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Jeanette Lehn
Dr. Yancey
ENC 5933 Convergence Culture
11/8/15
Assemblage: A Framework for Composing
Reid begins by discussing assemblage in terms of ontology. Reid writes “Assemblage
theory offers a method for investigating these questions by establishing an ontology that focuses
on the external relations among objects rather than on presupposing that objects are predefined
by essential, internal qualities” (4). What Reid proposes is that assemblage is a way of viewing
composing where all relationships involved in the assemblage are considered—even the nonhuman factors of composing. Reid argues that our previous conceptions of assemblage have been
human centric and socially based, but the advent of computing and big-data has altered our
relationship to composing. Reid also argues that if we factor in the heterogeneous resources
available from big data into our writing processes, we can gain a more robust understanding of
assemblage.
While Reid focuses more so on the ontological aspects of assemblage, Arola & Arola
question the ethics involved in engaging in assemblage when cultural identity is tied up into the
acitivity. The authors compare two examples of culture being tied up in assemblage—one is a
song by M.I.A./Diplo/Santogold in which a powwow was sampled as part of the track and the
other example the authors examine is the work done by a musical group called A Tribe Called
Red. In comparing the two musical examples, the authors introduce the term “creative repetition”
to discuss the difference between sampling that does not perpetuate stereotypes and the more
commonly heard term cultural appropriation where some aspect of cultural identity is used in a
way that perpetuates stereotypes. Additionally, an instance of creative repletion occurs when the
ultimate effect is benefit for a community.
Shipka discusses assemblage in terms of the process, but also the contemplation of the
object. She advocates for “rigorous productive play” in pedagogical and scholarly approaches,
and she advocates for consider composers as “collectors” who pull from a wide range of found
resources. She characterizes collection as “selecting, examining, preserving, ordering, researching,
transforming, and displaying” (3)—a highly involved and active process. She encourages a type of
pedagogical approach that contemplates the object and the curation of that object among other
objects. She also notes the influence of the collection on the collector and she ends by gesturing
towards how a more playful approach to composing could benefit the field.
McElroy uses the postcard to show how assemblage can be seen as product, process and
ontology. In his article, he notes the presence of assembled textual elements in the product, the back
of an early postcard, and he documents the process of creating a Teich “view” postcard in which
Teich would construct ideal visions of vacation locales in a process Teich called “fake photography”
(157). Teich would take pictures of locations and remove unsightly items such as telephone wires
and add in more ideal backgrounds, all to assemble a more ideal version of a location. McElroy
notes that numerous individuals were required to create these cards. He writes, “the sheer number
of collaborators who worked together to create each of these cards is impressive: there’s a
photographer who creates the image; Johnson, who places the order, pays for the cards’ creation,
and provides specific instructions for the design; and the artists who carry the design through
production” (159). One of McElroy’s key points is that by taking notes of how these textual
practices occurred in response to key exigencies allows us to see assemblage as an ontology and
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not just as an isolated textual practice that occurs solely in one time and place, that assemblage is
a recursive phenomenon.
Assemblage is a term that I’ve heard many times before and it was helpful to gain a more
basic understanding from these readings. (On a side note, I was pleased to see the term being
applied in an ethical context in the case of Arola & Arola as sometimes I think issues of race and
alterity get occluded when we begin to have discussions of the digital.) There are similar terms to
assemblage in circulation like remix, postmodernism and post-structuralism, but what I think that
assemblage offers one is a framework that offers more leverage for discussing the composing
processes involved. Remix or postmodernism might help one to describe an aspect of
assemblage, but assemblage theory offers a fuller vocabulary for examining fragmentary
relationships that exist in composing. One constraint of assemblage theory is that all of these
articles seem to view assemblage more in light of the composer as opposed to the audience. This
aspect of assemblage theory might pair well with something like Bolter and Grusin’s
Remediation because a constraint of that text is that it dwell predominately in the consumption of
media. If we combine these theoretical approaches, we are afforded with postmodern views of
both composing and of audience.