Title:  Electracy: Gregory L. Ulmer’s Textshop Experiments  Author:  Gregory L. Ulmer; Craig Saper and Victor Vitanza, eds. Series: Critical Studies in the Humanities Imprint: The Davies Group, Publishers soft cover 352 pp. USD 32.00 ISBN 978-1935452507 January  2015 In   this   important   volume   of   previously   uncollected   essays,   Gregory   L.   Ulmer   theorizes   the   shift   from   print-literacy   to   electracy.   Ulmer   challenges   his readers   to   do   for   this   mode   what   Plato   and   Aristotle   did   for   literacy:   to   invent   the   rhetoric,   workings   and   categorical   order   of   electracy.   In   responding   to   this   shift,   Ulmer   mines   and rereads   the   history   of   the   avant-garde   arts   as   a   liberal   arts   mode   of   research   and   experimentation,   and,   in   that   sense,   one   can   read   this   volume   as   a   set   of   instructions   to   try   to compose, read, and think in the electracy mode. “Gregory   L.   Ulmer   is   at   the   forefront   of   thinking   about   new   cultural   formations   as   the   paradigm   of   literacy   converges   with   digital   culture.”   His   work   on   electracy   is   “central   to contemporary   thinking   about   the   future   of   writing,   of   schooling   and   paradigms   of   learning,   the   dynamics   of   creativity   and   the   poetics   of   invention,”   and,   Ulmer   offers   “a   barometer and force of cultural change,” taking the “very notion of creativity into the twenty-first century.” — Darren Tofts, Professor of Media and Lisa Gye, Senior Lecturer in Media, Swinburne University of Technology  Gregory   L.   Ulmer’s   work   offers   “a   full,   rigorous,   and   perceptive   reading   of   my   published   work,   from   the   earliest   to   the   most   recent.   Gregory   Ulmer’s   interpretation   is   at   once   subtle, faithful, and educational, and would be of immense use for this alone . . . . [I read Ulmer] with recognition and admiration.” — Jacques Derrida (on Applied Grammatology) Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgements Chapter One: Barthes’s Body of Knowledge I. The Biographeme  1;  II. Theoretical Art  3;  III. The Sting  8;  IV. For a New Academic Writing  13 Chapter Two: Textshop for Post(e)pedagogy Lec(ri)ture  18;  Models  25;  As-sign-ments  32 Chapter Three: Teletheory: A Mystory The Future of Theory   47;  A Promising Essay   52; Narrative Explanation   57;  Theory Diegesis   64; The Pensive Essay   71;  To Be Continued   78 Chapter Four: Textshop for Psychoanalysis: On De-Programming Freshmen Platonists I. The Humanities Laboratory  83;  II. Surrealism as Invention  85;  III. Assignments  89;  IV. Evaluation  93; V. Mystory (The Subject of Knowledge) 96 Chapter Five: The Heuretics of Alice’s Valise Chapter Six: The Spirit Hand: On the Index Chapter Seven: One Video Theory (Some Assembly Required) Against explanation  139;  The television set  140;  “Believe it or not”  141;  Mythologies  142;  The public sphere  144;  Grammatology  146;  The subject of television  149;  Alienation  151;  Memory television  154;  Out of the fly-bottle  157 Chapter Eight: The Object of Post-Criticism Collage/Montage  163;  Grammatology  167;  Allegory 176;  Parasite/ Saprophyte  182 Chapter Nine: The Making of “Derrida at the Little Bighorn”: An Interview Chapter Ten: The Internet and Its Double Voice in Electracy  213;  The Cough  213;  Mise-en-abyme  215;  The Donor  217;  Gift  222;  Mourning  225;  The Abject  228;  Imaging  231 Chapter Eleven: Choramancy: A User’s Guide Part One: The Image Crisis  235;  Part Two: Consulting the Zone  249;  Part Three; Miami Ad-Vice  261;  Part Four: Drawing Conclusions  271 Chapter Twelve: Handbook for a Theory Hobby Chapter Thirteen: Emergent Ontologies: A Lecture by Gregory Ulmer Index The Editors Gregory   Ulmer   is   Professor   of   English   and   Media   Studies   at   the   University   of   Florida,   and   Coordinator   of   an   experimental   consultancy—the   Florida   Research   Ensemble.   His books include Applied Grammatology , Teletheory , Heuretics , Internet Invention , Electronic Monuments , Avatar Emergency , and Miami Virtue  among others. Craig Saper Professor and Director of Language, Literacy, & Culture Doctoral Program at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). He is the author of Networked Art (2001), Artificial Mythologies (1997), Imaging Place (2010, and Intimate Bureaucracies (2011). His publications on Gregory L Ulmer’s work include chapters in New Media/New Methods (2008), The Illogic of Sense (2008), and articles in Visible Language, Rhizomes, Enculturation, and the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory. Victor Vitanza Victor J. Vitanza is Professor English and Rhetorics at Clemson U.  He is also Professor of Rhetoric and Philosophy (The Jean-François Lyotard Professor ) at The European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, Division of Media and Communications. He is the editor of  PRE/TEXT: The First Decade. Pittsburgh (U of Pittsburgh P, 1993), the author of Negation, Subjectivity, and The History of Rhetoric (SUNY P, 1997), editor of Writing Histories of Rhetoric (SIUP, 1994, 2013), and CyberReader (Allyn & Bacon/Pearson, 1996, 1998, 2005), and author of Sexual Violence in Western Thought and Writing: Chaste Rape (Palgrave, 2011), along with numerous chapters in books and articles in journals. His most recent book in production, Chaste Cinematics (Punctum Books).  He is the Publisher and Editor of PRE/TEXT: A Journal of Rhetorical Theory (1980- ). His present project is a book and film: The working title of the book is A Re-thinking of Historiographies (of Rhetorics) as Atemporal, Anachronistic Post-cinematic Practices (with a complementary DVD film, on location in Sicily and Turkey). He has established St. Vitus Pictures, a non-profit film production company for the film.