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09/22/2005 Archived Entry: "Scratch"

Watching Scratch last night. At one point DJ Shadow is rummaging through the basement of a record store - stacks and stacks of records no one wants - searching for "beats." This is the metaphor for research. The DJs with their vast knowledge of sounds (Afrika Bambata being able to pull "The Clapping Song" from Shirley Ellis out of nowhere) represent the sense of cultural literacy Hirsch tried to promote but fell flat when he reduced it to "what you must know." Instead of the "what you must know" to be culturally literate, the DJ method works with "breaks," those snippets of information we collect and internalize, then reformulate for new work.

Media culture foregrounds the breaks through search engines, tags, television, film, etc. Of course, that simple fact is not as obvious as it mean seem; the various moments of cultural recognition that go unnoticed professionally or in the classroom seem odd and frustrating. We ask colleagues or students: how can that be, you never heard of that?

This scene with DJ Shadow was striking for that very reason; digging in the crates is the basic premise of research, of discovery, of finding those bits of information that you really don't know what you will ever do with, but you know to put it aside for now. It is the process of cultural recognition: I remember once hearing, seeing, feeling, knowing. . . it is the process of writing.

But the other interesting thing here is that these DJs are nerds. They have allowed information collection to command their lives. Maybe in that there is reason why this is not an example of cultural literacy. But I'd like to see some kind of mix of the two. At what point should you not be a nerd about the ideas you are developing or putting forth? Nerdliness is a trait of knowing, but also of the pleasure of knowing. You don't just become a nerd; you are invested in what you are doing.

Posted by joanna @ 09/23/2005 08:11 AM EST

Yes, we must spread the nerd aesthetic far and wide. That's a better trope than the Microserf "knowledge worker," to be sure. Subscriptions to Make for all! But nerdliness goes against darn near every trend in American culture, in which "mix" more often means "cake mix" than mixing a CD.

BTW, since I'm a nerd, let me say that it's "Palatino." :)

Posted by cbd @ 09/22/2005 10:55 PM EST

But to get the writer to WANT TO BE A NERD!
Ah, that is the trick. The true nerd will spend hours looking into something, gathering ideas, collecting references, allusions, points (not writing last minute, or only googling a few main points about what she's writing).

Cultural literacy is about knowing, about collecting, but it's not nerdly at all. It's just a prescribed knowing....and it's fixed in what you should know.

So we need a nerd-based cultural literacy.

Posted by jeff @ 09/22/2005 09:56 PM EST

Dude, you're talking to someone who just got a bit bent out of shape because her version of Word doesn't have the Palantino font. It went something like this:

jenny: "Maybe I shouldn't use Arial for this class handout. I know! I'll use Palintino. Oh shit, there's no Palantino! GRRRREAT!"

That's pointless nerditry, and I'm ashamed of myself.

Posted by jenny @ 09/22/2005 04:09 PM EST

At what point should you not be a nerd about the ideas you are developing or putting forth?

At no point. What's not to like about the nerdliness methodology? It's uncool, to be sure (yesterday one of my students called another a "conformist prude" because she was questioning the quality of their group work). But the nerd in the basement takes pleasure in knowing that maybe her knowledge of the usefulness of the second song on the back side of some long-forgotten record.

Why mix the two (assuming the two you are talking about here are nerdliness and cultural literacy quantified a la Hirsch or Selfe)?

Posted by cbd @ 09/22/2005 02:43 PM EST