Nothing scares composition more than hip hop or worse: THE DJ. And the DJ rapping this kind of stuff - performed as Quasimoto (pseudonyms??? Try alter egos, baby) - how is this writer gonna invent the university? Plagiarized. Yup. Who cares? Media makes the copy the writing itself.
This writer is exiled. Textbooks can't hold her in. Textbooks can't define her. "We need to communicate clearly and make sense of our world, more than ever before," Atwan's media-based textbook Convergences declares. Oh really? Exiled Pedagogy dismisses clarity. Clarity is what led to exile in the first place. Even the most banal of media like CNN opt for the assemblage. The newspaper was an exile media form. The sample is today's exile (unless we consider its commercial appeal to music. But its pedagogical value is still exiled. Journalism studies made the newspaper acceptable to the university; it pretended to be "ethical" and beyond plagiarism. But it's not).
Note Madvillain's intro to "Shadows of Tomorrow" (or even remember the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows"). Clarity? Where? Light? Past? Future? What are they talking about?
We should teach (or not teach? encourage? promote?) the exile. Of course, one could argue that composition already exiles. Write about that? Why? Topic sentence where? Why? Who cares? Tell you this ad means what? The elections? Oye. WHY US???
Some of my best friends are DJs, after all....
Replies: 3 comments
Ahh, good to know you've seen the inside of a community college, Jeff. I keep pressing for greater interchange between CC and university scholars, especially hoping that research universities would do some studies of CC comp. While I'm sure the grammar drills/5 paragraph essay crap is still too widespread, it's rare in my department.
What we need, I think, are some studies of long-time CC practictioners to see what profs who do comp for full careers have learned about teaching comp. George Hillocks has a little of this in a recent book, but we need samplings around the country. Schon's "Reflective Practitioner" stuff.
Posted by John @ 08/17/2004 04:47 PM EST
Hi John
All true. And I don't disagree with what you're saying.
When I first started higher ed, I started in the community college. The students were exiled from day one.
a. not good enough for the big boys over at the state university
b. not "smart" enough to do anything but mindless grammar drills and no-content five paragraph essays on nothing of matter (five reasons why credit cards are good/bad/ five reasons why abortion should be legal/not legal). Two run ons? Oops. You failed.
c. all the above confirmed by the label "basic writing."
The snooze factor goes off for these kids when faced with drivel. But so does awareness. They know what's going down. They are being exiled from any real investment in intellectual work. They see the kinds of writing they already produce elsewhere or interact with outside of the school, and then they see what the course offers. Exile on Main Street.
Posted by j @ 08/16/2004 07:41 PM EST
While I kinda get your use of "exile" in opposition to "composition," I can't really accept the notion of "composition" as some single, coherent entity that is frightened by DJs and exiles.
Some of my reaction comes from my own institutional context: lots of my students believe they have been exiled to the community college. Our governor even tried to make it policy for several thousand students qualified for the University of California this fall.
I think we have a different dance in the CC. We have to establish credibility, that what students get is as good or better than the university offers--AND we need to let them bring their own individuality, their own sense of composing which can easily come from rap/hip-hop sampling and composing. But we have such a rich mix of international and second language students many have not been socialized in American schools and American pop culture. Our student mix in itself critiques the unitary sense of "composition."
If the exile is the norm, what does that do to the concept?
Posted by John @ 08/16/2004 06:48 PM EST
