In searching for some relevant articles for my final project, I came across the article, "Digital Underlife in the Networked Writing Classroom" by Derek Mueller. Given our heavily reflective and "pulling-things-together" mid-term week, I thought this would be an interesting article to blog about even if it may or may not be able to feed directly into my final project idea (you know, in the spirit of underlife and all...)
Essentially, this article details the geneaology of this concept and how it might be a more useful, sustainable and, ultimately tolerant way of being in a networked classroom. Muelller defines this in the following ways:
Digital underlife encompasses both an ulterior field for illicit communication and the elusive, underground discursive activities proliferated therein with the aid of digital technologies; it evokes an inexact sphere for extraneous, hyper-threaded interchanges between pairs of individuals or among crowds of users, as often asynchronous as transpiring in real time. Like more traditional conceptions of underlife, new and emerging variations of digital underlife greatly push the limits of institutional rules and roles. More frequently than ever before, transgressions of institutional rules and roles manifest in writing—in the digital packets of discourse that are no longer confined by the physical space of a singular institutional scene. And so it is a crucial concept for us to understand as teachers of writing, particularly when the students we work with are multiply and simultaneously engaged in the production and circulation of writing related to any number of disparate,contending subjectivities (241).
Here, Mueller seems to be stating that the digital underlife occurs when unsanctioned institutional activities (texting/IMing between students in the classroom) occur. Mueller suggests that instead of thinking of these activities as unnecessary or unproductive, we could instead think about these as somewhat generative. One of the main premisely for Mueller's argument is that demands on our attention have shifted as thus teaching in ways that make use of the recognize these varying demands on our and our students' attention will serve both us and them better.
I find Mueller's ideas intriguing because, as an instructor, I have always found it difficult to ask students to do particular kinds of things with their bodies (sit in circular arrangements, get up and stretch, sit in new seats each time). I often find it patronizing to make these kinds of requests of students (although, of course, I have learned to deal with this). Technology, then, is a logical extension. I never ask students to put phones away simply because I don't really feel like they've been a problem in my class. Similarly, when I taught in Curtin 108, I would sometimes see students on Facebook or other sites. Although I think I've found ways to "deal with" these kinds of moments productively (talking about this use of the technology with the class, asking students to email friends notes from class that day or text them regarding a conference sign-up time), I I know that I'm not seeing these spaces in the same generative ways that Mueller suggests...at least not entirely.
Further, I wonder about what the "digital underlife" might look like in a classroom that is online, such as ours. In this case, would the "digital underlife" take place in ways that transgress the expectations of the course by relying too heavily on f2f conversations or context that we've had outside of the course?
Friday, March 19, 2010
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Carruthers' The Craft of Thought and Implications for the Composition Classroom
In this post, I'm going to trace out, Carruthers' foundational ideas on memory and invention and then place those in juxtaposition with how memory's relationship with invention seems to play out in central theories within our field (such as critical pedagogy). Ultimately, I want to suggest that Carruthers provides as way for us to complicate how we understand memory in our society and suggests that memory's role in creation is both downplayed and flattened in theories of writing such as those evident in critical pedagogy.
In Chapter One, "Collective Memory and memoria rerum," Carruthers suggests that memory is the "mother of all muses." By this, Carruthers means that memory, although it appeared near the end of the "five" parts of rhetoric, actually comes in much earlier as invention, Carruthers suggests is contingent on our memory. Carruthers traces classical Greek teachings on memory to suggest that memory was not taught for the purposes of mindlessly repeating information on exams but rather instead to give students a way to invent from memory. Memoria, Carruthers suggests, "is most usefully thought of as a compositional art. The arts of memory are among the arts of thinking, especially involved with fostering the qualities we now revere as 'imagination' and 'creativity'" (9). The distinction between how we currently think about memory in our teaching of composition was interesting to me because much of the earliest writing in critical pedagogy railed against teaching techniques that relied upon memory.
Of course, the cultural place of memory has now shifted so we might raise a question whether or not the Greeks' notion of cultural memory is relevant for us--would work for our means of teaching critical thinking or invention; yet, after reading Carruthers, I'm wondering if we can't better make use of a notion of memory as a means to invention within our own curriculum as we certainly seem to hold the parallel values as those lauded by Carruthers. How, though, would/could we draw from these without bumping up against the flattened vision of the role of memory now more pervasive in our culture. And one other quick point before moving on further in Carruthers' book: I've always been curious about how memory, in our contemporary contexts, is dealt with much differently in other disciplines. I remember in linguistics, for example, a professor who once gave a lecture on memorizing all of the information in our area within our field. "You'll need to do this to be a professor," he'd say. At the same time that I took that class, I was also enrolled in 701 and so I struggled with what he said; yet, I don't disagree that learned material or "memorized facts" are indeed deeply interwoven with "subject matter" classes such as linguistics or history, etc. I think Carruthers' text gives us a way to see this learning as having important and cultural outcomes and that's why I'm wondering about how we might hold onto some of this today even given the cultural shift in our sense of memory.
In her next section of Chapter 1, "Locational Memory," Carruthers details this shift in how we think about memory in our societies. She states that the Latin word, inventio, has come into English in two ways. The first of these ways means "to invent" or "to have an inventive mind" (i.e. to be creative) yet, the second is "inventory". Carruthers posits that this etymological relationship reveals something important about how the Classical Greeks thought of invention: you must have inventory to create and invent.
Again here, we can see how this idea present in Classical society could be used to trouble some of the current approaches to teaching composition in our field. If we choose to "wallow in complexity" or present texts to our students in ways that highlight their ambiguous nature, I'm afraid that we're losing some rich potential for a shared sense or "memory" of this text as a tool for invention. This is not to say that we still don't use memory to invent; I think Carruthers would say we perhaps always are. Yet, it suggests that because we are not attuned to this relationship, because we don't value it, we can't make the best use of it even given the way that memory has culturally shifted in our culture.
In the next two sections of her text, Carruthers distinguishes her sense of locational memory from a different sense of memoria that centered on memories that only referenced what had happened in the past. She then goes on in the next section of her text, to tie the concept of inventio with that of intentio (15). Here, Carruthers explains that the concept of intentio was bound to a sense of "charity" in monasteries and that this notion then bound emotion to facts in our mind. Intentio was bound to location and we were only able to access these in tandem with one another. This then leads Carruthers fourth section "Like a Wise Master Builder" where Carruthers explains that architectural features of buildings served as a means of invention and not simply retrieval. Carruthers argues that at the same time as locational memory and our inventions of them are private in that they are built in the networks of our minds, they are also public and civic due to the fact that all buildings contained similar building materials (21).
The importance of locational memory is interesting here not only because it demonstrates how our material conditions shape our thoughts but because it, as Carruthers' chapter aims to, displays that concepts which we in our field have thought of as dangerous or opposed to critical thinking actually have a history that is aligned with it. That is, although the notion of locational memory isn't in use today, perhaps we should attempt to re-think some of these historical relationships as a means to push our thinking about concepts like memory in different directions that could support the social aims of composition. But then I wonder about the actual possibility of this given, as I mentioned before, our differently situated place of memory.
In Chapter One, "Collective Memory and memoria rerum," Carruthers suggests that memory is the "mother of all muses." By this, Carruthers means that memory, although it appeared near the end of the "five" parts of rhetoric, actually comes in much earlier as invention, Carruthers suggests is contingent on our memory. Carruthers traces classical Greek teachings on memory to suggest that memory was not taught for the purposes of mindlessly repeating information on exams but rather instead to give students a way to invent from memory. Memoria, Carruthers suggests, "is most usefully thought of as a compositional art. The arts of memory are among the arts of thinking, especially involved with fostering the qualities we now revere as 'imagination' and 'creativity'" (9). The distinction between how we currently think about memory in our teaching of composition was interesting to me because much of the earliest writing in critical pedagogy railed against teaching techniques that relied upon memory.
Of course, the cultural place of memory has now shifted so we might raise a question whether or not the Greeks' notion of cultural memory is relevant for us--would work for our means of teaching critical thinking or invention; yet, after reading Carruthers, I'm wondering if we can't better make use of a notion of memory as a means to invention within our own curriculum as we certainly seem to hold the parallel values as those lauded by Carruthers. How, though, would/could we draw from these without bumping up against the flattened vision of the role of memory now more pervasive in our culture. And one other quick point before moving on further in Carruthers' book: I've always been curious about how memory, in our contemporary contexts, is dealt with much differently in other disciplines. I remember in linguistics, for example, a professor who once gave a lecture on memorizing all of the information in our area within our field. "You'll need to do this to be a professor," he'd say. At the same time that I took that class, I was also enrolled in 701 and so I struggled with what he said; yet, I don't disagree that learned material or "memorized facts" are indeed deeply interwoven with "subject matter" classes such as linguistics or history, etc. I think Carruthers' text gives us a way to see this learning as having important and cultural outcomes and that's why I'm wondering about how we might hold onto some of this today even given the cultural shift in our sense of memory.
In her next section of Chapter 1, "Locational Memory," Carruthers details this shift in how we think about memory in our societies. She states that the Latin word, inventio, has come into English in two ways. The first of these ways means "to invent" or "to have an inventive mind" (i.e. to be creative) yet, the second is "inventory". Carruthers posits that this etymological relationship reveals something important about how the Classical Greeks thought of invention: you must have inventory to create and invent.
Again here, we can see how this idea present in Classical society could be used to trouble some of the current approaches to teaching composition in our field. If we choose to "wallow in complexity" or present texts to our students in ways that highlight their ambiguous nature, I'm afraid that we're losing some rich potential for a shared sense or "memory" of this text as a tool for invention. This is not to say that we still don't use memory to invent; I think Carruthers would say we perhaps always are. Yet, it suggests that because we are not attuned to this relationship, because we don't value it, we can't make the best use of it even given the way that memory has culturally shifted in our culture.
In the next two sections of her text, Carruthers distinguishes her sense of locational memory from a different sense of memoria that centered on memories that only referenced what had happened in the past. She then goes on in the next section of her text, to tie the concept of inventio with that of intentio (15). Here, Carruthers explains that the concept of intentio was bound to a sense of "charity" in monasteries and that this notion then bound emotion to facts in our mind. Intentio was bound to location and we were only able to access these in tandem with one another. This then leads Carruthers fourth section "Like a Wise Master Builder" where Carruthers explains that architectural features of buildings served as a means of invention and not simply retrieval. Carruthers argues that at the same time as locational memory and our inventions of them are private in that they are built in the networks of our minds, they are also public and civic due to the fact that all buildings contained similar building materials (21).
The importance of locational memory is interesting here not only because it demonstrates how our material conditions shape our thoughts but because it, as Carruthers' chapter aims to, displays that concepts which we in our field have thought of as dangerous or opposed to critical thinking actually have a history that is aligned with it. That is, although the notion of locational memory isn't in use today, perhaps we should attempt to re-think some of these historical relationships as a means to push our thinking about concepts like memory in different directions that could support the social aims of composition. But then I wonder about the actual possibility of this given, as I mentioned before, our differently situated place of memory.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Week 6 Reflection
I really like the way our discussions on the forums are unfolding with the exception that I wish there were more time in the semester and that these could be unfolding throughout the week. But even though these happen mainly at the week's end, I really appreciate the great questions people ask and the careful responses I've received to my concerns. I also really like the new forum this week in that it allows us some space to begin to pull things together from past weeks and to push forward in our thinking about how the digital spaces we are using relate to the readings we're doing.
Besides simply running short on time this week and not being able to attend to things in a way I would be happier about, I think things are generally going well. As I mentioned in my other post, the reading (particularly the Lauer) for this week are really providing me with a greater sense of context for these ideas and giving me some useful background of the field of rhetoric more generally.
Besides simply running short on time this week and not being able to attend to things in a way I would be happier about, I think things are generally going well. As I mentioned in my other post, the reading (particularly the Lauer) for this week are really providing me with a greater sense of context for these ideas and giving me some useful background of the field of rhetoric more generally.
A brief overview of invention...
As promised, all of the readings for this week seemed to complicate our sense of invention in some interesting ways. For me, one of the most useful purposes of the readings for this week is that I am beginning to see how these readings are inter-linked more clearly than before. For example, Hawhee's discussion of the middle seemed to capitalize on our earlier discussions around audience and Lauer's chapters discussed the ways in which Toulmin and P & O-T's notion of argument helped lead up to the renaissance of discussions of invention in our field.
While Lauer's text complicated our sense of audience through offering a historical overview of the many different ways to see invention's nature, purpose and epistemology, and tracing the ways in which these have been present or absent in our field, most interestingly since the 60s, Hawhee's writing troubled the ways in which we have come to see invention and works to discuss this through her concept of the "middle" and in light of postmodern theories. Hawhee's idea of the middle, as stated above, trouble the ways in which we see invention happening in relationship to the inside and outside and thus her writing has some relationship to Arabella Lyon's notion of rhetoric, which is coming from a feminist position. Lyon offers us the idea of negotiating rhetorical approaches to invention with hermeneutic approaches to invention. By tracing the ideas of Gadamer and Mailloux, Lyon suggests that rhetorical reading is one way in which we can see distinctions between the rhetor (or speaker) and the reader. Whereas Hawhee's work seeks to clarify then, where invention comes from and to trouble and loosen these divisions through the notion of a middle, Lyon seeks to look at the process of invention itself to complicate traditional divisions between production and consumption; writing and reading. For Lyon, who is engaged in revisionist dialogues, this notion of invention becomes one that lends itself to more inclusion.
I know that this is not an exhaustive overview by any means, but for this sake of moving on, I'll have to come back to these ideas in more detail through and in relationship to other concepts.
While Lauer's text complicated our sense of audience through offering a historical overview of the many different ways to see invention's nature, purpose and epistemology, and tracing the ways in which these have been present or absent in our field, most interestingly since the 60s, Hawhee's writing troubled the ways in which we have come to see invention and works to discuss this through her concept of the "middle" and in light of postmodern theories. Hawhee's idea of the middle, as stated above, trouble the ways in which we see invention happening in relationship to the inside and outside and thus her writing has some relationship to Arabella Lyon's notion of rhetoric, which is coming from a feminist position. Lyon offers us the idea of negotiating rhetorical approaches to invention with hermeneutic approaches to invention. By tracing the ideas of Gadamer and Mailloux, Lyon suggests that rhetorical reading is one way in which we can see distinctions between the rhetor (or speaker) and the reader. Whereas Hawhee's work seeks to clarify then, where invention comes from and to trouble and loosen these divisions through the notion of a middle, Lyon seeks to look at the process of invention itself to complicate traditional divisions between production and consumption; writing and reading. For Lyon, who is engaged in revisionist dialogues, this notion of invention becomes one that lends itself to more inclusion.
I know that this is not an exhaustive overview by any means, but for this sake of moving on, I'll have to come back to these ideas in more detail through and in relationship to other concepts.
Lauer, Lauer, Lauer and more Lauer
While Invention in Rhetoric and Composition certainly wasn't the most compellingly written text for this week, it was the text I chose to focus most closely on because it was, in many ways, the text I needed to read and a text that I would like to do some writing on. What I appreciate about Lauer's book is its (seeming) comprehensiveness which helped me put some of the ideas I've been thinking about in greater historical context.
Lauer's main project in her book seems to be to historically trace the history of invention and to see that history in ways that speaks to crucial differences in the nature, purpose and epistemology of the concept. She notes the notion of invention is one that has been contested in ways that extend back to the Sophists and, for me, some of the most interesting discussion in Lauer is in regard to divisions between heuristics and hermeneutics and between debates over inventional pedagogy. What is useful for me in Lauer's work is the way in which the complicated history of "invention" itself helps to clarify what exactly is being highlighted in current work on invention and how we might more clearly understand pedagogical disagreements, for example, through considering the varying notions of invention at play between pedagogies.
After laying out some of the major contestations over the term "invention" in the first chapter, Lauer goes on to offer some broad definitions and a bit more contextualization for the study of invention in Chapter 2. Here, she explains classical terms used by the Greeks. Lauer explains that, "inherent in the notion of invention is the concept of process that engages a rhetor (speaker or writer) in examining alternatives: different ways to begin writing and to explore writing situations; diverse ideas, arguments, appeals and subject matters for reaching new understandings and/or for developing and supporting judgments, theses, and insights; and different ways of framing and verifying these judgments" (7). This definition of invention, though, becomes complicated by where in the composing process invention gets most heavily situated. Lauer introduces the concepts of kairos and dissoi logoi to discuss the ways in which the context of situation to determine the truth or falsity of a particular kind of claim. Most interestingly in this section, Lauer discusses Aristotle's work on topoi, "lines of argument and categories of information that were effective for persuasion, listing and grouping these topics so that they could be taught to others. Aristotle distinguished between common topic types that could be used universally and special topics that related to specific discourse. In contrast to these heuristic views of invention, Lauer also briefly lays our hermeneutic ways on seeing invention proposed by Burke and others who have, since the 1960s, shifted to looking at invention in ways that highlight its context-dependence.
In Chapter 3, Lauer throughly traces out the shifts in notions of invention throughout the times of the Greeks and throughout the Roman period and into the Renaissance. She argues that the importance of invention was lost (with the exception of in Greek society and in the Renaissance rhetorics taking up those Greek ideas) and that notions of invention were replaced by intuition and imagination, logic and discovery. I need to go back and read this chapter a bit more carefully, but I am confused at this point about how replacing invention with logic and discovery would remove the onus from invention since logic and discovery are related to invention. However, I do see how placing importance on intuition and imagination/creativity would stifle a serious attention to work on invention. As Lauer moves into her next chapter, she argues that invention remained dormant through most of the 20th century until, most notably, the 1960s where there was a major shift to hermeneutics and epistemological senses of invention seem to have taken hold.
After reading Lauer's chapter, I'm interested in looking more closely at how a shift from a heuristic approach to invention to a hermeneutic approach has relocated how we identify the work that invention does and where it happens. Although Lauer does explore this, I found her text to be too broad to see how this happens in a specific context such as, for example, pedagogical disagreements. Additionally, I would like to look more closely at the implications for Burke's work on invention. Most importantly, though, I'd like to look at theories of composition that are prominent within our field and trace out how they are defining invention and where they locate it and to use these observations to think about how each of these theories might successfully (or not) provide a way of shifting social structure by operationalizing (and teaching) invention in the ways that they do.
Lauer's main project in her book seems to be to historically trace the history of invention and to see that history in ways that speaks to crucial differences in the nature, purpose and epistemology of the concept. She notes the notion of invention is one that has been contested in ways that extend back to the Sophists and, for me, some of the most interesting discussion in Lauer is in regard to divisions between heuristics and hermeneutics and between debates over inventional pedagogy. What is useful for me in Lauer's work is the way in which the complicated history of "invention" itself helps to clarify what exactly is being highlighted in current work on invention and how we might more clearly understand pedagogical disagreements, for example, through considering the varying notions of invention at play between pedagogies.
After laying out some of the major contestations over the term "invention" in the first chapter, Lauer goes on to offer some broad definitions and a bit more contextualization for the study of invention in Chapter 2. Here, she explains classical terms used by the Greeks. Lauer explains that, "inherent in the notion of invention is the concept of process that engages a rhetor (speaker or writer) in examining alternatives: different ways to begin writing and to explore writing situations; diverse ideas, arguments, appeals and subject matters for reaching new understandings and/or for developing and supporting judgments, theses, and insights; and different ways of framing and verifying these judgments" (7). This definition of invention, though, becomes complicated by where in the composing process invention gets most heavily situated. Lauer introduces the concepts of kairos and dissoi logoi to discuss the ways in which the context of situation to determine the truth or falsity of a particular kind of claim. Most interestingly in this section, Lauer discusses Aristotle's work on topoi, "lines of argument and categories of information that were effective for persuasion, listing and grouping these topics so that they could be taught to others. Aristotle distinguished between common topic types that could be used universally and special topics that related to specific discourse. In contrast to these heuristic views of invention, Lauer also briefly lays our hermeneutic ways on seeing invention proposed by Burke and others who have, since the 1960s, shifted to looking at invention in ways that highlight its context-dependence.
In Chapter 3, Lauer throughly traces out the shifts in notions of invention throughout the times of the Greeks and throughout the Roman period and into the Renaissance. She argues that the importance of invention was lost (with the exception of in Greek society and in the Renaissance rhetorics taking up those Greek ideas) and that notions of invention were replaced by intuition and imagination, logic and discovery. I need to go back and read this chapter a bit more carefully, but I am confused at this point about how replacing invention with logic and discovery would remove the onus from invention since logic and discovery are related to invention. However, I do see how placing importance on intuition and imagination/creativity would stifle a serious attention to work on invention. As Lauer moves into her next chapter, she argues that invention remained dormant through most of the 20th century until, most notably, the 1960s where there was a major shift to hermeneutics and epistemological senses of invention seem to have taken hold.
After reading Lauer's chapter, I'm interested in looking more closely at how a shift from a heuristic approach to invention to a hermeneutic approach has relocated how we identify the work that invention does and where it happens. Although Lauer does explore this, I found her text to be too broad to see how this happens in a specific context such as, for example, pedagogical disagreements. Additionally, I would like to look more closely at the implications for Burke's work on invention. Most importantly, though, I'd like to look at theories of composition that are prominent within our field and trace out how they are defining invention and where they locate it and to use these observations to think about how each of these theories might successfully (or not) provide a way of shifting social structure by operationalizing (and teaching) invention in the ways that they do.
Friday, March 5, 2010
A Beautiful Portrait without directions: A reading of choice
One of the things I've been interested in this semester, is how the institutionalized splits between analysis and production situate us in less than useful ways for working with texts. This is a split that was central in the readings for this week on invention and so I decided to take a look at http://www.eliterature.org to see how digital literature was doing things that could trouble this split in interesting ways. While I was on the site, I heard a digital poem . And while listening to this poem by Thomas Swiss and animated by Motomichi Nakamura, I couldn't help but think about how even the split between writing and animating worked in some ways to reify this split. How could something "born digital" be written and animated by two different people? What would/could this kind of collaboration look like? This is yet another example, I think, of new forms not guaranteeing radically different ways of thinking.
While this poem, then, didn't help me gain many new insights into disrupting institutionalization of this split, I was interested by a feature on the page: the directions for reading digital works.
As I went to the sample texts page, I noticed that the narrative and game pieces offered directions for reading the pieces as a separate text. I was interested in how these directions work and how, in instances of "invention" this meta-textual information is provided as a way to help move and re-shape what our expectations for a text can be. While many of the links of other sample texts appeared to be broken, I was also interested in how certain texts, such as A Beautiful Portrait, didn't contain a link to this meta-text. I wondered why these texts were able to function on their own or even if and how they might benefit from a meta-text/directions like the other examples. These meta-texts are, of course, a form of invention in and of themselves as they, in ways, help us to invent interpretations of these texts, to identify them within their contexts and make meaning in ways that feel more comfortable and pleasurable.
While this poem, then, didn't help me gain many new insights into disrupting institutionalization of this split, I was interested by a feature on the page: the directions for reading digital works.
As I went to the sample texts page, I noticed that the narrative and game pieces offered directions for reading the pieces as a separate text. I was interested in how these directions work and how, in instances of "invention" this meta-textual information is provided as a way to help move and re-shape what our expectations for a text can be. While many of the links of other sample texts appeared to be broken, I was also interested in how certain texts, such as A Beautiful Portrait, didn't contain a link to this meta-text. I wondered why these texts were able to function on their own or even if and how they might benefit from a meta-text/directions like the other examples. These meta-texts are, of course, a form of invention in and of themselves as they, in ways, help us to invent interpretations of these texts, to identify them within their contexts and make meaning in ways that feel more comfortable and pleasurable.
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