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04/07/2005 Archived Entry: "The Exchange"

The Exchange
One of the things that bothers me the most about the now developing (though ended?) exchange for the W.P.A. Rag entry is not that the subject of my critique says "hey, I don't like your critique." It's how the exchange is framed as "that you critique me and the field means you're an asshole."
That's an easy move to make in order to avoid the critique. The points on this blog and here about the essay are valid. And if someone, the writer or someone else, wants to say that the points are not valid, then "I worked hard on it" or "I know what I'm talking about because I published in Kairos and set up our computer labs" are true enough statements, but not responses as to why our critiques are not valid. We are taking the writer to task for bringing up something as new which is not new at all, for circulating the mantra of "critical thinking," a phrase now used so often that its very usage is not critical, for demonstrating a lack of knowledge of technology and the Web (as well as recent scholarship which challenges conventional attitudes regarding these areas), and for actual errors in the piece. Rather than address our critique of the piece’s shortcomings, the writer calls me a jerk. That is how one ends discussion.

This exchange reminds me very much of how several of us were pissed off when the same method was used on WPA-L to dismiss theory or approaches which don't mesh with the old guard of composition. That WPA-L response used the word "cute" and claimed that those who write do so only "to get their names published." "Cute." "Angry." In search of self-fame. How useful such terms are to deflect the subject under discussion.

In other words, debate and exchange must never enter into conflict. Here we have writing textbook methodology: examine both sides of the debate, hear each other out, find a comprise. Booth's Listening Rhetoric, correct? And if I, or another critic, decide not to participate in that process because we feel it is a move to avoid the very critique or issue we see as in need of being addressed? Why, we must be an asshole. A jerk. A snob.

So this is where our profession finds rhetorical production? Exchange as an always agreement? That is a position of fascism. Once a side dictates that agreement must be settled, then that very side has already dictated the terms of the exchange on his/her own grounds. Hardly exchange.

The network is a troubled place. Its intersections, deletions, additions, connections do not always lead to agreement and getting along. The global village is, indeed, agonistic, as Lyotard claimed. Should we fight that sense of conflict, what Burroughs called "the nova technique"? I don't really see why. If blogs allow for something, they allow for the dissent to evolve and find its niche in the network. The network allows my responses to various issues/writings/whatever to be silly, critical, off-tangent, absurd, in comic-form, mystory-ish, etc. That is how I contribute to and help form this network of ideas. One is not obligated to venture into my niche in the network. But if you come in, welcome. The welcome is a welcome into exchange. It is not a welcome into “can’t we all just get along.” Once we do that, ethics or no ethics, the exchange ends. I want the exchange; in the exchange, ideas are formed.

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Posted by free online poker tournament @ 04/13/2005 03:51 AM EST