The Electrate Professor

My response to the essay rejection prompted a dialogue about possible directions the essay could take in the future and possible venues. I am indebted to Craig Saper for his encouragement, his tending to expression of my "genius." After giving it thought, I concluded that I could develop the autocartography as a genre and use a map interface for my presentation. I've also ordered the book Lacan: Topologically Speaking, edited by my former professor Ellie Ragland. I had a course with her while at UF called "Madness and Literature," in which I applied Lacan's theory of psychosis to a breakdown I had while an undergraduate. Getting back in to Lacanian theory will be a challenge of course! But this could tie into my references to topology as a spatial metaphor for "imaging place": in this case, the place of the mind. Lacan's use of topology to "map" the mind might yield clues to how it could be used to image place as I presented it at the conference (now almost two years past!). In my presentation (you can find the slideshow at slideshare.net: http://www.slideshare.net/rsmyth/second-life-imaging-virtual-place-part2), I mention the conceptual metaphor "thinking is moving through space" and consider what would happen to thinking if the space through which thinking moved was a topological space, or a multi-dimensional space.

There is much to think about here!