The age of Web 2.0 is the age of the review. What was once the expertise of two men telling you which movies to watch is now the work of anyone with a computer and blog space. To sit on the couch or behind the table and discuss what is good or bad is the essence of the review. Amazon asks for reviews. Blog posts review films and books. “I like, I don’t like: this is of no importance to anyone,” Roland Barthes writes, “this, apparently has no meaning. And yet all this means: my body is not the same as yours.”

There is much critique of the culture of the review. Highbrow taste dictates its elimination. Weblogs are described as diaries (and Barthes calls the diary diarrhea). Yelp and Rotten Tomatoes provide a service. Ratebeer and BeerAdvocate are databases of reviews. The field of literary studies is based on the review. Hermeneutics is another way of saying: here’s my review. The Michelin guide was the early foray into the review. Where to eat when you travel. It has since transformed into a secretive method of analysis. Its contemporary in new media writing, the Sears Roebuck Catalog, has a more vast contemporary presence (the commercial website). Yet the review captures our attention more than the catalog does today.

I like. I don’t like. What differentiates the review from any other form of writing? Let me tell you how I feel. The exigence for this post is the link above from a Kansas City blogger. Before I have watched a single video (and I have not yet watched one), I am drawn to the stills of the reviewer sitting on his couch, drinking beer, putting his nose into a glass, letting us see his house, his dress, his hats.  Let me tell you how I feel, he says. You want to know what I think. Every cliched student piece of writing ends with the catch all phrase: But then again, everyone has a right to their own opinion. Everyone has a right to be filmed, on the couch, sharing a review. The typical YouTube review (posted as comment) is “you suck” or “your gay” (”you’re” always written incorrectly as if the reviewer wants to point out possession of gayness for some reason).

The review is the ultimate form of sharing, of extending one’s self outward. The kids today want roles, not jobs, McLuhan noted. The role of the Internet writer is the reviewer.  Is this the great democracy of online writing? It’s not important. We watch as certain genres or writerly roles become adopted and repeated. Reviewer is one of the most widespread. Status updater is another. The information economy may not be restricted to knowledge workers, as Liu critiques, but reviewers and updaters. The next educational step, of course, would be to teach the review or update. It might be hard to jam a “thesis” into an update. Some textbook might figure out the pedagogy. I can imagine a pedagogy of nothing but reviews and updates. Updates of reviews. Reviews of updates.  We’ll still have the old school classroom review - the student evaluation - but then we’ll also have these stacks of updates and reviews to grade. At least that’s what the typical Facebook update tells me when I check my friends’ statuses: Almost done with grading/Lots of grading to do/Finally finished my grading….

I’ll post my review of that update shortly.

The other night, while watching a PBS documentary on the Buddha, I asked my wife: religion emerges from storytelling. Storytelling internalizes and externalizes experiences. We understand the world and ourselves through narrative. So, if ancient storytelling created the major religions, why do we not have a religion that has emerged out of modern storytelling? Why is there no religion, for example, born out of The Godfather or Taxi Driver?

She ignored me. This morning, I came across another popular method of explaining experience, telling the story of Detroit’s demise. The New York Times short article “Ruin with a View” relates this story to two recent photography books. At RSA next month, I will talk a bit about photography and the Michigan Central Train Station, the way one story is recirculated in image. The story, in this case, makes sense. “Once prosperous city is now in ruin. We have much to learn about ourselves from this decline.” Jerry Heron repeated  that claim in his own book on Detroit years ago.

Such storytelling, in many ways, is the repetition of topoi. In contemporary terms, we can call this gesture, composing with taxonomies. I have a taxonomy: Detroit is a city in ruins. I compose with it. TV reports, book reviews, photograph exhibits, etc. The taxonomy is not incorrect. Detroit is, indeed, in ruins. Communal meanings, however, pose serious limitations.

In cultural studies, those limitations have been easily recognized in terms of representation, an accepted taxonomy causes a problematic representation to be circulated as if it is a truth. Supposedly, by understanding that representation, we won’t reproduce it. Of course, we do reproduce problematic representations. Narratives are reproduced all the time (thus, the religion issue).  In terms of other areas of experience - technology, writing, college, pedagogy - the representation is often accepted more easily despite its problems and other taxonomies are reproduced. Barthes calls this mythology. We assume such narratives are natural. They are constructions.

Simple stuff. But I still am interested in my first question. How do some taxonomies (or narratives) become religion and how do do others remain at the level of popular culture (the Buddha being an early popular culture story…”let me tell you the adventures of a prince who sat under a tree…”)? Myths are stories. Maybe the story of Detroit has yet to transform into a religious story? It has the demise part down but not the renewal part. This religion, then, would not be Jesus-like (resurrection) but more of a ruins-based system of belief. “We are all doomed.” One can ague that Goth culture has already taken up this cause (though only at the level of popular culture still). Maybe the Goths need Detroit and Detroit needs the Goths in order to externalize and internalize the feeling of doom and despair. Maybe Detroit’s only hope now is to allow this narrative to be externalized as a way of life. Kind of like what Bill Zehme did with Frank Sinatra yeas ago in his book The Way You Wear Your Hat. The way you wear your ruins….

Tropes make life easy. Resistance is a popular trope in cultural studies. Resistance, combined with the adjective “student” creates another popular trope in pedagogy. Introducing the unfamiliar or unusual generates student resistance. Or so we believe.

I enjoyed a Skype conversation I had last week with Craig’s graduate class at UCF. The class had read The Rhetoric of Cool and they wanted to know: is this for real? Can you really teach this? Apparently, many of the students felt student resistance as they tried to incorporate new media into their classrooms.

I wonder if we misunderstand this concept, particularly at the pedagogical level. Unwillingness to do something may be attributed to any number of factors. There may be resistance involved, but I wonder if the unwillingness, boredom, apathy, lack of interest and so on that so many of us observe while teaching is merely a condition of schooling, being a student, or simply, being human.

I like to think, for example, that I have designed the ultimate student pedagogy! Emphasis is on the student’s work, readings serve as models or heuristics, and I try to pace students through complex projects so that they understand the amount of work it takes to do a project. Feedback is mostly positive. The constant feedback and interaction is meant to help them do excellent work and receive good grades. The process is about learning method. So I believe.

Is there resistance? When students don’t take advantage of ample time to do the project, when some come unprepared, when some ignore the attendance policy, when some opt out for the easiest way rather than take up the overall challenge as intended, is there resistance? Or is there mere studenticity?

Studenticity, a riff off of Barthes’ concept of a thing’s rhetorical nature (Italianicity) would be that image repertoire of items that make of the identity of a generic sense of being a student: late work, making friends, hanging out, putting off work, doing what is easiest, getting by. This is a generic taxonomy, of course, and when critically examined, it seems to be a description of many full time academics as well. We can say the same about technology. Blackboard provides an institutional example. But is this description one of resistance?

In that sense, pedagogy might be better off if it turns away from the allure of a word like resistance. I have little feeling that resistance is occurring (of course, I doubt its existence in many parts of the political sphere as well where it serves as a similar catch word for global or economic conflict). Another moment we often witness among teachers is the declaration that students, who have been studying some text or writer, “don’t get it.”  Getting it. Resistance. Are these tropes that help teachers make sense of complicated classroom moments? Or do they merely make teachers feel that it is not their fault. Maybe pedagogy, though, cannot always account for lack of desire.  We, like any good advertiser, may do our best to generate desire, but also like any advertiser, we sometimes fail. And resistance may have little to do with that failure.