a text-collage by me, the dead author
Wysocki presents an interesting text. I cannot agree
more with her general premises. In fact, as my last assignment attempted, I
tried to engage these “materialities” in ways that would allow for both
investigation and appreciation. I plan on using “new media” heavily in the
classroom. I enjoyed the reinforcement of my pedagogical intuitions when she discusses
actual ‘activities.’ I will not, however, require college students to purchase
crayons for my class. I also doubt I will use the term “scavenger hunt” or ask
two students to hold a pencil together and write. But it’s good to try new
things. I sympathize.
What I am critical of is Wysocki’s supporting texts.
I think these are drawn in from disparate sources and what I get from this is more
sentiment than praxis. For example, Bruce
Horner’s “materiality of writing” may, as he says, refer to “global relations
of power." Of course we can extend it to Nietzsche’s idea and say “the
materialities of writing can refer to the ‘infinite sexual potency of the
universe’” if we wanted to go that
far. I’m not sure how broad the focus should be. There is a possibility of
over-stating the claim in order to ‘scare’ young, politically impressionable compositionists
into taking their task too seriously. Perhaps it is also a sense of trying to
feel important—feel that we’re more than mere
writing teachers but are scholar-warriors fighting against discourses of
imperialism that have nested in the materials of what would otherwise be an
ideal post-structural consciousness, imbued with all the virtues of
communitarian identity and no trace of bourgeois boogeymen.
Do YOU really accept this claim: “We can only see
ourselves through the texts we make and give others” (18)?
She quotes Stuart Hall, writing that “your identity
is also in part becoming through the writing” (20). Can this, though, be said
of any activity one engages in? Is writing such a privileged activity? I think
in textual cultures such as ours perhaps it does hold some privilege. But let’s
not get over-excited. Also, it seems to me the assumption that identity is a posteriori is rather unfounded and
debatable—another dogma of literary-scholar-culture. It is the assumption that
you can be anything, anybody. The problem is: no matter who you are you are
still yourself. Your experience implies an experiencer. If you have agency, as
Wysocki insists, then there is a self that chooses its fashioning. But this
self can not be a choice and must exist a priori regarding experience. I really don’t want to
get into a tiresome dismantling of Wysocki’s implicit claims. I just think they're
over-stated and tread on territory endless philosophers have plowed for
centuries with greater yield than platitudes of post-structural 'discourse.'
OT: Ryan, while I have notice that you have read against "post-everything" in pretty much every blog post so far, I hope you don't stop trying to dismantle the implicit claims of the the theorist that we read. You always challenge me to think about my own assumptions about (the) self and identity, but I am unclear about some parts of arguments for the a priori existence of the self. Assuming that you are right (I really think you might be), to what extent can we conflate self and identity? For example, the way I read Freud, he argues that we are meaning making animals: the animal-part implying innate structure, the meaning-part implying created structure, and the making-part implying media. Perhaps I am just Freuding my own misreading of Freud but the making-part self seems to be the Ego. Of course, a fashioned self implies a fashioner but the only way for arts and science to find out something more than the mere fact of the existence is to "read" (or insert non-textual metaphor) the fashioning of these strange animals. I think you are a strong humanist, so I was wondering if your brand of humanism (or my own brand of humanism) approached humans as complex creatures, not "self simply" as Hall claims the third sense of identity rejects. Of course, I might be misreading your version of the self, the experiencer, because I find your argument eerily similar to arguments given by proponent of intelligent design which would have us throw up our hand at the apparent complexity of universe and rest in the designing arms of incredibly simplistic version of God.
ReplyDeletecan't say i am making any claims for intelligent design. i think there are limits to meaning, even in texts. i don't think humans can biologically be able to know everything.
ReplyDelete:)
There is definitely some common ground there. Here is cool story about how new technology is showing us where those limits are http://www.radiolab.org/2010/apr/05/limits-of-science/.
ReplyDeletePardon me for my confusing comparison, I didn't mean to suggest that you were making an argument for intelligent design. I was just trying to acknowledge my own prejudice against that type of thinking (which I think is Aristotelian, but I am not sure). I am just trying to learn and figure out want place the humanities has in the knowledge game, and I feel like you are too.