Friday, February 25, 2005

The Ninth Parabola of Purgatory

Purgatory requires parabola.
Here comes the studying. Tomorrow: Edward Schiappa's Definitions of Reality , which will be the special work I answer questions for. So.
Stuart Peterfreund came to talk to us about the comps. By the end of the meeting, I became convinced I am screwed. But that's because he didn't really address any methods of studying for those of us not doing literature. It made me rethink that fourth question: Do I want to answer a question on Bishop/Frost (the postmodern/modern divide? Ways of knowing in modern?)?
I'm so screwed.
Walking down St Stephens Street, I saw a sign--who knows if it was from God; if nothing else, it was from Symphony Properties, Inc. "Where will YOU be living next year." Amid the snow, I said to the sign, "I don't KNOW, which is the whole PROBLEM!" The sign didn't talk back.
Oh well.

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Spring "Break"

Alas, I may well weep with sighs deep
For I have no manner of company
To help me on my journey and me to keep
And also my writing is full unready
--Everyman

      Reading stuff for Rhetoric as Cultural Studies class makes me rethink again and again the implicit discussion at hand: How does Rhetoric fit into English studies? Cary Nelson asked the question in a different way, but the implications are the same. "The Linguisticallity of Cultural Studies" asks what place "language" has in Cultural Studies. Because Cultural Studies is one of those strange interdepartmental (non departmental?) disciplines, he is asking what I am asking: Why does Literature have to mean written, cannonized texts that we analyze via "critical theory? Why do we have two separate classes for "Lit crit" and "Rhetorical criticism"? If we are going to the trouble to acknowledge that our (and here I am identifying myself with the Lit people) objects of study are alwaysalready coded into a hierarchy of legitimization for anOther's purpose, and that we want to tease out those codes of legitimization--if we take all of that as our basic assumption of contemporary Lit Crit, then why the hell aren't we doing Rhetorical studies? Isn't it true that embedded in texts, discourses, genres and whole fields of communication, are "instructions to 'the audience how they are to respond and what sensations to experience'"? Isn't that Rhetoric Or am I stupid? (That was T Rosteck (233 At the Intersection , quoting E Black's "The Sentimental Style" (78)). Have I been using "Rhetoric" wrong?
      Ernest J Wrage findsthat we should, and here I'm being a "rhetorician," study "not only the conditions of the creatoins of ideas but allso the conditions of their reception" (Qtd in Rosteck 231). That the texts the audience make upon reception are themselves worth studying; that culture around a text, that contributed both to its inception and its reception should be examined. That Orwell was working from a Marxist perspective in an increasingly (and to him, frighteningly) Socialist England is important, but we must also examine who he was, how he got to pulish 1984 , who the publisher was, how it was recieved in the public, the discourses that surrounded its reception, other major political events happening both globally and locally, and finally, the literary tradition that shaped his text. What other anti-totalitarianism texts came out that year? By who? What were the universities teaching? What did the newspapers look like? How could the proles of his story be comapared to his readers? To those unable to read his story? (An important point).
      Further, am I giving too much agency to Orwell (and friends)? Too much intentionality? Am I falling into that Neo-Aristotelean trap of focusing on the success (or lack) of rhetorical production? If not examining success as my object, then what? Did I forget how often these are taught? Referenced? Turned into bad movies? If there is equal power in the reception as in the creation---what questions should I be asking? And how can I answer these, when most of the people who originally received the text are dead? I can't just use official, public documents. Those are fine, but not enough; what was silenced? Why have some of the dystopian fictions been appropriated to the English department, but not others? And where do they appear, when they are used?
      See. I'm just confusing myself now. In order to (re)fuse Literature and Rhetoric, we'd have to come up with new methodologies, new "legitimate" forms of proof for our readings of the text in question. And I haven't seen one yet, not even in cultural studies, where rhetoric is allowed to play with literture (but usually doesn't).
      And so Thursday begins Spring "Break." I'm planning on studying for the Comps all week, at the coffee shop, reminding myself of what I have, supposedly forgotten, or learning that which I never knew.
      Same thing.

The syllables were there, the ones that sang like poison in an open wound. They said "cut your hair" with the scissors in the kitchen. The scar manifests white, like we knew it would, right down the middle of the division. They said "go to bed" and forget about the bills in your pocket. The shiny backs of the books in question reflect like mouse eyes underneath the futon.

My mouse does not trot.

Monday, February 14, 2005

My GOD!

      Literally, My GOD! Because otherwise, I don't know how this happened.
      I sat down to begin the tedious task of wading through the Kenneth Burke bibliography (500+ entries, from the 1930s to 2001) for hints of Composition Theory, and decided to check my email, to gather my Notes to Self. Wherein I was greeted with this:
Hi, Amy! I'm sorry I missed you by telephone this morning. If you'd like to chat personally, please let me know what times of day are best for you, and
I'll call you. (If you'd prefer to try me, my office number is (847-491-5854.)
Here in the Department of Communication Studies, we are in the process of making admissions decisions. We wanted to let you know that you are on our short list of preferred applicants. Although at this moment we cannot offer you either admission or financial support, your application is one of a small number (fewer than ten) that we have forwarded to the School of Communication for further competitive review. Although we hope to be able to make you an offer, it is likely that not all the applications that we have put forward will be funded.
We wanted to contact you now to congratulate you on your success thus far and to tell you that we are very much interested in you and your application! We hope to be able to give you a definitive answer about admission by mid-March. In the interim, we want you to feel free to contact us with any questions that you may have about the program or about our admissions procedures. We hope that this information will be helpful to you as you receive offers from other schools.

      Pardon?


     First of all, as mother said, I no longer have to worry about living in my parent's basement, which is a strange concept since we have no basement. Upon reading the email seven or eight times to make sure I wasn't stupid, I squealed, and began announcing it to everyone in earshot. Shaking. Dry lips. Etc.


      I practically hopped into Professor Rotella's office, who seemed genuinely excited for me, who kept telling me what good signs were hidden in the rhetorically charged "almost acceptance" letter. At the moment I am sitting calmly in the computer lab, hair in a pony tail, looking demure. Mother and others tempered my excitement when they mentioned the fact that this is the first of what may be many offers. Then I remembered: I may have to make a decision in the end.


      Damn.
      I suppose I should say something here about being lucky. About being lucky to have the pressure of making this kind of decision. I suppose I could say this is justification for all those times I thought the Clemons family was looking down on me, for them making me feel stupid and inadequate. Maybe. Maybe I should celebrate tonight.


      If I were at home, I'd go out with K-dog and Lou. We'd drink coffee and eat cheesecake. Now, I'm just here, with me and the roommates. I don't know what to do. Mom's in Hawaii. Dad's got the flu. Emma started work today, and Kari's grandpa just died.
      Give me some damn cheesecake.

Friday, February 11, 2005

Fragmenting the Hell out of Essay (IV)

      Or perhaps it would be more appropriate to call this Essay version 3.5. or, rather, Somewhere else in the imagined outline than where I last left off. Oh well. I have ideas, and I am going to write them; organization is, afterall, the second step of Aristotle's 5 step model.
      I am reading Peter Elbow, a composition theory dude, and I run across his self-effacing remarks about not knowing whether he is exagerating a perceived conflict or not, a conflict between the act of writing and the act of reading. In some ways, he wants to see them on a continuum of meaning making, as people like Foucault and Stanley Fish do, to see the readers as makers of meaning, and thus "authors." On the other hand, Elbow is a writer, and like all writers, can't help but think of each text as his baby so keep your freakin interpretations out of my work! This, I think, is actually a good thing to hold in play; I can see the validity of each one. That "play" doesn't help me to do anything, though. So how is it handled?
      Let's turn to fanfiction again, as a place where people are, in fact, "Writing without Teachers" (the title of one of Elbow's first essays). They are, for the most part, not taking part in "academic" writing; there is no exchange value for their writing (that they have any control over). They are outside of many of the overt power relationships of the classroom (although, as Foucault says, we are always/already caught up in the webs of power and ideology, so there is no neutral writing space).
      Instead, there is a play between reader and writer which mimics some of the questions of domination we find in RL (Real Life). The review process on FFN and MediaMiner allows for readers to give suggestions and praise to the fanfic authors; this alone would not be of importance, except for the way that that feedback is often exemplary of the ideologies of power and truth in society at large. Who writes these feedbacks? How are they recieved? What does the author do with them? How do reviews affect the drafting process? How are these reviews like what we have learned to do in school? How might they affect the younger generation, who learn this type of feedback first, before learning the formulaic public school versions of "Peer Editing?" (And I do not mean to imply that these students will be at a disadvantage--they may, in fact, turn out to be better at responding to texts because they are used to being given the authority to speak on others' texts, where as some of my students still feel embarrassed or hesitant to (re)mark on their classmates' papers.)
      Elbow finds that as much as he wants to destroy the reading/writing binary, he can't help but feel that they are fundamentally opposed, that "readers and writers have competing interests over who gets to cntrol the text" (75). When we readers throw back to the idea that it is readers who construct the text (a reader response methodology), we can't deny that as writers, we are inherently frustrated when our work is misinterpreted. At the heart of this debate is "the question of what I 'said,' what meanings are 'in' my text" (76). Who "owns" the text determines who gives it meaning, value, and legitimacy.
      Elbow names the interaction between reader and writer as one of "disdain," approaching "mean and disrespectful." The reader wants to control the text, to remove the writer from the scene; the writer, already knowing s/he is absent in the mind of the reader comes to disdain the readers' misinterpretation and appropriation of her/his creation. This is when we may see the writer say, in the words of Elbow, " 'Readers are not my main audience. Sometimes the audience that I write for is me. For some pieces I don't even care whether readers always understand or appreciate everything I write [....] What do readers know?" (76). To me, this is a self-defense mechanism; always/already absent from his or her text, the author tries to regain control by making him/herself the audience; this, however, only serves to further the belief that the power is in the hands of the readers.
      These types of moves are common in fanfiction, but, as always with new media, the multiple authors, multiple texts, and fragmented composition of the texts create some interesting rhetorical moves and the creation of some strange writings meant to ease the shift from writer to reader. These, I think, are based on those common responses readers and writers have in classroom settings; the language of individual interpretation is learned early, and the ideologies of individualism are so tightly woven into American culture that self-expression through writing is a fairly common experience. It is when the writer can actually talk back, can use those responses to shape a continuing text that makes for an interesting study: What we would expect to be a typically (generically) monologic discourse is, through the implimentation and encouragement of peer review processes, becoming dialogic. And that dialogue between writer and reader is, as the genre expands, gains momentum, and establishes its own traditions, becoming an integral part of a text that is already complicated by problems of invention, authorship, and genre. And by "dialogic" I am not just refering to the way texts "enter into conversations with" other texts, or "respond to" other texts; I am refering to acutal dialogue between writer and reader about the writing process being inserted into the text itself, being refered to in various rhetorical moves that mimic other genres, but use these moves to create a further sense of fan community.
      What do these moves look like? What kind of feedback, and thus dialogue, is being created? How does it compare to what we do in a composition classroom? These are questions I want to consider in Return of the Fragmented Essay; I also would like to note to myself here that at some point I need to address (okay, figure out) my own standpoint on whether the peer review skills are "tools" that can be moved from context to context or whether the reframing in an academic setting means the skills must change, discourses must be silenced, fanfiction must be denigrated as non-legitimate texts...and how that affects peer reviewing in its two separate contexts.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

Posting Apocalyptic

Demons always have red eyes


Overheard: Woof woof! Woooof! Aaaaaaah Oooooooh! I love you, Back Bay!


The dogs, the wolves, that are in all of us--the souls of Paradise--it's ecstasy when your skin can sing with chills and love.


InuYasha quote of the week:
As Kagome sat on her bed making these calls from her room, Inuyasha waited, content to give her some “privacy” as he listened to her through the closed door telling her lies to humans.
Everyone's got to have limits. Mine is when the strawberries are in my mouth and that's all there is to think of, not even the sleeting through the open window.



It wasn't meant to be sad. But she kept looking away, at the stars, craning her neck to look out the hatchback's window as best she could from the back seat. She got quiet always when we passed this intersection. She always was a drama queen. She told the best stories; even ones that were meant to be sad. I listened as she reworked the events, making important things into side notes, making subplots and satires out of the most mundane of things. We went to go eat, and this guy was there, staring at us--probably because we were half naked in the middle of winter--but what was important was when he looked at us, and said in this agonizingly slow--I mean, turtle versus hare slow--voice "Can I take that tray from y'all?" We were trying so hard not to laugh, and my bra strap had snapped, and it just made me remember why I have to leave this state. Really. Now.

Slowly, he told her about long sleep, about the divine interventions she had missed while napping.
trick
tickle
suffering of the lungs
the oil of the surface of water
trickling
Time is wasting
waist deep in water
the sum of the puns
equals that special number



unlike the savages of her day
she moves in sallow light with glee
not desiring more than what she sees
not informing the cold rooms with fires.

usual cautions surfeiting the way
she slightly limps to the shaddows wtih ease
the elves and imps about her free
her hair from binds and silver wires

Thursday, February 03, 2005

Waiting out the Weekend (Perchance to Dream)

Oh, how horrible.
You'd think that someone like me would be thrilled to spend today, this dreary New England day, the Thursday before SuperBowl (or, as I think of it, Potential Riot Sunday), indoors, in a mediocre, yet comfortable office chair (forest green, swivel, fully adjustable), hiding from the little nature that there is out there.
You'd think that, and you'd be mostly correct. What is not said, is that if this were undergrad, I would SO be skipping class tonight. The thought of spending two and a half hours alert is about to break me down into my elemental pieces. Who says that to dream is to be unengaged? I promise, I'll dream of the various relationships between texts and contexts, and rhetorics of the body.
A dream in Japanese is "Yume." Yume is also a girl's name, as is "yumi" and "Ayumi." I don't know what either of those mean. To dream in French is "Rever." Tonight is last Saturday's FullMetal Alchemist and Ghost in the Shell. "Ghost in the Machine" is the term for our fears about communication, and "Rage Against the Machine" is a term for a band that fears Ghosts, Shells, and systems.
3 and a half hours to go. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. There are more things to think of on a Thursday, Chibi-chan, than we dream of in classes about philosophy.