"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
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