Exciting! Secret! Thoughts!

-Thompson

a.  verb; to thompson: 

                1. the act of futile self-assertion

                                ie: In my personal writing essay, I thompsoned my way into a corner of                                        solipsistic garbage.

                2. Defacement of property; collq.

                                ie: That billboard was totality thompsoned.

b. adjective; thompsonesque:

                 1. A stupid individual who fails to recognize own insignificance

                        ie: The thompsonesque girl fell asleep during philosophy class.

Notes and questions (interspersed with amusing anecdotes):

According to Davis, the Thompson’s of the world are stupid, finitude-y beings, unaware of their failure to matter as individuals in the world… to display their own sense of “I” on the “I” that has been…erected…by others.  As Brian questions in Prelude to Discussion, I find a place to begin thinking about the pedagogy that Davis endorses, and wondering about the paradox of community/ collaborative effort as a manifestation of multiple “I”s.  Are the “I”s more important merely because they are pooled together, and thus their singular assertion of a community of selves more valid?

What about when it is the “text” that defaces the “I”?  Should we assume that the individual text as an “I” is important or is it the collaborative bodies, who have been defaced, that are important? 

What is she talking about (you wonder at this point)?  Oh, don’t worry…I’ll tell you.

In an English class I had as an undergraduate (survey of brit lit from nascence to reformation), my otherwise typical (not meant in pejorative way) professor had an unusual tattoo. On the inside of his upper arm was a single word*, followed by a question mark.

It was distracting.

Upon being asked about this tattoo, the professor described a project in which he had taken part, a fascinating inversion of self-imposing-on-text to text-imposing-on-self.  Here’s the “skin”ny:

Shelley Jackson composed a work, “Skin” (http://www.ineradicablestain.com/skindex.html ).  In a fascinating experiment with new mediums, the text only exists in the form of single word tattoos on a variety of individuals across the country (world?).  The text lives through the collaborative body of the people.  It exists, but it is not known to any but those who were pieces of the text.  And, coolly, it is not static.  As the professor explained, the literal meaning changes as participants of the project die or are variously maimed/ subject to amputation.  The piece is entropic-ly hastening towards non-existence again.

The “I”s were made subservient to the text, yet, it was only through the “I”s that the text could be experienced, as a single meaningless component, with no potential of communicating to others the place they occupied in the scheme of the text, or the text itself.

An Apology for Thompson: though one of Thompson’s failings is that in expressing his/her identity, s/he has actually remained as anonymous as if not marked out by the gigantic letters (which, is only in keeping with the gigantic surface on which s/he is writing), it is through this anonymity that Thompson has prevailed.  Had the graffitist been so specific that s/he left a full name and contact info, or maybe a (n ethnocentric example) social security number, than s/he could have been identified but then, alas…arrest and imprisonment would have followed. 

Perhaps the text “Skin”, in a forced anonymity and mortal existence, recognizes the futility on both sides of the equation.  Individuals are eventually meaningless and insignificant, but texts and collaboration ultimately cannot transcend the same limitations that the individual is faced with.

Is the fundamentally anonymous proclamation of self the best we can hope for?  Aren’t we all as anonymous as Thompson even if we have disclosed all of the information about our ephemeral selves? What do we know about the column?  The text is fleeting, Thompson is fleeting, and Pompey’s column is fleeting.  I’m not sure how the collaborating of Thompson’s makes for a more permanent/significant Thompson than the singular Thompson.

The preceding statement, I worry, is too simple.  I hope the collaborative discussion of the “I”s in class will help me to ‘get’ Davis’s point if I have missed it.

* I refrain from mentioning the actual word in respect of the project, being unsure whether or not the author would approve of any component of the text being represented in any other form.