In the opening sections of his book, "Electronic Monuments," Gregory Ulmer speaks of a societal shift in "language apparatus"- away from literacy and toward what he calls "electracy," a sort of digital literacy. Ulmer talks about how literacy (and orality before it, and electracy in the future) has impacted the way things are memorialized. He documents the traditions of orality- that things were remembered through spoken language and ritual; and of literacy- where things are remembered through writing. Ulmer proclaims the basis of his EM project out of the need "for a compositional practice capable of supporting learning with digital media, to do for the Internet and hypermedia what the essay did for the library and argumentative writing."
Ulmer sees "electronic monuments" as a method of inviting the collective into this realm of an "electrate civic sphere." The basis of this theory comes from the ways our literate culture constructs monuments to commemorate people, places and things that have passed. Particularly, monuments are used to form both an individual and collective identity through making sense of traumatic events (9/11 is the main example in the book.) However, in an electrate society- memory and socialization will be less tied to the physical and more tied to the virtual. Further, Ulmer references Paul Virilio in stating that we are now living in a world of "instantaneous activity," a world of "real time"; with "unprecedented immediacy" that leads to "the displacement of the real city by the telecity, the loss of a lived public space in favor of a virtual gathering on the Internet..." Human identity is at risk in such a context. However, Ulmer argues that these things may appear as crises from the perspective of literacy- but electracy provides a new apparatus for these shifts in identity. The venue for these shifts is in the digital world and on the Internet.
Electronic monuments themselves operate off the basis that commemoration is a basic human operation which, as I said before, helps shape both individual and collective identities. In electracy, this commemoration happens, at least in part, in the digital realm. Ulmer concerns himself mostly with what I can only guess is a specific kind of electronic monument in these first couple of chapters- the MEmorial. Whereas a memorial "bears witness" to a prominent specific person(s) or event, a MEmorial is the opposite- it refers to that which is "neither clear nor distinct." Furthermore, Ulmer goes on to compare the two in terms of the ideal and the abject. A memorial is a celebration and a conceptualization of an ideal of some kind. He uses the example of the Vietnam memorial as representing the ideals of freedom, and contrasted it to the "sacrifice" of car accidents as something that might be "MEmorialized" as an abject value.
An abject value is an underlying societal value; one that is not visible or readily apparent, and one that the collective might not even be consciously aware of- let alone accepting of. Ulmer uses the example of car accidents, by making the point that car accidents are social sacrifices of a sort- just not in the ideological sort like a soldier at war. The abject value that is demanding this sacrifice is this- we want to be able to drive, where we want, when we want, how we want; as Ulmer says. The sacrifice that we willingly give up is the knowledge that accidents happen and that thousands of people die every year in traffic accidents. This value is not a national or cultural ideal- it is abject in that it reflects the "base" or perhaps the underbelly of human existence that often only takes place in our subconscious.
The goal of these MEmorials is to recognize the abject, the things that aren't recognized by the dominant-hegemonic ideology of the time. This does not just mean car accidents, but anything that is suppressed by the dominant ideology- homosexuality, minorities, etc. The hope is that, in recognizing the abject through these electronic monuments, both the individual and the collective would become more self-aware and in becoming so, would grow into an electrate society. Ulmer mentions the ways in which monuments (particuarly in America) invite people into national ideals and a national spirit. People "tour" (a key analogy in the book) our national monuments- the Lincoln Memorial, for example- and they are somehow ushered into relationship to the ideals which those monuments embody. Similarly, electronic monuments can invite individuals into a better understanding of self and community in the digital age- and usher them into a new way of relating- that of electracy.
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