Fundamentalist Poetics, or "Grandma, Where Did Dead People Go Before Jesus Came?"

To paraphrase Viktor Frankl quoting Nietzsche in Man's Search for Meaning - we humans can live with any how as long as we have sufficient why.

For my grandparents, the King James Bible was all the why they ever needed.

In After Theory, Terry Eagleton calls this "a neurotic hunt for solid foundations" (204) - I always called it Chasing the Devil. According to my Assembly-of-God-minister grandfather and my born-to-be-Preacher's-Wife grandmother, anyone who couldn't see that every word in the Bible was minutely, excruciatingly, and, at times, horrifically true and must needs be read in exactly the way Grandpa preached it on Sunday, was obviously and irrefutably being influenced by, if not completely filled with, The Devil.

Eagleton believes this stance is a denial of the "roughness" (204) of life, that Fundamentalists expect to feel life as "a matter ...of treading on thin air" (204) - I must, respectfully, disagree. My grandparents grew up in rural areas of Texas and Louisiana in the early part of the last century with over ten children in each family - lots of chances for children to get sick, get hurt, and die. My great-grandmother was a midwife, which meant that my grandmother, as a young girl, witnessed both birth and death - sometimes simultaneously.

My grandparents married and began a family while traveling many dusty roads of the South around 1930, leading tent revivals, just as the Depression was getting into full swing. Unlike today's t.v. personalities-cum-ministers, my grandfather made only what he received in tithes - they often lived on toast and coffee for weeks at a time. They knew life was "rough;" I argue, they expected nothing else but, instead, waited patiently for reward.

When my grandmother passed away, it was not the thought of "treading [the] thin air" of this world her soul flew toward, but the purified air of a Heaven she felt sure the Bible had promised.

Though I have never been able to share in their "pure ice of absolute certainty" (205), I came to respect very early that they were not trying to hide from reality - they lived long, full lives filled to the top with good and bad, and they embraced every moment. Maybe it's because they didn't have a lot of time for theorizing.

Barry, Super-Readers, and Truth with a Capital "T"

When I first came back to school - and after a semester or two of taking literature "survey" classes - I became frustrated with the idea that, unless I found a way to live forever, I would never have enough time in my life to really get to know every author, every poet, every playwright I was interested in on more than a cursory level.

This semester, I've felt as though I were turning myself into a pretzel trying to capture the "essence" of whatever theory we were studying at the moment. I felt as though I were losing my own perspective in the process of trying to wear someone else's mantle; more than this, I felt, more often than not, detached from what I was writing and that my words were way too often "[bland and superficial]" (Barry 191).

When Barry wrote:

"A genuine interest in one [field of theory] can really only arise from aspects of your own circumstances. These perspectives cannot be put on and off like a suit - they have to emerge and declare themselves with some urgency" (192),

I was grateful.

Theory is like the field of literature itself, too deep and varied for one person to ever be able to focus well and with relevance on more than one area in any one lifetime.

A Talking Book and the Silence of the Dominated

How does silence make, deconstruct, and appropriate meaning? Language has no inherent meaning - what we state, whether written or oral - is true before we verbalize it. Even without words - truth exists.

No matter how eloquently we speak, language only signifies truth (Truth) and our words only create the metaphor for meaning. We can argue, then, that, in silence, we are closer to original intent, especially when the signifier is a member of a dominated group who is merely appropriating the language and structure of someone else's cultural point of view.

In silence, we may refuse to "play the game;" sometimes it's the only move of power available.

In "Writing, 'Race,' and the Difference It Makes," Henry Louis Gates, Jr. teaches that "language use signifies the difference between cultures and their possessions of power... the difference between subordinate and superordinate, between bondsman and lord" (1894).

In a social structure in which race "[lends] to even supposedly innocent descriptions of cultural tendencies and differences the sanction of God, biology, or the natural" (1893),

a society in which a poet like Phyllis Wheatley must prove her grasp of the dominant language after proving her facility by writing a noted volume of poetry in that language,

how can any dominated group fight using the only linguistic weapon available with impunity - when even "to attempt to appropriate [their] own discourses using Western critical theory [at the very least] 'uncritically' is to substitute one mode of neocolonialism for another" (1902)?

"The trope of the talking book," says Gates, "is not a trope of the presence of voice at all, but of its absence" (1900), the absence of the black [minority] voice which, through an appropriation of legitimate language "[preserves]...a tradition of [difference]" (1901).

Insignificant Linguisic Interaction

Spring 2009 - my first semester as a "teacher:" I walked into my very first Eng 090 classroom at Pueblo Community College, so nervous I couldn't remember if I even actually spoke English - how would I presume to teach it?

23 faces stared at me with varying degrees of trust and friendliness as I handed out syllabi and explained department policy. Then, as I had carefully pre-planned, I asked the class to take out pen and paper for a free-write exercise. At the mark of my completely un-empowered word, all at once, 23 people reached for notebooks and pens and began to write like robots. It was one of the most surreal moments of my life.

In Language & Symbolic Power, Pierre Bourdieu "portrays everyday lingquisic exchanges as situated encounters between agents endowed with socially structured resources and competencies, in such a way that every linguistic interaction, however personal and insignificant it may seem, bears the traces of social structure that it both expresses and helps to reproduce" ("Editor's Introduction" 2).

In other words, though those students didn't know me from a hole in the ground, even the people who glared distrust at me from the minute I walked to the front of the class did exactly what I asked of them because of the "complex [and powerful] historical process" (5) developed in this country around the idea of "teacher" as signifer. It was "habitus" - what Bourdieu sees as a "set of dispositions which incline agents to act and react in certain ways" (12) - that "entitled [me] to speak in the circumstance" (8). They listened because 13 years (more or less) of public schooling inculcated them with specific actions and expectations. I, on the other hand, found myself in a situation "[lacking] congruence", in which I was unsure of exactly "how to act and was [at least for a while] lost for words" (17)

Very Superstitious

Neither of my mother's parents were educated beyond the sixth grade, but my grandfather became an ordained Assembly of God minister - a "learned" man of God.

My grandmother grew up in rural Louisiana; her mother was the local midwife and "healer" who believed the power of prayer superseded all.

My grandparents met and married around the time of the Great Depression; their "conditions" colored by poverty, struggle, and Fundamentalist Christian superstitions, they were girded by the hope ("faith"?) that no matter how they toiled or what they endured if they were "[good] subjects" (Althusser 1271), subjugating themselves to the Will of the Subject (1272) in this world, a better world - with more satisfying conditions - awaited.

My mother moved to Colorado, married a law student, and finished a college education in the late sixties and seventies - she was a staunch feminist, and that's the world I was raised in. Consequently, outside of their conditions, I noticed the way my grandparents' Biblical ideologies morphed in direct correlation "to those [perceived] conditions of existence" (1265), and I rejected their religion at a very early age as childish and nonsensical.

I was unable to reject all religion, however:

"Before its birth, the child is ...always - already a subject, appointed as a subject in and by the specific familial ideological configuration" (1270)

and spent many years searching for the specific explanation of the conditions of existence as I perceived them.

Finally, as I approached 40, I recognized that searching for another belief system to take the place of my grandparents' rejected religion failed to get me any closer to the answers I sought or to the "knowledge of the mechanism [of recognition]" (1269) at all. In a way, this has become the new ideology of my life - and I continue to be the subject.

We Can't Fix What We Won't See

"And that clarity helps us remember that all of us, female and male, have been socialized from birth on to accept sexist thought and action" (viii)...

as I was reading bell hooks' Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, a movie came on t.v. - one I had seen so many times before, at first I didn't even recognize the connection.

Baby Boom starring Diane Keaton came out in 1987. In the opening sequence, a narrative voice over (Candice Bergen, I think) a standard Bill Conti 80's score and a background scene emphasizing busy New York streets filled with women wearing skirt-suits and tennis shoes (no one could walk that fast in heels) assures us that "33% of the American workforce is female. Three generations of women," we are told, "have turned a thousand years of tradition on its ear."

Eventually, we are introduced to J.C. (a suitably androgynous name), known in the business world as "the Tiger Lady...first in her class at Yale with an MBA from Harvard." J.C. is a marketing executive who is soon offered a partnership - with reservations, of course, because she may change her mind at any moment and walk away from her hard-earned, six million dollar a year salary to start creating babies instead of ad campaigns.

"You know that normally I don't think of you as a woman," her boss tells her, "but in this case I do have to look at you as a woman-slash-partner...I'm lucky," he says, "[as a man] I can have it all." To nail the partnership, she tells him what he wants to hear:

"I don't want it all. I don't."

Before 29 more movie-minutes have run, however, J.C. is nearly ready to walk away from it all after "inheriting" a baby from deceased relatives, a baby she has no idea what to do with until, miraculously, while taking the child's temperature (rectally) she finds her inner-Mother and falls in love. Before the movie closes, she will lose her job, move to the country (after purchasing a 60+ acre farm with a working apple orchard), develop and market her very own gourmet baby food, and shove her new-found success in her former company's collective face.

On the surfact it's just a sweet movie with an obvious feminist bias - all based on what Barry calls "essentialism:"the "view that there is some natural given essence of the feminine, that's universal and unchangeable" (128), but by squinting your eyes ever so slightly, this innocent movie becomes a grand cog in bell hooks' "systemic institutionalized sexism" (1) machine.

Not only did the script not consider the possibility that a woman's heart would not automatically be changed by the mere presence of a baby but the fact that J.C. uses a stream of working-class women (secretaries, nannies and later employees) who are barely given any voice and are often portrayed as bumpkins or damaged in some way (and absolutely no women of color) is never even mentioned.

"By failing to create a mass-based educational movement to teach everyone about feminism we allow mainstream patriarchal mass media to remain the primary place where folks learn about feminism, and most of what they learn is negative" (23).

The character of J.C. was what hooks calls a "reformist feminist" who was able to "break free of male domination in the workforce and be more self-determining in [her] lifestyle" (5) without a second thought to her less fortunate "sisters" in the struggle. Movies like this, produced in the "patriarchal mass media" allowed everyone to pretend the feminist battle was not only over and done - but won. Years after this movie was released (and since played and re-played on weekend television), I sat in a Women's Studies class, full of young female students who all "assume[d] that sexism [was]no longer [a] problem" (17).

But women still make significantly less than men in the workplace, most single-parent homes are still headed by women, and they still live, for the most part, below the poverty line. Birth control is not covered under most insurance policies, but Viagra is. None of the young women in that classroom even considered voting for Hilary Clinton - but they still believed they could do and be anything that men could.

If they can't see a problem, they will never look for a solution.

No Art in the Void

I turned to the "art" of journaling and from there to "creative" writing many years ago in order to save my sanity as a young mother with four small children and a nasty case of cabin fever. I learned quickly that what I wrote mirrored the unspoken, nearly unthought, emotions and contexts in my head. Even then I knew I couldn't separate internal and external experience in any significant way.

We see only with our own eyes and are seldom our own best judge or most honest critic. It requires no particular stretch then to find agreement with Marxist theorists who believe "the author is unaware of precisely what he or she is saying or revealing in [his or her] text" (Barry 161).

However, Hegel points out in The Phenomenology of Spirit "work forms and shapes" the worker (The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism 635), and any English major knows - writing is work. The author (artist) creates initially from a place of social and cultural context, but the process of writing shapes her in unexpected ways, and she is no longer just the product of society but sees from a new place, perhaps a collaborative or a dialectic between social and work experience...

Through this process of change, the author (artist) gains authority as an agent in the "struggle for power" (Barry 151) against the current dominant class, the struggle which defines the Marxist ideal of progress and without which progress would be impossible.

The Power of Pop Culture to Create Real

"Even today," Derrida said, "the notion of a structure lacking any center represents the unthinkable itself" ("Structure" 115) - this is chaos. We believe in the need for meaning as a basis for the "moral" choices we make; without the "transcendental signifier" we are alone with our own will, with no one to blame when the choices go wrong.

A student told me he wished we could all be blasted back to the Stone Age. He said he was just bored - but maybe he's searching for purpose in a generation being taught reality is found on MTV and survival is a game with only one winner per season. This student and others display a startling lack of connection to Foucault's "historical knowledge of struggles" (Foucault 129).

Jameson says Foucault's theory of "genealogy" makes a clear statement for a nonlinear history ("Postmodern" 269), but our modern cultural history is being deconstructed one episode at a time, giving the illusion of a linear, repeating history that restarts itself at the beginning of every new season. Jameson's "frantic economic urgency of producing fresh waves of ever more novel-seeming goods" (270) has led to a reality-show mentality of relationship parodies and communities that last only until we vote someone else off the island to save ourselves.

Though Foucault argued the "endlessly repeated [definition of power as repression]" (134) is "wholly inadequate to the analysis" of power (135), I have to respectfully disagree. Merriam-Webster online defines repression as that which "[prevents] the natural or normal expression, activity or development." What we have right now is a generation repressed, seeking to deconstruct its own society "back to the Stone Age" - a generation to which chaos seems like a viable alternative.

Derrida's Garme...Or, All the Theory in Ft. Knox

Peter Barry reminds us of something we all understand as we get older: rebellion often begins when we "accuse [our] predecessors [our elders] of not having the courage of their convictions" (Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, 57). Jacques Derrida, revels in the childish rebellion in "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences." He calls linguistic theory a "game" and the nonstandard manipulation of language "freeplay" (116).

He bases his arguments (his rebellion) on the idea that language has no inherent ("transcendental or privileged" (117)) meaning. Concluding, therefore, that the organized structure of language can have "no access to any fixed landmark which is beyond linguistic processing" (Barry, 57). There is no linguistic reality except that which we create, which, by our own (standard) definition, means it's not real at all.

Everything we know or have learned through language, then, is construct - not a particularly arguable thought for either Structuralists or Post-Structuralists. In fact, Barry differentiates between the attitude of the two not by whether or not they buy into constructed language as a concept, but by whether or not they are willing to accept it as a foundation for defining meaning (61)regardless. For Post-Structuralists, says Barry, language is too "liquid" to rely on even provisionally (62).

But, Derrida defines it as a game - possibly a "quasi-religious" game(Barry 65) from which he and his compatriots derive "a certain masochistic, intellectual pleasure" (Barry, 61) - but, still, just a game. The pieces are signifiers and are moved around in hopes of disproving any hypothetical center that can be defined by the language that creates them. But, even Derrida understands we can't "[refuse the concept]" of sign and signifier completely (Derrida, 117).

We can choose to play with the difference between signifier and signified - that is, we can know that the word "tree" is not the same as the actual concrete, sensually recognized entity which is created outside of our minds, therefore outside of our language - but that doesn't negate the fact that, until an as yet undiscovered alternative comes along, we will continue to use systems of language to communicate using the word "tree" to describe certain plant life - even when it means communicating about what it is or isn't actually being communicated.

Theory is a form of mental gymnastics - Post-Structuralists like Jacques Derrida acknowledge and play with this fact. Now that he has gone, however, into a place "as yet unnameable" to the rest of us, we might never know if he took the game seriously or is now laughing as we try desperately to figure out what sort of "formless, mute, infant" monster he was attempting to give birth to (Derrida, 119).

There Are Always (@ Least) 2 Sides

In a very Augustinian approach, Peter Barry wishes to give a "clear explanation and demonstration" (1) of the art and importance of literary theory. He also wants to help the reader (student) "make some personal sense of theory"(2), wonderful for someone who has always believed a personal sense of literary interpretation is all we can honestly claim.

As Morse Peckham points out - even the New Critics are "governed by an ideology of which the practitioners are themselves unaware" (111). I love a good "close reading." Like Barry, I find "intensive reading [often] more useful than extensive reading"(4); however,I can't lie and say I don't sometimes find Formalist theory full of "meaningless, pretentious jargon" (7).

On the other hand, though I agree with Jonathan Culler that "literature is a form of communication" (100) - and we should all be talking in one form or another - when we can hardly claim to know our own individual minds, how on earth can we judge the one true meaning for literary texts written by those we will probably never meet?

An even-handed statement, then, from Cleanth Brooks spoke with the loudest and clearest voice this week:

The various imports of a given work may well be worth studying. ...But such work, valuable and necessary as it may be, is to be distinguished from a criticism of the work itself" (28).

We must examine texts for what they add to the on-going human dialogue, but we must not forget to simply appreciate literature (and all forms of art) for what it may potentially add to the on-going dialogue we have with our own soul.

The Rhetoric of Meaning

Now, I know I've lost it - I finished my reading days ago, and I'm still wandering around debating with myself about the value of rhetoric (Is it an art or a con man's best friend?) Then I decided (somewhere in my sleep, I think) that it's just another way we search (academically, of course) for meaning.

Whether we think of it as necessary to a life of civic duty, or we believe it's nothing but a distraction on the way to finding greater Truth it is actually just another metaphor available to define values we hold as inexplicably linked with the reason for our precarious human existence. Why are we here? What does it all mean? Is it creation? Human relation? Discovering the soul's ultimate purpose?

I might even go so far as to argue (if I felt like arguing) that the theorist's style says much about those values. Maybe when we feel the need (like Cicero)to map each possible path an argument might take, we are actually trying to control outcomes, because our faith (in Ultimate Meaning) is held a little uneasily.

On the other hand, the iron-fisted approach of Luther and his rhetorical counter-part Peter Ramus could indicate an (subconscious?) awareness of the precarious hold they have (or at least that the masses had/have) on their own religious mythology (e.g. Invention had to be restricted because Scripture was the "final word," and scrutiny of Scripture reveals an undeniable fact: at the heart of Christianity lies faith -a quality intrinsically immune to rhetorical argument - you either have it or you don't).

Rhetoric, then, I have decided, is a scholar's way of defining personal meaning through academic discourse - and the beat goes on...

Necessity is It's Mother

I wish I had the eloquence of Quintilian or Erasmus so that I might better express effectively the things that went through my mind with this week’s readings (even with the pages and pages of notes).

What I seemed to see was that the original arguments of rhetoric as art versus being just a practical instrument used in civic discourse had not much changed from the age of Cicero and Quintilian, and – arguably – even from that Aristotle and Isocrates. What seemed to happen, is that it would be “arranged” and “re-arranged” (pun intended), often by the giving and taking away again the gifts of invention.

In the era of horrific violence we now call the Renaissance, “the very abundance of lore then available led to the perception of a need for simplification” (Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition, 119-20). George Trebizond, very practically, decided that invention was a “skill…acquired through experience alone” (116), defining rhetoric as something “pragmatic” and “indifferent to morality” (115).

To Agricola, invention merely provided “maxims” which supplied “the criteria by which an argument may be taken as valid and true. He separated invention for dialectic, taking away any idea of probability and argument, leaving (so he believed) certainty and assertions (125). They needed certainty in a world turned upside down – then as the debate over free will heated, Peter Ramus stepped in…

Ramus restricted invention in his quest to raise Scripture the last word in all argument – making argument completely unnecessary, transforming rhetoric into nothing more than “the vehicle for the transmission of [God’s truth] to an audience unprepared to accept it” (130).

In the seventeenth century, rhetoric and religion became inextricably tied s the art focused on moving men’s minds through their emotions. Bartholomeus Keckermann defined invention as a way to reorganize traditional doctrines “that [made] sense of them in terms of what he [saw] as the primary goal of rhetoric… ‘to move the emotions and the will of men’” (qtd. in Conley, 158).

But, in a time of scientific inquiry and constant political unrest, philosophers like Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes saw rhetoric – and it’s handmaiden, invention – in much the same light most people (not in this class, of course) view it today, as a dangerous manipulation of men’s minds.

Apparently, the old adage: necessity is the mother of invention, is more rhetorical than I realized.

The More Things Change...

In “Topica”, Aristotle states that “reasoning is a demonstration when it proceeds from premises which are true and primary” (Readings from Classical Rhetoric, 111) – it seems those born with a mandate to speak, and to publish about speaking – those we might agree to call rhetoricians – all want to start from the same “true and primary” place, but they all end up someplace completely different (at least they think they do).

“All [men],” said Aristotle, “up to a certain point, endeavor to criticize or uphold an argument to defend themselves or to accuse” (117). Apparently, then, as now we must ask: Is the “natural” rhetor – born not only with a silver tongue but an inner compass pointing to true North (Kairos) – a “good man” as defined by Quintilian (“Institutio Oratoria,” Readings from Classical Rhetoric, 211)?

Or, is he a man “uninstructed and uncultivated,” who “always prefers utility to moral value” (Cicero, “De Partitione Oratoria, Readings from Classical Rhetoric, 193)?

If the latter is the case, does the man really lack a moral compass, or does his lack of education merely mean that when he speaks out – he lacks “oratory [effect]” (Cicero, “Brutus,” Readings from Classical Rhetoric, 175) to either defend himself or “accuse”?

Through the centuries it seems one of the few things the “Ancients” have been able to agree on is that only men (not women, who don’t count at all, of course) of a certain class can understand the depth of the questions surrounding rhetoric – and whether it is one of the most important arts in the whole of civilization or just a sham created by con artists – of a certain class, of course.

The Truth is Unknowable, So Question Everything

Thomas M. Conley, in Rhetoric in the European Tradition, teaches that "public discussion, where options were debated and consensus sought, was evidently the traditional way in which decisions were reached" (2). In other words, people have been talking each other into things for a very long time.

The type of rhetoric may change, so the story goes, but not the actual idea of "elaboration and rearticulation" (24). Yet, it is arguable that what we are looking at via the Sophists, Plato, Aristotle, and Isocrates is not just four types of argument, but four distinct personality types persuading us toward their own particular worldviews.

Gorgias, for instance, with the heart of either a politician or a dictator (not sure which), may have called himself a teacher, but he taught the manipulation of audience - not the enlightenment, and a "unilateral transaction between an active speaker and a passive audience" (6) sounds a little like a drug deal to me.

Protagoras, to a lesser extent, and Isocrates, on the other hand, were truly teachers. For them it was not about manipulating the audience nor about finding some immutable Truth - which "for all practical purpose, was held by Protagoras to be inaccessible" (5). For the teacher-personality, rhetoric becomes a way to get everyone on the same civically-minded page.

Plato was a born philosopher. For him, rhetoric was finding and communicating that greater Truth grasped "only by the lover of wisdom who apprehends them as a result of divine inspiration or by recollection ... of them as they were viewed by the soul before birth" (8). I'm guessing he believed he was one such blessed "lover."

Aristotle, Plato's genius student-who-could, felt that rhetoric stood on its own as an art form: reason for reason's sake. Like Isocrates, and Protagoras before him, Aristotle looked at public discourse as the art of seeing possibilities (technically: "probabilities"). Unlike the teachers of art, however, Aristotle was the the artist, with the artist's devotion to product - and not what the product could necessarily bring to the community at large.

Rhetorical style then, I think it can be argued, is a reflection of the personality and the values of the rhetor. Conley's "four basic models" (24), may reflect four possible personality types of thinkers who often are instrumental in changing our world. I haven't yet decided if this thought comforts me or not.

Crowley and the Origins of Consciousness

"Consiousness does not precede, and give birth to, language; rather, it is language that makes consciousness possible." - Hmmm.

Since we're talking deconstruction, we will have to deconstruct the word "consciousness."

I have always wondered about the role language acquisition plays in memory. Can we construct memory without language? And, isn't consciousness just an awareness of ourselves that would of necessity include the process of remembering who and where we've been?

For as long as I can remember, I've had a set of moving pictures in my head for which, until relatively recently, I had no frame of reference:

A very, very small white house, out on a lonely prarie, unpainted wooden steps up to an unpainted wooden porch with whitewashed railings. Inside, the house is very dark and close - though it doesn't feel cramped; I see only a living room (filled with knick-knacks), a kitchen, and a tiny bedroom. A woman lives alone in the house, a woman with hair so long it reaches down to the backs of her knees. I like the woman a lot when I see her, but I'm not sure who she is - I don't even have a name.

I'd held those pictures inside, because I didn't know what they meant; they were simply a part of my knowing of myself. Finally though, I shared this with my mother whose response was:

"Oh, my goodness, that was Aunt Eunice's house in Texas. How on earth could you remember that; you couldn't have been more than a year and a half old when she died."

"But, did I visit her in her home while she was alive?" I asked.

"Yes, many times. You really seemed to love being with her."

My mother always said I learned to speak at an early age - so it is possible these memories could be linked to some rudimentary language development, but I don't think so, simply because there were never (and still aren't) any words or speech of any kind associated with them - just the pictures.

So, which came first: consiousness or language?

Ruszkiewicz: More Debate on Politics... and a Pretty Darn Good Idea

According to Thomas Mattarocci's handout - John Ruszkiewicz "calls into question the right of the teacher to make their own political views those that the student is subjected to in order to learn how to write."

For Min-Zhan Lu and others who argue for a more politicized classroom, this statement assumes that any teacher could walk into a classroom completely free of political agenda in the first place, and that, by not openly confronting subjective leanings, the student is more likely to assume that whatever the instructor says is absolute truth - indicating on a more subtle, therefore incidious way that the student's beliefs are wrong. On the other hand, if the teacher is openly political and encourages the same throughout the class, students may feel more confident in their own agency.

On a lighter note - I really like the concept of following our own writing process as Ruszkiewicz describes in his "Back to the Source" essay - this is another good argument for portfolios in the classroom, especially digital portfolios (even for the teachers).

Flower's Quest and the Holy Grail of Writing Process

It all sounds so simple - when you hit that wall of writer's block, look at Linda Flower's model, figure out where you're stuck, and the answer will be there waiting for you - to the best of my knowledge, they never found the Holy Grail either.

Sarcasm aside, I do see how it should work, when I am on a writing quest with a specific rhetorical agenda in mind, my hands seem to run over the keyboard as though my mind has pre-loaded the entire paper into my fingertips; whereas, when I'm feeling forced to create an argument out of thin air, pulling sentences out of my head is often painful.

For me, however, this does not lead to a flowchart, so much as the curricular question: How do I create asignments that will stimulate my students toward specific rhetorical agendas?

Mike Rose: Creating Thinkers, Not Students

I have not raised any children - I have raised content, competant adults. I do not intend, in the classroom, to create students - I intend to create thinking human beings.

I completely agree with Rose's assumption that students will give to us what we expect from them - I have always found that to be true of anyone.

I do not know what side of the argument I fall on in terms of whether we teach academic texts, literature, or even Berlin's pop-culture. What I do believe in is Anne Ruggles Gere's assertion that it is motivation that creates good writers, and our job as teachers is to help them find that motivation.

I also agree with Rose that to treat "underprepared" students (of any age, but even more so for older students) as though they are incapable of higher thought is insulting and - I think - counter-productive.

Someone Has to Write the Textbooks - John Ramage

By now, anyone who has read any of my blogs, knows I believe in context and creating (constructing) arguments, and I am becoming more and more sure of the necessity of argument (conflict?) in the classroom.

It also has become clear to me that the field of composition has been arguing the same points for many years, to no great effect - there is definitely a need for new blood, here. But, will change ever come via text books, or does change only trickle down slowly into textbooks?

Villanueva and Min-Zhan Lu: The Power of "Red"

In "From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle," Min-Zhan Lu talks about her inner conflict with the word "red." Lu grew up in Maoist China, the daughter of academics who chose English as their "family" language. Lu went to the socialist schools, however, to learn math and science and - inadvertantly learned a whole new language - and a whole new context for language, which, in her article, she embodies in the word "red."

Instead of seeing this as the color of a beautiful rose, at home it became the color of "the commies," at school the color of "revolution." She felt pushed and pulled between meanings, unable, until she was much older, to resolve the two contexts until she was able to accept all parts of her cultural heritage - all parts of herself.

Even in the most seeminly inane comments, teachers can convey to students a difference between the language they enter the classroom with and that which they are expected to use within the classroom - it's another one of those very fine lines we must learn to walk if we are to give every student room to resolve their own inner language struggle and become effective communicators.

Construct, Context, and Lester Failgy's Self

Deconstruction has always amused me - the first time I read Derrida, I laughed (once I figured out what the heck he was saying) because I had been deconstructing my world from the time I was a little girl. For instance, my grandmother used to sing Christian children's hymns to me:

Jesus loves the little children,
all the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white,
they are precious in His sight...

It was not long, however, until I understood that song in her Southern-Jim-Crow context (as opposed to the way I had grown to understand it, which, eventually, became a point of contention between the two of us): of course - absolutely - Jesus loves all the little children - he just loves the little white kids more. From that time, I began analyzing everyone in terms of context (probably over-analyzing would be more accurate).

Lester Faigley seems to be a man after my own heart: we can't fully trust language once we become aware that language does not "[exist] outside of history and [can never be] innocent of politics." The problem is that history and politics also are constructions - at the very bottom of everything, every context is a construct; this is the same wall I hit with Derrida.

Understanding social construct, and having the wherewithal to deconstruct both language and context, is incredibly important when we want to look seriously at what we think we believe about ourselves and our world - but, at some point, we have to work within the construct - within the everyday social contexts, using our fallible language for purposes of practical communication - hoping, as we go, that our knowledge may help us change the context - and the language - ever-so-slightly for social good - which would, by definition, be our own construct.

Nancy Sommers: Understanding Where Writing Comes From

I found Nancy Sommer's ideas on student awareness of their own potential and the possibilities inherent in writing interesting and right where my head has been since beginning this semester as a teacher.

The only point I find I'm not completely in agreement with is the dismissal of the connection between speech and writing. While I agree that writing has as its goal something deeper than everyday speech normally does, making the student look at the connection can still be beneficial. Many Basic Writers come into a composition classroom scared that what we will expect from them will be some painful, alien process. Reminding them that they are already confident language users in the form of speech - as well as the obvious written communication forms (texting, e-mailing, etc) is a way of establishing their agency from the start.

Anne Ruggles Gere, in "Writing Well is the Best Revenge," was saying even in 1978 that for students writing "is a means of demonstrating competence in subject matter rather than as an end in itself. They lack moti-vation to write well" (256). It is, I believe precisely because students don't understand the writing process and what is possible that they seldom see writing as having a "greater purpose" (Beard).

Gere suggests the answer is motivating the students by showing them how to use this process to "shout back" at a society that has left them feeling disenfranchised (257).

"Pop, Pop, Pop Muzik:" Berlin and Pop-Culture in the Writing Classroom

In my Basic Writing class at the community college, I began teaching with Youtube and Stephen King; then, after a couple of weeks - and much discussion about structure and word choice - I snuck in some Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, and even a little Walt Whitman. I was blown away by the student response to these poets. They not only got it, but were inspired toward one of the best class discussions we'd had to that point.

In his presentation on James A. Berlin, Klayton quoted Berlin: "Our consciousness is in large part a product of our material consciousness. But our material conditions are also in part the products of our consciousness"

As a teacher of Basic Writing, this means we must start where our students are - at the place where their "material consciousness" has brought them to. It is always easier to give someone directions when we know the departure point, and so many of our students are starting in the world of pop-culture: MTV, Youtube, MySpace, Facebook, blogs, I-Phones: all creators of consciousness.

As believers in communication and the twin fields of rhetoric and composition - instead of fighting it we should embrace these things that seem to have the whole world writing.

Composition and Creative Writing w/Wendy Bishop

"All writing is creative" - those might be the truest words I've read since beginning this class on theory. For me, it sums up all arguments and discourse surrounding the fields of rhetoric and composition - those I agree with and those I don't.

At our core, as teachers of writing, that is the "product" we work to bring out in our students; whether we prescribe for them the structure we want to see, allow them to express themselves freely, or try to impress upon them the importance of grammatical rules, there is no getting around the fact that each writer (Basic or experienced), must pull the final words out from somewhere inside of them - this is at the heart of the canon of invention.

With Bishop, as with Yancey, I find myself drawn to the pedagogy of portfolios, especially when it relies on writer reflection; as all writing is creative, in order to be truly creative, it must also be reflective. It will, in fact be reflective, though the mirror may belong to the student or equally (and maybe unfortunately) to the teacher, the thoughts began somewhere.

Wasil writes: "[Bishop] works to find theoretical and practical ways to help students share their personal stories in their academic writing."

No matter the topic, everything is personal - just as everything is political - and all writing is creative.

"And in the end"... At Least for Now: Reflecting on Pedagogy

My mind is so full of newly acquired information, that - like my desk - everything is stuffed and stacked and piled with no organizaiton, no coherence - waiting for the semester's end so I can sort through it all. Everytime I read something new, I find a thread leading me somewhere newer. I feel relieved to be taking the summer off from classes so I can actually follow up on some of it.

What I know right here and now, however, is I love what I'm doing and what I'm learning, and I love teaching. This semester, my first as a teacher, has been a joy. I loved creating lesson plans and suprising my students who have never failed to surprise me in turn - one of them asked if we were going to have a lesson on listening, so we spent part of a class period playing "Simon Says."

What I know I've learned is that I have to pay attention to my own mind as well as to theirs - I often find myself walking a thin line between a teacher-centered classroom - with me as entertainment and resident "class clown" - and a student-centered classroom - which is where I want to be; though, I'm still trying to discern the difference between student-centered and student-driven.

I kind of like the idea of a student-driven class, because I've come to believe, both from my own experiences and from reading people like Yancey, Lu, and Lindemann, that it is incredibly important for students to take responsibility for their own education - and it becomes my responsibility to guide, to suggest, and to respond.

I've been planning to do a Master's in Education as well as in English, in order to teach K-12, but I find myself, instead, leaning toward staying in the community college, helping students find stepping stones - and not just dead ends.

I've also come to believe that language is important in every aspect of what we teach - in the words we speak as well as in those we don't (either consciously or subconsciously), and it is possible that we must face conflict, struggle, and argument in the classroom to find out why we say -or don't say - what we choose. This is a subject I hope to study extensively as I move toward working on my thesis - a prospect (like walking into the classroom everyday) that both excites me and scares me to death.

Learning to Teach on My Own - Pedagogy Statement

"Our first responsibility is to listen with understanding to our students voices" (Lindemann, A Rhetoric, 305).

What do I want my students to take away from our classes? Based on what I've seen so far, they are coming to me with a very basic idea of written discourse, but their grammar is really not that far off, and they are good verbal communicators. What seems to be missing is the belief that writing could ever become a viable alternative to the spoken word - when they begin a written "discussion," it is as if they are being asked to speak a foreign language.

"Our function,first and foremost, is not to tell them what to say or how to express it but to help them find their own meanings and styles" (Lindemann, 305).

So, I guess my goal is for them to begin thinking of writing as just an extension of their thoughts and of spoken-word discourse. Learning is not so much learning as it is allowing them to become comfortable discovering a skill they all possess to one extent or another, one they can use to help them understand they are capable of so much more than they might believe.

Certainly, I will offer them a "toolkit" made up of grammatical rules - and explain to them that any project is easier to accomplish when you own the right tools, but do I want them to memorize the rules and drill them into their brains forever? No - for that, their toolkits can also contain resources such as their grammar handbooks and texts, dictionaries, thesauruses, and even websites (the Purdue OWL site, for instance) they can use for reference anytime.

One of the most important "tools" in their arsenal, I hope, will be an understanding of their own learning process. Along with critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, a habit of self-reflection will help them in the rest of their classes as well as in the rest of their lives.

I like Yancey's idea of using space differently in conjunction with teaching composition - and not just in the digital format. I'd love to have a permanent classroom with walls we could use to create a bulletin board for communication or a "gallery" to display work, using space that might even flow off of the page. In a community college setting, of course, this is not possible, so I'll have to find a way to create a similar feel in a portable package.

I have seen with my own eyes the engaging effects of multimedia capabilities in a classroom, but I also appreciate whiteboards and chalkboards and just using paper and pen as students free-write and work in groups.

For me, teaching is about, being a facilitator, a motivational speaker, and a resource guide as well as an instructor. I have come to believe that creating an nonthreatening atmosphere in which the students have a certain amount of control is important to many older, nontraditional students, who expect their educational experience to be relevant to their lives on many different levels.

"To listen, then, is to profess that student voices matter, matter more in fact than our own" (Lindemann, 305)

Learning to Teach with Lindemann

I have, perhaps, put this particular blog off until last - because I don't know where to begin, but once I have, I may not stop. Lindemann's A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers has become the book I carry around in my bag in case I need something interesting to read while I'm waiting to see the dentist.

I have also found multiple ways in which the book is relevant to my writing in class and to the ways in which I have begun to look at my lesson plans each week - I've actually read parts of the book out loud to my 090 classes (from the "What Does the Process Involve?" section, she talks about her own somewhat disjointed writing practices - a good illustration of a real writing process for students who believe that writing comes with ease to some people, just not to them).

The "Questions to ask in creating assignments," as listed on Rebecca Wasil's handout are, I have decided, also and awesome guide for us newbies to the world of teaching.

There have been many theorists we have seen presented, many who I knew I could spend a lifetime studying and still not grasp what they were trying to achieve. For me Lindemann is one I will spend my career as a teacher studying (however long that might be) because she makes perfect sense to me.

The Selfe Who Pays Attention

In our Computers in the Composition Classroom text, Cynthia Selfe has four articles she either wrote or co-wrote. In those articles she talks about rhetoric, about politics, and about literacy and paying attention. In her presentation on Selfe, Cathy Bergin revealed more of Selfe's ideas on technology: urging teachers to "incorporate technology into the classroom," teach students to be "technology scholars," and "be careful" with technology as we teach composition - in other words, once more - pay attention!

Of all the theorists we have read so far who directly deal with the topic of technology in the classroom, Cynthia Selfe seems to have the best grasp on the balance that needs to be maintained. Like Yancey, she urges us not to become "irrelevant," but, in "The Politics of the Interface: Power and Its Exercise in Electronic Contact Zones," she and partner Richard J. Selfe, Jr caution that technology could also be a geopolitical landmine currently "[representing] the dominant tendencies in our culture" (Computers in the Composition Classroom, 65) - we need to pay attention on a larger scale both inside and outside of the classroom.

Her "areas of expertise" (as listed on Bergin's handout) also show other ways in which Selfe pays attention to diverse issues ranging from Feminist Theory to Video Games, from Literacy to Technical Writing.

Selfe pays attention in a world - and possibly a theoretical field - in which people too often accept the status quo. She is a role model to whom we would do well to pay attention.

Bruffee on Construct and Collaboration - Awesome!

One of the most fascinating things I have learned so far as a student of literary and rhetorical theory is probably one of the simplest ideas of all - knowledge is a construct. The first time I really grasped that concept - I know I shouldn't admit this - but, for me, the world of writing turned on its head. When we really understand that words are, by themselves, as empty as Ft. Knox, it opens up whole new galaxies of meaning.

According to our Compbiblio text, Bruffee has been "generally considered the first compositionist to urge consideration of socially constructed knowledge" (36) and he has held that "instructors should use collaboration in the classroom, allowing students to participate in the 'conversations of mankind'" (36) - what a powerful statement - what a powerful thought. If you understand that knowledge is a construct and you are willing to collaborate with others and participate in the ongoing dialogue, you might actually, even if it's only in some small way, shape the "converstations of mankind" - and, in that way, use words that have no meaning on their own to create meaning in the world - how awesome is that?!

Bruffee might just be my new hero.

With Thanks To and Permission from Dr. Yancey

Dr. Yancey was gracious enough to give me permission to post our e-mail interview here on the blog space, and I have created links from my blog to the digital portfolio websites. Thanks Dr. Yancey!

1. Who were your influences in the field of composition and rhetoric?

This is a great question. When I was in graduate school, it was during the 1970s and into the 80s, so I was an early student in composition and rhetoric. I remember reading Lloyd Bitzer’s article on the rhetorical situation, and even on that first reading, realized that his understanding of rhetoric, especially as it was located in exigence, could provide a critical framework for historical scholarship as well as for curriculum and pedagogy—and it has! Ed Corbett’s CCC article on the open hand and the closed fist in rhetoric was another defining text for me. Mickey Harris’ CCC text on first-draft and multiple-draft writers (and Mickey was on my dissertation committee) was another useful text for me; she drew from work conducted in the Purdue writing center, so we saw it develop in process, and that was helpful. And I liked the way it revised the idea that all writers have to revise. I loved the section of the Cowan and Cowan textbook (Writing) on invention: it was the best collection of pedagogical approaches to invention I’ve ever seen. The work of Judith and Geoffey Summerfield was also influential: they focused on the role of comparison as an inventional framework.

Your question has helped me see that I think more in terms of influential texts rather than in terms of influential people.

Does this make sense?

2. Do you have one piece of work you would consider seminal? That is, one work more than any other that articulates your pedagogy and that you believe has had the greatest impact in this field?

Another great question. I think I’d have to cite two pieces. One is my first edited collection on portfolios: Portfolios in the Writing Classroom, 1992. This edited collection included work from middle school through college, so it was read by a wide range of teachers, and at the end of the day, this book is about curriculum and pedagogy working together in way that fosters good assessment. A second piece that has been more influential at the postsecondary level is my CCCC Chair’s Address: “Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key.” It’s also about pedagogy, but it takes an historical look at rhetoric and composition as a discipline as well, so it has a larger cast.

3. What do you feel (what would you like to feel) will be your legacy> within the field of composition theory?>

Oh gosh, a legacy. That’s funny. I used to tease Brian Huot when we were co-editing Assessing Writing that we and the journal would be a footnote in the history of assessment ;)
I suspect that if I have a legacy, it will end up being something to do with assessment or portfolios (both print and e), and/or something to do with my seeing a shift in composition that hadn’t been fully articulated before and then finding ways to support that shift.

4. In a 2005 interview with Richard Colby, you stated that you > didn't want to use electronic portfolios as an assessment tool "unless, by assessment,you mean a formative evaluation of work to enhance programs"(http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/yancey/yancey.htm), could you explain what you meant by "formative evaluation?"

Formative evaluation is the use of assessment to help students while they are in formation: to help them learn. So responding to writing is a kind of formative assessment. Make sense?

5. What is the current, generally accepted, paradigm for assessinge-portfolios? Do you agree with it?

I don’t think there is one yet. I think what currently happens is that people use the criteria of print to assess portfolios, and I think that’s too narrow a set of criteria. But this does depend on how you see the portfolio, and on how much agency the technology provides to students. I have a CCC article on some of this: if the students are working in a scripted online system, they won’t be able to exercise much agency, and the old criteria will suffice. But my view of digital portfolios conceptualizes them as a composition requiring a new set of criteria—including connections; design; and context. Make sense?

6. Finally, could you point me toward some good examples of electronicportfolios (there's so much to choose from out on the web, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed)?

I think we have that covered, but if you want more, let me know?