Straight, No Chaser

From Rice’s blog:

What are the readings complicating regarding the teaching of writing? Assignment creation?

To pose an assignment as part of a Thing, or circulation, then, means you have to think of the Whole, not part.

This means you have to think of the class, not the one assignment. Our challenge now is to be seeing the class as a whole, not as scattered pieces.

Let’s start in that direction: Class goals. Context. Book. Day to day.

Particularly if you are imagining argument or critique as central to the work you will do.

Rather than pro/con, controversial issue, “something of importance,” or related assignment that does not get at what this week’s readings propose, construct the assignment(s) within the larger course based on the whole. In other words, don’t teach the matter of fact assignment (Latour). Instead, can you teach to write matters of concern (Latour)?

First step: what would you read? (invention - see Walker, Corder)

Second step: what does that reading allow students to do? (rhetoric - see Vitanza, Brodkey, Davis, Ray, Barthes)

Third step: what are the larger issues, “gatherings,” gestures, moves, material conditions you want students to engage with and express?

Fourth step: how would students go about researching or exploring the issue/problem/idea/gesture (Johnson) or use the details of their research (Brooke) to remake, rethink, redo (Harris) and rethink assumptions (Skorczewski) in an inventive way (Ulmer, Bishop) where language drives the work (Vitanza, Hartwell, Williams)?

What would be gathered or assembled or added in such research (Latour)?

How might the course/assignment/writing be intertextual/inter-connected (Vitanza)?

Robert Brooke’s understanding of “underlife” stems from Erving Goffman’s books Asylums and Stigma.

In Stigma, Goffman explains that we understand another person’s identity as a product of (1) how they immediately appear to us through dress, bearing, accent, physical features, and the like;* (2) what we know about their history; and (3) the stances they takes towards the groups we assume they belong to (Brooke 142).

I’d like to use these criteria to deconstruct my history with my housemate, whom we’ll call “Danzig” to protect his identity.

I initially assumed that Danzig was your typical “hippie” because of (1) his long hair, his goatee, his sandals, and overall laid back attitude. As I got to know (2) Danzig’s history, I found that he was working toward his M.A. in “Fish and Wildlife,” that he is an avid hunter of all legal animals, employing a bow or rifle, that his father is a Forest Ranger, that he belonged to a fraternity as an undergraduate. (3) Danzig loves to drink “white russians,” not cheap beer, but he considers himself a redneck because of his love for hunting. He considers himself a conservationist, but he is not a “tree hugger,” and he often has to defend his love of hunting against attacks from his peers. He considers hunting to be an act of conservation. And we finally find out that his father wishes that Danzig had taken up medicine because there is no money in “Fish and Wildlife.”

So that’s Danzig’s identity as I understand it. Not your typical “hippie,” eh?

Alright then.

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* NOTE: William James outlines a fairly similar aspect of identity in his book The Principles of Psychology (1890), which also contains fascinating chapters on “The Stream of Thought” and “The Consciousness of Self” that remain relevant to modern thought. Check it out sometime, my droogies.

Apparently, my recent bout with bronchitis and my hydrocodone-induced-sleep-away-vacation from the blogging world has caused domino-like repercussions on a classroom scale. Well, I’m feeling better, and I’m ready to blog. (Don’t call it a comeback!)

So. What was my initial reaction to the grammar/revision readings?

Relief. These articles reinforce what we’ve been practicing in the writing lab — a focus on higher-order, content-based concerns in a student’s writing (i.e. logic, argument, organization, etc.) rather than lower-order grammar concerns. Of course, Nancy Sommers would prefer it if we, as instructors, did not “rubber stamp” our higher-order comments. And that’s an ideal suggestion, but during the grading 60+ papers, how are instructors to avoid “rubber stamping”?

-Well, Eric. You should make your “This paragraph needs to be expanded” comment specific to the point/topic at hand. Perhaps you could suggest avenues of exploration for the student.

-That sounds time-consuming. It sounds like more work.

-You know what’s more work, Eric? Meticulously searching for split infinitives and dangling modifiers and marking every one of those “errors” with your red pen!

-Well, I agree entirely with you there. It’s not my intention as a future-composition-instructor to focus my energy on grammar usage and spelling. But to give each essay the specific feedback it most likely deserves? When am I supposed to find the time to work on my Master’s thesis?

-Sucks to your thesis! I’m not going to lie to you, Eric. Grading papers with focused attention is going to be time-consuming, and it’s going to be exhausting. It’ll be hard at first. But you’ll get the hang of it, and it’ll come easier and easier (and hopefully without too much rubber-stamping).

-Well, I’m glad you’re optimistic.

-I have to be.

-Why?

-Because freshman can smell fear.

-So what do we do with grammar then?

[Everyone laughs.]

When people ask me: “Who is your favorite philosopher?” I am inclined to answer Donald Davidson (though Wittgenstein and Marx are both contenders in their own right.)

I have been fascinated (and sympathetic) with Davidson ever since I read his essay “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme” (1974) in my undergrad epistemology class in March 2005. (Yes, I actually remember the date.)

So upon reading Diane Davis’ “Finitude’s Clamor” I was quite pleased to see Davidson mentioned on page 125 as a primary influence on Thomas Kent. It must be said that I’ve never any of read Kent’s work, so I have no way of telling whether he is a close disciple of Davidson or whether Diane Davis adequately interprets Kent.

That being said, I read Diane Davis’s rejection of Kent’s “hermeneutics” as a rejection of Davidson, and thus I felt compelled to defend my main squeeze, Donald Davidson.

First…

[At this point Eric stopped and opened his collection of essays by Donald Davidson entitled Subjective, Intersubjective, and Objective. Upon scrutinizing his scribbles and notes in the margins, Eric felt there was too much crucial ground to cover in one mere blog post, and so he left his “A Defense of Davidson” project for another day… to appear most likely in the form of a wiki and so forth.]

But know this: Davidson is probably best known for his notion of “triangulation,” first introduced in his essay “Rational Animals” in 1982. But Davidson would continue to elaborate and defend his theory of “triangulation” throughout his career.

The notion of triangulation is defined by a three-way conceptual interdependence between knowledge of oneself, knowledge of others and knowledge of the world.

Just as knowledge of language cannot be separated from our more general knowledge of the world, so Davidson argues that knowledge of oneself, knowledge of other persons and knowledge of a common, “objective” world form an interdependent set of concepts no one of which is possible in the absence of the others.

–“The basic situation is one that involves two or more creatures simultaneously in interaction with each other and the world they share” (Davidson 128).

–Each creature interacts with an object, “but what gives the concept of the way things are objectively is the base line formed between the creatures by language” (Davidson 105).

–For Davidson, the three varieties of knowledge (i.e. subject, intersubjective, and objective) are inseparable, and yet they are also irreducible.

Final note: Davidson and Diane Davis would no doubt disagree on a number of issues (e.g. 3a and 3b on page 138).

That being said, my admiration of Davidson has not caused me to stubbornly say “no! no! NO!” to Diane Davis.

I like much of what Diane Davis has to say. For example: “The goal of writing would not be to defend one’s thesis and then cleanly and clearly wrap up. Rather, the stated goal of the essay in such a course would be to hold the door open on this thesis (and so, on one’s writing-being)…” (Davis 141).

Fin.

Allyson and I are presenting this week on “Personal Writing.” That being said, I would rather not discuss the ideas in the reading assignments as of yet. That would ruin the surprise.

So I’d like to introduce a column for the music historian and aficionado in us all, temporarily entitled “the best bands you never heard of….” Rather than an attempt to sound snide or elitist, the title simply refers to lesser known musicians and groups who perhaps have not garnered the recognition they deserve.

You ask: “How does this relate to Rhetoric and Composition?”

I have no idea. But I’m working on a reply for that question. But obviously the music and the culture surrounding music can be read and unpacked as a kind of “text.”

And so. This week, I’d like to introduce a brilliant and energetic band known as… The Embarrassment.

Years: Formed in Wichita, Kansas in 1979, The Embarrassment toured consistently until their breakup in 1983.

Sound: Angular guitar lines and throbbing bass licks in a “post-punk” vein reminiscent of better-known contemporaries like Gang of Four, Mission of Burma, and the Feelies. Some critics have written off this band as an inferior and derelict Buzzcocks. They are wrong. The Embarrassment take elements of pop, country, disco, and metal and make it their own, infusing their songs with that lacerating and eclectic “Wichita sound.”

The Embarrassment’s combustive live shows also added to their prominence and earned them gigs with Iggy Pop, John Cale, and William S. Burroughs.

Lyrics: The lyrics are often associative and allusive (and elusive), but delivered with a deadpan sense of humor. For example, take this lyrical sample from the toe-tapping hit track, “Celebrity Art Party”:

What he does is really good

Nuance, séance, his fiancé

Easy for you to say, doctor

What do you think this is?

An artistic party

Narcissistic Party

Look, there goes Art Carney again.

Albums to own: There is an anthology available on a 2-CD set entitled Heyday 1979-1983. This contains nearly everything and anything The Embarrassment put their name on during this period.

However, if you have a turntable, you should go immediately to eBay and search for a copy of their 1981 self-titled EP and then a copy of their darker Death Travels West EP (1983).

Cultural references: In the classic Nickelodeon television show “The Adventures of Pete and Pete” the two red-headed brothers live in a town known as Wellsville. This is homage to The Embarrassment song entitled “Wellsville.”

It is also rumored that the band’s name, The Embarrassment, is a reference to Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Bluebeard in which a character notes that “embarrassment” is the one word that sums up the human existence.

Well…

I hope this was interesting and informative. Stay tuned for another installment next week.

Until then, don’t choose the wrong song.

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*Addendum: If you’re interested in listening to a sample of any of the music I discuss here and in the future, please let me know. (I’m a mean whistler).