Walled In or Walled Out?

There were a number of things I really liked in both readings this week.  Both articles deal with the concept of points of view and that we can see different things in the same situation simply by shifting our perspective.  I was immediately reminded of a couple of readings from a course in ethnography I took a few years ago.  Robert Brooke, in an article about an ethnographic study he did, asked, "who would I become, as teacher and writer and member of the classroom community I had been in, if I explained what I had seen one way rather than another?"  Similarly, in her essay, Ethnography and the Problem of the "Other," Patricia Sullivan asks, "how can we conceive and reflect the "other," the not-us, in the process of inquiry such that we convey otherness in its own terms?"  We have to learn about these other cultures in order to start to see from their perspectives.  I think Swearingen's and Mao's article nicely summed up traditional Western issues with Chinese (and Asian) rhetoric, although I'm not sure if they really stated flat-out (pun intended) that all the allusions made in Chinese rhetoric are the writers displaying their knowledge of the subject, and since there is no private ownership of material, there is no plagiarism, so using direct quotes without citations is standard practice.  Imagine how difficult it must be for Chinese American students to have to learn our academic English, when their culture talks "around" a subject rather than addressing it directly. 

What I really liked about the interview with Gloria Anzaldua was her focus on identity and that there are many different traditions within each of us.  "I cannot disown the white tradition, the Euro-American  tradition, any more than I can disown the Mexican, the Latino or the Native, because they are all in me" (52).  Perhaps this comment resonates with me because in a mere two generations, my family went from being American Indian to being white; of course, as the colonized people, assimilation was far more likely to guarantee survival than trying to retain the old traditions.  And the desire to fit in is certainly seductive (I love her use of that term), but I really like that she emphasizes that we can't ever disown parts of our cultures because they are a part of ourselves. 

I think Anzaldua's focus on changing and shaping our identities is a key point to discuss with our students.  The realization that, oh, this isn't the only way to write and the person I've always been can change, that "if you see that shed and that sky and that sea and all that happens in it from this other angle, then you will see something else.  You can recreate reality" (67) is a very powerful one for students (and everyone else).  It is also why I love Ursula LeGuin's work so much, because it is always dealing with issues of identity and seeing the same situation from different perspectives.  Since I read it in a science fiction literature class my freshman year of college, The Dispossessed has changed my perspective on so many issues.  It opens with this description of a wall around a landing platform for space ships:

Like all walls, it was ambiguous, two-faced.  What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on…[t]he wall shut in… the rest of the universe.  It enclosed the universe, leaving Anarres outside, free.

Looked at from the other side, the wall enclosed Anarres:  the whole planet was inside it, a great prison camp, cut off from other worlds and other men, in quarantine.

Prior to reading that novel, there were a lot of cultural walls in my life that I had never recognized and therefore never questioned.  Now I'm constantly seeing them and (usually) jumping on top of them to see what it looks like from the other side, and doing my best to rewrite the culture surrounding the walls.

Further reading:

Brooke, Robert. “Ethnographic practice as a means of invention” in Voices and

Visions: Refiguring Ethnography in Composition, Cristina Kirklighter, Cloe Vincent, &

Joseph Moxley, Eds. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1997.

Sullivan, Patricia.  "Ethnography and the Problem of the 'Other'," Ethics & Representation in Qualitative Studies of Literacy, Mortensen, P and Kirsch, G Eds.  IL: NCTE, 1996. 

Are there really any clear boundaries?

"Understanding is always relative to the whole grid or map" (Gee 32).

Both articles this week really focused on Discourses and the intersection of various Discourses in the classroom.  While Gee's article defined Discourses (and discourses), and explained how we use them to define ourselves, Monroe's article really brought to light the values of various discourse communities and how easily those values can be misinterpreted in the classroom. While I had been aware of the various "dialogues" many African American students have in class conversations, no one had actually spelled out for me why these students acted in specific ways, and Monroe's explanation of putting oneself on Front Street really outlined it.  The same Black student poet I mentioned last week used every one of the behaviors Monroe outlined, including all the joking going on in his "personal" (it wasn't) narrative.  I just wish I knew then what I know now, because I definitely would have been able to respond to his actions much better.  The UM/Detroit study showed that the students (on both sides) were conversing with a group identity rather than their personal identities, which makes sense since they didn't know one another.  Monroe states that, "interactants work most consistently from their group identities, defined by both race and gender" in email conversations (43).  I immediately thought of the people I've met through Twitter and how they convey themselves online.  Last spring I did a discourse analysis of one specific Tweeter (@academicdave) and found that nearly all of his tweets fell into one (or more) of three categories:  academia, social commentary, and personal.  However, unlike the approach of the college tutors in Monroe's study, and (unfortunately) unlike so many social networking users, @academicdave always treated his tweets as public conversation; it was very apparent that he knew that anyone could be reading his tweets, so even the personal ones tended to be about a good run, or watching Top Chef.  But what really interested me about the Detroit students is that they treated email as public, even though it was only being sent to one specific person.  From that aspect, I think their home Discourses may have actually better prepared them for online writing than the college students who viewed the communications as private.  Any thoughts on that?

Two points in Gee's article really struck me, one of which is the quote at the top of this posting, about contextualizing understanding.  I mentioned in class that I was born extremely nearsighted, and that wasn't discovered until I was five.  But unless there is something about blood quantum and the way one relates to the world, I would have to say that those first five years shaped my view of the world very much as Gee describes Discourses placed on a map always being relative to all the other countries on the map (32).  Because I was so nearsighted, there were no distinct boundaries between objects (including people); I take off my glasses now and I see vague fuzzy grey lines on the screen, the monitor's black border blends into the white desk, which blends into the carpet, which blends into the sleeping cat.  They are all components in one continuous whole; there are no individual items.  The second point, which marries with the first, is "which comes first, recognition work or Discourses?  Neither.  They are reflexively related, such that each creates the other" (29).  This concept of Discourses creating each other is very similar to Donna Haraway’s concept of cyborgs: she stresses that we cannot separate ourselves from the technologies and machines that we create.  Because we make them, they are a part of us, and we are a part of them.  She furthers this idea with her concept of companion species, of which she says cyborgs are a part (Haraway 299).  “Companion species take shape in interaction.  They more than change each other; they co-constitute each other, at least partly” (307).  I think these are important points to discuss with students, so that they can start to see how we change through the process of relating both in and out of the classroom, and also to start to see that they have the power to change me as much as I have the power to change them.

Additional reading:

Haraway, Donna J.  The Haraway Reader.  New York:  Routledge.  2004.

What Versus Why, Said the Cat

(I'm going to play a bit today, mostly because I'm trying to write this blog with one cat insisting he sit on my lap and lick my fingers.)

I will vote with Pearce and argue that Gee is wrong when he states that technology is neutral.  Since we cannot separate our minds from our bodies and the "logical" portions of our mind from the emotional, the concept of "objectivity" is a fiction.  Technologies are therefore created by subjective people, with a specific use in mind.  The result may be adapted to unforeseen uses (like satellites now being used for cell phones in the public sphere, instead of remaining strictly under government control), but the technology was created for a specific, subjective purpose.  Gee's notion of neutrality is based on the concept of, "it is how we use them that matters."  What he overlooks, though, is that technologies have very specific limitations, so we can't necessarily adapt any given technology to any given use.  I can't print out this blog from my microwave.  Just as no pedagogy can be neutral, no technology can be neutral.  However, what I do really like about Gee's essay is his analysis of the types of learning and cognitive thinking that occur in the technologies of video games. 

(Successfully booted the cat onto the return, thanks to the birds outside.) 

This point  came up in Chris Ritter's and Shawn Lamebull's colloquium last week.  One literature professor in the audience could not understand how the learning principles and issues of sex, race, and gender in video games could be compared -- in nearly any way -- to the literacy involved in reading a book.  As Monroe noted, "[g]enres from the entertainment domain employ different rhetorics of information that require complex literate behavior" (103) and Gee demonstrated with the example about Brian playing Pikmin:  the boy "was aware that the changes signaled that he needed to rethink some of his strategies, as well as his relationship with the game" (27).  How many six year old kids rethink their strategies of reading and relationship to a narrative in a book?  I'm bringing this up because most of our students have grown up playing video games, and analyzing the learning strategies and the rules of the games can, I believe, help us find a "way in" to academic discourse for those children whose home discourses are at odds with what is expected of them in school. 

In my "remedial" ( I hate that word) writing course that I taught in California, I had a young black man that had a terrific sense of humor, he could tell stories to the class, he was great at interjecting some satirical comment while I or anyone else was speaking (and then we'd all be laughing), but he really struggled to write.  Following the structure for that course, the students read from a text that was composed of personal narratives written by students from other cultures who were struggling with American society and the American school system.  One of the first big assignments was a personal narrative, and while this student had a great story to tell, his sentence structure and punctuation were, in the "traditional" academic sense, atrocious.  I had him work with a tutor in the writing lab each week, in addition to the one class our the entire class spent working with tutors every week.  His writing improved a bit, but his persuasive and expository essays were still poorly structured.  He tried very hard, but having grown up in a very oral culture, as with some of the examples we reviewed in class last week, structuring what he was saying was very difficult.  But as an extra-credit assignment, he had co-written (with another "poor" writer) a poem that was beautifully done.  Since it just had line breaks and no punctuation, there were only minor spelling errors, and he was able to communicate exactly what he wanted.  He turned in another poem that was again, beautifully written, and I knew that I had a very talented poet on my hands.  When I submitted his portfolio for review, I had him include the two poems because I knew the panel of teachers would immediately fail him if it wasn't made obvious that he was an excellent writer, just not a "standard" writer.

(The cat is back and now his front paws and his head are on my left forearm.)

In the same course I had a Chinese girl who wrote beautiful essays, but in the traditional Chinese way:  her points were never stated outright and the essay would sort of spiral it's way around what we wanted to say.  Being familiar with that style allowed me to appreciate her writing and compliment her on it, while also showing her how the Academy would want her to structure her essays.  The textbook also helped with these issues, because the authors complained about the same things: not understanding how they could write well enough to earn A's in their country, and then not even get into FYC here. 

(Just booted the cat.  Again.)

What I really liked about Monroe's article was the discussion of what-questions versus why-questions, and the parallels she draws between the why-questions and different cultures, as well as the individual computer usage versus family computer usage.  My personal experience with students and a Mexican boyfriend completely align with her generalizations (always aware of there being exceptions)

(the cat came back)

about different cultural literacies at home, but I'd never broken it down into "what" versus "why."   I used to frustrate my mother with why-questions because I always had to find another why (as a result, I was frequently sent outside to play, or off to read a book, so that she could have some time free of a pestering child).  But so many of my friends from other cultures did not question; they simply accepted, and so for them, not only did many of them struggle with written academic English, they also never saw the ideologies at work in their lives, which meant they simply accepted the cards they were dealt without realizing they could discard some and hope for a better hand. 

("But WHY do you have to boot me to type?" asked the cat.  "WHY can't you take a hint and let me get my work done?" I replied.  "Because," the cat said, "you're the one that's always singing, 'But the cat came back, the very next day. They thought he was a goner, but the cat came back. He just couldn't stay awayyyyyyy'")