Sunday, December 26, 2004
For those who iz about to be interviewed:
Posted by jrice @ 04:04 PM EST [Link]
The Unbearable Lightness of Pedagogy
Taken from Kundera’s Dictionary of Misunderstood Words in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, an update for the discipline in honor of the ending year. I.e. a top ten (without reaching ten) countdown of disciplinary misunderstood words; the Yellow Dog Remix.
Posted by jrice @ 02:02 PM EST [Link]
Saturday, December 25, 2004
Escaping the Delta
Reading:
Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues. Interesting for its take on "other histories"; Johnson is not the product of Delta clichés and tropes (poor Black underclass searching out vehicles of expression within a dominant, oppressive culture) but rather the product of an overall effort to create pop music in a specific time period. Robert Johnson wanted to be a crooner. Elijah Wald wants us to rethink the blues, and blues history, as just another effort to create pop music. Taste in place of romanticism.
Like anything, there are lessons to be learned. The obvious lesson is that of the "grand narrative," Lyotard's critique of those sweeping gestures we readily adopt and believe in. Wald challenges the grand narrative of blues. We might just as well challenge composition's grand narrative (my own efforts are in The Rhetoric of Cool). Or we might challenge those narratives we construct around the concept of writing as well, what Wald is trying to do for the composition of blues, we might think about regarding writing in general or even more narrowly, what we have come to accept as "student writing." This is my own trope. If you read this blog, you see it repeated ad nausea. Much apologies. But point not yet taken.
We also, those of us folk dedicated to composition, still have a romanticized vision of writing and writing instruction. Wald's larger lesson is how such romanticizing gestures unfortunately discredit other kinds of gestures in circulation. Por ejemplo: So what if Robert Johnson wasn't really representative of a "true" Delta sound? The question is not trying to minimize nor erase Johnson's influence and importance, but rather to de-romanticize a specific version of Delta music so that other understandings may emerge, even if those understandings generate uncomfortable histories (Wha wha wha…Skip James and Son House were not well known in their time???).
In turn, we might de-romanticize the visions of student authorship circulated and accepted so that other kinds of writings might emerge. Easily said. But the very fact that I situate this point within a book about a blues musician is what complicates the whole issue. Who is going to treat this analogy as serious? Not too many folks. The romantic hold we place on specific types of student writing (what Bartholomae has canonized as inventing the university and Sirc has done the best job to displace with a variety of alternative situations) is strong. Displacements, of course, are intellectual exercises. Robert Ray often imagines the “what if” as an exercise in filmic possibility. Breton created his own alternatives evoked by the random encounter. Marvel comics did the same in super hero match ups (“What if Spider Man was a Girl?”). Wald extends that move to the blues, and we and those we work with in the classroom should as well; the Web’s network of links and connections offers a viable media outlet.
Posted by jrice @ 08:30 PM EST [Link]
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Composition Stubbornness
Composition studies is stubborn.
Its stubbornness resembles, at times, the movie industry and music industry clamping down on p2p. Rather than try to understand how p2p is changing the nature of reception, entertainment, distribution, and production, the industry tries to shut down the entire p2p operations as illegal and exemplary of copyright infringement. That copyright, as so many have now written online and elsewhere, may be the product itself of a different logic and different time period (early print culture and the invention of book manufacturing and selling) and now be in need of an update doesn't matter to p2p foes. It's wrong. Stop it now.
We see that stubbornness repeated in composition studies. Those that view specific legacies and models of instruction as still relevant as is in the digital age are as stubborn as the industrial giants that fight p2p applications. "But it is our responsibility to teach clarity and well crafted prose," many cry out. “Nothing is more important than teaching the essay.” “Where’s your thesis!” A good deal of that composition desire is legitimate, as is the desire to continue to make a living selling entertainment. But how the vague concepts of clarity and well-crafted writing are understood in light of technological change still does not spark much interest. That there exist logics which structure our understanding of culture, rhetoric, and writing, and that those logics shift eventually under technological change is a lost point. No one gives a damn. “Our students just can’t write,” is the only response these folks can think of.
Those in this game for some time respond in cynical fashion (circulating their so-called "experience" as tropes for credibility): "Ah, we used to think ‘radical’ stuff mattered. We've learned our lesson since. You are so naïve."
Others respond in instrumental fashion: "Our purpose is not to teach how to make web pages. We're writing teachers."
And still even among the newly convinced, we find instrumental reasoning governing the teaching of technology and writing, this reasoning is rooted in a disciplinary stubbornness to move beyond print paradigms: “In this assignment you will analyze several websites/weblogs and point out their audience, purpose, etc” or: “Design a website for X business using usability testing and web standards. Identify the audience and purpose for your project.”
And yet, this stubbornness doesn't seem to get the complainers anywhere but deeper mired in a culture of disappointment and dissatisfaction. For others, the stubbornness fabricates a feeling of being digital, even if the methods and ideologies dictating this “new” work are almost the same as that which came before blogs, websites, or Flash.
WPA-L has become a solid example of this occurring. CCCC another locale.
These days, I feel like I make my living yelling at and critiquing that stubbornness. There is something very dissatisfying in that as well.
I have seen certain folks throw up their hands and walk away, staying within the field but refusing to contribute any longer to a stubborn discursive structure hostile to ideas different than its own. I have seen others who are within composition simply ignore composition.
This is too long an entry, I know. And I could say more regarding this stubbornness, that it really isn’t a new phenomenon at all, that its roots extend back to the invention of the field and become pronounced in the early and mid 1960s. But enough for now. I got a Detroit snow storm to await and a new book about the other side of Robert Johnson to read (and comment on later).
Posted by jrice @ 03:36 PM EST [Link]
Monday, December 20, 2004
The World of the Link
Chuck shows me that Amazon is enacting the link in all kinds of odd, scary, and yet provocative ways. On Amazon, he found a listing for his blog. I'm immediately intrigued, of course, so I start seeing what else is up in terms of Yellow Dog. I couldn't find a listing for Yellow Dog like his; this is all I find. A slot, but no picture - Chuck's listing has a screen shot of his site. I do see at the bottom of this listing my old Gainesville address and phone number. That's spooky.
Through a general Amazon search, I also find:
Amazon is now tracking, through its search engine A9, not just my site - or any other - but the peripherals of the site, like images. Only six images pop up for my site (I have more still online). But the consequences loom large for this linking. What comes after the linking to of images?
The WPA-L recent back and forth of subliteracy speaks to these consequences. It's still fairly difficult for composition to imagine new logics emerging out of new media. Bring up the digital, and the response will focus only on a weblog assignment or making a webpage. But there is more to this digital game. Amazon understands that quite well. They - and Google - work hard to create a world of small pieces loosely joined. Their goal is obviously commerce. But so what? The question of linking and connectivity, what Collin is going to teach regarding the network at Syracuse, extends beyond the commercial appeal of viral marketing, synergy, or any other related concept. When voices proclaim today's students as subliterate, I can imagine (and this is an act of imagining, of course, b/c I do not know what many of these instructors teach) a course which resists the interlinking logics of new media. Thesis driven work is the most obvious example. Singe authored compositions fall quickly behind. Hierarchical reasoning’s in this mix too, as is argumentative writing.
Do ALL students who write poorly do so because of a mismatched pedagogy - one which forces print logic (represented loosely by the thesis example) onto new media beings (those who understand the networked society in very explicit and implicit ways)? Of course not. But that mismatch exists and is dominant in maintaining problematic pedagogy. The real question continues to be: Why is Amazon the one to understand the network and pedagogy the one to not understand? Financial motivation? Sure. Something else? Of course: ideology. Composition has a lot at stake ideologically. And breaking ideological holds is difficult to accomplish. But think about it for a minute: that Amazon knows my old Gainesville address may be frightening in terms of privacy, but it’s also fascinating in how this linking logic finds/makes connections where connections would not be obvious nor would they appear. The connection, the interlinked network of information which bends and changes, which drops information and adds new information in very unpredictable ways – that is the key to composing and intellectual work. For Amazon, that knowledge translates into marketing. For a writing student (or even, ahem, professor), that knowledge will manifest in other ways. There is a great deal to learn from the Amazon example.
Posted by jrice @ 02:47 PM EST [Link]
Sunday, December 19, 2004
So Coldand the northern portions of my
- Tom Waits "Emotional Weather Report"
ability to deal rationally with my
disconcerted precarious emotional
situation, it's cold out there
