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05/13/2004 Archived Entry: "Remix etc"

Jerz’s excerpt of an old Yellow Dog post and the very brief ensuing discussion prompts me to revisit the perpetual question, what is composition?
Bartholomae asked that question in an essay of similar name, and his response like much of his work was unsatisfying.
So many folks teaching first year writing. What are they teaching? The post on Jerz’s blog was from one of my rants on the remix. His colleague’s response is that such ideas are fine and dandy in theory (and apparently for grad students…didn’t understand that point since I’m not a grad student and even if I was, so what?) but not in practice. First year students need to learn to “think on their own,” the colleague says. Mixing texts doesn’t allow for that. Oh really?
Here’s the dilemma and confusion. Asking students to conform to a print based logic in an electronic world is not teaching anyone to think on one’s own. Indeed, this kind of pedagogy translates into a continual academic stubbornness, a refusal to recognize the communication shifts we have experienced and are experiencing currently. Telling students to write according to the logic of print (whether the writing is on paper or not – I am talking about the logic not the medium) is to force students to reject the communicative practices around them: IM, the Web, Film, TV, music, etc.
The other serious problem here is that the refusal to recognize the remix is also a refusal to recognize the nature of texts we often value and admire in English Studies (and the university in general). The Wasteland? Remixed. Shakespeare? So remixed. Las Meninas? Remixed Velasquez. Pick a Medieval text at random. It will be a remix. Newspaper stories? Always remixed (I remember my own newspaper experience at several publications– we would go through other papers looking for ideas). Literature reflects a Borges universe where every story is remixed and mixed. Spun around on a literate turntable and wondered over.
And the general concept of research? It is a remix-oriented practice when done right. In fact, the notion of one’s “own idea” as Jerz’s colleague puts it, only occurs after one has gone through various ideas, synthesized those ideas, and remixed them in order to produce a so-called new idea.
What digital media has done (and what Benjamin pointed out long before the digital as we know it and what McLuhan understood before the personal computer) is it has made the remix a daily practice for all and disseminated the practice so widely that its ubiquitous nature (Tv, film, music, word processing, etc.) has greatly confused composition studies. The remix is so prevalent that somehow it can’t be worth doing, composition seems to believe. That which is repeatable is no good – a splendid fantasy to believe in (and contradiction - how many personal stories leading to self worth or empowerment has expressivism made the poster boy of triteness or cliché? ). Or, the favorite mantra tells us, remix? That’s plagiarism.
But another angle: composition’s greatest error is ignoring writing. The field clings to the standard essay while ignoring how writing looks elsewhere. We can’t deny that sampling, digital media, Flash, weblogs, or whatever your flavor is writing. Folks, it’s writing. Take a harder look. Just because it doesn’t match the essay (and here again composition falters; historical overview serves as a reminder of just how radical the essay itself once was) doesn’t mean it’s not writing.
And then I marvel. “Think for yourself.” And many students do just that. But when they think for themselves and work within the logic of new media (consciously or not) some instructor comes along and accuses them of cheating, or to a lesser degree, not organizing information the way the text book says.
So what’s the point of this post? A self-response to the brief conversation I read? A reminder that composition seems to enjoy sitting outside of writing practices that can’t be jammed into yet another textbook that teaches purpose, audience, clarity, coherence? A call for better teaching which reflects how writing actually works (it’s not theory; it is practice – how odd to declare a media-based practice a “theory” – is this fellow not living in the modern)?
Today on WPA, Fred Kemp says he’s looking for less calls for more research on writing and more narratives about actual, new practices. Look around Fred. The practices are already here. Getting the teachers to understand that is our real challenge.