Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Some early week random thoughts:
Posted by jrice @ 09:27 AM EST [Link]
Monday, March 29, 2004
Like so many others, I am back from CCCC. I really didn't like San Antonio - too Disney Land for me. And I started to get a bit scared when I saw how the city revitalized itself through tourism. What if that happens here in Detroit? It will ruin the city. I don't want a Detroit Riverwalk or a city which sells only the five brands of beer one distributor sells, or Fudruckers and Hardrock as the places to eat, or anything I saw in San Antonio.
Posted by jrice @ 08:06 AM EST [Link]
Monday, March 22, 2004
For the Detroit class tomorrow, two images we should probably work with regarding Barthes' "Myth Today":
and
And if we have time, this one too (not related to the "Spirit of Detroit" statue, but interesting still):
"Myth has in fact a double function; it points out and it notifies, it makes us understand something and it imposes it on us" (117). Maybe we can find a way to understand how these images do all of this, and how such writing can help us produce a neologism to better explain the "sign" we create when we construct a mythology of Detroit.
Posted by jrice @ 04:27 PM EST [Link]
Sunday, March 21, 2004
More material for my mystory:
Notice how the narrative of Sir Noise D'Voidoffunk names me at the end of his speech ("J"). Funketelechy, as I am writing about in Funkcomp, is the digital update of Burke's "entelechy." This image also poses my discipline (cool) against the entertainment part of my mystory (funk).
Posted by jrice @ 03:55 PM EST [Link]
European anti-Anti-Semitism is out of control. The left needs to be more critical of the assumptions it makes and the prejudices it circulates.
Posted by jrice @ 02:08 PM EST [Link]
Campus mail is down yet again. This is what happens when you lack IT leadership (the last head guy was fired; no one has replaced him yet).
Random thoughts:
De'boughetto - Detroit Bouguesie Ghetto: Those who live in big houses in what
'used to be' middle class but maintain the appearance of middle class status.
Posted by jrice @ 11:54 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, March 18, 2004
I have March Madness. First day thoughts (so far):
Posted by jrice @ 07:38 PM EST [Link]
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Some more thoughts for the day:
Posted by jrice @ 02:40 PM EST [Link]
Back to the Rhetoric of Cool manuscript this morning for a little rethinking:
Maybe I'm driven to this because of recent comments on WPA-L regarding Literature and Composition (why on earth am I suddenly in the position of defending lit on this listserv?). But anyway, two chapters of the manuscript deal with how the Beats and noir teach the Rhetoric of Cool specific strategies for electronic writing (because of how these genres fall within the 1963 juxtaposition I create).
One issue I take from noir is manipulation.
Jim Thompson's usage of the con in the 1963 The Grifters as a rhetoric of manipulation runs counter to typical textbook advice like this from The St. Martin's Guide to Writing:
“What is wrong is manipulating readers with false or exaggerated appeals” (Axelrod and Cooper 462).
But, as I will also show when I get to technology and Engelbart and Sutherland, manipulation is an electronic rhetorical strategy. Even more so, that manipulation becomes violent as I move to Chester Himes' work: murder, abuse, beatings, all are used for producing information. “Reasoned argument requires more thought than quarreling,” The St. Martin's Guide teaches (201), but it has to involve quarreling, violence, manipulation, and destruction at times. By the end of this chapter, I get to King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail" and this quote:
“The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation”
becomes all the more relevant because King's idea of rhetorical extremism fits well with cool, but not with textbook advice which turns King into an appeal for rationality.
Posted by jrice @ 10:54 AM EST [Link]
Monday, March 15, 2004
I need to work this into my mystory (the cowboy meets funk):
Posted by jrice @ 03:12 PM EST [Link]
Governor Granholm declared today "Bob Seger Day". More celebritacy at work, I see.
Posted by jrice @ 12:29 PM EST [Link]
Sunday, March 14, 2004
The Motor Booty Affair image I described on Friday:
Posted by jrice @ 01:00 PM EST [Link]
Saturday, March 13, 2004
A good friend sent me this postcard:
Posted by jrice @ 04:17 PM EST [Link]
Friday, March 12, 2004
One more thing to add today:
This postcard below came to my office a week ago (discipline) advertising Richard Florida's talk for Create Detroit downtown. The idea behind Florida's appeal is to bring creativity to the city as the focus of urban renewal. He is aligned with Gov. Granholm's "Cool Cities" plan. Cool is found in my discipline (my textbook and manuscript in progress). And one figure in the card mentions "corporate cool" a term which reminds me of a recent article I have written called "Cooltown: The Place of Intellectual Work," a critique of HP's Cooltown project, WebCT, and managed software.
But note the language of this card: "Groove." "We're starting a new groove" echoes Funkadelic's "One Nation Under a Groove." Florida accidently names funk as central to his plan, not cool. And, the obvious signifier here, Florida is the place I grew up (I am reversing the trend - Michiganers go South; I went North. In the words of Funkadelic, am I creating "Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis"?). I see myself, then, within this card (Florida, cool), and I see a reference to another article, "Funkcomp," I have been working on for my edited collection.
I want to use this postcard along with the back cover of Motor Booty Affair in order to map out my mystory more completely.
Posted by jrice @ 12:28 PM EST [Link]
More mystory notes to give students as my example during Tuesday's class:
I'm working with Parliament's Motor Booty Affair while I work with Ulmer's directive to find the overlap of entertainment and the personal in the popcycle.
On the back cover of Motor Booty Affair is the picture of a cowboy (in hat and clothes) riding a wave with a ghetto blaster to his ear. As I note on my notes for the assignment, my personal involves Homestead and Miami, Florida, cowboy imagery and the frontier. I'm from Miami (my father is from Homestead; at my grandmother's house in Homestead, I would pretend the water pump in the backyard was a horse). This image from Motor Booty Affair, then, functions as an emblem within my mystory bridging Detroit and Miami (motor booty and the waves off of South Beach where we would hang out as kids). It also contains elements of the frontier: Detroit bordering Canada; Homestead is the frontier.
The character in the image, I assume, is Rumpofsteelskin whose name further aligns me with the auto industry of Detroit (STEEL) and technology (my discipline). The directive on the album, which is repeated in several songs and on the back cover, is "Go Wiggle." This directive repeats in my UDM URL as the tilda (~).
Posted by jrice @ 11:38 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, March 11, 2004
An eleven year old article in Metropolis Mag, "Dismantling the Motor City." I come to it after class discussion today on the erasure of Detroit, the Cool Cities plan, and the absence of attention to race. It's also on my mind as I have to remember the examples of the mystory I did for my 409 class last year, and will have to repeat on Tuesday.
Discipline: Teaching writing in Detroit
Entertainment: Funk
Detroit - the Motor City
George Clinton - the Motor Booty Affair
Personal: Buying boots at Roberts Western Wear in Miami when I was a kid; walking around Oklahoma in my boots (and don't forget Bootsy Collins!)
Tearing down houses in the city - former Mayor Archer's plan to spend more on demolition than rebuilding
Clinton: Tear the roof off this mutha
Why isn't Detroit mentioned in "Chocolate City"? I have my James Brown pass, but what about my Detroit pass?
Posted by jrice @ 02:30 PM EST [Link]
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
This building, The Vinton Building, located at 600 Woodward, is for sale. 
Built in 1917 and designed by Albert Kahn, the building has long been abandoned. I wonder how much it's going for.
Posted by jrice @ 08:15 PM EST [Link]
Thanks for reminding me, Collin.
Posted by jrice @ 09:29 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, March 9, 2004
My fortune cookie from Saigon Legend in Gainesville (eaten almost one week ago):
"Smile when you are ready."
Posted by jrice @ 10:05 PM EST [Link]
Jenny sent me this image of Elvis in Austin. Another fine example of celebritacy. American Photo uses Elvis' image to push its issue on icons and photography, but Austin uses the image within an image so that bus riders will forge connections between upcoming consumer purchases (buy this magazine) and daily life (what to do today?). And it is important that this particular Elvis image is used - the movie still Warhol borrowed for Double Elvis. Meaning circulates in repetitive ways - not in terms of topos but chora.
Posted by jrice @ 07:17 AM EST [Link]
Saturday, March 6, 2004
I'm reading Stuart Selber's Multiliteracies for the Digital Age. Selber's book is interesting in its breakdown of different kinds of technology literacy, but there is still a great deal missing. What strikes me as a significant lack is how he focuses technology literacy around the computer. This kind of reasoning situates computer literacy (for want of a better phrase) around owning a computer. Thus, arguments get bogged down on issues of race, class, gender, access, etc. All are important. But - the rhetorical and "literate" effects of technology extend beyond computer ownership. Whether or not I own or use a computer, my understanding of how to acquire and produce knowledge is still affected by technology. This is a huge point of Ulmer's electracy and my spin off celbritacy. We are affected by the rhetoric of celebrity (or cool) whether we use computers or not. Digital reproduction makes this form of literacy possible. Selber doesn't pick up on any of this, and missing from his argument are those theorists whose ideas are tied to how we make meaning in an electronic world, but who did not work with computers - like Benjamin. And missing are folks who problematize technology-based literacy like McLuhan and Ulmer.
In fact, if we are going to write about and engage with technology and literacy, we have to stop using hte word literacy. Literacy is tied to print. The ability to make meaning now includes more than print. Celebrity, cool, whatever, sampling, and much more are all a part of the new digital apparatus. When we use the word literacy, we are still engaging with what Ted Nelson called the "paperdigm." Composition studies, literacy studies, education, all have to disengage from the paperdigm and think about technology not just as the machine but the logic and ideology also within the apparatus.
So - I have to question the "multiliteracies" in Selber's title. The kinds of computer usage he describes are still print based - as far as I can see. I 'm reminded of a recent thread on Techrhet regarding technology narratives. Asking students to write narratives of their first technology usage is not a computer -based form of rhetorical instruction. The narrative - I first used a computer when I was 10 - is still print based. Narrative can take other non-print forms (see Barthes, Ulmer) but not in this assignment. Cyborgography is my attempt to defamiliarize his kind of print based narrative.
Posted by jrice @ 04:46 PM EST [Link]
Friday, March 5, 2004
Posted by jrice @ 09:38 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, March 2, 2004
Let me add to my little bit below on spim and spam:
An email just arrived from a textbook rep. It directed me to the website of the latest online version of St. Martin's Guide to Writing. Here's an isolated frame from the collaborative activities section. An excerpt:
To construct an effective argument, you must assert a position and offer support for it.Part 1: Get together with two or three other students and choose an issue. Agree together to argue for the same position on the issue, whether you personally agree with the position or not. Write down the issue and position like this:
Issue. Should grades be abolished?
Position. Grades should be abolished.
· Take ten to fifteen minutes to construct an argument for your position, giving several reasons and noting the kinds of support you would need.
· Try to anticipate one or two of the arguments people with other views on the issue could make, including objections to your argument and reasons for their positions.
To me, that kind of teaching is pedagogical spam. What is to be learned from such an exercise other than regurgitation of commonplace tropes and ideas? Should grades be abolished. Should abortion be legal? Should smoking be allowed in public places. Should should should should should...WHO CARES? Why do such textbooks reduce argumentation to should/should not and why do they repeat the same mindless drivel?
Every textbook that repeats such rubbish is committing pedagogical spam. Can we get the FCC/MLA/CCCC to step in here and start cracking down? I need a textbook spam blocker in place.
Posted by jrice @ 11:42 AM EST [Link]
We love spam. Now we have Spim. I think we're going about this all wrong. We need to embrace the genre of spam as a writing form we can use for getting ideas across. I had the idea already about a special journal edition (of a nice new media journal I know) whose focus would be spam (all the essays about something dealing with spam). But rather than just post the journal online, we'd spam all the subscribers with it about 20 times a day.
So how about a class where students engage with spam (and now spim) in all kinds of provocative ways?
For your next essay, compose a series of spams you will use to get your other classmates to do something, believe in something, or consider something. Your spam must be at least 500 words long and include HTML and images. Think about what kinds of headers you can compose so that readers will open your document. Catch their attention quickly.
You can't avoid media, you know? It infects you like a virus. Once infected, how do you respond? Think Burroughs before you answer.
Of course, this assignment doesn't have to be done only with email. There are other ways to spam....
Posted by jrice @ 11:07 AM EST [Link]
