We propose, perhaps perversely, that our question is ultimately an impossible one. And yet we intend to proceed "as if" it were not -- proposing, in fact, 2 answers. What we suspect (literacy has taught us nothing if not to *be* suspicious) is that by working through the implications and the complications generated by these 2 answers, we will discover something useful. We suspect that we will discover that that which we are hoping to "see" has yet to arrive; at least it has yet to arrive under conditions whereby we might be able to see it. In other words, by giving 2 different answers we want to invoke a logic of paradox -- a logic that dictates that what we are looking for will not be found because it cannot be "there" where we are looking, cannot be "positioned," and cannot satisfy our desire to "possess" it.

So, by proposing 2 answers -- let's call them "S" (for screen) and "M" (for mediation), we will be engaged in constructing a fantasy.

This project, generated by specific classroom experiences teaching in a computer networked environment, will explore the desire that is produced by the disjunction between what *is* and what *ought to be*. Thus we want to exhibit the provisional results of an experiment that engages a range of texts in a variety of media showing and telling how desire may be mobilized to produce and to construct versions of our fantasies that tease and please rather than frustrate and bore.

Author: Michelle Glaros
Second Author: Michael A. Laffey

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Target Audience: Advanced