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05/04/2005 Archived Entry: "Why Don't You Listen"

Why Don't You Listen

Putting the remix into critical practice.
I borrow the image from Brendan to note a recent experiment in disciplinary niceness. A week or so ago, I picked up on Collin and Will's thread on Udell and spread the joy to WPA. I posed the post nicely, and framed it as a current Web-response to emerging forms of professional writing (emergences far beyond the traditional teach the genre: memo, proposal, report). Udell, like other “popular” writers on technology and writing (Steven Johnson, David Weinberger) is seeing technology and writing as something outside of instrumentality (which tool do I use) and genre (memo anybody? Website for non-profit?). There is a lesson there for composition studies and its stagnant curriculum.
My question to myself was: would the repetitive threads on mocking student mistakes (uh, didn't Macrorie jump on that practice about 30 years ago) and machine grading yield to a fairly intellectual discussion on some of the issues Udell noted regarding writing and technology, points that are not so much instrumental as logic-based. Could the list shift to intellectual discussion without coping out (“technology is beyond us”) or shrugs of the shoulders (“who cares anyway”)? Not that folks need to agree with me or anybody. Instead, could there be a discussion?
The experiment, of course, failed. No one listened. No one – to quote the continued mantra I critiqued previously – “paid attention.”
I am becoming more and more convinced that this field is going to die shortly. Its death will be triggered by a heightened regression into anti-intellectualism and a preference for positivist disciplinary identity. Composition studies will become irrelevant. Its focus will be on sending kids through the system and backing up that movement with so-called relevant data (“We taught X amount of students Y amount of things via Z amount of teachers at a mean score of Q”) that has little to no connection to writing within the digital apparatus. The emerging concerns with connectivity, networking, juxtaposition, etc which mark digital writing and thinking will remain ignored. And what do the rest of us do? Complain, gripe, get angry, blah blah blah. But really, not much more than what we currently do. We got the blog space, the occasional article, the here and there response on a listserv, but you can’t do much more than that. The revolution will not be web-ified because the revolution probably won’t happen, or it won’t happen until the practices are so ubiquitous (though I think they already are) that even composition’s greatest hits of administration can no longer ignore them.

Posted by collin @ 05/06/2005 04:50 AM EST

Something has to be alive before it can die. The more institutionally entrenched comp becomes the less likely it is to become a site of intellectual development...that is unless someone thinks that the fact that my own state system (SUNY) instituting systemwide assessment of composition is going to raise the intellectual/disciplinary tenor.

I've bounced around some hinterlands, and I would contend that the average FYC course is taught using pedagogy that is 20 years behind the time (i.e. not really grasping the whole idea of "process" rather than product). Add into that the fact that the mainstream disciplianry "best practices" are 5-10 years behind the leading edge of rhetoric.

I think there's plenty of opportunity to talk about the theories Jeff and many others are interested in, including myself. But, for all its instutional security (indeed b/c of it), I think FYC is an intellectual dead end. It's far more intellectually productive for me to work with my two rhetoric colleagues developing a small writing program, than try to convince 20-30 adjuncts and lecturers to teach FYC in a way they know nothing about.

Posted by Alex @ 05/05/2005 10:23 PM EST

Donna: exactly right. Follow the money trail in the universities. Who gets it? Where does it go? It goes to disciplines that are typically empirical and outcomes based. IOW, those disciplines that can "prove" their work in numbers and tangible results. (This is why VV and others have called for us to resist being "disciplined.") So, if we are talking about marginalization in an institutional sense, being WPA-heavy is never going to hurt.

Death from more empiricism? Death from a more administrative nature? No way. Well...not an institutional death, anyway. The discipline will get stronger because of these things. Perhaps a good reason to stay undisciplined, as Sirc and others argue.

Posted by jenny @ 05/05/2005 11:18 AM EST

It's more, yes. There's always more. I'm talking historical conditions of emergence and current conditions of pressure.

And, um, has anyone noticed that the last two CCCC chairs are former WPA big-wigs? Not that I have anything against Kathie or Doug--in fact, they're both rather nice people. But I still think it's true that in important ways that shouldn't be overlooked, WPA work/administrative imperatives have made comp possible and continue to function to make it possible.

But, anyway, that's enough from me.

Posted by Donna @ 05/05/2005 10:52 AM EST

Interesting post that makes me think three quick things:

* I think the demise of comp/rhet is greatly exaggerated, and I'm also happy to say that I think you're kind of rehashing a relatively old fear within our field/discipline/group/whatever we want to call it. And I think that whatever counts as comp/rhet is a big enough tent to include bean counters and the VVs and Glues of the world who think that the beans are mere figments of our collective imaginations.

So don't worry, Jeff; be happy.

* Donna, I sure as hell hope that comp/rhet is more than writing program administration, and I know that it's more than the WPA-L mailing list. I've been in a tenure-track job since '96, and I have spent a grand total of 1 year as a WPA (though I recently dodged the bullet to do it again). I teach in an undergrad and a grad program where we are training folks in various flavors of writing, but not administration. Maybe I'm in an unusual situation, but I have a job where I'll never have anything directly to do with writing program administration, and that's okay with me.

* I read the WPA-L mailing list only when I have time and/or when I see something interesting. I was pretty busy with other stuff when you would have made that post, Jeff; I just threw away about 200 messages from WPA-L unread.

Posted by Steven D. Krause @ 05/05/2005 08:36 AM EST

Mike, I agree with you. But I also know that dominant voices set dominant belief systems. The participation on the list is low and dominanted by a few. But many of those voices can/will/do set the tone for the field on list and off list. When those voices refuse to disicuss an issue/or find that issue not relevant to the field, then that belief has the tendency to grow.

Posted by jeff @ 05/05/2005 07:09 AM EST

I agree, Jenny. The managerial/number-crunching stuff makes composition really at the vanguard as universities themselves become all the more managed and number-crunching. Maybe the disciplines they are a-changin? (Sorry.) I would even argue, Mike, that WPA in a certain sense *is* comp. Why are there grad programs in comp, after all? Aren't they, primarily, training administrators?

All to say--I think Jeff's effort to intervene on the WPA list is important and necessary, if nonetheless frustrating. Don't give up the good fight!

Posted by Donna @ 05/04/2005 11:45 PM EST

Dude -- you're trying to gauge the status of the field based on the conversation on a program *administration* list. Of course they're going to sound weirdly conservative at times. Of course they're gonna sound like they're overly concerned with mundane public image stuff. WPA ain't composition, at least not the whole thing.

Posted by Mike @ 05/04/2005 10:44 PM EST

Hmmm....not sure I follow. If composition studies falls into just a system of tests and outcomes and numbers, is it a discipline? Or is it just a service? If it's just a service, then its rise as a discipline (a rise not very long in temporal duration) ends. It goes back to being simply a service. It dies.

Posted by jeff @ 05/04/2005 07:46 PM EST

I think you're probably wrong about the demise of comp studies. Being test-crazy, outcomes-crazy, and number crunchers doesn't mean you're marginalized in the academy. Quite the opposite, actually, since you have something to *show* for yourself to administration. The disciplines who die are those who can't print out their worth in tables and charts. Of course, this doesn't mean that comp will be intellectually stimulating or creative. It just means that rumors of its demise (in the institutional sense) is greatly exaggerated here...

Posted by jenny @ 05/04/2005 05:39 PM EST

Maybe your experiment failed because it's the end of the academic year for many of us--I am so busy doing grades, ordering books and so on that critical, abstract thought is beyond my ken right now. I expect to be able to think like a professional (don't try this at home)in a few weeks.
As far as WPA goes--I'd read the list if I could. No matter what I do, it comes garbled and full of formatting instruction within the text, so I tend to delete the darn thing without reading,
which kind of supports your argument in a sorta tangential way--how can we discuss technology if the list is illegible?

Posted by joanna @ 05/04/2005 03:11 PM EST

Maybe we move more and more into teaching cultural studies. I remember meeting a guy at the National PCA meeting whose talk was essentially "we need to read more Vitanza." I liked it and got into a conversation w/ him about VV, Glue, and others. He remarked, glumly, that Glue got much more attention outside of Rhet/Comp circles than he gets inside.

So perhaps we move into the larger conversation across disciplines (sorry about that cliche) while the Comp machine continues on TOPIC.

Posted by Brendan @ 05/04/2005 02:41 PM EST