Rhetoric of the Mind

The blogging cat is back on my lap, so I guess it's time to blog. 

Jess pretty much summed up my reaction to this week's readings/viewings.  They also nicely fit in with a session I attended at Cs talking about multimodal learning in FYC.  Alexander's article does echo much of Gee's work and I think  reintroduces the concept of play in the classroom.  No one takes issue with children playing; in fact, most primary school classes are designed around daily activities that are "fun" for the students.  They can "play" at being different people, taking on different roles in the classroom.  I learned all about good and evil and racism and questions about race/identity issues through my model horse battles with my childhood best friend.  The elaborate back stories and ongoing duals we "wrote" -- albeit verbally and in our minds -- were very similar to what players experience in WOW or other MMORPGs. 

One interesting question Alexander brought up is one I can answer:  he asks, "whether the game designers are consciously inculcating particular values in their game designs, or if their narratives (such as storylines involving race conflicts) arise out of a political unconscious" (52).  At least in the professional world of game design, the answer is absolutely a "yes" -- on both accounts.  My cousin designed the number one selling PS3 game last year.  While he admits that his focus on values became much more of a conscious effort once his children were born (they're 2 and 4 now), he said many times he'd be partway through a design and suddenly realize a political point he had unintentionally built into it. 

Alexander also brings up (and fails to answer) two other key questions about online gaming and the Internet in general:  "What, exactly, is extended from one 'world' to the next, and is the 'real world' perhaps its own extension of the 'virtual world'?  More specifically, and critically, whose 'worlds' are we talking about, in terms of both the 'real' and the 'virtual'" (58)?  Since this nicely ties into my Cs presentation, I have to ask, is there really any way to separate our experiences in these worlds?  Are experiences any less "authentic" in a virtual realm?  Certainly I don't believe so.  Vivian Sobchack states that since the Internet is “[a]ll surface, electronic space cannot be inhabited by any body that is not also an electronic body” (Carnal Thoughts 159), so in order to participate in online worlds, we have to create an electronic self.  But in keeping with phenomenology (and paraphrasing Merleau-Ponty), we can't think of a space without existing in it -- without some part of our selves being in that space.

 

Selfe's literacy narratives project also reminded me of the multimodal learning in FYC session at Cs.  One lady presented on the videos she has her FYC students do for their final project -- in place of a final paper.  These videos are 2-5 minutes long and can be about anything.  She stated that her students had a lot of fun and became much more aware of visual rhetoric; in fact, the project had received so much attention that now, at the end of each semester, they hold a public viewing and the entire school administration shows up.  However, I didn't see a lot of the reflective literacy in her examples that Selfe highlights.  One of these videos was just the camera following a guy running sideways and flapping his arms about; he ran across campus, into a dorm, into the elevator, got out of the elevator and ran past other students, then it cut to a shot of the dorm exterior where you could see the guy through the windows and he ran out of side, and then through 3 stories of windows, he falls, head over feet, to the first floor, then we see him run out the door, still flapping arms and running sideways, out of the shot.  What is the purpose of such a video?  The instructor was particularly proud of it and how the students used a dummy for the fall, but she seemed more impressed by the videography than any meaning the piece may have had.  I think I would consider such a project, but if it was going to be the final work of the semester, I would have the students include a written rhetorical analysis of the piece

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So, do I side with Hesse or with Selfe?  Selfe, for the most part, but since I am teaching Technical and Professional Writing (I inform the students on the first day that it is Technical and Professional Communication, and that there's going to be much more than just writing involved), the need to focus on certain forms of writing is essential.  Interestingly, Julie Meloni does not teach her 402 students anything about web design, because she feels like they'll mostly be writing memos, lab reports, etc., and web design and visual design will be taken care of by experts in those fields.  If the students end up working for large corporations, that's pretty much how it will be.  However, my first permanent job out of college was for a small office design firm, and I quickly went from executive secretary to Novell network manager, and then to migrating their ancient accounting system into a integrated software package that began with the proposal, through design, electrical, delivery, setup, and the accounting.  And so far, my students have agreed that learning basic web design (if it's only google sites) is beneficial, because that's one more skill they have that might help them get a job or move up the ladder. 

I really liked Selfe's emphasis on writing being one rhetorical tool and that "'writing is not simply one way of knowing' but rather 'the way'" (609).  In 402 we deal with the CRAP principles throughout the semester (contrast, repetition, alignment, proximity), because corporate newsletters and write-ups from science experiments or even building plans always have photos and/or graphs imbedded in the text, so we consider how to best present text and graphics to "sell" the project or findings.  Students quickly see the differences in resumes with borders versus those without -- anything that brings a visual element to the text is more likely to be memorable.   And I then have them extend those principles beyond tech writing to other visuals, such as this photo of my cousin taken by her husband:

The students can immediately see the CRAP principles at work, and how important they are to all visual design. 

I think incorporating other media into rhet/comp classrooms is essential.  In my 101 classes, I use the adbusters website to show students how powerful rhetoric can be -- a simple picture can say far more about our society and our values than a 1,000 word essay.

  

The Interdependent Self

This week I'm writing my post in Blogger, instead of Word, just out of curiosity -- I want to see my comfort level with the different environments. And I'll warn you -- I'm going to be all over the place in this post, because the articles brought up a number of different issues for me.

"It is a miracle that curiosity survived a formal education."
 -- Einstein

First, I'm going to start with rebuttals to two arguments Ong made.  On page 52, he states that "[w]e know that formal logic is the invention of Greek culture after it had interiorized the technology of alphabetic writing, and so made a permanent part of its noetic resources the kind of thinking that alphabetic writing made possible."  This is the Western notion that ancient Greece is where it all began.  The Phoenecian and Semetic alphabets preceded the Greek alphabet by several centuries, and arguments can be made that the first alphabet was created in Egypt as far back as 1800 BCE (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/521235.stm).  Since we can't fully translate these other alphabets, we have no way of knowing that they didn't have "formal logic."  But if Ong's statement that the culture "interiorized the technology of alphabetic writing," we have no reason to think that these older cultures didn't have logic.

Second, on page 54, he discusses how the "illiterates" in Lurias's study struggled with self-analysis.  "Self-analysis requires a certain demolition of situational thinking.  It calls for isolation of the self, around which the entire lived world swirls for each individual person, removal of the center of every situation from that situation enough to allow the center, the self, to be examined and described."  This is, once again, looking at definitions through a Western lens.  I would argue that "the center, the self" can certainly be analyzed and described within the context of the situation (especially since we can never be out of a context), but it is a different form of analysis and is expressed in different ways from traditional Western expectations.  If you ask an indigenous person a Western-centered question, of course the person is not going to provide a Western answer.  But if you were to rephrase it into that person's cultural traditions, you would get a "valid" answer.  Case in point: in my non-western rhetorics course I took, my professor had spent years studying Chinese rhetoric.  When I asked her if the I Ching could be considered rhetoric, she said no way.  But with some research, I was able to prove that this "book of mysticism" had actually been the most powerful rhetorical tool for the Chinese for thousands of years.  As I mentioned in class, Chinese leaders would actually consult the I Ching before making major political decisions such as going to war or marrying a daughter off to another clan to avoid future battles.  So the book was absolutely a rhetorical tool, but it was used in a manner foreign to Western tradition.  

One quote I really like in Ong's article was that "[o]ral folk assess intelligence not as extrapolated from contrived textbook quizzes but at situated in operational contexts" (55).  This is very much the American Indian belief that you cannot separate yourself from the land; once you do that, you are headed on a path of destruction. Or as Monroe mentioned in "Plateau Indian Ways with Words," "the Plateau Indian self is also a relational, interdependent self, a construct that also manifests in many ways, often simultaneously with the independent self" (w324).  There is an "independent" self but it is always connected to the social; it is interdependent.  What I took from Monroe's article was a clear definition of my philosophy of self, and I'm definitely a holistic thinker.  But what also intrigues me is that my brother is not; we are definitely yin and yang.  His life, as a Naval commander, prosecuting attorney, and a police officer, is all about right and wrong; there is no in-between.  For me, there is only in-between.  We both have the same blood quantum, yet I identify AI and he identifies white.  And our self-identities showed in school as well:  I always listened to the teacher and didn't speak out-of-turn (although I was taught to look at the teacher so that she or he would know I was paying attention); my brother was argumentative, and while he would take his disagreements with what another student said "outside," it was an absolute "I'm right and you're wrong" attitude that several times resulted in physical violence.

Both articles also answered a question I posted on FB yesterday: how could a student produce such a beautiful resume and have such an incredibly wordy cover letter?  Re-reading her letter in light of oral culture, I can see that she was writing exactly how she would speak, and she did repeat herself several times and included information that wasn't pertinent to a cover letter, but information that would come up in conversation.  So now, my job is to explain "the values [a cover letter] embodies" (w340) without engaging in "rhetorical imperialism."  Any suggestions?




P. S. In case you were wondering, I prefer Word because it checks grammar.  This editor didn't catch when I typed "rhetoric" instead of "rhetorical."

Mixed (I)dentities