That's not My Kenny

Reading CounterStatement
by the light of the laptop
by the glow of the Chemistry building
was not particularly Enlightening

Who is this man
who can yet speak of essences?
Who presents even criticism
without a hint of what's to come?

Tell me, Kenny,
please pun on the word "novel"
or tell me that the arguments
share the same lava flow.

This presentation belies you;
your certainty me fait peur,
and only your assumptions of my readership
let me know it's you

Inside the text
peeking out to reframe the white margins
There you are, on page 16, defining simple words
I thought I knew: Pure and art

And PreRaphaelite dreams
"Art was 'justified' because art
was an appetite--in being desired,
it found its reason for existence."

And, "inevitably" this all ends up
in the Church and Sex
"A people more direct in its religion
would divide and subdivide its divinities"

The immutable is important because
it adds to our lexicon of Flux
Countering, changing, adding, synthesis,
antithesis; it's the Other that show us Us

What is aesthetic?
I know what it is, but does he?
there's spirit and material
l'art pour l'art--sublime beauty or something

Lots of Ofs to link two words
Rhetoric of Motives, Aesthetic of Symbolism
the Name of Decadence.
The futility of the human race as a Whole.

If anything, our art should be like water
the arguments sliding over each other sensually
replacing each other like one ice skate
after the other to trace a figure 8.

An author ...must preform his transgressions
on paper (two divergent legs molten at the core
must cross and be relieved of control
or we all fall down)

Fun with Teaching and Technology

          Last year I thought about begging for use of the computer room at NEU to teach my composition class from. I was jealous of all the 302 TAs who got to teach there twice a month.
          Then, they hand me lab time once a week and I panic?
          Well, not panic. Panic is reserved for tests and defenses. I'd use "confusion," but that feels overused in my lexicon. I was Uncertain.
          Unlike what the Duffelmeyer reading for tomorrow, however, it wasn't because I was afraid of giving up the traditional classroom and the authority in it. Please, please, take away my authority. (This might have something to do with my undergraduate education at a Mennonite school, where everything was about mutual respect and making explicit forms of authority and ideology built into our systems). I don't want to control them. Please don't call me Ms Clemons. Please don't think I have this all put together.
          In fact, the only TA in Duffelmeyer's essay I could relate to was the one who felt that she or he had to be at least as good at computers as his/her students. This, I think, is built into my own perfectionist personality, especially when it comes to science. Just because I didn't study it formally doesn't mean I can't talk about theoretical physics. I don't know what it means to NOT own a computer. I think better with a keyboard at my fingers. I can't compose with a pen and paper, except poems.
          In other words, I love Mr. Computer. And it seems ridiculous that, as attached as Tek (the name of my computer: Short for, of course, Technology, but spelled like Boston catcher and team Captain Jason Varitek writes his nickname) is to my lap and palms, I would be unable to figure out his friends in the labs. Or that some of his words and applications are beyond me, but not those younger than me. I've had extra years with him! I remember a time BEFORE Frontpage! Before Instant Messenger, when, to chat, one used mIRC and had to know how to locate nearby servers, "ping" people to determine "lag", and write cool scripts so that when someone said "bye" a picture of a waving frog came up in ASCII. But I can't link a network connection?!
          Hell, I remember when network connections were only accessable through DOS, and there were backslashes and "dir"s and all that fun stuff that my kids don't understand, but I do. But networking now is scary because there are so many more options, so many more dirs.
          I remember when one of my darling classmates hacked into our high school network to change his grades, making the stupid mistake of printing out the port information (so he could erase his footprints) from the library computer, and leaving the sheets in the machine.
          So of course I want to be better than my students. And I was relieved today when I had to show the students how to use a pdf file I'm not old yet.
          And when I had to explain how to attach files, I was excited because I had a teachable moment, and tried to show how this knowledge will be useful later.
          I'm sure some of the students were wondering why we did the exercise in the computer lab, a waste of technology time but it some of them looked more relaxed in that environment. And, despite my fears, they did talk to each other, I think because they could always look at the screens instead of each other. Some may find this detrimental. I say, "baby steps."

Blogging Burke--scattered Essay of Doom Theory

It had to happen Sometime, so it might as well be Now: Reading All of Burke.
Yes, it is daunting, which is probably why we aren't doing it. Not all, that is. But most.
The thing about Burke is that he and I write and think alike, "strangely" recursive, reflexive, revising without erasing. Each concept reappearing in each book in a different form, a kaleidescope of the idea. It makes more sense to read Burke conceptually, not chronologically.
That, however, is difficult to do unless you already have read Burke chronologically. Which is why tonight I'm starting in on the First, Counter-Statement a title which reveals very little.
To help I have none other than Professor Dave Blakesley's book called "Elements of Dramatism." That title reveals very little; one might think it is simply an overview of Burke's Dramatism. But Blakesly recognizes (of course!) that in order to understand the system Burke finally ended up with (or, simply ended with due to old age?) requires knowing the steps Burke took to arrive at that hexad/pentad.
Every time I read "pentadic" I think it says "pedantic"
Reading "Elements" on the bus today, I realized some things.
When Burke talks about "imaginative works" as providing ways for writers to answer Big Life Questions that arise from the writer's (creator's?)current situation, he is talking about the representative anecdote (almost) described in the Grammar. The two ideas are inexorably linked: The representative anecdote is the result of the writings that are done in order to symbolically react to a situation. The situation is defined by the writer (the writer gets to frame it according to his/her past interpreations of OTHER representative anecdotes s/he's read) so as to provide an interpretation for other readers in similar situations. That interpretation is the representative anecdote, the "equipment for living" that literature provides.
Subjectivity, then, is not only the author's own self, but the interpretations that help him or her create new interpretations. At this point, if you're still reading my blog, you must know some Burke. Who gives a damn? Indeed.
Why worry about interpretations borne of interpretations? What the hell does that have to do with ANYTHING in the corpus of Amylea-dom?
I've been working this "Essay of Doom" for a few months now, getting down thoughts, noting theories or criticism that may come in handy, etc. You may notice I have uncharacteristically avoided Burke. Instead, I've been recursively revisiting the same ideas through different frameworks, hoping to arrive at the answer to "Why is Fan Fiction so alluring?"
Perhaps I was not using the right word? "Alluring" is close. Others I've used: Attractive, interesting (ew!), engaging, popular, involved...I'm sure there are others. That's not the point. I was missing one, one which triggers giant neon signs and fake animated idea light bulbs over the heads of lit crit people:
Desire
Why is it desirable? Desire, as the Freudian mechanism (eros, blah blah, need fulfillment, blah blah), desire as the Derridian deferral of (of WHAT?) pleasure (or meaning), desire as the trace where we almost get to the meaning, we want pure communication of angels, we are so close to being linked, but...
we are denied. The desire multiplies from this denial/deferal. We want more.
Blakesly interprets Burke's "syllogistic progression/form" via examples of arguments we're used to, namely, mystery novels and academic thesis on top essays. In these forms, we are given several pieces of "prior knowledge" to consider (oooh, I'm working in Ed Psych stuff!) which make us desire some end to all these proofs. "Where are you going with this?" we ask our composition students. "How does X lead to Y?" We desire to reach that end, the completion of the argument, and consent consubstantiality with the writer in order to achieve that end, to be "gratified by the sequence." It's a familiar form, we know how (or at least that it ends. We join the author in following the clues to generate conclusions.
This is lovely, and I would have missed the real loveliness of it had Blakesly not given his last example: "Television soap operas rely on such a form [Syllogistic], but in their case, the progression is unresolved; they must keep going and going (and therein is their lure)" (57). The defered desire that both Derrida and Freud note as a key to human action comes from the form (can I say "genre" in this case?).
Let me take this to my own interests before I begin waxing tangental on the problematics of genre and Burke. Mother often tells me that anime is no different from soap operas. I want to scoff, but know better; both are serial and seemingly unending. While most soap operas have yet to end, animes do. Manga do. And that's a big problem for all of us desire defering people.
Most of the popular anime in America, in fact, are already over in Japan. A big exception was, until recently, Inuyasha, and in that case, the manga continues. Because manga are more difficult for most of the US (those not living in cities, that is) to acquire, anime is the medium most popular for these serials. Anime is more difficult to continue, though, due to budget restrictions and TV ratings, and tend to end after a few seasons while the manga may or may not continue on afterward (an additional 100 chapters of Inuyasha have already been written past the "end" of the anime).
What do we do when we are given a conclusion? Particularly one that is not at all satisfying? Inuyasha ends with much of the plot unresolved, sexual tension still not released, and the bad guy still alive. If we wish to make Inuyasha a representative anecdote, to let it give us instructions for living, then our lives seem very bleak indeed--we are stuck in limbo with Inuyasha and the gang, unable to move beyond episode 167.
Fanfiction seems to do several things in light of this small section of Burkean prose, depending on the genre of the fic. One, the "continuation" fics (Media Miner genre label) allows us to move beyond the "end" of the series, or, in many cases, imagine that end. Two, as "interpretations of interpreations" that will help readers with their own interpretations, fanfics help writers symbolically mediate those confusing things in life, and work out--in fiction, symbollically--possible answers. Writers who make characters that seem particularly OOC are usually using the fic to answer questions via role playing: What if Inuyasha started feeling attracted to males? What if Kagome decided to stop being so forgiving? What if they weren't in Japan, but the US? These questions lead to some of the more improbable fan fics, but at the same time, are probably the most useful fics for us to analyze here; they are less of an explication of the original series than an explication of the "writer's situation."
Another possibility is that some are tired of defering the fulfillment of desire. In the Harry Potter fan universe, as well as Inuyasha, the "final battle" is a subject that is almost a genre of its own. (Note to self: All fan fiction is AU by necessity because we can never know where the author would have gone/is going (again, the terminal end metaphor!)) The end is written because the author takes the fulfillment into his/her own hands. Is there some sort of breaking point? Did anyone imagine the final Inuyasha battle before, say, episode 100? A critical mass of deferal?
If we want to think of other fan fiction actions ("Genre as social action"), the "original" category is interesting (again, an mm.org genre). In this genre, the stories are set in the middle of the series and seek to explore/exploit those moments the author has left open to interpretation. While PWP stands for "Plot? What Plot?" in so called "lemon" fics, in the "original" genre, there is often a TWT bent--"Time line? What Time Line?" The tongue in cheek manner with which the authors treat the adherance of their fic to the canon time line points to a different social action than simply fulfilling some desire within a conclusion: instead, there is further deferal of conclusions, but a satisfaction of questions about character. I'll have to read Counter-Statement, but I'm willing to bet Burke addresses this kind of symbolic action, where form satisfies something other than an end
Note: See ffn, mm.org and checkmated.com for stories that emerged just prior to and just after the release of Harry Potter VI. How do the authors situate themselves in this new situation?

Millions of leaves

Millions of leaves of paper I have marked
since emerging from the walls of that dark city.

Tonight I went through my papers from Bluffton and Northeastern in an attempt to find my copy of Bruno Latour's essay on "immutable mobiles." I found, instead, the essay I wrote about the case of the immutable mobile known as a church bulletin. Interesting, but not helpful.

I also found some of my first work with critical theory. I realized, for a moment, that I was far less trusting of theorists back then, that I did not immediately latch onto every abstraction. That I had a far better grasp on application before I understood it so well.

What has happened? Some sort of reduction, I'd imagine. The only reduction I haven't quite made has been with Kenneth Burke. I think that's because I keep revisiting the original text. When reading Dave Blakesley's explanation of Burke, "Elements of Dramatism," I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated because I could see the gaps where he was reducing for the sake of clarification. At other points, when he filled in gaps for me, I wanted to return to the original, to make sure that I agreed, that Burke hadn't been coy and slipped in some other thing to trigger that rush.

That's why I love theory, and always have. It's that brain rush. When everything makes sense all at once and there are no words. No pictures. Pure intuition. It's in this way that I understand James Watson's memior of finding the double helix; he's cocky while at the same time unsure, but he relies completely on intuition (so he says) for most of his time there. Lucky Jim luckily is male and his intuition is seen as revolutionary, not weak and emotional.

Emotional? Me? No, not as Watson imagines.


Such claims to the end have an absolute duty. The revelation was written to fit the genre, so it plays absurd, a bad drama on screen. It uses some conventions, to revel in the reveal and promote unity. Time, plot, a used, ordered world, seems included in this eternity of absurdity in play. Mocking not the core of real prophecy, but those browning leaves about it, it rules the way they create an understanding world. The end is near. A harmless arm comes out to embrace us all, and still we duck away.

Teaching Week 1

          Who knew fifty minutes could go by so quickly? I certainly didn't. For the last two days I've found myself staring at the clock in awe when it reads 8:17. What do you mean I only have three minutes left? I was initially worried about what I'd do with conference time; now I see that with only 50 minute classes, I will have to rearrange some of my teaching plans so that the little group work moments I usually have (Think, Pair, Share, people!) come during conferences.
          The class iself seems like a good one. My B group was a little more dynamic this morning than the A group, but, if I had to hazzard a guess based on pure stereotypical essentialism, I'd say it's because B was mostly male and A was mostly female. I asked them to divide themselves up into A1 and A2, B1 and B2, just so I could observe the group dynamics. And I found out that B is quick and decisive while A likes to mull things over and dialogue things into a conclusion. While they didn't get much done in the 12 minutes I gave them, I got to see them in action when they thought I was focused on something else, so the time was used wisely. Now I know I have to divide and conquer differently.
          As for the proposal stuff...I wish I could say that I was far enough ahead in thinking to worry about it. But I'm not. I've looked at it, made those intuitive mental break downs (where do those come from? I don't have enough experience for it to be that easy. Maybe I'm just winging it? It usually works out though. Does anyone else just seem to Feel where things would fit?). So I can't describe my plans--at the moment the only uncertainty in the schedule is where a discussion about rhetorical moves (what Tarez was outlining in her email) might come in. I agree that taking a sample text is best--that's how I learned rhetorical analysis. Practice makes perfect. Eventually, analyzing other people's stuff becomes--here comes the word again--so intuitive that you (me? They?) begin to write in a rhetorically sound manner because the moves are familiar. I didn't understand how to write an argument until I took Communication classes and learned how to analyze arguments. Sorry to say, reading literature does NOT teach one how to write persuasively according to the current conventions of academic writing. So, where does it go? I have listed that I will be giving them student samples to read over the weekend, but since I'm in the lab on Monday, I think I'd like to let them do it on a computer screen, and teach them to use the Word comment function, which is my main way of commenting on their papers (My hands give out too easily otherwise). Then they can mark up the papers just like I will mark up theirs; we will all be revisionist (ha) editors together. So now I have to figure out where I'm going to put the samples on my page, and where I'm going to put a list of questions. Since I plan on redesigning the page to include frames (sorry Tarez, but tables make me more frustrated than the Yankees do) and Amy's Famous Background, my purple venetian blinds look.
I'm not sure what else to say. It's day two, I'm not sleeping much, and I haven't had time to do yoga in two weeks. The stairs on this campus are a nightmare. I know there are handicapped accessible entrances, but to access them you have to walk all the way around the building and enter at the basement. That seems stupid to me, and since I can't move quickly, I'm always running later than I should be, so I take the stairs to save time. Then my legs spasm, and I look like a marrionette tangled up in its strings, kicking randomly with a dazed expression.
      At some point during mentoring today, I zoned out for about seven or eight minutes. I only know this because of the clock on the wall behind Tarez's head. I don't know what happened during those minutes. I must have been looking at the computer screen, because my eyes felt weird. I haven't zoned out for that long since my sophomore year of high school, wherein I entered third period and stared at the blackboard until some part of my brain heard the bell ring. Apparently, however, I still absorb info during that time; getting it out is the hard part. Whatever happened during those minutes had to do with activities for the proposal, I think. Or activities for the CD? I "woke up" when we started talking about students not finding the CD, so whatever happened before then....oh well. I can't go back.
      It's the first week. We're all tired. It's not just me (mantra of the year: It's not just me). To quote Five Iron Frenzy: "Amy's going back to school today. Elation, jubilation beams from her face....A new hope"



One of those pictures fell down. It doesn't really matter which one, as long as the edges aren't torn. I'm sliding out of the margins onto the blank white wall. They've encouraged me to move toward mauve before because in China red is the color of happiness, which is cultural, but too bold. Mauve is global, in the maple trees, the flowers, and the hair of those girls I used to envy in high school. When I edge out of the margins and onto the wall the sign will be signified, and we can all sleep easier. I'm being held up by a silver frame I'm being raptured by the pages beneath me.

A Nightmare on Essay Street, part 5.2

Rereading my July 20th post reminded me that Mediaminer.org has recently posted an email from a reader discussing the quality of fanfiction on that server. Mediaminer defended itself by replying: "We agree that, unlike what many smaller sites are starting to do, we do not disallow fiction based on its quality or lack thereof. That has been considered unfair to writers who are just starting out" (a 7-28-95 Homepage News post). The rest of Lady MacBeth's, one of mm.org's moderators, response points writers to their Beta/Pre-readers and Writing Help Forum as well as the FanFiction Author Review Guild. Lady MacBeth and company do not want to discourage younger writers, but, as moderators, also want their web site to have quality work. By posting this reader's "flame" of the website at the start page, the moderators are effectively directing the attention of anyone reading or writing on mm.org; the prominence of this message on the page cannot be ignored.
The rhetorical strategies behind the flame and the response could be analyzed here; but it is not the near admission of bad writing which caught my attention. Instead, it was a brief apostrophe in the last sentence of Lady MacBeth's reply: "The point of this Guild is not to give empty praise, which has lately become the meaning of 'review', but rather to give honest reviews - including critiqes - of submissions."
The second clause "which has lately become the meaning of 'review'" is the one that is of importance to my "study." The "bribes" I spoke of in the July 20 post are part of this problem: Writers refuse to write more until they are given reviews, and thus meaningless praise--even for somewhat bad writing--is dished out quickly. Other times, "celebrity" fan fic authors will receive praise because no one wants to be accused of "flaming" the well known writer. Some reviews for the more famous writers are pages long, exalting every description, and moving on to praise the personality traits of the writer him/herself.
These well known writers become well known by winning awards from various fan guilds or even the fic host itself. That is not to say these awards aren't merited--there are some truly talented writers in this genre--but that once the writer is recognized as being "one of the best" he or she is unlikely to receive constructive criticism. The reviews, as vast as they are, are not there to improve such writer's skills, but to become part of the strange entourage--a fan of a fan--forming a community with its own unique hierachies and seniorities, friendships and arch enemies, none of which seems to have much to do with either discussing good writing or the original text.
side noteOn checkmated.com (Harry Potter Fan Fiction) some of these relationships do extend into the writing; there are many more fics written by multiple authors, and readers continue or do "outtakes" of their favorite fics, with the permission of the original author. This style of communal writing reminds me of when we did writing exercises in elementary school, and one person would write one sentence, pass the paper down, the second person would continue that thought, pass the paper down, etc. By the end, the story was everyone's and no one's. And they usually made no sense. The importance of these communal "fan fic universes" is that they do make sense, and are expansive, excrutiatingly detailed to the point where the original text seems very far away, and that distance does not seem to matter one bit.

How Amy Gets Her Groove Back...again

Alternate Title: What the Hell am I Teaching This Semester? Part I
I've always hated the last week before school starts.
The last weekend I hate even more. It used to be that I'd get awful panic attacks about the task (why such a harsh word for fourth grade? Or even ninth?) ahead of me. Sometime in high school it shifted--I had panic attacks in which I was worried about having panic attacks.
I know for a fact that I never got a good night's sleep until the second Tuesday of the school year. Not even weekends.
So here I am, awake again at 6 a.m. because I just had to take that nap around 5 p.m. What better to do than to read the book my students will be working from?
The title is "Fieldworking: Reading and Writing Research." It's difficult to tell how much we will be relying on a "fieldworking" approach, but I can tell already that the philosophy of the writing programs here are much different from the "Question everything and everyone" subverting exercises that Bartholomae and Petrosky wished their students to engage in. I don't doubt we will be looking at and re-evaluating assumptions, but suddenly the idea of "reading against the grain" will be supplanted by a reading of the culture related to the text, not the author's attempt (or lack thereof) to imbed ideologies in my poor, naive kiddos. The introduction says that the book's authors want the students to act on their discoveries. I feel like there will be less me dragging them through the mud of some Foucauldian nightmare, grading them on their ability of not sinking.
I love Foucault, I really do. I just want my kids to be able to write when they're done with my Composition class, not just subvert things.
Subverting is exhausting.
One of the questions for the orientation week is "What is the difference between ethnography and journalism?" This is a good question. One that came up several times as I taught Fight Club and Notes on the Balinese Cockfight. The students seemed to think it had something to do with the "accurateness" or the "truth" of the writing. The transparency of "simply reporting the facts." And maybe at one point I could say that that was the goal of (although it could never truly acheive it) journalism. Journalism back in the throes of Woodward and Bernstein. Before 24 hour cable news programs.
But now what? No one but Fox News pretends they are "fair and balanced." We all know who owns whom (or at least that they are owned).
The book says the readings will draw from "fiction, non-fiction, and journalism." This sentence seems strange; isn't journalism non-fiction? Is journalism a genre of its own, is its job so different from the work of "non-fiction" that we have to point out the divide?
The concerns of this book seem to be drawn from Mary Louise Pratt's idea of the contact zone; of outsiders and insiders, self and other, questioning the daily practices (not those large ideologies) of a specific group that has somehow (ah, there's the question) divided itself from the rest.
Kinda like journalism?
They encourage "close looking and listening skills" (1) as opposed to close reading. But in order to "read" don't we have to first look and listen? Before we can give meaning to what we've just seen, we must acknowledge what it is we've seen. Clifford Geertz's "thick description" is misleading because it is both a close looking (for both the writer and the person reading the context being described) and a close reading. Can we ever really just look and listen?
It's been a while since I could just look. There is always a "hmm" at the tip of my tongue whenever I actually pay attention. Paying attention all the time, as Dr Susan Wall said, must be exhausting. We can't live like that. Like most people, I just block things out and move along merrily, unless wanting to engage in a "hmm" moment with friends. When a text--by which I mean a film or piece of writing or music or art--is presented to me, I automatically do a close looking, listening and reading all at once. I just jump from "What is this?" to "What does this mean?"
I wonder if my students will have similar problems, or if I am clouded by my own strange behavoirs. Now I remember that I wasn't always this way; it began when I took that Sociology class at OSU-M, and continued as Lou and I sat in Sue Biesecker-Mast's class (Mass Media, was it?). Sue's "hmm" became our "hmm."
I remember when it all broke for me; it was the night before the first Mass Media paper was due, and I had forgotten the paper was due at all. I finally listened to what Sue had asked us to do: I was too stressed to try do anything else. I looked at the ad I was analyzing, and began with its semiotics. Color? Shape? Angles? People? Text? Etc, etc. Typing furiously, trying to reach those ten pages, I wrote down every detail I could think of. The act of describing in that haze of tension made me stop making assumptions, and instead of seeing some random ad from some girly mag I saw the story that caused it to come into being, the ideology that made that ad materialize itself that way. As I finished the "description" section of the paper, looking at all my evidence, the intentions and ideologies of the ad became transparent to me, and I couldn't understand why I hadn't seen it before.
I thought, It's just like journalism. It's clearly not, but that was my thought. It was clean, organized, and there were sources to back up every comment I made. My opinions stopped whirling around each other into the abyss of "Vague, has no point. D-". Things started to have heirarchies. As my ability to clear all the assumptions from my opinions increased, so did my writing ability.
And none of it had to do with Freshman English. I could write a research paper; I have always been damned good--sometimes too damned good--at research. I could talk about how essays worked together to form a "theme." (Oh God! Not the Theme Paper!). But it was always the same thesis: "They're the same in how they x, but different in their idea of y." Which is probably why I get on the cases of students who do those theses. Because I know that in order to make claims they make with that weak thesis they have noticed other, bigger things, but are afraid of their sentences scrawling right off the off white bounds of Microsoft Word and into that territory: "I'm not really sure what you're arguing here."
Am I ranting? Yes I am. But usually in those rants, I find hints of things to share with others who are smarter than me, thus making me seem smart in the process. In time, I will go back over this, and listen to myself, see my own motivations and assumptions that drive these words, this organization and discover questions I have not yet asked, and answers to some that I have already.
How do you tell a bunch of scared 18 year olds that they might not have the answers? That you might not? That there may be no answers to all those teen-angst ridden questions they wasted the last 5 years on? That's when they looked the most scared: When I told them to argue either side, that both were right. Clifford Geertz is imposing Western views and Clifford Geertz is undoing Western assumptions .
Gotta love both/and. It's one of those things I can almost understand now.