusion of opposing ideas. Only time will show whose approach to the promotion of electronic literature is the better one; this is true regardless of whether venomous remarks are made in the meantime. Me, I’ll balk at the staggering price of a recent Eastgate publication and hope to take a look at it sometime without breaking my graduate-student’s bank account.
You know, Diane Greco wrote not long ago that the “elit community” consists of maybe 200 people. A phrase like “can’t we all just get along” usually sticks in my craw, but I fear that if we can’t figure out how to do just that then pretty soon the whole enterprise is going to fly apart at the seams.
Mark Bernstein took what should have been an internal communication and made it an act of public dissension by sending a tendentious and misleading statement to everybody in his address book. The ELO’s response was, if anything, generous. Meanwhile, over on his own blog–which, incidentally, doesn’t allow for comments–Bernstein resorts to ad hominen attack. So I ask again: what are the real motives here?
There’s so much flying around my head that relates to this in some way, Matt, that I’m afraid I’ll be unintelligible. But, first, yes: “can’t we all…” is an atrocious phrase. Goodness, I wish you were here: the “elit community” may be small, but the community that *should* be promoting both electronic literature and other forms of humanities computing is bigger. I am very glad to see that the practitioners of elit and computing humanists (who are practitioners of an electronic art as well) are coming together: it couldn’t be more clear that we are all struggling with the same theoretical issues.
This is turning into a note from myself to myself, which I will use as a basis for another post about the conference.
I try not to take sides in conflicts to which I’m not party, and I’ve a strong distaste for academic/artistic politics in general. (By politics, here, I mean negotiation that stems from usually negative emotions and is not explicitly meant to be constructive.) But I do agree with you: Mark’s making this public was not a good move. That’s only one of the problems I have with his letter. It is in no way constructive. We need constructive. You don’t like the way things are done? Propose *concrete* alternatives, and here’s the trick: do this with enough tact to not antagonize people. (Dale Carnegie had a good point, really. True, lasting influence does not exist in an atmosphere charged with personal conflict.) If the majority dissents, there is nothing you can do but sit back and watch the consequences unfold. Someone will be wrong, we will learn from our mistakes and hone our subjective views. But subjectivity, in itself, is not evil. Its salt is in the application.