Wayde Compton Clip 3
Details
Wayde Compton Clip 3
Metadata (MODS) |
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|---|---|
| Titles | Wayde Compton Clip 3: |
| Name | Wayde Compton |
| Name | Dr. Joanne Leow |
| Type of Resource | sound recording |
| Identifier | Interviewer |
| Identifier | Wayde Compton Clip 3 |
| Abstract | This section of the interview starts by discussing the way Compton integrates multiple genres into his works. The conversation then ties in the topic of genre theory with a discussion of discourse and language use. |
| Extent | 3:59 Minutes |
| Form | nonprojected graphic |
| Note | Joanne Leow: One of the ways, though, that you try to convey this idea of discourse that you’re talking about is this use of multiple genres, and you’ve done that before with your work on Hogan’s Alley. But specifically here you use the activist flyer, the condo ad, the floor plan, the glyphs. What were you trying to convey by inserting them into what would be more—a more like traditional work of fiction? 0:22 [thump at 1:20 & 2:13] Wayde Compton: That does go back to my first book. In my first book, in 49th Parallel Psalm, I wanted to write about the black pioneers and black identity here from a lot of different, oblique angles. I felt that was a better way to—for me, anyway—to describe the history than, say, a conventional history. Well, okay, we need conventional histories, too, it’s not really a critique of those existing, but for me, I was more interested in—I include things like an imaginary jump rope rhyme that the kids of the black pioneers might have been singing while they’re on the streets of Victoria, and it’s those sort of…this kind of social angle, the emotional angle, on the things that are happening in history that I felt like were not accessible to me through conventional history, and I think it’s sort of the same thing here. More conventional narrative can give you one thing, and that’s good for concentrating on maybe individual characters, protagonist, but that’s not what I wanted to do with the book. I wanted it to be about the city, really, I wanted it to be much more decentered than a single character, through-line around a single character like a novel, or even multiple characters. I wanted it to really be kind of multiple types of discourse and different types of language. And the kind of power relations that I talk about in it, to me, are interesting because they’re expressed through language most of the time. I remember being a student of Roy Miki, he really taught us to pay attention to how power is expressed through types of discourse. Being someone who went through the Japanese internment here; I remember him teaching a class and saying, it’s amazing, because when they’re going to do something barbaric like this to people, they’re going to uproot families and children, and take away their property and move them across the country and jail them, and they’re innocent, when it comes down to it, in order to do that, they have to put it into words to justify that act. And the term they used for them was “enemy aliens,” and it’s just like—so just these euphemisms and sort of ways of constructing a logic that makes this thing at least feel like it makes sense. That’s absolutely fascinating to me, and I wanted that to be there throughout the book. In some ways, it kind of pings off in strange directions, like the government grant—the art grants that I have was also kind of a version of that in a way that art, that the arts admin community, we have that as well, everything is…power expresses itself through euphemism. 3:06 Joanne Leow: And code, a particular kind of jargon, or in the changing meanings of words themselves, like they use a word that, you know, is supposed to mean one thing and then they turn it on its head, right. One of the things that really struck me was that kind of…the beginnings of the intersections between the language in the condo ads with the language in the activist flyers, and that kind of Orwellian, almost, like degradation of that language, which, I mean, I think that’s how we experience power all the time. In a condo ad, you experience power. 3:36 Wayde Compton: I was parodying some of the real ads that we’ve seen here from the big developers, and they’re canny, advertisers are canny, so they will use the language of grassroots movements because it has cache. Anything that has some kind of authentic cache they’ll use, and it all kind of cycles around and becomes defused at a certain point. |
| Access Condition | Contact Dr. Joanne Leow |
| Subject Topic | Low-- |
| Subject Topic | -- |
| Subject Topic | Ecosystem-- |
| Subject Topic | Land-- |
| Subject Topic | Law-- |
| Subject Topic | Power-- |
| Subject Topic | Language |
| Subject Hierarchical Geographic | North America--Canada------Vancouver |
| Subject Local Name | Low----Ecosystem--Land--Law--Power--Language---- |