I’ll admit, I didn’t pay enough attention to the syllabus. A week ago I got a copy of Adam Banks’ Digital Griots. Thought I wouldn’t need to pick up the packet in class. Not all the way through Digital Griots yet. Not a huge fan of the play with the format, but I like rhetorical contrast between historical academic language and the playful ‘mix’ language. I think it works really well not only because he’s practicing what he’s preaching (in a sense) but because it acknowledges and welcomes emotion back to rhetoric. I found Bank’s confessions of resistance to discussing ‘community’ based work insightful and compelling. I don’t remember the last time I picked up an academic publication and had difficulty walking away from the guiding narrative(s). Many of the websites and shoutouts to other projects not only hold a great deal of information, but also serve to make this text perhaps more hypertextual. My favorite part so far is where Banks jabs at scholars like Sirc and Rice who too readily show tendencies to appropriate things that have historical and ideological baggage at stake, without acknowledging that baggage.
Despite the data-dump-style history bludgeonings, Bolter is getting much more tolerable. I think the way he describes similarities between mass production of print and publications online. I can see how they both widen the degree of access for individuals to participate in publishing (hyper)texts. Interesting though how Bolter goes on the create a sort of high vs. low culture of image and text by referring to some as “chartjunk” while insisting other examples are “more sophisticated”. The film industry metaphor doesn’t hold because every movie is filmed based on a written text or screenplay. One doesn’t exist without the other. Just because one is made less visible doesn’t mean its influence has decreased or slackened. Most of “the electronic book” chapter is obsolete – not to mention I didn’t notice any talk of audio books. I wonder what Bolter has to say about Kindles and the degree of software piracy associated.
The word “authenticity” starts showing more and more frequently. Bolter clearly respects the concept of authenticity but doesn’t employ it in a very complicated / problematic way which leaves me walking away wondering about just what he’s trying to get at on pages 114-116. Further, he gives some lip service to the notion that new technology might be better suited to re-inscribing old hierarchies than subverting them, and maybe I just missed something, but he doesn’t really come to any sort of position on this idea. Perhaps, some things he glosses too quickly and I think that works against him because other topics he investigates and describes very thoroughly. I wonder about the choices he made in this respect.
Writing Space still reads like it was published in 2001, AND the claim that the internet was about a year old is so false that it’s either meant to be brazenly provocative, or denotes a degree of astonishing ignorance by the author. I’m not going to mince many words here. I do not like this book as of yet (but I’m keeping an open mind). The so-called “NeoMarxist” lip service in chapter one is remedial at best and results in making visible Bolter’s ultra-narrow specialized niche in the field. Stay there buddy. While we’re on the topic of Marxism, I’d be remiss if I didn’t draw attention to the absence of Benedict Anderson, whose work with the history of print capitalism remains fundamental to contemporary NeoMarxists. Further, in the ten years it’s taken Bolter to produce a second edition, a quick glance through the bibliographical material suggests that he hasn’t read anything new on this subject since.
I get a sense that Bolter is more of a literature person than a rhetoric / composition person because of the kinds of sources (Derrida perhaps most notably) and methods of analysis employed (close reads of history and literature). In other words, I’d expect a rhetoric / composition person to actually mention people from the field. People like Cynthia Selfe perhaps who is conspicuously absent from this text. Are we at post-literacy yet? I feel like I’m fairly familiar with many of the arguments in this book. However, I’m not a big fan of the way Bolter tries to advance his positions and ideas because I’m hesitant to fully embrace work that’s not exactly in a field I identify with (anymore).
Canagarajah is one of my favorites. I’ll admit now my fanboyism and how happy I was/am to get a hold of this article. The use of Mary Louise Pratt is weird for a couple reasons. First it’s really old and though it is made relevant, I feel like the context of that article has been stripped and re-suited for C’s purpose. My other issue with this article is that as it begins to really pick up steam and bring the heat with the “Self-In-The-Collective” section it just kinda stops. I’m wondering why no mention of “The Objective of Social change” really obtained here. Perhaps I’m not understanding the significances of the section headings? It seems to me that seeing oneself and participating withing the collective is one the most potentially vital sites of enacting social change.
At any rate, while reading this entire article I was basically just cheering C on. I was already fairly familiar with his story here, but I think this might perhaps be the most clear, concise, important article he’s written for our field. I particularly like how C describes triangulation along with the methodology he develops in order to demonstrate what he’s talking about.
On an unrelated note: If you want to read some good autoethnography — Exterminate All the Brutes. By Sven Lindqvist
A brief note on the Hess piece: I feel the need to compliment this article because I’ve not been a big fan of most of this book thus far. All I’m going to say before diving into Box Logic is that I really appreciated how the essay is called “multimodal assignments” and there was really no concrete assignments in the essay. Instead we get Trimbur warning us that changing the method of composing doesn’t necessarily change or clarify connections between composition and circulation. /Cheer.
Boxing Helena — I mean Logic
I don’t appreciate the formatting choices. Not a big fan of the assignment designs — without context specific information they seem mainly concerned with pre-determined destinations. Kris must have underlined some passages, because “Elbow put the dilemma best, I think: life is long, college is short; do we teach to life or college? I’m more and more persuaded to err on the side of life in my courses: both to public, cultural lives students live, as well as their own personal lives and expressions” (113). If I had a guess, and my life depended on which comp theorist phrased a dilemma in such a way, I would guess Elbow. I don’t know where to begin hating on this passage so I’ll be nice and point out that this is problematic in many ways. Broad and vast generalizations about students and their capabilities or lack thereof.
I found the Logic of the assignments interesting. While the prose continues to be self-serving and writer centered, I think Sirc brings up some points worth considering. (126). Sirc’s invokation of Haacke, which is supposed to take form of some serious theoretical ball-smash, reveals the author’s shallowness and lack of attention to detail. As readers we assume that Sirc also believes “‘you cannot act outside the system, or be on your own, and participate in a discourse'” (126). Hey Sirc, you weren’t done with this point yet, so you come off as a doing a very privileged subject positioning that makes me ill. This example upsets me greatly and ignores historical and broader cultural contexts. Let me reminisce for a moment on a point of disagreement between Malcom X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. X claimed that a broken system cannot be fixed from the inside out, that it will take sacrifice and may not be pleasant. King Jr. claimed that education made people good. All we need to do to fix the system is to educate people and they will be kind to each other. Haacke/Sirc would seem to side with the later even though they don’t come from disenfranchised populations. Judith Butler talks about this very idea – she comes down on the side of X (forgive me for not remembering the citation) saying something to the effect of ‘To be present in a discourse as an abiding falsehood or to be completely silent is often how this choice gets melted down’. I don’t think that the master’s tools can dismantle the master’s house and I don’t like a shallow explanations of complicated philosophical ideas that readers are supposed to consume without being offered another choice… or other choices.
I’ve never really put too much thought into OWcourses so I found Warnock and Tascano informative and thought-provoking. Definitely some things to consider when I’m on my living/fishing boat in the san juans teaching remote OWcourses. On an intellectual level, I found the Blair/Hoy a bit more compelling. Not trying to sound like I’m showering my superiors in unnecessary and uncharacteristic praise. I had no idea that courses like this existed and I think it’s really cool (207 — In fact I suspect that for some this would be an ideal structure for FYC). I also appreciated talks about “extend[ing] and complicat[ing] the social metaphor of ‘virtual community’.” Indeed –the word “community” itself. Our readings continue to demonstrate heavy reliance and import on the term. To that end, I was pleased to observe Blair and Hoy’s text cautions and warnings about the visibility of labor and changing demographics. I couldn’t help but remember back to Rick’s WPA course — that whole thing about making administrative work into the kind of scholarship that is valued by Deans and other admins., etc.
Some things about the Blair and Hoy piece left me a bit in the dark and/or wanting more detail. The word “community” gets lots of air quotes. I’m not sure I ever get a sense of where “community” has been and what it’s undergone as a result of this treatment because instead of a lovely dense brick of theory talk about language and ideology I read an highly detailed summary and analysis of a unique kind of composition course — where it’s been and what it’s undergone. I understand the practicality of this decision. I guess I’m asking myself a question at this point “Which is more convincing, a theoretical apparatus or a practical model?” Not saying I can answer this one. I’d be interested to see more 207 course materials, because that’s where the meat of the argument is and where the details that define “community” and indeed “membership” obtain.
My comments on the self article are brief. I’m not sure if I should feel like a puny child or if I should furrow my brow and wait for the beef as I read through the large print size and the checklists. Visual e/affects aside, I kept wanting theory section where he addressed the problems in even using the word “communities” a million times. I think what Selfe meant here was “100% surveillance” not “communities” — somebody needs to make sure there’s some sort of law and order with the ways instructors move to integrate more and more new technologies. I’m not going to run through and attempt a summary Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, I guess I just missed the part where he got folded into obsolescence.
Now for DeVoss et al. I’ll admit, these folks continue to grow on me. Early on in the chapter, authors note “Long before students are able to compose these stories independently with pencil and paper..” (Interesting choice of words coming from this book) “..they are able to perceive themselves as composers, as writers” (62). Even though I can’t help but wince at the conflated terms “composer” and “writer”, even though I have to read this whole section as a metaphor in order to manipulate the context into FYC and hence am left to question the comparison of six-year-olds to my university students, I think I’m starting to agree with kernels of information here and there. I’m trying to not be the stubborn person who always complains about learning new things / modalities — but can I get some suggestions for reading that will give me the kinds of theory / theoretical (back)ground upon which the ideas and motives in these text obtain under current form? I mean, I think the denser stuff is going to help me understand more better — that or many courses on how to work the various new technologies.
Online Video Games and Rhetorics of Ridicule
What are the most an least popular trends of shit talking among college students who identify as casual to professional competitive online video game players?
Anonymous survey of students in my classes, perhaps other classes.
I play a lot of games online and pay attention to the competitive often offensive language used by participants. As such, I’ve become very reflective of my own shit talking so that I don’t get owned by 12 year olds. I’m biased in terms of my deep familiarity with this genre. Also because I think most people that play various online games are homophobic racist shit bags. I’m pretty sure my findings will be upheld so I’ll have a few questions on the survey that ask about sticking up for people or warning others about their offensive language etc. Hopefully this will provide the opportunity for participants to not make their demographic look like a bunch of assholes. As far as potential contributions, my aim is to use this data to pose a series of questions to the people who develop terms of service for online video games. My basic question is something like “When the game is rated MA and filled with vulgar language and violence, why when I go online do I get in trouble for telling some kid to ‘fuck off’?” Seems counter-intuitive.
Back to data organization: I’ll want to look at a few different genres of video game and for each offer a few categories of type of insult.
My methodology will be qualitative in approach and rhetorical in nature. Survey information will be primary data set. Since I only wish to identify various trends (or lack thereof) I will draw upon social humor/ridicule linguistic scholars for most of my analysis. To that end, a key part of the survey (relationship to other person(s)) will have to ask people to actually go play video games with this survey in mind. I’ll need this for any legitimate sort of analysis. The fewer variables I have to assume and generate theory for, the better.
Rough Draft Examples: I’m having difficulty thinking of clever ways to word these categories – even though I want anonymous data. Also want to be sure I hit games that are constantly played by over 350k people world wide at any given time.
Sports (Madden ’12 Online) –Relation to shit talker/victim
-Gay Stuff
-Racist Stuff
-Misogynist Stuff
-Other
FPS (Call of Duty MWF2 and Blops)
MMO (WoW, LoL)
Other — I’ll have to ask people to submit other games that I won’t have pre-listed in case I’ve missed any that still get significant attention.
Five Questions for Collaborative Survey:
1 Do you listen to the radio? When? What stations? (Campus radio does Free PSAs)
2 Have you ever been engaged in violent physical activity with people in your current or past residences?
3 If yes to 2, were the police contacted? If no to 2, how was this incident resolved?
4 Are you currently aware of Wood County Victims Services?
5 What kinds of community outreach/volunteer work do you currently participate in?
I don’t like sampling and surveys as a way to collect data. It is so limited that it no longer feels the need to foreground how limited it is and how few variables it’s able to take into account. Too many shortcuts. Obama’s approval rating is at some odd 30%. How did they figure that out? I didn’t get asked what I think. Sorry Lauer and Asher, I’m not so sure we need more sound-byte statistical facts in the world. Perhaps I’m being hyperbolic (again?) but to me this is a form of research that creates shortcuts by exclusion, not addition.
Now for the good news. I enjoyed the Blakeshee/Fleischer chapter on “qualitative research” even though they included non-qualitative methods. Particularly, the sections on interview and indepth phenomenological interview were inspiring if only because now I’ve found my primary methods for the work I’ll be doing on my own projects for this class. I have a feeling I’ll be revisiting this section of chapter 5 several more times when I get into drafting actual interviews. This leads me to my final point of concern. Ethics and the difference between knowledge and persuasion. I’m not settled on a working definition of ethics or ethical yet. I think I’m more interested in the so called “un-ethical” because it’s defined as purposefully lying or things that aren’t listed under the “ethics” section. Does ethical mean honest? Near the end of the chapter there seems to be this warning against having strong opinions or beliefs so that you can have ethical research. I don’t think that’s really ever possible. Feigning the ability to minimize bias/lenses seems to me particularly dishonest and hence un-ethical. What if I want a vague question as a control? What if I want to mislead people in my survey / research to prove how stupid some of them are? They do those surveys all the time and in fact there’s a TV show called “Are you smarter than a 5th grader?”. I’ve got a lot more hypotheticals that need attention before I can get my brain around this term “ethical”. If money is involved is it ever ethical? Has anyone ever seen the short-lived FX series written by Kenny Hotz called “Testees”? It was a sitcom about people who make a career out of testing experimental drugs. During these experimentation processes many terrible things are enacted and weaknesses are constantly exploited. Upon further digression, I’ll posit that violence is not necessarily an unethical form of persuasion — but that gets into other forms of HSRB protection so I’ll leave it alone for now.
orthodxist 