Pedagogical Lessons #56
Somewhere CNN is playing in the background….
Not too long ago. Someone is describing the task of first year writing (it is a trope, but this time it happened as well): the thesis helps the student focus.
The funny thing about writing is that it is often becomes autobiographical. Whether there is an “I” or no “I,” one is telling a particular story about one’s self. Analysis? Description? Summary? The moment you write about someone or something, you are writing about yourself. That’s not a claim for a specific pedagogical moment (expressivism) nor is it a claim for confession. It’s more a realization of theory. The autobiographical seldom settles on a totalizing sentence or two. When de Certeau argues against totalizing, this is one area he is referring to. Space is autobiographical. It shouldn’t be totalizing.
A Lewis Trondheim comic strip…..
You ask a writer to consider the relationship. Not the relationship between two people (though, not excluding that either), but between a person and an idea, an idea and an idea, an idea and a place, a reference and an idea, a place and a person, and so on. It’s an endless mess. The pedagogy is making that request: find the relationship. Others call it “research.” We could also call it a mess. What is the harm in that? Research is making a mess, not - as one of our compositionists calls it - tidy writing. You don’t write as if you are cleaning your room.
The closing credits of an Ernie Kovacs show….
The hardest pedagogical moment is the reference. “I don’t know who this is.” These are interesting moments of engagement. To bypass the reference without caring (”I never saw that movie,” “I never head of that,” “I didn’t know who he was talking about”) is to say, I don’t care. To say these such things is to admit to not being engaged.
This is the source of pedagogical complaint. The essay that repeats a cliché. The essay that says nothing. The essay that begins, “There are many different ideas about…” or “One side says…the other says…” Nothing anchors these writings. They are not circulations. They do not reference. They are not responding to anything. Writing without engagement. Of course, the writing is often tied to the teaching. Pedagogies without references: “Write about a controversial topic.” “Bring in your thesis.” “Make sure you have X amount of sources.” Teaching without engagement. No one gets engaged.
I particularly liked the initial segment, especially the part about space being “autobiographical,” instead of totalizing. It reminds me of the final projects we completed for the Rhetoric of Pleasure class, and the continued emphasis on drawing on the image repertoire. The image repertoire, as I understand it, is intimately autobiographical. The images that we associate with a particular space, that helped us map that space, were intimate, and could not be totalizing.
The second part reminds me of Massumi’s introduction to Parables for the Virtual, when he is discussing the use of examples…
“Then reconnect it to other concepts, drawn from other systems, until a whole new system of connection starts to form. Then, take another example. See what happens. Follow the new growth. You end up with many buds. Incipient systems. Leave them that way. You have made a systemlike composition prolonging the active power of the example� (12)
If the example is to be considered the result of research, or, more accurately, the application of research, than it seems that research could potentially be more beneficial as mess. It seems that this is somewhat similar to what Deleuze and Guattari suggest in a Thousand Plateaus in terms of the signifiying regime:
“it must constantly assure the expansion of the circles or spiral, it must provide the center with more signifier to overcome the entropy inherent in the system and to make new circles blossom or replenish the old.”
But then, I am referencing, as you discuss in the third segment.
Comment by jargoncomputer — September 20, 2007 @ 11:55 pm
Yet, I am drawn back as I reread the body without organs…couldn’t one write as if cleaning a room, if only to subvert the strata?
I know I am probably on a weird thread here, but, it might be the difference between emptying the body of organs, instead of looking for the point at which one could dismantle the organization of the organs. Again, Deleuze and Guattari:
“It is through a meticulous relation with the strata that one succeeds in freeing lines of flight, causing conjugated flows to pass and escape and bringing forth continuous intensities for a BwO” (161).
I like the idea of working within the system, perhaps within the tidiness of that which already exists or the insistence on tidiness, in order to subvert; the idea of “mimicking the strata.”
Comment by jargoncomputer — September 21, 2007 @ 11:50 am
I know you are describing a slightly different response, but couldn’t “I never saw that movie,” or “I don’t know who that is” also be a moment of research, if it sparks curiosity to follow up and read, see, etc.? I remember you talking once about “I don’t know” as being, not an endpoint of ignorance, a badge of shame, but where much valuable research begins.
Comment by Brian — September 21, 2007 @ 1:55 pm
Jeff,
when you say, “That’s not a claim for a specific pedagogical moment (expressivism) . . .” i cringe at the thought of expressivism as a “pedagogical moment” because i think of it (the term, the naming of it) as a political gesture that infantilized some very important work.
i keep trying to help us think about what got called expressivism and what it was about. retrieving it from the confines of The Taxonomy helps. maybe i need to read what you’re reading of de Certeau
Comment by bonnie kyburz — September 21, 2007 @ 2:23 pm
but oh lordy i’m tired of that discussion and was cringing as i hit “tell me what you want”
moving on . . .
Comment by bonnie kyburz — September 21, 2007 @ 2:24 pm
couldn’t “I never saw that movie,� or “I don’t know who that is� also be a moment of research, if it sparks curiosity to follow up and read, see, etc.?
Of course. I’m thinking more of the response to not knowing:
Teacher: When the writer uses Sun Ra at this moment, he is working with dissonance in way that…
Student: I have no idea. I don’t know who Sun Ra is.
This could be extended to teachers as well….
Cultural Literacy? Cultural Capital? How do you write or proceed to know without either?
Comment by jrice — September 21, 2007 @ 2:26 pm
Ah– got it.
Comment by brian — September 21, 2007 @ 3:54 pm
instead of looking for the point at which one could dismantle the organization of the organs
right…which could lead to interesting discussions on the nature of organization.
Comment by jrice — September 22, 2007 @ 9:21 pm