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02/08/2005 Archived Entry: "Pushing the Envelope"

Pushing the Envelope
I don't like getting political here in the crowded offices of Yellow Dog ("Koom, put that back!"), but maybe a word or two on the parallel missions of FCC censorship and composition attitude as expressed on its main listserv WPA-L. From the halls of Congress, Fred Upton applauds legislation that will raise indecency fines to $500,000.

"My sense is we're not going to have any problems," said Rep. Fred Upton, R-MI, chairman of the House telecommunications subcommittee. "With passage of this legislation, I am confident that broadcasters will think twice about pushing the envelope."

Don't push the envelope. Don't rock the boat. Don't do anything. Intellectuals love to call for free speech and whatnot, but our own little niche of academic work (for those of you reading who are not academics), devotes a lot of time basically saying the same thing: Don't push the envelope. Composition has become the FCC of expression. As one notable compositionist said recently on the listserv:

As we've gotten academically cuter with our pedagogical ideas, we've
shunted ourselves further from both the writing program administrators
who can understand and appreciate them, and even further from the
possibility of their finding their way into the actual lesson plans in
the tens of thousands of classrooms that teach writing in America.

C'mon, you say. Those two statements aren't the same. Oh no? The little-bit softer tone of the second quote is saying that we don't need new ideas, and in particular, we don't need new ideas that push the envelope. Such ideas are too dense for common folk to understand. "Don't you theorists get all fancy now with your edumucated talk." In other words, don't say anything. Cause if it’s a bit complex, it ain’t worth knowing.

So what? What are you griping about, big shot professor? So - the undertone is the ideology of complacency. It's a not so subtle message, typically directed at younger folks in the profession, to keep their mouths shut. “Either agree with us in our language, or get the hell out.”

Another compositionist argues:

Let me just leave with the suggestion that the
desire to be engaged in intellectual and/or creative pursuits (and thus
*be* intellectual and/or creative) is quite possibly (I think probably)
implanted in us by a hierarchically arranged social structure that gives
dominance and privilege to those who get paid for thinking (or for thinking
they are thinking) over those who do manual labor (which I call real work).

Thinking is not work, then. Beyond the romanticizing of working class ethics here (“Oh, glorious manual labor! Oh Marx! Oh Lenin!”), there is a move to stop thinking. That's not "real" work. Thought is unnecessary. Just do what you're supposed to do, and don't think about it. Don't push the envelope.

This is where we are today. A rhetoric of the envelope. The clarity narrative instilled in students now has come full circle in the open. "Folks," the narrative says, "it's not enough that we've been telling students all these years to see the world as clear and coherent (i.e. don't push the envelope by showing the world its problems). Now we want the rest of you teachers to keep it simple too." And the left is worried about the right? Shades of Pogo once again: We've met the enemy, and it is us.

Posted by Clay @ 02/08/2005 08:32 PM EST

I say we just go beat them up.

Ass kicking is quite labor intensive and not very cute

But, as Jenny mentions on her blog, maybe our best bet is to just do our own thing.

Nah!

Posted by Dan S. @ 02/08/2005 03:09 PM EST

I guess I should sign my whole name on this blog, given that "j" could be "j.rice."

This "j" happens to be moi, however.

Posted by j (enny) @ 02/08/2005 01:20 PM EST

The quote is also simply breathtaking in its argument: The desire to be creative and intellectual is ideological.

The desire to be engaged in creative pursuits is ideological.

And it's an ideology that is oppressive.

The desire to be engaged in creative and intellectual pursuits is oppressive.

I'm stunned. Honestly. Speechless in the face of such an argument coming from someone who actually has a history in the field.

Speechless in the face of such thinking. (Which is, of course, creative thinking already.)

But, on another note, it's just plain ugly. I love the presumptuous nature of arguments like this, which claim to be siding with "working class" concerns, which YOU PEOPLE must not be concerned with, in all your theory-headed muddleness.

Oh yeah? Well, guess what?. I is working class, too. I don't know too many other people in academia who came from a more working class family than I. So comments like these are not only shortsighted, but they are just plain INSULTING.

Posted by j @ 02/08/2005 01:19 PM EST

There is that point as well. But in this case, my understanding is that the quote - which was circulated and not responded to on the field's dominant site of online discussion - was to belittle thinking as not really "work" even when folks believe it is work they are doing when they write or speak (and thus, not the "clerical" stuff we also attend to).

Posted by jeff @ 02/08/2005 12:27 PM EST

I'm not sure if this is your point, but the distinction between manual and intellectual work that the quote seems to present is not remotely defensible. As Chomsky has frequently said, much scholarship is simple clerical work and a great deal less intellectual than building a boat or digging a straight ditch.

Posted by Jonathan @ 02/08/2005 11:56 AM EST