Reflection
The project’s purpose was to create an unconventional discourse; I think it accomplished this goal in at least some way. One of the most important components that we identified as being left out of the homogenized body of information that forms the doxa was experience. The technique of inserting experience and memory into the treatment of a historical scenario by adapting actual, existing characters and structures and using them to create an unconventional narrative was adapted almost directly from Ragtime, The Plot Against America, and Slaughterhouse-Five. These were the texts we adopted as our models for the creative subversion of traditional models of historical analysis, and the parahistorical structure of the vignettes for the project express that missing affect. Also, several entries are written in a mode more reminiscent of historical analysis. These are less explicitly divergent from the doxa, but the combination of the particular perspectives that were included in the project represent a more complex presentation of the historical situation, which is typically shown in one of several overly simplistic models within the traditional discourse.
Taken as a whole, I feel satisfied that the project conveys the affect that I was intending to represent with the array of entries. The variation of image and text, combined with the textual combination of narrative and analysis, supported the underlying premise of stereographic plurality and the existence of multiple layers or channels of expression. For example, one entry which I consciously composed to make this dynamic clear is “The Campbell Doctrine”. The bulk of the entry is a rather straightforward analysis of a possible justification for the arms race; this needed to be included in the array of affects from the period, but it had to be expressed in a way that would distinguish it from the bland, homogenized product of the doxa. Enter Major Howard W. Campbell, the virulently anti-Communist defector from Slaughterhouse-Five: by framing the entry as a Campbell monologue rather than a dry academic critical summary, an unconventional mode was introduced into the entry without compromising the basic intent of the analysis. This dynamic, in varying forms, was the essential foundation of the composition process of the project.
One of the things that stood out to me the most in the course of composing the project was the capacity for almost anything to be absorbed into conventional forms and refashioned (sometimes literally) into more culturally acceptable modes of expression. Honestly, I was somewhat surprised to see things like this or this. In this light, I don’t expect that this project will be any more resistant to the homogenizing forces of the doxa. Given the apparent cultural fascination with the Cold War and nuclear weapons, at this point it does not appear that any amount of nontraditional content is sufficient to inoculate a form of expression from assimilation into the doxa.
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