As I've been thinking about how to incorporate the readings we've been doing into (a) paper assignment(s), I keep coming back to Lamb's idea of "responding." I think that the paper assignment she discusses using in her class (in which students work in pairs to write and respond to each others' writing) could potentially be useful in my classroom in a modified form.
This assignment could either be used as one of the three formal writing assignments or as a series of microthemes. In my modification of the assignment, I would ask students to write (independently) brief (2 pp) position papers on a topic we'd been discussing in class (immigration, Iraq, etc). I would then have them post these papers to the class discussion board. I would have the students choose one of their classmates' postings to respond to (with a limit of two responders per post; they could claim their post by posting a reply on the Discussion Board). I would have them write brief summaries of their classmate's argument to bring to class to discuss with that person, giving them a chance to see if/how they have misunderstood each other. They would then work from their classmate's post and their discussion with that classmate to write a response to their classmate's argument. This response could be Rogerian, but it would not be required to be Rogerian; the goal would be to demonstrate their understanding of their classmate's argument and explain their disagreement with it, using at least two outside sources to back up their argument. (We would have visited the library and discussed using databases, etc in preparation for this assignment).
I'm inclined to think that I won't use this as one of my three formal assignments, but I might use something along these lines in a shortened form to prepare my students for their final paper, which requires them to research and argue a position. Any thoughts?
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Readings... (not sure if we were suppose to post)
Here's my clustered readings
Burns, Christy. "Suturing Over Racial Difference: Problems for a Colorblind Approach in a Visual Culture." Discourse 22.1 (Winter 2000): 70-91.
hooks, bell:
Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992)
Teaching to Transgress: Education As the Practice of Freedom (1994)
Art on My Mind: Visual Politics (1995)
Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies (1996)
Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (2003)
*Still narrowing down within this selection
Howard, Rebecca Moore. "Style, Race, Culture, Context." Coming of Age: The Advanced Writing Curriculum. Ed. Linda K. Shamoon, Rebecca Moore Howard, Sandra Jamieson, and Robert A. Schwegler. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Boynton/Cook, 2000. 94-105.
Yee, Marian. "Are You the Teacher?" Composition and Resistance. Ed. C. Mark Hurlbert and Michael Blitz. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1991. 24-31.
Weaver, Constance. Black Dialect? Or Black Face? ERIC, 1974. 091-713.
Burns, Christy. "Suturing Over Racial Difference: Problems for a Colorblind Approach in a Visual Culture." Discourse 22.1 (Winter 2000): 70-91.
hooks, bell:
Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992)
Teaching to Transgress: Education As the Practice of Freedom (1994)
Art on My Mind: Visual Politics (1995)
Reel to Real: Race, Sex, and Class at the Movies (1996)
Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope (2003)
*Still narrowing down within this selection
Howard, Rebecca Moore. "Style, Race, Culture, Context." Coming of Age: The Advanced Writing Curriculum. Ed. Linda K. Shamoon, Rebecca Moore Howard, Sandra Jamieson, and Robert A. Schwegler. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Boynton/Cook, 2000. 94-105.
Yee, Marian. "Are You the Teacher?" Composition and Resistance. Ed. C. Mark Hurlbert and Michael Blitz. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1991. 24-31.
Weaver, Constance. Black Dialect? Or Black Face? ERIC, 1974. 091-713.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Power, Language, Argument, the Body, Conferencing, Ed Grimley...
On Lassner:
(I’ll try to get all my digressive quotations out of the way with this article).
This article really challenged my earlier reception of Rogers, and Lassner's focus on contextualizing argument as a situated practice, one that occurs between individuals and groups that have differing levels of power, spoke to what I have known in my own experiences. Her focus on how Rogerian argument delimited the power of female students in her class--because it undermined their ability to oppose already dominant patriarchies--is intriguing:
"Feminist scholars have shown how far women have to go before they can even face that contending narrative. This is because women feel they must capitulate to the values of the majority culture in which they live. Engaging in a person-centered dialogue fails to acknowledge women's ambivalent relations to culture, the fact that although the language of the majority culture does not always fit their experiences, they often behave as though it does. Because women and other marginalized people don't always see themselves represented either at all or accurately in their culture, they often find language to be inhibiting rather than expressive. Hairston's claim that neutral language improves communication is therefore problematic because in the experience of many no language is neutral, non-directive, or nonjudgmental" (409).
This brought to mind for me a couple of things (time for the digressions). The first is one of my favorite essays, “Postmodern Blackness,” in which bell hooks (who Lamb refers to) observes that:
“[7] The postmodern critique of ‘identity,’ though relevant for renewed black liberation struggle, is often posed in ways that are problematic. Given a pervasive politic of white supremacy, which seeks to prevent the formation of radical black subjectivity, we cannot cavalierly dismiss a concern with identity politics. Any critic exploring the radical potential of postmodernism as it relates to racial difference and racial domination would need to consider the implications of a critique of identity for oppressed groups. Many of us are struggling to find new strategies of resistance. We must engage decolonization as a critical practice if we are to have meaningful chances of survival even as we must simultaneously cope with the loss of political grounding which made radical activism more possible. I am thinking here about the postmodernist critique of essentialism as it pertains to the construction of ‘identity’ as one example.”
I've always read this to mean that hooks feels that the critique of essentialist notions of ethnicity and authenticity comes at a time when those who have been oppressed and who experience the social facts related to their identities are still trying to be heard in the first place, to finally have a voice. While hooks acknowledges the emancipatory potential of the pomo critique, she also asserts--very powerfully--that those who have been oppressed will have to "cope with the loss" of the political grounding" that authenticy and identity provided radical activism. To me hooks' discussion of postmodernism and black identity parallels Lassner's observations about Rogerian argument and feminism.
Lassner's positing of rhetoric in terms of power relations brought to mind a second digression: there is this set of competing explanations in sociolinguistics for certain features that were first identified as aspects of “women’s speech" by the linguist Robin Lakoff (who was once married to George Lakoff, one of the authors of _Metaphors We Live By_, the book Dr. Strickland excerpted for us a few weeks ago). In her 1973 essay “Language and Woman's Place,” Lakoff posited that women use certain features much more than men, things like hedge phrases (e.g. “sort of,” “it seems like”), tag questions (e.g. “It sure is nice out, isn’t it?”), hyper-politeness, “empty” adjectives, indirect requests, and so on. Lakoff’s findings (they were largely intuitive) have been highly influential. It’s been observed--not entirely facetiously--that Deborah Tannen, who arguably edges out Saussure and William Labov as the most famous linguist of the 20th century after Noam Chomsky because of the popular reception of her books on gender differences in speech, owes her career to Lakoff (Tannen's _You Just Don't Understand_ spent four years on _The New York Times_ best-seller list). But they have also been disputed. Seven years after Lakoff published her initial findings, a study done by William O’Barr and Bowman Atkins was published under the title “’Women’s Language’ or ‘powerless language’?” in which they asserted that what had been considered features of gendered speech was, in fact, more about issues of power, in general. O'Barr and Atkins observed witnesses appearing court cases over a period of 30 months. They examined the witnesses’ testimonies for the features that between men and Lakoff had proposed were part of women’s speech. They concluded from their study that the quoted speech patterns were “neither characteristic of all women nor limited only to women”. The women who used the lowest frequency of women's language traits had an high status--educated professionals and those with upper-middle class backgrounds. Inversely, a corresponding pattern was noted among those men who used these features—they had relatively low social status.
------------------------
On Lamb:
I really loved this article--and it dovetails nicely with Lassner's, of course. One way to put them into dialogue, I think, comes on 157, when Lamb asserts that "it can be feminist to both at times be confrontational and at other times advocate approaches that minimize confrontation" contra, in a way, Lassner's well-taken point about historically contextualization.
I found several parts of Lamb's piece particularly interesting:
from 155: the description she includes by Kenneth Burke regarding the "unending conversation" of humankind is great, while at the same time her challenges to it ("...who has been invited and who has been left out...") are equally good. Lamb points out that "For the past twenty years of [feminist composition's] history, the emphasis has been on developing the personal voice. Argument, techniques of persuasion for gaining acceptance of one's point of view, if it was dealt with, was seen usually in pejorative terms, as an expression of patriarchy." But, she asserts, "there are now suggestions that other alternatives are possible.... alternatives which "return to women's experience in spite of the pitfalls of idealizing or overgeneralizing that experience." Women have not been able to remain in theory, because they "can not assume [they] will be heard" and so they "have had to articulate concrete ways to respond when there appears to be little, if any, common ground from which to negotiate a relationship."
156: Lamb briefly recounts the history of feminist composition, and emphasizes that because "Feminist composition was developing at a time also of great idealism in the women's movement;" there was an "illusion of a domain free of conflict" as "the variables of race, class, and sexual orientation were not a concern." (I'd say there actually *were* challenges by so-called "third wave" or "post-" feminists by this time--the early 1970s--but perhaps those challenges had not yet reached this field). The historical moment in which feminist composition arose, coupled with "an emphasis on developing a personal voice" meant that there was "no need to consider conflict; it may even be discouraged..." and this "emphasis on uncritically accepting what another has written means that real differences, whatever their sources, are elided."
157: see above; and she begins her "feminist responses to argument" with those "situations for conflict resolution in which one strives for an outcome that is acceptable to both parties"--mediation and negotiation are alternatives to argument, and...
158: Mediation and negotiation, Lamb argues, provide ways of resolving conflict "when the goal is no longer winning but finding a solution in a fair way that is acceptable to both sides." These alternatives to argument, "in which the goal is to win," require "a contrasting view of power" and she nods towards Foucault's formulation, which I love. I disagree, however, with her contention that there exists "a major difference" between her concern and Foucault's, that "Foucault's interest in analyzing power as it has been exercised historically or in existing societies and institutions" contrasts with her own "imagining new, positive ways in which it might be used." Foucault was very concerned--though skeptical, I would argue--in such possibilities (see my note on DeLuca below for further discussion).
159: I'm supremely intrigued by Lamb's description here of the unpublished paper by Julia Dietrich addressing the social construction of argument, so much so that I did as thorough a search as I know-how for the paper in every database I know, with no luck in finding it--and so I contacted Dr. Dietrich to try to procure a copy from her directly (she's a professor specializing in medieval literature, culture, and rhetoric; as well as Shakespeare; and argumentation, generally, at the University of Louisville--here's her website: http://www.louisville.edu/~jcdiet01/)
160: There are some great "one-liners" here regarding "maternal thinking" (a term that I resisted at first, but I came to accept it)--"If feminist responses to argument are to be viable, they must include in them a broader range of possibilities in their responses to conflict. Is it possible that power exercised can eventually be enabling?... The goal is still for writer and reader to establish and maintain a subject-subject relationship... The main feature of the relationship, however, may be needing to honor the present tension, staying in the moment of the disagreement, recognizing that resolution may never occur but that continuing the conversation is still a legitimate way of maintaining a relationship. The other party remains a subject, I think, if her or his views are still taken seriously, even if there appears to be no movement in the dialogue." This is a great observation, in my opinion, and from here I can go on to summarize more why I liked this article so much. Lamb goes on to quote hooks (161), who says in "Toward a Revolutionary Feminist Pedagogy" that her goal as a teacher "is to enable all students, not just an assertive few, to feel empowered in a rigorous, critical discussion, and in her discussion of responding, Lamb asserts that her role as a teacher "is not to provide the clarity and security of a prescribed form... it is to create the kind of atmosphere in which students can think honestly and openly about their position on an issue about which they care and then can reflect on the most generous response of which they are capable" (162--and she goes on to broadly "operationalize" how to do this in terms of assignments). Then Lamb gives that really great account of the abbot who wrote about homosexuality for the Episcopalian newsletter. The whole account is just amazing, but some of the best parts of the description include how the abbot "noted the passages in Leviticus and Romans often used to attack homosexuality; without denying what they say, he also provided us with broader contexts in which to interpret them, thus showing that the primary issues may not be homosexuality.... Later, he noted that we are to empty 'ourselves of all that makes us want to push others away just because they are different... If our identity is threatened by the difference of another that is a signal of our own need to empty ourselves of that identity, in the faith that we will discover ourselves more deeply in the other person and in God'" (163). That sounds almost Rogerian. Lamb goes on to recount that the abbot "never took an explicit position; the emphasis instead was on broadening the context in which the discussion takes place, creating openings for anyone except possibly the most diehard on either side" (ibid).
It seems as though one could construct a counter-narrative to that which I have given here, in which Lassner follows Lamb and qualifies Lamb's "empathetic" argument, rather than the other way around (I'd say that Lamb's account of the maternal is empathetic; she even says on page 158--quoting herself-- that "A central notion is that of 'attentive love or loving attention': 'Loving attention is much like empathy, the ability to think and feel as the other.'" Again, I'd say that the two are in dialogue--that I find productive elements in both.
----------------
On DeLuca:
A great piece--I've photocopied it and passed it along to a few friends of my moms who are activists in the queer community, simply because of the rich language he uses. And overall it's a way "in" to reading the body as another example of a text, just like print, film and television, advertisements, etc.--and as DeLuca notes, as seeing the body as engaged in "constitutive rhetoric: the mobilization of signs, images, and discourses for the articulation of identities, ideologies, consciousnesses, communities, publics, and cultures... [they] constitute a nascent body rhetoric that deploys bodies as a pivotal resource for the crucial practice of public argumentation" (226-7). There's pedagogical value to be found here.
The discussion of media coverage was great, too--"as radical groups questioning societal orthodoxies, they can expect news organizations to frame them negatively as disrupters of the social order.. [but] What they do have control over... is the presentation of their bodies in the image events... Their bodies, then, become not merely flags to attract attention for the argument but the site and substance of the argument itself" (227). This suggests--for me any way--examining the framing of media reports on such events, much like Bri did with the story on the British twins.
I loved the rich descriptions that DeLuca uses for ACT UP and Queer Nation. Page 235 is just full of quotable text: "The body is front and center in their arguments for it is the body that is at stake--its meanings, its possibilities, its care, and its freedoms. In their protest actions, the activists use their bodies to rewrite the homosexual body as already constructed by dominant mainstream discourses--diseased, contagious, deviant, invisible... The force of the body makes it a sublime and contested site in cultures, subject to feverish and multiple modes of disciplining and constructing."
Here DeLuca cites Foucault's _Discipline and Punish_ and _The History of Sexuality: Volume I_, along with Alphonso Lingis, but I'd like to comment a little further by way of quoting from Foucault (no such luck on getting digressions out of the way early), as his account of discourse and power is productive in tying DeLuca back to Lamb. In _The History of Sexuality: Volume I_, page 43, Foucault notes asserts that
"As defined by the ancient civil or canonical codes, sodomy was a category of forbidden acts; their perpetrator was nothing more than the judicial subject of them.... Homosexuality appeared as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species."
This radical shift was the result of discourses concerned with disciplining and constructing the body, which emerged in the nineteenth-century:
"There is no question that the appearance in the nineteenth-century psychiatry, jurisprudence and literature of a whole series of discourses on the species and subspecies of homosexuality, inversion, pederasty, and 'psychic hermaphrodism' made possible by a strong advance of social controls into this area of 'perversity'; but it also made possible the formation of a 'reverse' discourse: homosexuality began to speak in its own behalf, to demand its legitimacy or 'naturality' be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categorie by which it was medically qualified. There is not, on the one side, a discourse of power, and opposite it, another discourse that runs counter to it. Discourses are tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations; there can exist different and even contradictory discourses within the same strategy; they can, on the contrary, circulate without changing their form from one strategy to another, opposing strategy. We must not expect the discourses on sex to tell us, above all, what strategy they derive from, or what moral divisions they accompany, or what ideology - dominant or dominated - they represent: rather we must question them on the two levels of their tactical productivity (what reciprocal effects of power and knowledge they ensure) and their strategic integration (what conjunction and what force relationship make their utilization necessary in a given episode of the various confrontations that occur). In short, it is a question of orienting ourselves to a conception. of power which replaces the privilege of the law with the view-point of the objective, the privilege of prohibition with the viewpoint of tactical efficacy, the privilege of sovereignty with the analysis of a multiple and mobile field of force relations, wherein far-reaching, but never completely stable, effects of domination are produced" (101-2).
To take up DeLuca once again (still on 235), I think this is amazing prose: "In our culture at this time, homosexual bodies are a particularly hot site for they serve as the necessary foil for heterosexuality and yet are evidence of the failure of discursive disciplining and the excess of bodies...they are marked not due to physical features but sexual practices, which provokes erotophobia... [and] represents an especially potent boundary transgression that violates the hegemonic discourse of heterosexuality and threatens the social order." DeLuca goes on to quote Judith Butler--in her brilliant _Gender Trouble_--who herself coined the term "heteronormativity" to describe the hegemony that DeLuca is discussing.
DeLuca goes on to point out that "The penalty for exposing one's gay body ranges from verbal abuse to physical beatings to death... Thus, by their very presence at a protest the activists are enacting a defiant rhetoric of resistance." And on page 236, DeLuca notes that "The same-sex kiss-in ups the ante. The romantic kiss, the portal to heterosexuality, marriage, children, and family values that function as the ideological bedrock of patriarchy is subverted, made 'bi'.... As a performance of gay or lesbian sexuality, it violates two taboos--the taboo of homosexuality and the backup taboo on visibility." That's a great insight--this "double bind" taboo schema that he posits here. It brings to mind the oft-heard "tolerant" observation, "I don't mind gay people..." followed by "as long as they act straight in public" or "I just don't want to see it." This sentiment has been appropriated by gay activists and redeployed publicly--on t-shirts and bumper stickers--as "I don't mind straight people as long as they act gay in public," a strategy reflecting the quote by Judith Butler (from _Gender Trouble_ once again) that DeLuca cites on 238--that "As imitations which effectively displace the meaning of the original... parodic proliferation deprives hegemonic culture and its critics of the claim to naturalized or essential gender identities." DeLuca puts a fine point on the matter in quoting Berlant and Freeman: "Being queer is not about a right to privacy: It is about the freedom to be public," and, as DeLuca adds, "the freedom to be visible, to exist" (237) and the, quickly afterwards, he goes on to say that, "In using their bodies as billboards to disrupt the straight spaces... activists recreate these spaces as sites for multiple significations of sexuality" (238).
----------------------------
Curzan and Damour:
A lot of great practical advice in this chapter. As I read, I made a few notes to myself:
pages 106-7 (office hours location): I seem to remember there being a note made at some point discouraging the practice of holding office hours at coffee houses, etc. I must say (because I'm Ed Grimley, apparently) that when I was an undergrad I kind of resented it when people (instructors or otherwise) asked me to meet them off-campus if it was for anything school-related. I don't know why--I like coffee, I don't mind spending money, usually, and I actually love having lunch with friends--but I just didn't like it. Maybe because it usually involved parking and/or walking a great deal to the designated establishment, whereas somewhere on campus, where I probably already was and would be going afterward, was more convenient. I could also see there being a problem with always finding a table--you'd have to be mindful of the time of day, etc. At the same time, I could see the urge to get out of the rooms in downstairs Tate for conferences. There are a couple of professors I know who hold their office hours at Brady... not the most glamorous locale, but I can't think of anything better right now. Suggestions?
page 108 (timing office hours): I agree with Curzan and Damour that office hours should be at times when students can attend. Something that I did for my primary tutoring hours last semester was on the first day I attended class, I brought photocopies of a blank schedule and asked them to fill in times they knew they had classes or other commitments and I used those to find at least one hour that each of them would be free in making up the three primary tutoring hours. I don't know if it really did much good... but maybe it will work better when it's actually my students (just an idea).
page 109 (Ending office hours): Like Claire, I found the discussion of strategies for dealing with students misusing office hours to be helpful. But I did have one "objection" while reading this section. I know I'm going to be too much of a push-over, in general, but to me the description given here of stating "politely that your office hours are over" when you're in the middle of meeting with someone seems, well, rude. I think I need Claire to clarify (ha!), because I'm missing something. I know that surely they mean to qualify the discussion a little, and they probably leave it up to the reader to use common sense as to when it's appropriate and when it's not to end office hours in the middle of a discussion with a student. But still, if they're going to mention it at all, it seems like they could be a little more nuanced in describing when it's appropriate and when it's not. They actually go so far as to say that it's okay, though it might be "difficult" when "you are in the middle of a meeting with a student who is angry or upset," to "bserve that your office hours have ended and that you can continue to talk with the student more in the future if necessary." What?!? Reading ahead to the sections they direct you to--"Students with Personal Problems" and "Grade Complaints"--fleshes it out quite a bit and they sound more sympathetic, but this section really threw me.
There is a lot of great, practical advice moving forward, though, much of which dovetails with Bean. I know I’m going to keep going back to both of these texts, even years from now. I have a lot more to say about both but I've come down with what feels like the flu and my head is getting muddled, so I'll stop (for now).
(I’ll try to get all my digressive quotations out of the way with this article).
This article really challenged my earlier reception of Rogers, and Lassner's focus on contextualizing argument as a situated practice, one that occurs between individuals and groups that have differing levels of power, spoke to what I have known in my own experiences. Her focus on how Rogerian argument delimited the power of female students in her class--because it undermined their ability to oppose already dominant patriarchies--is intriguing:
"Feminist scholars have shown how far women have to go before they can even face that contending narrative. This is because women feel they must capitulate to the values of the majority culture in which they live. Engaging in a person-centered dialogue fails to acknowledge women's ambivalent relations to culture, the fact that although the language of the majority culture does not always fit their experiences, they often behave as though it does. Because women and other marginalized people don't always see themselves represented either at all or accurately in their culture, they often find language to be inhibiting rather than expressive. Hairston's claim that neutral language improves communication is therefore problematic because in the experience of many no language is neutral, non-directive, or nonjudgmental" (409).
This brought to mind for me a couple of things (time for the digressions). The first is one of my favorite essays, “Postmodern Blackness,” in which bell hooks (who Lamb refers to) observes that:
“[7] The postmodern critique of ‘identity,’ though relevant for renewed black liberation struggle, is often posed in ways that are problematic. Given a pervasive politic of white supremacy, which seeks to prevent the formation of radical black subjectivity, we cannot cavalierly dismiss a concern with identity politics. Any critic exploring the radical potential of postmodernism as it relates to racial difference and racial domination would need to consider the implications of a critique of identity for oppressed groups. Many of us are struggling to find new strategies of resistance. We must engage decolonization as a critical practice if we are to have meaningful chances of survival even as we must simultaneously cope with the loss of political grounding which made radical activism more possible. I am thinking here about the postmodernist critique of essentialism as it pertains to the construction of ‘identity’ as one example.”
I've always read this to mean that hooks feels that the critique of essentialist notions of ethnicity and authenticity comes at a time when those who have been oppressed and who experience the social facts related to their identities are still trying to be heard in the first place, to finally have a voice. While hooks acknowledges the emancipatory potential of the pomo critique, she also asserts--very powerfully--that those who have been oppressed will have to "cope with the loss" of the political grounding" that authenticy and identity provided radical activism. To me hooks' discussion of postmodernism and black identity parallels Lassner's observations about Rogerian argument and feminism.
Lassner's positing of rhetoric in terms of power relations brought to mind a second digression: there is this set of competing explanations in sociolinguistics for certain features that were first identified as aspects of “women’s speech" by the linguist Robin Lakoff (who was once married to George Lakoff, one of the authors of _Metaphors We Live By_, the book Dr. Strickland excerpted for us a few weeks ago). In her 1973 essay “Language and Woman's Place,” Lakoff posited that women use certain features much more than men, things like hedge phrases (e.g. “sort of,” “it seems like”), tag questions (e.g. “It sure is nice out, isn’t it?”), hyper-politeness, “empty” adjectives, indirect requests, and so on. Lakoff’s findings (they were largely intuitive) have been highly influential. It’s been observed--not entirely facetiously--that Deborah Tannen, who arguably edges out Saussure and William Labov as the most famous linguist of the 20th century after Noam Chomsky because of the popular reception of her books on gender differences in speech, owes her career to Lakoff (Tannen's _You Just Don't Understand_ spent four years on _The New York Times_ best-seller list). But they have also been disputed. Seven years after Lakoff published her initial findings, a study done by William O’Barr and Bowman Atkins was published under the title “’Women’s Language’ or ‘powerless language’?” in which they asserted that what had been considered features of gendered speech was, in fact, more about issues of power, in general. O'Barr and Atkins observed witnesses appearing court cases over a period of 30 months. They examined the witnesses’ testimonies for the features that between men and Lakoff had proposed were part of women’s speech. They concluded from their study that the quoted speech patterns were “neither characteristic of all women nor limited only to women”. The women who used the lowest frequency of women's language traits had an high status--educated professionals and those with upper-middle class backgrounds. Inversely, a corresponding pattern was noted among those men who used these features—they had relatively low social status.
------------------------
On Lamb:
I really loved this article--and it dovetails nicely with Lassner's, of course. One way to put them into dialogue, I think, comes on 157, when Lamb asserts that "it can be feminist to both at times be confrontational and at other times advocate approaches that minimize confrontation" contra, in a way, Lassner's well-taken point about historically contextualization.
I found several parts of Lamb's piece particularly interesting:
from 155: the description she includes by Kenneth Burke regarding the "unending conversation" of humankind is great, while at the same time her challenges to it ("...who has been invited and who has been left out...") are equally good. Lamb points out that "For the past twenty years of [feminist composition's] history, the emphasis has been on developing the personal voice. Argument, techniques of persuasion for gaining acceptance of one's point of view, if it was dealt with, was seen usually in pejorative terms, as an expression of patriarchy." But, she asserts, "there are now suggestions that other alternatives are possible.... alternatives which "return to women's experience in spite of the pitfalls of idealizing or overgeneralizing that experience." Women have not been able to remain in theory, because they "can not assume [they] will be heard" and so they "have had to articulate concrete ways to respond when there appears to be little, if any, common ground from which to negotiate a relationship."
156: Lamb briefly recounts the history of feminist composition, and emphasizes that because "Feminist composition was developing at a time also of great idealism in the women's movement;" there was an "illusion of a domain free of conflict" as "the variables of race, class, and sexual orientation were not a concern." (I'd say there actually *were* challenges by so-called "third wave" or "post-" feminists by this time--the early 1970s--but perhaps those challenges had not yet reached this field). The historical moment in which feminist composition arose, coupled with "an emphasis on developing a personal voice" meant that there was "no need to consider conflict; it may even be discouraged..." and this "emphasis on uncritically accepting what another has written means that real differences, whatever their sources, are elided."
157: see above; and she begins her "feminist responses to argument" with those "situations for conflict resolution in which one strives for an outcome that is acceptable to both parties"--mediation and negotiation are alternatives to argument, and...
158: Mediation and negotiation, Lamb argues, provide ways of resolving conflict "when the goal is no longer winning but finding a solution in a fair way that is acceptable to both sides." These alternatives to argument, "in which the goal is to win," require "a contrasting view of power" and she nods towards Foucault's formulation, which I love. I disagree, however, with her contention that there exists "a major difference" between her concern and Foucault's, that "Foucault's interest in analyzing power as it has been exercised historically or in existing societies and institutions" contrasts with her own "imagining new, positive ways in which it might be used." Foucault was very concerned--though skeptical, I would argue--in such possibilities (see my note on DeLuca below for further discussion).
159: I'm supremely intrigued by Lamb's description here of the unpublished paper by Julia Dietrich addressing the social construction of argument, so much so that I did as thorough a search as I know-how for the paper in every database I know, with no luck in finding it--and so I contacted Dr. Dietrich to try to procure a copy from her directly (she's a professor specializing in medieval literature, culture, and rhetoric; as well as Shakespeare; and argumentation, generally, at the University of Louisville--here's her website: http://www.louisville.edu/~jcdiet01/)
160: There are some great "one-liners" here regarding "maternal thinking" (a term that I resisted at first, but I came to accept it)--"If feminist responses to argument are to be viable, they must include in them a broader range of possibilities in their responses to conflict. Is it possible that power exercised can eventually be enabling?... The goal is still for writer and reader to establish and maintain a subject-subject relationship... The main feature of the relationship, however, may be needing to honor the present tension, staying in the moment of the disagreement, recognizing that resolution may never occur but that continuing the conversation is still a legitimate way of maintaining a relationship. The other party remains a subject, I think, if her or his views are still taken seriously, even if there appears to be no movement in the dialogue." This is a great observation, in my opinion, and from here I can go on to summarize more why I liked this article so much. Lamb goes on to quote hooks (161), who says in "Toward a Revolutionary Feminist Pedagogy" that her goal as a teacher "is to enable all students, not just an assertive few, to feel empowered in a rigorous, critical discussion, and in her discussion of responding, Lamb asserts that her role as a teacher "is not to provide the clarity and security of a prescribed form... it is to create the kind of atmosphere in which students can think honestly and openly about their position on an issue about which they care and then can reflect on the most generous response of which they are capable" (162--and she goes on to broadly "operationalize" how to do this in terms of assignments). Then Lamb gives that really great account of the abbot who wrote about homosexuality for the Episcopalian newsletter. The whole account is just amazing, but some of the best parts of the description include how the abbot "noted the passages in Leviticus and Romans often used to attack homosexuality; without denying what they say, he also provided us with broader contexts in which to interpret them, thus showing that the primary issues may not be homosexuality.... Later, he noted that we are to empty 'ourselves of all that makes us want to push others away just because they are different... If our identity is threatened by the difference of another that is a signal of our own need to empty ourselves of that identity, in the faith that we will discover ourselves more deeply in the other person and in God'" (163). That sounds almost Rogerian. Lamb goes on to recount that the abbot "never took an explicit position; the emphasis instead was on broadening the context in which the discussion takes place, creating openings for anyone except possibly the most diehard on either side" (ibid).
It seems as though one could construct a counter-narrative to that which I have given here, in which Lassner follows Lamb and qualifies Lamb's "empathetic" argument, rather than the other way around (I'd say that Lamb's account of the maternal is empathetic; she even says on page 158--quoting herself-- that "A central notion is that of 'attentive love or loving attention': 'Loving attention is much like empathy, the ability to think and feel as the other.'" Again, I'd say that the two are in dialogue--that I find productive elements in both.
----------------
On DeLuca:
A great piece--I've photocopied it and passed it along to a few friends of my moms who are activists in the queer community, simply because of the rich language he uses. And overall it's a way "in" to reading the body as another example of a text, just like print, film and television, advertisements, etc.--and as DeLuca notes, as seeing the body as engaged in "constitutive rhetoric: the mobilization of signs, images, and discourses for the articulation of identities, ideologies, consciousnesses, communities, publics, and cultures... [they] constitute a nascent body rhetoric that deploys bodies as a pivotal resource for the crucial practice of public argumentation" (226-7). There's pedagogical value to be found here.
The discussion of media coverage was great, too--"as radical groups questioning societal orthodoxies, they can expect news organizations to frame them negatively as disrupters of the social order.. [but] What they do have control over... is the presentation of their bodies in the image events... Their bodies, then, become not merely flags to attract attention for the argument but the site and substance of the argument itself" (227). This suggests--for me any way--examining the framing of media reports on such events, much like Bri did with the story on the British twins.
I loved the rich descriptions that DeLuca uses for ACT UP and Queer Nation. Page 235 is just full of quotable text: "The body is front and center in their arguments for it is the body that is at stake--its meanings, its possibilities, its care, and its freedoms. In their protest actions, the activists use their bodies to rewrite the homosexual body as already constructed by dominant mainstream discourses--diseased, contagious, deviant, invisible... The force of the body makes it a sublime and contested site in cultures, subject to feverish and multiple modes of disciplining and constructing."
Here DeLuca cites Foucault's _Discipline and Punish_ and _The History of Sexuality: Volume I_, along with Alphonso Lingis, but I'd like to comment a little further by way of quoting from Foucault (no such luck on getting digressions out of the way early), as his account of discourse and power is productive in tying DeLuca back to Lamb. In _The History of Sexuality: Volume I_, page 43, Foucault notes asserts that
"As defined by the ancient civil or canonical codes, sodomy was a category of forbidden acts; their perpetrator was nothing more than the judicial subject of them.... Homosexuality appeared as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species."
This radical shift was the result of discourses concerned with disciplining and constructing the body, which emerged in the nineteenth-century:
"There is no question that the appearance in the nineteenth-century psychiatry, jurisprudence and literature of a whole series of discourses on the species and subspecies of homosexuality, inversion, pederasty, and 'psychic hermaphrodism' made possible by a strong advance of social controls into this area of 'perversity'; but it also made possible the formation of a 'reverse' discourse: homosexuality began to speak in its own behalf, to demand its legitimacy or 'naturality' be acknowledged, often in the same vocabulary, using the same categorie by which it was medically qualified. There is not, on the one side, a discourse of power, and opposite it, another discourse that runs counter to it. Discourses are tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations; there can exist different and even contradictory discourses within the same strategy; they can, on the contrary, circulate without changing their form from one strategy to another, opposing strategy. We must not expect the discourses on sex to tell us, above all, what strategy they derive from, or what moral divisions they accompany, or what ideology - dominant or dominated - they represent: rather we must question them on the two levels of their tactical productivity (what reciprocal effects of power and knowledge they ensure) and their strategic integration (what conjunction and what force relationship make their utilization necessary in a given episode of the various confrontations that occur). In short, it is a question of orienting ourselves to a conception. of power which replaces the privilege of the law with the view-point of the objective, the privilege of prohibition with the viewpoint of tactical efficacy, the privilege of sovereignty with the analysis of a multiple and mobile field of force relations, wherein far-reaching, but never completely stable, effects of domination are produced" (101-2).
To take up DeLuca once again (still on 235), I think this is amazing prose: "In our culture at this time, homosexual bodies are a particularly hot site for they serve as the necessary foil for heterosexuality and yet are evidence of the failure of discursive disciplining and the excess of bodies...they are marked not due to physical features but sexual practices, which provokes erotophobia... [and] represents an especially potent boundary transgression that violates the hegemonic discourse of heterosexuality and threatens the social order." DeLuca goes on to quote Judith Butler--in her brilliant _Gender Trouble_--who herself coined the term "heteronormativity" to describe the hegemony that DeLuca is discussing.
DeLuca goes on to point out that "The penalty for exposing one's gay body ranges from verbal abuse to physical beatings to death... Thus, by their very presence at a protest the activists are enacting a defiant rhetoric of resistance." And on page 236, DeLuca notes that "The same-sex kiss-in ups the ante. The romantic kiss, the portal to heterosexuality, marriage, children, and family values that function as the ideological bedrock of patriarchy is subverted, made 'bi'.... As a performance of gay or lesbian sexuality, it violates two taboos--the taboo of homosexuality and the backup taboo on visibility." That's a great insight--this "double bind" taboo schema that he posits here. It brings to mind the oft-heard "tolerant" observation, "I don't mind gay people..." followed by "as long as they act straight in public" or "I just don't want to see it." This sentiment has been appropriated by gay activists and redeployed publicly--on t-shirts and bumper stickers--as "I don't mind straight people as long as they act gay in public," a strategy reflecting the quote by Judith Butler (from _Gender Trouble_ once again) that DeLuca cites on 238--that "As imitations which effectively displace the meaning of the original... parodic proliferation deprives hegemonic culture and its critics of the claim to naturalized or essential gender identities." DeLuca puts a fine point on the matter in quoting Berlant and Freeman: "Being queer is not about a right to privacy: It is about the freedom to be public," and, as DeLuca adds, "the freedom to be visible, to exist" (237) and the, quickly afterwards, he goes on to say that, "In using their bodies as billboards to disrupt the straight spaces... activists recreate these spaces as sites for multiple significations of sexuality" (238).
----------------------------
Curzan and Damour:
A lot of great practical advice in this chapter. As I read, I made a few notes to myself:
pages 106-7 (office hours location): I seem to remember there being a note made at some point discouraging the practice of holding office hours at coffee houses, etc. I must say (because I'm Ed Grimley, apparently) that when I was an undergrad I kind of resented it when people (instructors or otherwise) asked me to meet them off-campus if it was for anything school-related. I don't know why--I like coffee, I don't mind spending money, usually, and I actually love having lunch with friends--but I just didn't like it. Maybe because it usually involved parking and/or walking a great deal to the designated establishment, whereas somewhere on campus, where I probably already was and would be going afterward, was more convenient. I could also see there being a problem with always finding a table--you'd have to be mindful of the time of day, etc. At the same time, I could see the urge to get out of the rooms in downstairs Tate for conferences. There are a couple of professors I know who hold their office hours at Brady... not the most glamorous locale, but I can't think of anything better right now. Suggestions?
page 108 (timing office hours): I agree with Curzan and Damour that office hours should be at times when students can attend. Something that I did for my primary tutoring hours last semester was on the first day I attended class, I brought photocopies of a blank schedule and asked them to fill in times they knew they had classes or other commitments and I used those to find at least one hour that each of them would be free in making up the three primary tutoring hours. I don't know if it really did much good... but maybe it will work better when it's actually my students (just an idea).
page 109 (Ending office hours): Like Claire, I found the discussion of strategies for dealing with students misusing office hours to be helpful. But I did have one "objection" while reading this section. I know I'm going to be too much of a push-over, in general, but to me the description given here of stating "politely that your office hours are over" when you're in the middle of meeting with someone seems, well, rude. I think I need Claire to clarify (ha!), because I'm missing something. I know that surely they mean to qualify the discussion a little, and they probably leave it up to the reader to use common sense as to when it's appropriate and when it's not to end office hours in the middle of a discussion with a student. But still, if they're going to mention it at all, it seems like they could be a little more nuanced in describing when it's appropriate and when it's not. They actually go so far as to say that it's okay, though it might be "difficult" when "you are in the middle of a meeting with a student who is angry or upset," to "bserve that your office hours have ended and that you can continue to talk with the student more in the future if necessary." What?!? Reading ahead to the sections they direct you to--"Students with Personal Problems" and "Grade Complaints"--fleshes it out quite a bit and they sound more sympathetic, but this section really threw me.
There is a lot of great, practical advice moving forward, though, much of which dovetails with Bean. I know I’m going to keep going back to both of these texts, even years from now. I have a lot more to say about both but I've come down with what feels like the flu and my head is getting muddled, so I'll stop (for now).
Bean, Curzan, Damour and One on One
I have only had a chance to read the first two readings for this week, the ones concerning one-on-one interaction with students. For the most part, I think much of it was common sense. However, I would like to highlight the idea of not socializing with students after the semester. I think this advice is often overlooked, which could cause a problem later down the road since we hopefully won't teach only EN1000 for the rest of our careers on campus. Students could very easily turn up in a later lit. section.
I also found it interesting that office hours in a coffee house were mentioned again. I never would consider this, but this is the second time such a setting has been addressed. Is it a common practice today? I am rather confused by it. I guess it would make the meeting more casual, but is that what you want when discussing a paper? I would be too distracted myself to give the student's paper the attention it deserves. One other point I have is about the checklists in the Curzan chapter. I am not sure I agree with all of them. I will update this blog again later to be more specific (I left my book at home!).
The other point I found interesting concerned sexual harassment. I am really leery about this possibility ever since I received a pornographic note from a student when teaching high school. The district did not want to deal with it and I did not want to sue the district in order to get a response. So, I wonder how such matters are actually dealt with or if they are at all? I followed what I was told was proper protocol; however, I felt like that was a channel which only sought to conceal the problem and keep it out of the public eye. Any suggestions or concerns?
I also found it interesting that office hours in a coffee house were mentioned again. I never would consider this, but this is the second time such a setting has been addressed. Is it a common practice today? I am rather confused by it. I guess it would make the meeting more casual, but is that what you want when discussing a paper? I would be too distracted myself to give the student's paper the attention it deserves. One other point I have is about the checklists in the Curzan chapter. I am not sure I agree with all of them. I will update this blog again later to be more specific (I left my book at home!).
The other point I found interesting concerned sexual harassment. I am really leery about this possibility ever since I received a pornographic note from a student when teaching high school. The district did not want to deal with it and I did not want to sue the district in order to get a response. So, I wonder how such matters are actually dealt with or if they are at all? I followed what I was told was proper protocol; however, I felt like that was a channel which only sought to conceal the problem and keep it out of the public eye. Any suggestions or concerns?
On Deluca's "Unruly Arguments"
Although I found the Deluca article compelling, I think there is a tension that runs throughout the argument. Sometimes he contends that "bodies and images of bodies argue" (228); this implies that the images themselves are performing argument directly. Elsewhere, he contends that bodies are "crucial elements of arguments" (229), which suggests that they are not arguments themselves, but part of a larger discourse. In another location, Deluca argues that "bodies at risk are encapsulated arguments" (232), which seems different than the other two options. So the three different propositions I see here are:
1.) Bodies argue.
2.) Bodies are crucial elements of arguments.
3.) Bodies are encapsulated arguments.
I'm not sure that these three propositions work together in any kind of logical manner. Regarding the first proposition, I am skeptical. It seems to me that bodies do not directly argue; rather, that they imply an argument that can only be truly articulated through language. This may be a personal bias, but I genuinely cannot "think" an argument without language. The gesture in itself remains mute. Even Deluca's example of the EarthFirst! "bodies at risk" relies upon an intricate, textual analysis of the symbolic nature of the actions.
The 2nd and 3rd propositions seem like they might work together. It makes sense that bodies would be "crucial elements" of an argument because the "body at risk" is a material crystallization of the more abstract ideas. To bury oneself up to the neck to help preserve biodiversity reveals a commitment to "green" principles and implies an "ecocentric" rather than "anthropocentric" worldview. The body is, then, a manifestation of this philosophy and a crucial element in the larger argument. So, it seems to me, bodies are "crucial elements" in the larger, social argument exactly because they are "encapsulated" arguments; like all symbols, the body opens out into varied and complex domains of signification.
Ultimately, the 2nd and 3rd propositions seem quite intelligible to me. However, the first seems like a contradiction in relation to the other two. This relates also to Leta's post. Leta seemed to take issue with the idea of bodies as arguments because a mute body is irrefutable. One cannot argue with a symbol. But, if one considers the 2nd and 3rd propositions, it becomes clear that the body is a part of a larger, articulate argument -- a crystallization of that argument. One need not try to argue with the symbolic gesture; argue instead with the organization, the philosophy, etc. I think the gesture is usually a method of drawing attention to a marginalized or otherwise obscured issue rather than an "infantile" argument in itself.
1.) Bodies argue.
2.) Bodies are crucial elements of arguments.
3.) Bodies are encapsulated arguments.
I'm not sure that these three propositions work together in any kind of logical manner. Regarding the first proposition, I am skeptical. It seems to me that bodies do not directly argue; rather, that they imply an argument that can only be truly articulated through language. This may be a personal bias, but I genuinely cannot "think" an argument without language. The gesture in itself remains mute. Even Deluca's example of the EarthFirst! "bodies at risk" relies upon an intricate, textual analysis of the symbolic nature of the actions.
The 2nd and 3rd propositions seem like they might work together. It makes sense that bodies would be "crucial elements" of an argument because the "body at risk" is a material crystallization of the more abstract ideas. To bury oneself up to the neck to help preserve biodiversity reveals a commitment to "green" principles and implies an "ecocentric" rather than "anthropocentric" worldview. The body is, then, a manifestation of this philosophy and a crucial element in the larger argument. So, it seems to me, bodies are "crucial elements" in the larger, social argument exactly because they are "encapsulated" arguments; like all symbols, the body opens out into varied and complex domains of signification.
Ultimately, the 2nd and 3rd propositions seem quite intelligible to me. However, the first seems like a contradiction in relation to the other two. This relates also to Leta's post. Leta seemed to take issue with the idea of bodies as arguments because a mute body is irrefutable. One cannot argue with a symbol. But, if one considers the 2nd and 3rd propositions, it becomes clear that the body is a part of a larger, articulate argument -- a crystallization of that argument. One need not try to argue with the symbolic gesture; argue instead with the organization, the philosophy, etc. I think the gesture is usually a method of drawing attention to a marginalized or otherwise obscured issue rather than an "infantile" argument in itself.
Are Peer Reviews Bean-ificial?
I know from just talking with several of you that many of us had disastrous (or at least not beneficial) peer review sessions as undergrads. Peer reviews tended to fall into one of two categories with me: 1. "good paper" with no other comments, or 2. suggestions that were completely wrong. Both of these are, I think, legitimate concerns. While I think that Bean attempts to combat some of these issues with his suggestions for response-centered, advise-centered, and out-of-class reviews, I still wonder whether students will know enough to be able to diagnose and offer advise for improving problems with one another's writing.
Here are a few other things that I'm thinking of that might help to combat these problems:
1. Do a practice peer review together. This could be done with a Smart Board or an overhead. Students could take turns reading paragraphs aloud and discussing what they would suggest to improve.
2. Anonymous peer reviews. While this removes the possibility for dialog with the reviewer, it might also encourage students to be honest (rather than polite) about the paper's flaws. Aaron Harms does this in his classes. Essentially, students bring drafts of their papers without their names on them (he has them put their student #s on the drafts, but I would likely use a number that I would assign to each student). The students take the drafts home and write a response (about a page) answering a series of questions. The reviewer brings back the marked up draft and the review, marked with only his/her student number, stapled together and a photocopy of the entire packet. One copy of the packet is returned to the student whose draft it was, the other goes to the instructor. The reviewer is then graded on his/her peer response. It seems complicated, but might remove some of the anxiety students have with reviewing and being reviewed.
3. Grade the students' responses. I alluded to this in #2, but I'll restate it here. I think that this will encourage them to help one another with their writing. Furthermore, knowing that I'm going to read their drafts and their responses will make them take them seriously.
4. I don't plan to use peer reviews for the first paper. I want them to have some experience under their belts, to have gotten back a graded paper, to have visited the writing lab, etc.
I'd be anxious to hear any other suggestions.
--Bri
Here are a few other things that I'm thinking of that might help to combat these problems:
1. Do a practice peer review together. This could be done with a Smart Board or an overhead. Students could take turns reading paragraphs aloud and discussing what they would suggest to improve.
2. Anonymous peer reviews. While this removes the possibility for dialog with the reviewer, it might also encourage students to be honest (rather than polite) about the paper's flaws. Aaron Harms does this in his classes. Essentially, students bring drafts of their papers without their names on them (he has them put their student #s on the drafts, but I would likely use a number that I would assign to each student). The students take the drafts home and write a response (about a page) answering a series of questions. The reviewer brings back the marked up draft and the review, marked with only his/her student number, stapled together and a photocopy of the entire packet. One copy of the packet is returned to the student whose draft it was, the other goes to the instructor. The reviewer is then graded on his/her peer response. It seems complicated, but might remove some of the anxiety students have with reviewing and being reviewed.
3. Grade the students' responses. I alluded to this in #2, but I'll restate it here. I think that this will encourage them to help one another with their writing. Furthermore, knowing that I'm going to read their drafts and their responses will make them take them seriously.
4. I don't plan to use peer reviews for the first paper. I want them to have some experience under their belts, to have gotten back a graded paper, to have visited the writing lab, etc.
I'd be anxious to hear any other suggestions.
--Bri
The Body and Rhetoric
I enjoyed the readings in Barnet, found them to be stimulating. All of the readings expanded the notion of argumentation in helpful ways, ways in which I think we don't normally associate with being in the realm of argumentation. The DeLuca article was particularly helpful in this way – and I found much of what he had to say resonant with the job talk that was given on Friday with regard to the rhetoric of graffiti. The lecturer was making the point that argument is all around us but in amorphous sort of ways that are very difficult to pin down. Deluca’s notions of body rhetoric as a sort of visual rhetoric was much in line with this. Living in Japan for many years, I came to understand how the body can be used in this form through its culture. The Japanese bow, for example, is interesting in that it conveys a lot of persuasive force and is absolutely essential to effective communication in Japan.
One-On-One with Students
I want to blog a little today about Chapter 7 of the Curzon and Damour. Working in the Writing Lab has given me a lot to think about, in regard to the value of individual interaction between students and instructors.
When I tutor, I frequently feel like a therapist. It seems that a lot of what students need in a tutoring session is reassurance and encouragement. Often students come in on the verge of tears; others show up feeling angry and frustrated. I know that English 1000 instructors work hard to connect with their students, and to give them the one-on-one time that is essential to their progress, yet it feels like there’s just not enough time to give each student the time and attention they seem to need. I was surprised to find that many students just don’t learn the way I do (I shouldn’t have been surprised about this) and that they need the individual attention that I always tried to avoid when I was an undergraduate.
Curzon and Damour were very helpful to me; I felt like they raised a lot of points that I had not yet considered. I hadn’t thought about students misusing office hours and I thought the suggested responses to this type of student (pg 109) was really helpful. Curzon and Damour were careful to highlight the importance of recordkeeping; from previous jobs I know how essential it is to maintain a paper trail, in case a conflict or situation gets out of hand.
I liked the section on page 114 to 117, in which C&D talk about students with personal problems. The supportive-but-fair policy seems to sensible in theory, but I imagine it’s much harder to tell a student they must confront their own problems, than to make excessive accommodations for student problems. I’m attached to the idea of logical consequences, so I hope I’ll be able to keep this up in the classroom.
Finally, the section on antagonistic students was both reassuring and frightening. I’m afraid that I’ll wind up with problematic students, and I know that I will, so it was kind of nice to hear that yes, these things will happen, and here are some practical ways to deal with this situation.
The Courtroom Drama of Sense vs. Sensibility
For the record, yes I will (and do) take every opportunity to make one of my courses overlap with the others.
I thought Lamb's and Lessner's essays on feminism and argumentation raised important issues. However, I wasn't sure what to make of Lassner's determination on Rogerian argument. When she mentions her students who hate Rogerian argument, dubbing it "masculinist and denialist" and noting "it leaves no space to be persuasive with anger…because for women to be recognized, everyone needs to know how they feel" (407).
Are the students saying that women are unjustly categorized as overly emotional? Or are they arguing that women are overly emotional? It seemed like the latter to me. It all smacks of those 18th century writings on whether a woman should be a rational creature or an emotional one. Yeah, 18th century. Good thing we worked that problem out, right?
I feel (ha...) the more effective counterargument to Rogerian argument is the one we raised in class: why does he not consider the opposing side? Practice what you preach, Mr. Rogers!
Anyway, I would have thought Rogerian argument could appeal to any egalitarian approach to teaching, but maybe Lassner's students were not egalitarian feminists. Although I do agree that minorities of gender, ethnicity, class status, sexuality, and age all have been "coerced into accepting the claims of traditional rhetorical forms," not to mention social norms, but let's allow that this is just about rhetoric for right now (409). This seems to relate back to Leta's post on body rhetoric: emotionally charged rhetoric works, but is it fair? If a marginalized person is allowed to get angry, will others buy the argument or will they just write this person off as another raving hysteric? (For the record, yes I am using "hysteric" in the 18th century medical sense.)
I thought Lamb's and Lessner's essays on feminism and argumentation raised important issues. However, I wasn't sure what to make of Lassner's determination on Rogerian argument. When she mentions her students who hate Rogerian argument, dubbing it "masculinist and denialist" and noting "it leaves no space to be persuasive with anger…because for women to be recognized, everyone needs to know how they feel" (407).
Are the students saying that women are unjustly categorized as overly emotional? Or are they arguing that women are overly emotional? It seemed like the latter to me. It all smacks of those 18th century writings on whether a woman should be a rational creature or an emotional one. Yeah, 18th century. Good thing we worked that problem out, right?
I feel (ha...) the more effective counterargument to Rogerian argument is the one we raised in class: why does he not consider the opposing side? Practice what you preach, Mr. Rogers!
Anyway, I would have thought Rogerian argument could appeal to any egalitarian approach to teaching, but maybe Lassner's students were not egalitarian feminists. Although I do agree that minorities of gender, ethnicity, class status, sexuality, and age all have been "coerced into accepting the claims of traditional rhetorical forms," not to mention social norms, but let's allow that this is just about rhetoric for right now (409). This seems to relate back to Leta's post on body rhetoric: emotionally charged rhetoric works, but is it fair? If a marginalized person is allowed to get angry, will others buy the argument or will they just write this person off as another raving hysteric? (For the record, yes I am using "hysteric" in the 18th century medical sense.)
Where does the power lie?
Catherine Lamb, Phyllis Lassner, and Kevin Michael DeLuca present some interesting arguments about how power relates to argument. I found these articles particularly helpful because they led me to question (for the first time) my assumption that everyone feels welcome and empowered to engage in traditional methods of argument. They also led me to question (yet again) the effectiveness of arguing as a combatant out to defeat an opponent, making a convincing argument comparable to a conquest. Of course, as Lamb suggests, the ideal conversation of cooperation (rather than confrontation and conflict) leads to a solution that satisfies everyone. The problem of the day seems to be how people can have a conversation with all parties cooperating when trust breaks down and power is unevenly distributed.
Before I read Lassner’s article, I was confident that the Rogerian method could create something close to this ideal conversation (and I still think that Rogerian argument has potential). Now, I have come to admire Lassner for assuming that a participant in an argument must have a passionate, personal connection to his or her position. This attitude seems to make restating an opposing argument difficult, if not impossible. Yet, Lassner, like Carl Rogers, does acknowledge the participants in an argument need to reach some kind of common ground. For her, ‘common ground’ means a shared humanity, rather than a shared understanding of the opposing argument (as Rogers understands it). I don’t see why one cannot do both. I agree with Lassner that restating an opposing argument can be scary, especially when one has such a strong, personal connection to one’s position. But I do not understand how a group can cooperate without understanding all positions. Perhaps, this understanding cannot come until trust is already established, rather than as a means of establishing trust. Perhaps, the trust is established within a group in conversation by acknowledging shared humanity.
Before I read Lassner’s article, I was confident that the Rogerian method could create something close to this ideal conversation (and I still think that Rogerian argument has potential). Now, I have come to admire Lassner for assuming that a participant in an argument must have a passionate, personal connection to his or her position. This attitude seems to make restating an opposing argument difficult, if not impossible. Yet, Lassner, like Carl Rogers, does acknowledge the participants in an argument need to reach some kind of common ground. For her, ‘common ground’ means a shared humanity, rather than a shared understanding of the opposing argument (as Rogers understands it). I don’t see why one cannot do both. I agree with Lassner that restating an opposing argument can be scary, especially when one has such a strong, personal connection to one’s position. But I do not understand how a group can cooperate without understanding all positions. Perhaps, this understanding cannot come until trust is already established, rather than as a means of establishing trust. Perhaps, the trust is established within a group in conversation by acknowledging shared humanity.
Beanie
Once again (I feel that I start all my blogs off this way), Bean has been most useful this week (though I fear he’s going to let me down soon). One-on-One conferences worry me somewhat simply because of location, time, and intimidation. Because we are all confined to the basement of Tate Hall, it seems that the atmosphere could be somewhat intimidating for the student. On any given day, at any given time there are loads of students in and out room 1 or 6 with 10+ conferences occurring at once. A student that may not be as confident or would really appreciate a quieter; more focused environment could have some real issues with one-on-one conferencing in Tate. A second issue for me is determining what the appropriate amount of time for a conference. I know current instructors that meet with students for 10 minutes each after they receive their 1st submission back, but that just doesn’t seem like enough. Then again, how do you schedule 40 students for meaningful, helpful conferences? Suggestions?
Also, Bean’s explanation of how to conduct an actual conference was very helpful. One issue I did have was creating an agenda during the meeting with the student. For the sake of time, I think it would appropriate to have an agenda already created of the issues that as the instructor you know need to be paid attention to. Another issue I had was the group paper conferences. If it isn’t already apparent I’m totally apprehensive to situations that could be uncomfortable and subsequently embarrassing for some students, such as (too much) group work, any “on the spot” type of activities (such as reading out loud), and group paper conferences. I always hated my work being compared to my peers as a means to critique it, and this type of conference just seems very… bad, for a lack of a better word. I definitely see some of the benefits it could reap, but I also can see how it could be a catastrophe.
Also, Bean’s explanation of how to conduct an actual conference was very helpful. One issue I did have was creating an agenda during the meeting with the student. For the sake of time, I think it would appropriate to have an agenda already created of the issues that as the instructor you know need to be paid attention to. Another issue I had was the group paper conferences. If it isn’t already apparent I’m totally apprehensive to situations that could be uncomfortable and subsequently embarrassing for some students, such as (too much) group work, any “on the spot” type of activities (such as reading out loud), and group paper conferences. I always hated my work being compared to my peers as a means to critique it, and this type of conference just seems very… bad, for a lack of a better word. I definitely see some of the benefits it could reap, but I also can see how it could be a catastrophe.
body rhetoric
So I also found DeLuca's body rhetoric essay to be fascinating and problematic. I can see Leta's point about the petulant child, though I also agree with DeLuca that the protestors' willingness to risk their safety and even lives for something perceived as "lesser" is extremely moving and eloquent. Is it just what they are defending that encourages viewers to devalue their argument? Is it the environment (no pun intended) in which they protest? I doubt anyone would look at the photograph of the lone man staring down a tank in Tiananmen Square and think "petulant child." (By the way, Leta, I'm not calling you out!)
Regardless, this suggests another paper topic to me- having students find images of the body that create an argument, and analyzing that argument. Kate probably already has this assignment whipped up. Between advertising, photographs, sculpture, etc. there's a lot out there to use and read. And this article would be a both an introduction to the concept and a good example of how to read the body as argument.
Regardless, this suggests another paper topic to me- having students find images of the body that create an argument, and analyzing that argument. Kate probably already has this assignment whipped up. Between advertising, photographs, sculpture, etc. there's a lot out there to use and read. And this article would be a both an introduction to the concept and a good example of how to read the body as argument.
One-on-One Interactions and Individual Conferencing
One-on-One interactions with students can be tricky, and I think that Curzan and Damour commented on some of the more problematic ones. I've always found it strange when some students are antagonistic and seem to openly show disdain for the class. I usually think something to the effect of "if they really don't like this class, why are they in it?" But, of course, in many cases, it is a requirement for them to take it. That, however, is no excuse for rude behavior. I find that most of the antagonistic students I've had in classes don't seem to realize just how rude their behavior is-- so many students seem to think that because you're standing in front of a group that you're not as likely to notice the behavior of individuals in front of you. That's simply not true-- you see more than you'd like to-- you see every eye-roll, every smirk, and you have to train yourself as a teacher to not let it get to you. One on one with these kinds of students is even trickier. Usually they go into defensive mode--"I don't know why you don't like my writing, I showed this to my high school teacher and they thought it was good" (and I actually have had a student say such a thing to me after turning in a paper that had no thesis statement at all. Inherent in the way they approach you is the problem itself. Instead of thinking that they could possibly have done something wrong, they choose to put the blame on you-- it's your fault that they got a bad grade. I really think that there's not much you can do with these students other than to be able to point out what's wrong with the paper and explain why it got the grade that it deserved. It seems that in most of the tricky situations, it's simply best to have a clear set of rules, a clear set of reasoning to explain why certain actions have certain consequences. Whether it's setting up a clear attendance policy, and making clear that allowed absences should be saved for days when the student really needs it, or making your grading policy clear--"the criteria I gave you said that a paper without a thesis statement will get lower than a C, it's not a matter of whether I like your writing or not, it's a matter of fulfilling the assignment."
I also want to raise some questions about Individual Conferencing. I wonder how much class time we are allowed to use for one round of individual conferences. I've seen some instructors only use a week, others two weeks for one round. Two weeks seems to take out a lot of class time, but allows for a longer conference time with each student. If you tried to do Individual conferences for just one week, it would require that each conference be only ten minutes long, and would still require the use of office hours as well in order to fit in 20 students. If done over two weeks, the conference times could be fifteen minutes, but, again, that takes out another week of "teaching" time. Students would love to have all that time out of class, but it doesn't quite seem right. A part of the problem for me is that I would want the conferences to be a true learning situation, done more indirectively like a writing lab tutorial, but if you only have 10 minutes, the time would need to be more directive--"I'm just going to quickly explain the notes I made on this draft, and tell you exactly what you need to do to get a better grade on the next submission." I would like to incorporate conferences into my class, but am wondering what works best.
I also want to raise some questions about Individual Conferencing. I wonder how much class time we are allowed to use for one round of individual conferences. I've seen some instructors only use a week, others two weeks for one round. Two weeks seems to take out a lot of class time, but allows for a longer conference time with each student. If you tried to do Individual conferences for just one week, it would require that each conference be only ten minutes long, and would still require the use of office hours as well in order to fit in 20 students. If done over two weeks, the conference times could be fifteen minutes, but, again, that takes out another week of "teaching" time. Students would love to have all that time out of class, but it doesn't quite seem right. A part of the problem for me is that I would want the conferences to be a true learning situation, done more indirectively like a writing lab tutorial, but if you only have 10 minutes, the time would need to be more directive--"I'm just going to quickly explain the notes I made on this draft, and tell you exactly what you need to do to get a better grade on the next submission." I would like to incorporate conferences into my class, but am wondering what works best.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Argument And Mediation
Catherine E. Lamb’s discussion of argumentation brings many interesting points. Again rhetoric turns to us with its different angle and new side. Particularly I am interested in distinctions between argument and mediation made by the author: “I advocated mediation and negotiation as alternatives to argument as it is often taught and practiced, in which the goal is to win, making confrontation virtually inevitable” (157-8). This passage links to a metaphor of an argument as a war that we meet quite frequently. Argument suggests hierarchy and win/lose thinking. Mediation, therefore, appears as a way out from these limitations of traditional argument.
The article raises a question of argument’s purpose. Lamb points out that “argument as it is usually taught has its place at the beginning of the process, not the end…” (158). We speak a lot about thesis and evidence, and means of persuasion. Classroom offers modeled situations, but in reality final decision is not less or even more important than discussion itself. When I planned class discussions I thought more about process than result; and finding final solution, that would satisfy all opponents, was not in my goals. Now I think it is important not only teach students to give good evidence but also look for solution. For example, we may have the unending discussion on a law case and give evidence on whether an accused is guilty or not; in class the goal is mostly discussion, but in reality nothing is more crucial than the result of it.
In Lassner’s piece I liked the emphasis on importance of personal voice in argumentation opposed to neutral attitude. Traditionally neutrality implies objectivity, which is good in many cases. Yet it limits the possibility of expressing Self. I approve personal attitude when a writer finds his/her topic “interesting.” In general, I think both approaches are equally important.
The article raises a question of argument’s purpose. Lamb points out that “argument as it is usually taught has its place at the beginning of the process, not the end…” (158). We speak a lot about thesis and evidence, and means of persuasion. Classroom offers modeled situations, but in reality final decision is not less or even more important than discussion itself. When I planned class discussions I thought more about process than result; and finding final solution, that would satisfy all opponents, was not in my goals. Now I think it is important not only teach students to give good evidence but also look for solution. For example, we may have the unending discussion on a law case and give evidence on whether an accused is guilty or not; in class the goal is mostly discussion, but in reality nothing is more crucial than the result of it.
In Lassner’s piece I liked the emphasis on importance of personal voice in argumentation opposed to neutral attitude. Traditionally neutrality implies objectivity, which is good in many cases. Yet it limits the possibility of expressing Self. I approve personal attitude when a writer finds his/her topic “interesting.” In general, I think both approaches are equally important.
Jelly Bean
While I thought Bean had some excellent ideas regarding conferences, I’m still unsure how to structure my own student-teacher meetings. First of all, how long should these conferences be? The sort of help I envision providing—discussing structure, organization, thesis, etc.—seems like the sort of task that requires at least an hour or so. Most of my sessions in the WL for English 1000 papers take the full 50 minutes, a period of time I often feel should be extended to adequately assess the essay’s HOC and sometimes LOC.
Moreover, although I like the idea map and tree diagram provided by Bean (both of which would probably make excellent tools in the WL as well), I’m not sure if these should be introduced at the conference stage. I think that they would be helpful earlier in the writing process, as I plan to hold conferences once students have completed a rough draft. I might integrate one or both of these forms into my lesson plans as a class discussion or small group activity (for example, we’ll read a text/article and analyze its structure by filling out a tree diagram, or create an idea map for an argument or problem we’ve discussed in class or in free writes). I’d then require each student to create an idea map or tree diagram for their own paper, which I might have them bring and workshop in small groups. Requiring an outline would force students to think a little more about structure. Finally, a comparison/analysis of their rough draft and tree diagram (or idea map) would enhance my own understanding of the student’s difficulties and strengths once conference time comes around. I think it would be helpful to see the student’s thought process at all stages of writing.
Does anyone else have any ideas/comments about conferences? Anything you’ve encountered that works well?
Moreover, although I like the idea map and tree diagram provided by Bean (both of which would probably make excellent tools in the WL as well), I’m not sure if these should be introduced at the conference stage. I think that they would be helpful earlier in the writing process, as I plan to hold conferences once students have completed a rough draft. I might integrate one or both of these forms into my lesson plans as a class discussion or small group activity (for example, we’ll read a text/article and analyze its structure by filling out a tree diagram, or create an idea map for an argument or problem we’ve discussed in class or in free writes). I’d then require each student to create an idea map or tree diagram for their own paper, which I might have them bring and workshop in small groups. Requiring an outline would force students to think a little more about structure. Finally, a comparison/analysis of their rough draft and tree diagram (or idea map) would enhance my own understanding of the student’s difficulties and strengths once conference time comes around. I think it would be helpful to see the student’s thought process at all stages of writing.
Does anyone else have any ideas/comments about conferences? Anything you’ve encountered that works well?
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Arguing with Gandhi
While reading the DeLuca article, I kept thinking back to an Indian history course I took as an undergrad. While I have great respect for Gandhi and the things he accomplished, I couldn't help being frustrated with him during that course. The reason for my frustration was his use of hunger strikes. Hunger strikes can be very useful in accomplishing praise-worthy ends, and Gandhi did use them that way--but not always. As Time reports, "His hunger strikes could stop riots and massacres, but he also once went on a hunger strike to force one of his capitalist patrons' employees' to break their strike against the harsh conditions of employment." (The full article is available at .) While I agree with DeLuca "that the nonlinguistic can argue" (229), I would contend that it is not always a fair form of argument.
When I read DeLuca's description of Earth First! activists "sitting in trees, blockading roads with thier bodies, chaining themselves to logging equipment, and dressing in animal costumes at public hearings," I couldn't help but notice how similar these strategies are to the strategies of children who cannot reason their way into getting what they want (229). I do not mean this to condemn the actions of Earth First!; their intentions are certainly good, and I'm not qualified to comment on whether their actions have always been justified. But my point is that this type of "argument" wouldn't have to be used for "good" purposes, and it would seem to be equally effective for either a worthy cause or an unworthy one.
When I read this, I wrote in the margins of my book, "Is this argument or manipulation?" This is still an open question for me. I have my doubts about how many loggers actually have had their minds changed by these tactics. Yes, Earth First! has managed to save some trees, but have they been able to change the minds of people who weren't already disposed to agree with them? DeLuca argues that "The bodies of Earth First!, then, question the possibility of property and the definition of the land as a resource and, instead, suggest that biodiversity has value in itself..." (232). It would seem to me that it takes a fairly dedicated, well-educated reader to understand this aspect of Earth First!'s argument, and I wonder, if this is the case, how useful is this argument? (And, for that matter, how do we define the "usefulness" of an argument? What is the point of argument?)
I think that asking our students to "read" this type of argument could be an interesting and challenging intellectual exercise, but I have questions about its practicality. (Of course, I realize that practicality is not the only criterion for what we should study/teach. I am studying English, after all!) ;) Any thoughts?
When I read DeLuca's description of Earth First! activists "sitting in trees, blockading roads with thier bodies, chaining themselves to logging equipment, and dressing in animal costumes at public hearings," I couldn't help but notice how similar these strategies are to the strategies of children who cannot reason their way into getting what they want (229). I do not mean this to condemn the actions of Earth First!; their intentions are certainly good, and I'm not qualified to comment on whether their actions have always been justified. But my point is that this type of "argument" wouldn't have to be used for "good" purposes, and it would seem to be equally effective for either a worthy cause or an unworthy one.
When I read this, I wrote in the margins of my book, "Is this argument or manipulation?" This is still an open question for me. I have my doubts about how many loggers actually have had their minds changed by these tactics. Yes, Earth First! has managed to save some trees, but have they been able to change the minds of people who weren't already disposed to agree with them? DeLuca argues that "The bodies of Earth First!, then, question the possibility of property and the definition of the land as a resource and, instead, suggest that biodiversity has value in itself..." (232). It would seem to me that it takes a fairly dedicated, well-educated reader to understand this aspect of Earth First!'s argument, and I wonder, if this is the case, how useful is this argument? (And, for that matter, how do we define the "usefulness" of an argument? What is the point of argument?)
I think that asking our students to "read" this type of argument could be an interesting and challenging intellectual exercise, but I have questions about its practicality. (Of course, I realize that practicality is not the only criterion for what we should study/teach. I am studying English, after all!) ;) Any thoughts?
Thursday, March 8, 2007
A Cultural Studies-Critical Pedagogy Tag Team
To be honest, Lindquist’s article was probably the most challenging of all for me—mostly because I found the first 13+ pages problematic at best (and unnecessary and irrelevant, at worst) and because—probably due to my own poor understanding of her analysis—it appeared to me that she missing the big picture when it came to cultural studies and its possible use within a critical pedagogy.
Muksian-Schutt seemingly validates a cultural studies approach, and her engagement of it is refreshing. She recalls how when examining Pat Bizzell's model of contact zones, she was "intrigued by the use of multiple forms of 'text' as a way to help students access their positions" and that "It seemed only logical that since art forms such as musical lyrics impact students, using these art forms in an argument class might provide students with the tools to study and express their positions and perhaps even to understand their positions better, 340). Muksian-Schutt uses lyrics from The Boss’ “Nebraska” in her piece, and I’ll use a few lines from arguably one of the best lyricists of all time, Jarvis Cocker, frontman for arguably one of the most underrated bands of all time, Pulp, to vent my frustration here. Pulp’s biggest hit (#2 on the UK charts) was a song called “Common People” (William Shatner does a cover of it for his album _Has-Been_, for those playing at home).
The song’s persona meets a fellow art student at university; she comes from a wealthy family but she “wants to live like common people"--she finds glamour in poverty (this is sometimes referred to as “class tourism”). The chorus of the song is:
“Rent a flat above a shop
Cut your hair and get a job
Smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school
But still you'll never get it right
`cos when you're laid in bed at night
Watching roaches climb the wall
If you called your dad he could stop it all (yeah)
You'll never live like common people
You'll never do whatever common people do
You'll never fail like common people
You'll never watch your life slide out of view
And then dance, and drink, and screw
Because there's nothing else to do”
Did anyone else get the impression that this was the kind of life that Lindquist led as a *grad student*, tending bar at a *restaurant* in a *suburb* of Chicago? She sets herself up as being from the area and identifies herself as “working class”--and this “authenticity” is crucial for her, in a way, until 15 pages later when she pulls the rug out from under herself and admits it’s “bullshit." I wouldn't care either way, really, except that the tone she strikes toward the "working class" throughout the piece--one I would refer to as mildly disdainful--belies both her self-representaion (even if *some* of the "regulars" picked fights--and it seemed to me like it was more like teasing) *and* her conclusions. But first, the set-up. On page 170 she says, “As a teenager growing up in a blue-collar neighborhood, I experienced bars as an important rite of passage from childhood to adulthood—one that has a functional parallel, I would venture, the passage undertaken by young middle-class adults first going ‘away’ to college. My experience, while perhaps not universal, is far from unique.”
She’s right—her experience was neither universal nor unique. I had a very similar experience, myself—minus the great bartending gig at a restaurant in a suburb of one of the wealthiest cities in the country. I’m a first generation college student. I came up in a pretty much all-black neighborhood (did any one else notice that Lindquist’s “working class” seems to be all white? I mean, she comes out and says it at a couple of points--but usually she just uses "working class," unqualified). My moms were both factory workers. They frequented a bar, pretty much nightly—and so I often frequented that bar when I was younger (a real dump--no restaurant attached) a few nights during any given week—but not to tend bar, just to have a place that was relatively warm and well-lit enough for me to read and do my homework. I think I have a pretty good idea of what constitutes any approximation of a “working class” in the U.S. (a problematic formulation, by Lindquist’s own admission). I gotta say—I don’t think she’s representing it. It’s way too multifaceted, too complex, for any one to speak of accurately using the homogenizing, reductionist language that she does. Class in this country is bound up with issues of race, gender, political affiliation, regional identity (urban vs. rural), industry, and so on. To gloss over these differences is to miss a big part of the conversation, and the problem is that her whole piece basically rests on this construction (even though she claims several times that she knows there is no such thing). At other moments, she seems to concede that what she's really talking about is what I'd be more apt to refer to as political affiliation and cultural identity (that's different than class). She talks about these students' "apparent political conservatism" (184) and the piece is peppered with references to "red necks," even if she puts the words in other speakers' mouths.
Lindquist's overall project, in my opinion, (eventually) relates back to seeing the *classroom* as a kind of contact zone, which connects her back, of course, to Muksian-Schutt (and Pratt), Shen and Bean (for reasons I discussed in my last post a couple days ago). After spending 13+ pages of (faux-) “ethnography” establishing a false dichotomy between a monolithic (all white, all suburban, all conservative, all "redneck") "working class" (one that she extrapolates from an infinitesimally small sample and in a country that barely acknowledges “class” as a significant category to begin with) and what she considers to be the "middle class" university establishment (I won’t even get into that—I could write a second post as long as this one), Lindquist finally gets to what I think is the heart of the matter. On page 183, she asserts that, "The way to persuade working-class students of the value of what-if, then, is to openly acknowledge functional parallels between the rhetoric of the barroom and that of the classroom. This means that we would make the nature of institutional discourse the focus of our pedagogy, and would encourage students to think about how speculative rhetoric can be of value to them as capital, how it can be useful as currency in the marketplaces in which they wish to participate. Examining how what-if can be useful as an instrument in the academic marketplace might then invite inquiries into how much philosophical and instrumental rhetorics are differences in kind, and to what degree they suggest differences in context. The language of action and use may help to invest us with the authority to persuade students that writing has important uses even when it isn't being useful."
I like the self-reflexive idea of making “the nature of institutional discourse the focus of our pedagogy” but I’m wondering how she wants to do that. From what follows this dictum, it looks like she’s saying that we have to bring the classroom situation into stasis (“openly acknowledge functional parallels between the rhetoric of the barroom and that of the classroom”) and/or we have to learn from Rogerian argument and be able to have a meaningful dialogue with these students. One we’ve accomplished that, we have to demonstrate for them that reading, writing, and thinking critically has use-value for them now as students and then after they leave college for whatever career they pursue (“encourage students to think about how speculative rhetoric can be of value to them as capital, how it can be useful as currency in the marketplaces in which they wish to participate”). This is all along the same lines that Rebekah Nathan discusses in the excerpt I posted last week. So, I guess that, without the consideration of class (which I think Lindquist fails at doing), I don’t see anything too revolutionary here. She doesn’t have much to say about how to persuade “working class” students, just vague generalities, some quotes from others and the use of her concept of “what-if” way too often. Sub sole nihil novi est.
What's really frustrating about Lindquist’s conclusion here, though, is that immediately before it and immediately after it, she *does* touch on a possible way to enact a solution. On the way to getting there, however, I’d like to mention Leta’s citation of the question Virginia Anderson asks towards the end, and what Leta has to say in response to it. Anderson questions if activist teachers don’t find solidarity in their own (opposing) radical stance rather than with their students, so in other words the students are constructed as “Other,” and in a pretty decent approximation of Hegel’s Master-Slave relationship. Setting aside my resistance to the presumption behind the question itself and the conclusions Lindquist herself draws from it for a moment, I’d actually like to instead turn to Leta’s question, one she posits in response to what she sees as Anderson’s “warning”: “Can I teach writing in a non-classist way, realizing that not everyone participates in my academic mindset, valuing learning for its own sake, and that it is alright that they don’t?”
This brings me back to what I see as a solution—both to Lindquist’s call to “encourage students to think about how [rhetoric] can be useful as currency…” and to Leta’s concern about having a “classist” attitude towards teaching writing. In my opinion, Lindquist herself uncovers a possible solution when she recounts how students in another teacher’s class “upon being asked for their responses to essays critical of popular culture forms for an advanced composition course, were more interested in figuring out what the critics stood to gain in their rhetorical performances than they were in evaluating the validity of the critiques themselves… [they] suspected that the critics were motivated by an urge to assert class distinction at the expense of the average, unenlightened reader” (182). So help me God, I still can’t figure out if Lindquist is bemoaning this or celebrating it. She immediately precedes this anecdote with a seeming parallel that “In making conventional symbols of middle-class capital the subject of our critical performances, we not only set ourselves in opposition to the discourse of working-class institutions but also demonstrate class privilege...” (a bad thing) and she follows the anecdote with the realization—at long last—that she constructed and over-generalized her good pal and debate buddy Walter as a “redneck”, “working class” stiff (182, ditto). A little later (184) she also says “It is certainly true that working-class students' obvious lack of (middle-class) cultural capital, combined with [again] their apparent political conservatism, may tend to frustrate and alienate teachers whose political views and teaching philosophies work together as valuable symbolic resources within the institution" (she goes on to qualify these students further as "white working-class students"--the first time she does this, as far as I can see--she characterizes the suburb and the bar regulars as all white, but this is the first time race has been used to qualify this monolithic term "working class").
It seems to me that--to borrow a phrase about Marx and Hegel--Lindquist came along and found cultural studies, right-side up, and proceeded to turn it upside-down. She talks about “Cultural studies-derived pedagogies aim[ing] to have students interrogated the material conditions of their lives, and thus to help them arrive at a fuller understanding of their own (and others’) socioeconomic predicaments” (168). Lindquist admits that she sees “this as a worthy goal [but she questions] the means, which seem not to put nearly enough energy into the enterprise of learning what is at stake (an in particular, what is at stake for working-class students) in assenting to such critiques, into figuring out what resistance to cultural-studies projects might mean” (168-9). This is the starting point for Lindquist—she wants to “look beyond the university to see what happens in institutions where working-class identities and values are publicly invented and ritually affirmed” (169). But again, take way the bar ethnography (I can’t find one lesson to extrapolate from it—other than Lindquist’s apparent self-discovery) and the monolithic working class, and that last sentence is a little thin. Instead of lamenting the students’ questioning of the critics of popular culture, why not engage those cultural artefacts themselves—or some very much like it? It takes imagination—and probably stepping outside your own “middle class” values—but doing so is what engages you in this contact zone (like Miksian-Schutt did with the song lyrics, media clips, etc.) or Third Space or what-have-you. Meet your students half-way.
Muksian-Schutt seemingly validates a cultural studies approach, and her engagement of it is refreshing. She recalls how when examining Pat Bizzell's model of contact zones, she was "intrigued by the use of multiple forms of 'text' as a way to help students access their positions" and that "It seemed only logical that since art forms such as musical lyrics impact students, using these art forms in an argument class might provide students with the tools to study and express their positions and perhaps even to understand their positions better, 340). Muksian-Schutt uses lyrics from The Boss’ “Nebraska” in her piece, and I’ll use a few lines from arguably one of the best lyricists of all time, Jarvis Cocker, frontman for arguably one of the most underrated bands of all time, Pulp, to vent my frustration here. Pulp’s biggest hit (#2 on the UK charts) was a song called “Common People” (William Shatner does a cover of it for his album _Has-Been_, for those playing at home).
The song’s persona meets a fellow art student at university; she comes from a wealthy family but she “wants to live like common people"--she finds glamour in poverty (this is sometimes referred to as “class tourism”). The chorus of the song is:
“Rent a flat above a shop
Cut your hair and get a job
Smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school
But still you'll never get it right
`cos when you're laid in bed at night
Watching roaches climb the wall
If you called your dad he could stop it all (yeah)
You'll never live like common people
You'll never do whatever common people do
You'll never fail like common people
You'll never watch your life slide out of view
And then dance, and drink, and screw
Because there's nothing else to do”
Did anyone else get the impression that this was the kind of life that Lindquist led as a *grad student*, tending bar at a *restaurant* in a *suburb* of Chicago? She sets herself up as being from the area and identifies herself as “working class”--and this “authenticity” is crucial for her, in a way, until 15 pages later when she pulls the rug out from under herself and admits it’s “bullshit." I wouldn't care either way, really, except that the tone she strikes toward the "working class" throughout the piece--one I would refer to as mildly disdainful--belies both her self-representaion (even if *some* of the "regulars" picked fights--and it seemed to me like it was more like teasing) *and* her conclusions. But first, the set-up. On page 170 she says, “As a teenager growing up in a blue-collar neighborhood, I experienced bars as an important rite of passage from childhood to adulthood—one that has a functional parallel, I would venture, the passage undertaken by young middle-class adults first going ‘away’ to college. My experience, while perhaps not universal, is far from unique.”
She’s right—her experience was neither universal nor unique. I had a very similar experience, myself—minus the great bartending gig at a restaurant in a suburb of one of the wealthiest cities in the country. I’m a first generation college student. I came up in a pretty much all-black neighborhood (did any one else notice that Lindquist’s “working class” seems to be all white? I mean, she comes out and says it at a couple of points--but usually she just uses "working class," unqualified). My moms were both factory workers. They frequented a bar, pretty much nightly—and so I often frequented that bar when I was younger (a real dump--no restaurant attached) a few nights during any given week—but not to tend bar, just to have a place that was relatively warm and well-lit enough for me to read and do my homework. I think I have a pretty good idea of what constitutes any approximation of a “working class” in the U.S. (a problematic formulation, by Lindquist’s own admission). I gotta say—I don’t think she’s representing it. It’s way too multifaceted, too complex, for any one to speak of accurately using the homogenizing, reductionist language that she does. Class in this country is bound up with issues of race, gender, political affiliation, regional identity (urban vs. rural), industry, and so on. To gloss over these differences is to miss a big part of the conversation, and the problem is that her whole piece basically rests on this construction (even though she claims several times that she knows there is no such thing). At other moments, she seems to concede that what she's really talking about is what I'd be more apt to refer to as political affiliation and cultural identity (that's different than class). She talks about these students' "apparent political conservatism" (184) and the piece is peppered with references to "red necks," even if she puts the words in other speakers' mouths.
Lindquist's overall project, in my opinion, (eventually) relates back to seeing the *classroom* as a kind of contact zone, which connects her back, of course, to Muksian-Schutt (and Pratt), Shen and Bean (for reasons I discussed in my last post a couple days ago). After spending 13+ pages of (faux-) “ethnography” establishing a false dichotomy between a monolithic (all white, all suburban, all conservative, all "redneck") "working class" (one that she extrapolates from an infinitesimally small sample and in a country that barely acknowledges “class” as a significant category to begin with) and what she considers to be the "middle class" university establishment (I won’t even get into that—I could write a second post as long as this one), Lindquist finally gets to what I think is the heart of the matter. On page 183, she asserts that, "The way to persuade working-class students of the value of what-if, then, is to openly acknowledge functional parallels between the rhetoric of the barroom and that of the classroom. This means that we would make the nature of institutional discourse the focus of our pedagogy, and would encourage students to think about how speculative rhetoric can be of value to them as capital, how it can be useful as currency in the marketplaces in which they wish to participate. Examining how what-if can be useful as an instrument in the academic marketplace might then invite inquiries into how much philosophical and instrumental rhetorics are differences in kind, and to what degree they suggest differences in context. The language of action and use may help to invest us with the authority to persuade students that writing has important uses even when it isn't being useful."
I like the self-reflexive idea of making “the nature of institutional discourse the focus of our pedagogy” but I’m wondering how she wants to do that. From what follows this dictum, it looks like she’s saying that we have to bring the classroom situation into stasis (“openly acknowledge functional parallels between the rhetoric of the barroom and that of the classroom”) and/or we have to learn from Rogerian argument and be able to have a meaningful dialogue with these students. One we’ve accomplished that, we have to demonstrate for them that reading, writing, and thinking critically has use-value for them now as students and then after they leave college for whatever career they pursue (“encourage students to think about how speculative rhetoric can be of value to them as capital, how it can be useful as currency in the marketplaces in which they wish to participate”). This is all along the same lines that Rebekah Nathan discusses in the excerpt I posted last week. So, I guess that, without the consideration of class (which I think Lindquist fails at doing), I don’t see anything too revolutionary here. She doesn’t have much to say about how to persuade “working class” students, just vague generalities, some quotes from others and the use of her concept of “what-if” way too often. Sub sole nihil novi est.
What's really frustrating about Lindquist’s conclusion here, though, is that immediately before it and immediately after it, she *does* touch on a possible way to enact a solution. On the way to getting there, however, I’d like to mention Leta’s citation of the question Virginia Anderson asks towards the end, and what Leta has to say in response to it. Anderson questions if activist teachers don’t find solidarity in their own (opposing) radical stance rather than with their students, so in other words the students are constructed as “Other,” and in a pretty decent approximation of Hegel’s Master-Slave relationship. Setting aside my resistance to the presumption behind the question itself and the conclusions Lindquist herself draws from it for a moment, I’d actually like to instead turn to Leta’s question, one she posits in response to what she sees as Anderson’s “warning”: “Can I teach writing in a non-classist way, realizing that not everyone participates in my academic mindset, valuing learning for its own sake, and that it is alright that they don’t?”
This brings me back to what I see as a solution—both to Lindquist’s call to “encourage students to think about how [rhetoric] can be useful as currency…” and to Leta’s concern about having a “classist” attitude towards teaching writing. In my opinion, Lindquist herself uncovers a possible solution when she recounts how students in another teacher’s class “upon being asked for their responses to essays critical of popular culture forms for an advanced composition course, were more interested in figuring out what the critics stood to gain in their rhetorical performances than they were in evaluating the validity of the critiques themselves… [they] suspected that the critics were motivated by an urge to assert class distinction at the expense of the average, unenlightened reader” (182). So help me God, I still can’t figure out if Lindquist is bemoaning this or celebrating it. She immediately precedes this anecdote with a seeming parallel that “In making conventional symbols of middle-class capital the subject of our critical performances, we not only set ourselves in opposition to the discourse of working-class institutions but also demonstrate class privilege...” (a bad thing) and she follows the anecdote with the realization—at long last—that she constructed and over-generalized her good pal and debate buddy Walter as a “redneck”, “working class” stiff (182, ditto). A little later (184) she also says “It is certainly true that working-class students' obvious lack of (middle-class) cultural capital, combined with [again] their apparent political conservatism, may tend to frustrate and alienate teachers whose political views and teaching philosophies work together as valuable symbolic resources within the institution" (she goes on to qualify these students further as "white working-class students"--the first time she does this, as far as I can see--she characterizes the suburb and the bar regulars as all white, but this is the first time race has been used to qualify this monolithic term "working class").
It seems to me that--to borrow a phrase about Marx and Hegel--Lindquist came along and found cultural studies, right-side up, and proceeded to turn it upside-down. She talks about “Cultural studies-derived pedagogies aim[ing] to have students interrogated the material conditions of their lives, and thus to help them arrive at a fuller understanding of their own (and others’) socioeconomic predicaments” (168). Lindquist admits that she sees “this as a worthy goal [but she questions] the means, which seem not to put nearly enough energy into the enterprise of learning what is at stake (an in particular, what is at stake for working-class students) in assenting to such critiques, into figuring out what resistance to cultural-studies projects might mean” (168-9). This is the starting point for Lindquist—she wants to “look beyond the university to see what happens in institutions where working-class identities and values are publicly invented and ritually affirmed” (169). But again, take way the bar ethnography (I can’t find one lesson to extrapolate from it—other than Lindquist’s apparent self-discovery) and the monolithic working class, and that last sentence is a little thin. Instead of lamenting the students’ questioning of the critics of popular culture, why not engage those cultural artefacts themselves—or some very much like it? It takes imagination—and probably stepping outside your own “middle class” values—but doing so is what engages you in this contact zone (like Miksian-Schutt did with the song lyrics, media clips, etc.) or Third Space or what-have-you. Meet your students half-way.
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Horrifically late :(
Please forgive my lateness...
Once again Bean has sparked my (re)thinking about group work. Personally I disliked group work in undergrad (probably because I was the one always doing the work), however, Bean does make a good case for it, and the benefits just seem to outweigh the negatives. For my course, I believe group work will most likely work better in the actual class room setting, such as an exploratory writing assignment, as opposed to a group project to be completed over time.
In response to Barnett and the goal of wanting to “produce humane, informed citizens” (182), specifically the Shen piece enlightened me the most this week. As fortunate as we are (we being those able to study in the higher echelons of academia in America), we often take too much for granted. I never considered that one of my main goals in Eng 1000 (to get students to feel comfortable expressing their own opinions regardless if they’re apart of the general consensus or not) could be interpreted as/ or representing something more than eccentricity and individuality solely. I appreciate this piece because it speaks to the space of misinterpretation that I as an American would have (most likely) never considered simply because of the privilege I’ve been given. Particularly after reading Shen, I now need to figure out an effective way in which we as a class can define what we want to deem as “I,” the “individual,” “my opinion/perspective,” etc. Any ideas?
Once again Bean has sparked my (re)thinking about group work. Personally I disliked group work in undergrad (probably because I was the one always doing the work), however, Bean does make a good case for it, and the benefits just seem to outweigh the negatives. For my course, I believe group work will most likely work better in the actual class room setting, such as an exploratory writing assignment, as opposed to a group project to be completed over time.
In response to Barnett and the goal of wanting to “produce humane, informed citizens” (182), specifically the Shen piece enlightened me the most this week. As fortunate as we are (we being those able to study in the higher echelons of academia in America), we often take too much for granted. I never considered that one of my main goals in Eng 1000 (to get students to feel comfortable expressing their own opinions regardless if they’re apart of the general consensus or not) could be interpreted as/ or representing something more than eccentricity and individuality solely. I appreciate this piece because it speaks to the space of misinterpretation that I as an American would have (most likely) never considered simply because of the privilege I’ve been given. Particularly after reading Shen, I now need to figure out an effective way in which we as a class can define what we want to deem as “I,” the “individual,” “my opinion/perspective,” etc. Any ideas?
Anglo-American Writing
As the only one international student in our group I cannot help giving a comment on discussion of cultural diversity. Shen’s article is very interesting. I am sure it took many years to shape these notions into words because such things are very elusive. I myself often have feeling that something is “different” yet I am not able to name it with exact words.
The question of changing identity is difficult. I find it quite normal that the author had to adjust to Western values in order to right in English. I mean I have never thought about it in the sense of identity. I have seen Western-style writing as merely further learning of the language, probably on the most advanced level. There is kind of putting on a mask even in speaking. I guess it happens when one studies any foreign language. We discussed it in my ESL class last summer. Our American instructor told us that we did not have to pursue sounding exactly like native speakers because our accents were parts of our identities.
Rhetoric classes and discourses of particular disciplines do not connect directly or do they? For example, I am able to write a paper in the field of literature, and many principles we use here are familiar to me from my past experience of studying literature in Russia. At least, the professors have not classified my works as “strange” yet. But I don’t feel very comfortable when writing a short essay in English 1000 style. Why is it so? English 1000 is supposed to be the basic level and Grad school writing is advanced.
Another thing about this article is that it was written nearly 20 years ago. The situation is changing quickly now. It had to be much more difficult to adjust to foreign environment and values in the past.
The question of changing identity is difficult. I find it quite normal that the author had to adjust to Western values in order to right in English. I mean I have never thought about it in the sense of identity. I have seen Western-style writing as merely further learning of the language, probably on the most advanced level. There is kind of putting on a mask even in speaking. I guess it happens when one studies any foreign language. We discussed it in my ESL class last summer. Our American instructor told us that we did not have to pursue sounding exactly like native speakers because our accents were parts of our identities.
Rhetoric classes and discourses of particular disciplines do not connect directly or do they? For example, I am able to write a paper in the field of literature, and many principles we use here are familiar to me from my past experience of studying literature in Russia. At least, the professors have not classified my works as “strange” yet. But I don’t feel very comfortable when writing a short essay in English 1000 style. Why is it so? English 1000 is supposed to be the basic level and Grad school writing is advanced.
Another thing about this article is that it was written nearly 20 years ago. The situation is changing quickly now. It had to be much more difficult to adjust to foreign environment and values in the past.
Late, late, late
Please forgive my lateness. I managed to internalize the one-blog-a-week concept but entirely forgot the deadline. Thanks, Donna, for the reminder.
Like most of the class, I liked this week's Barnett readings more than usual. I was personally very attracted by Lindquist's essay. Like Lindquist, I'm particularly fascinated by the "connections between class, culture, and rhetoric...and...the public construction of knowledge in, and ultimately in the production of, working class culture" (166). Rhetorical approaches to an analysis of class give me an angle of thought I'd not considered thoroughly before. I'm now interested in Lindquist's ethnographic research--her creativity and choice of subject endear her work to me. Folklorists never tire of exploring barroom culture. I was so curious about her that I looked Julie Lindquist up, and discovered that she doesn't appear to have written anything else so close to folklore or ethnography.
I will use this article, perhaps as an assigned reading in Eng 1K, and maybe also in an intro to folklore class. The issues of class and construction of culture are, to me, integral.
Having just finished my lesson plans, I've got to say that I'm overwhelmed by the quantity of concepts we must teach in a short amount of time. I'm glad to know that we're really teaching for the future, and that we can hope for long-term results in our class, because I know it's going to be tough to not totally overload my students.
Like most of the class, I liked this week's Barnett readings more than usual. I was personally very attracted by Lindquist's essay. Like Lindquist, I'm particularly fascinated by the "connections between class, culture, and rhetoric...and...the public construction of knowledge in, and ultimately in the production of, working class culture" (166). Rhetorical approaches to an analysis of class give me an angle of thought I'd not considered thoroughly before. I'm now interested in Lindquist's ethnographic research--her creativity and choice of subject endear her work to me. Folklorists never tire of exploring barroom culture. I was so curious about her that I looked Julie Lindquist up, and discovered that she doesn't appear to have written anything else so close to folklore or ethnography.
I will use this article, perhaps as an assigned reading in Eng 1K, and maybe also in an intro to folklore class. The issues of class and construction of culture are, to me, integral.
Having just finished my lesson plans, I've got to say that I'm overwhelmed by the quantity of concepts we must teach in a short amount of time. I'm glad to know that we're really teaching for the future, and that we can hope for long-term results in our class, because I know it's going to be tough to not totally overload my students.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)