Overall, the mystory is a new media based writing that asks writers to consider the various areas of discourse that construct identity. Traditionally, we work in these areas in separate ways (I am formed by schooling practices; I am formed by family issues/moments, etc).

The mystory, drawing upon new media logics like pattern formation and juxtaposition, asks writers to compose with four areas of discourse at once. At the point of these areas’ (the popcycle) intersection, there is a moment of insight. An “ah-ha” experience. That insight drives the writing. The writing, therefore, is not argumentative - it does not “prove” anything - but instead is exploratory. The writing demonstrates the pattern (the insight). The one who benefits most from its composition is the writer, not the reader, for it offers the writer an insight not yet discovered.

The mystory, like the other three examples for this week, is still what we might call “academic.” Yet, it does something to “academic” that many, at first, won’t recognize. One challenge is to consider its usage of the personal. The same holds true for the other three weekly readings.

Or we can ask how a mystory, a writing on the bias, a generative ethos, and a merger of creative non-fiction with composition each draws on specific points, tactics, movements to create a piece of writing. One obvious “tactic” the essays ask us to teach is metaphor. Another might be the role of ethos (credibility, but also dwelling place). Others?

What the writers don’t seem to be interested in is personal writing for the sake of saying something about one’s self (i.e., “The time I went to camp,” “My favorite song,” “Why I Love My Mother”). Each essay complicates narrative, personal information, and how one’s story works across several social contexts (how it is informed by contexts or informs contexts).

A side note: “teletheory” - the term used by Ulmer in the intro to “Derrida at the Little Bighorn” is the name of the book this chapter is excerpted from. It is a prior theory Ulmer explores regarding the merger of video, theory, and pedagogy (when the book is written, video appears to be a major fixture in new media work). In later work, video is replaced by the Web.

Why does one write a mystory? To respond to a problem (whatever that may be) in a non-instrumental manner. It, like our other weekly readings, is a response to a dissatisfaction with instrumental approaches (pure analysis, thesis driven writing, modes of writing).

Problem solving, the mystory claims, is guided by experiences in other registers of life. Those experiences produce a re-occurring image. The re-occurring image offers insight instrumental thinking cannot provide.

The responses are to a an exigence: Why don’t instrumental thinking exercises  - compare/contrast, argument, personal narrative - produce sustained critical thinking gestures?  Here we get four responses that highlight personal writing in relationship to other registers of experience.  Mystory is one genre invented as response to the exigence.

The result of writing a mystory is not known until it is written, and it is meaningful only to the writer.