De/Compos(t)ing

OK, so I read Rice's chapter on appropriation, and it was a bit of a struggle. He's even wordier than me, which is an accomplishment. A few thoughts:

"The preference for clarity via organization, I contend, weakens appropriation's rhetorical power." (59)

Really? Organizing something to make it clearer makes the message weaker? I'm not sure I buy that. I could get on board with the idea that organization in a multimedia sense may not look the same as linear argumentation in writing, or even two-dimensional print products. In new media literacies, organization may require the use of time, or sound, or other organizing principles rather than being primarily spatial. But I'm convinced it still exists and is critically important. Take visual art, for example, where the principles of unity and variety work together in design.

I'm a fan of Lakhoff & Turner's More Than Cool Reason, and I like thinking about how language and metaphor shape thought patterns (and, of course, are shaped by them). With a quick read of Don's first paragraph, I got to thinking about the metaphor of composing. At what point does composing turn into composting, into decomposing? That is, does there come a point where a collection of stuff is just that, and it starts to collapse in on itself and degrade? That extended metaphor seems to connect to what we mentioned in class about collecting information vs. gaining understanding, together with Tom was saying about coherence: composting can render fertile material, but you have to put it in a garden and plant something (activities involving some planning and order) for it to grow anything.

Total Side Note: I also watched the Cut Up Method video, which made no sense the first time through because I didn't know anything about cut-ups or Burroughs (thank you, Wikipedia), and the first six parts of the DJ Spooky lecture for EGS. The latter was really interesting, and the part about the trains made me think of ancient heroic codes, where the goal was to gain fame to create immortality. My husband's rhetoric of religion class was talking about something similar today: a theorist arguing that the desire to join a collective/network is essentially the same thing -- a way of belonging to something bigger that will outlast you, to defeat mortality in some way. But what does the transitory nature of our new technologies and literacies do to that? After all, no matter how many friends you have on MySpace, that is so last year.

Response to Readings for 6/25

Yancey (2009)
Yancey brought up an interesting concept with the phrase "citizen writers." In "Historical Perceptions" she talks about how receptive modes of oracy and literacy have been preferred, especially for young students, as vehicles for transmitting and preserving societal values. But I never see her go back and directly address alternative possibilities -- what the power and potential of a citizen writer might be, or what that might look like in our context today.

What could a citizen writer be, or do? Apparently they can play large-scale practical jokes (see "This is Sparta,"), but what else? In Yancey's conclusion, she calls for a way of imagining writing that fosters "a new kind of citizenship." However, she does not go on to describe how writing might help create a new kind of citizen, which I think is very interesting. Are we talking about national citizens? Global citizens? Web citizens? Traditionally, citizenship has been a dividing line, between us/them, haves and have nots. Could the Web be changing this in some ways? -->

Yancey (2004)
In the other piece by Yancey, she uses two phrases on p. 319 that seem to go along with this idea of citizen writers. In talking about how technology changes constantly and in unpredictable ways, and she mentions "worldwide distribution" and "democratization of authorship," which both have something to say about citizenship. Is the Web actually making the globe more democratic in some ways? Is it making writing more democratic? How could these things be interrelated, and what are their limits? We've tried artificially creating and militarily propping up democracies: should we be air-dropping wireless-capable laptops instead of bombs? I've heard it argued that the means of production, distribution, and networking have radically changed the playing field of knowledge and power -- that those who never had "voice" before are gaining it now, and are finding each other and joining together in new ways and for new purposes. Does Yancey's idea of a new kind of citizenship come down to increased agency (and therefore, maybe, increased responsibility)?

Baron (1999?)
There are plenty of other interesting things in the Yancey pieces to comment on, but I thought I'd try to stick to a theme. I will say, in reading the chapter by Baron, I learned much more about pencils than I expected. :-) It did strike me how everything comes back to money, from the development of writing itself through the various technologies of writing into our present-day issues about access and even copyright. And the first page struck a chord, as I mentioned in class: I hate composing without a computer, and I never do it unless forced. I often use pen/pencil to think -- I prefer it for notetaking and prewriting -- but I never begin to compose until my fingers hit the keyboard. My writing and thinking processes are radically different between print and screen media, and writing virtually anything out by hand is a stymying, frustrating experience for me. Realizing that has made me suspicious of a common schoolhouse model of the writing that places all computer work -- presumed to be typing and maybe formatting -- at the end of the line under the "publication" umbrella, something like dessert after all the meat and potatoes work is done. I really can't work well that way, and I wonder if my students may not have a similar experience.

Getting Set Up

OK, here it is: my official class blog for summer 2009. Exciting stuff. =)
More to come later as I do the readings and create a real post for today.