Exciting! Secret! Thoughts!

A brief defense of my delicious links for the edification and enlightenment of all involved:

1. public domain achieve: watch out Google, you’ve got competition. In a library class/workshop, this website was introduced as a valuable way to search for texts and illustrations. I agreed.

2. pitchfork media: this is a snobby indie music review site that I posted because Eric yelled at me for not having posted it.

3. English short title catalogue: a complete record of all of the titles in the 18th c. If one cannot understand how great this is, I don’t know how to convince them.

4. ECCO: in conjunction with the estc, this site has full text from the 18th c., but not all of them. A pretty good percentage though, I have been told about 3/4ths.

5. Shelley Jackson’s skin project: please see blog entry “Paradox or Attribute-Modality Mismatch” for an in-depth explanation of this one. ***Good luck Allyson!

6. Library Databases: I added this one because there was no reason that I should not add it. We all like the library, right?

7. 8010 Blog: I put this one up because I kept forgetting our class website and this way I didn’t have to remember it (these are now out of order and I apologize, I would have cut and pasted them around, but the format in the blog-write-post-thing lacks the ability, I trust you are all able to follow the list anyway…actually, no one probably noticed that it was out of order because I doubt anyone has the time to look at my delicious account simultaneously with reading this post to verify. If you do, you are a better time-manager than I).

8. Everyone else’s links: because I like you guys.

Stayed tuned for future installments!!

–Editor

With all the discussion about identity formation and the multiple voices of the academy in the readings this week, I find I am reminded of the film Quadrophenia.

Johnson’s focus on understanding specific groups in relationship to the proscribed identity of the academy as well as his (limited) descriptions of subcultures made me think of it would be a fun ‘text’ to introduce into the classroom to confront those issues and open up discussion about them in a way that students might find accessible…also, could clear up some issues for those who have been not informed about mod/rocker subculture, and perhaps give an interesting perspective to the disgruntled (in this case not pierced, but dandy) youths that Johnson describes and how this search for identity can be applied to finding one’s place in academic writing.

And it is cool.

Brooke/Underlife and Writing Instruction Notes; or not notes, but highlighted parts that prove pertinent to my previous statements

“It may be that the process of allowing a particular kind of identity to develop is what contemporary writing is all about” 142

“The identity we assign to a young man is greatly determined, however, by the kinds of information he chooses to give us” 142

the information game/interaction

identity: “a function of organizations…she operates in” 143

Disruptive vs. contained “looking at those activites through which individuals resist or reject the identity assigned them by institutions is a way of looking at how individuals form their sense of identity” 144

How the underlife relates to the class room…

1. related to class activities

2. related to roles of people “speaker is aware of and different from the roles asigned in the situation, that there is more to the speaker than that” 147

3. related to evaluation

4. division of attention

teacher is disruptive, students contained underlife…ought teachers appeal to and recognize the role of the students as participants in an underlife?

teachers encouraging voice: “What’s at stake, it seems is a part of their ‘identity– we would like them to think of themselves as writers rather than students” 150

“writing teachers want to produce writers, not students, and consequently we seek to change our pedagogy to allow the possibility of the writer’s identity” 151

“such a shift in education would be a far-reaching and benefical shift, focusing on the identity and abilities of the student as an original thinker, rather than on the student’s ability to comply with clasroom authority” 152

To obsessively return to the complicated discussion of grammar and the place it holds in the inner-most hearts of us all, I find I must write a quick, fragmented blog about it and ESL students.

In the writing lab, we all know how differently an esl appointment goes. I will thus spare everyone a description of it. But with new perspective, departing from dinosaur-ic current traditional proscriptives, these aren’t as different from other appointments as they initially appear.

My point being to discuss the similarity between the ESL workshop advice and the readings for last week: Not focusing on grammar to the exclusion of the ideas whether creator of idea is esl or not.

It can be tough to do this, especially when grammar becomes distracting. But, if we relinquish our regime as diction dictators we can hopefully see beyond the splitting of infinitives towards the point of the student writing.

I’ve often had esl kids come in and I can’t see the writing for the grammar but, it is really not our job to teach them this, if it is even teachable* (long side contemplation about the teaching of second-languages and the acquisition of grammar).

Instead, though they often do ask for grammar advice, it seems the pointers given at the workshop are more pertinent for making a better piece of writing instead of a simply more correct one (am reminded of interesting point made by group in workshop about some non-colloquial usages being more interesting and indicative of unique perspectives than the strictly idiomatic way).

The workshop we all attended was very helpful for pointing this out.  This lesson, reinforced by our readings, leaves me refreshingly (and uncharacteristically) optimistic about goal in understanding students as writers and not needing to make their papers bleed with the red pen of evaluation**!

*I am not suggesting to not give grammar help, just to note lower priority of it.

**especially good point from Sommers: writing is necessarily not static at revision point of process, and rather a waste of time to proofread prose that will be discarded…

In further discussion of the assignment design in class, another potential approach that was considered and rejected by our group is noted (I have no reason for stating the previous statement in passive voice, nor for drawing attention to my subjectivity as a speaker with a Thompson-esque I).

The Grammar Jar: The idea behind this being a transformation of the swearing jar. In this case, the frowned upon behavior is incorrect grammar. One makes a grammatical error; one is forced to put an object of value (money?) into the jar. Followed by expulsion of student from class and public ridicule.

Adjustment: Allyson proposed making the grammar jar contain a subtitle: Beer Money, or some such fun (age appropriate) thing. This way, students would not be fearful of making a mistake, but the mistake could be sought out as a way to contribute to whatever enjoyable activity is mentioned in the sub-title…However! they are not permitted to make the mistake only, but must demonstrate an understanding of why it is wrong. Thus, they use the social function of the sub-title to facilitate a discussion of correct grammar.

However, as we discovered, this doesn’t address the more ‘meta’ level of the issue.

Thus, the mad-lib idea: In this way, one can see that it isn’t necessarily the improper use of parts of speech that creates confusion, but turns the focus onto the meta issues of grammar– communicating.

The mad-libs, though correct, don’t communicate a clear idea….

Translation into assignment I have seen (and found interesting) in the writing lab:

Bad prose. The assignment consisted of the student seeking out a bad piece of writing that (which???), though grammatically correct, is incomprehensible. The student is required to point out the instances in which the meaning is lost in a maze of clauses, jargon and unnecessary complication. Describe the actual meaning implied by this conglomeration of bad writing then to rewrite it clearly (while maintaining correctness in a way that this sentence fragment does not).

What is grammar anyway? Have we lost touch with the descriptive function of grammar definition and transitioned into a proscriptive (elitist) mentality?

Why does one feel that to write academically, one must use grammar to complicate rather than communicate? The mad-libs/writing-lab-observed-assignment address and attempt to offer alternatives to this mode of writing.

Focus: Communication.

-Thompson

a.  verb; to thompson: 

                1. the act of futile self-assertion

                                ie: In my personal writing essay, I thompsoned my way into a corner of                                        solipsistic garbage.

                2. Defacement of property; collq.

                                ie: That billboard was totality thompsoned.

b. adjective; thompsonesque:

                 1. A stupid individual who fails to recognize own insignificance

                        ie: The thompsonesque girl fell asleep during philosophy class.

Notes and questions (interspersed with amusing anecdotes):

According to Davis, the Thompson’s of the world are stupid, finitude-y beings, unaware of their failure to matter as individuals in the world… to display their own sense of “I” on the “I” that has been…erected…by others.  As Brian questions in Prelude to Discussion, I find a place to begin thinking about the pedagogy that Davis endorses, and wondering about the paradox of community/ collaborative effort as a manifestation of multiple “I”s.  Are the “I”s more important merely because they are pooled together, and thus their singular assertion of a community of selves more valid?

What about when it is the “text” that defaces the “I”?  Should we assume that the individual text as an “I” is important or is it the collaborative bodies, who have been defaced, that are important? 

What is she talking about (you wonder at this point)?  Oh, don’t worry…I’ll tell you.

In an English class I had as an undergraduate (survey of brit lit from nascence to reformation), my otherwise typical (not meant in pejorative way) professor had an unusual tattoo. On the inside of his upper arm was a single word*, followed by a question mark.

It was distracting.

Upon being asked about this tattoo, the professor described a project in which he had taken part, a fascinating inversion of self-imposing-on-text to text-imposing-on-self.  Here’s the “skin”ny:

Shelley Jackson composed a work, “Skin” (http://www.ineradicablestain.com/skindex.html ).  In a fascinating experiment with new mediums, the text only exists in the form of single word tattoos on a variety of individuals across the country (world?).  The text lives through the collaborative body of the people.  It exists, but it is not known to any but those who were pieces of the text.  And, coolly, it is not static.  As the professor explained, the literal meaning changes as participants of the project die or are variously maimed/ subject to amputation.  The piece is entropic-ly hastening towards non-existence again.

The “I”s were made subservient to the text, yet, it was only through the “I”s that the text could be experienced, as a single meaningless component, with no potential of communicating to others the place they occupied in the scheme of the text, or the text itself.

An Apology for Thompson: though one of Thompson’s failings is that in expressing his/her identity, s/he has actually remained as anonymous as if not marked out by the gigantic letters (which, is only in keeping with the gigantic surface on which s/he is writing), it is through this anonymity that Thompson has prevailed.  Had the graffitist been so specific that s/he left a full name and contact info, or maybe a (n ethnocentric example) social security number, than s/he could have been identified but then, alas…arrest and imprisonment would have followed. 

Perhaps the text “Skin”, in a forced anonymity and mortal existence, recognizes the futility on both sides of the equation.  Individuals are eventually meaningless and insignificant, but texts and collaboration ultimately cannot transcend the same limitations that the individual is faced with.

Is the fundamentally anonymous proclamation of self the best we can hope for?  Aren’t we all as anonymous as Thompson even if we have disclosed all of the information about our ephemeral selves? What do we know about the column?  The text is fleeting, Thompson is fleeting, and Pompey’s column is fleeting.  I’m not sure how the collaborating of Thompson’s makes for a more permanent/significant Thompson than the singular Thompson.

The preceding statement, I worry, is too simple.  I hope the collaborative discussion of the “I”s in class will help me to ‘get’ Davis’s point if I have missed it.

* I refrain from mentioning the actual word in respect of the project, being unsure whether or not the author would approve of any component of the text being represented in any other form.

Inquiry: What was the debt of inspiration that I referred to in blog post, “A Retraction”?

Response: I suppose I only meant that I began thinking about the issues I discussed based on the impressions I got from the readings. But, saying it in that way seemed so uninteresting. I was inexplicably compelled to dress up my impression in an attempt to resurrect my thwarted dreams of being a creative writer, especially because I so much enjoyed the creative approach of the critics. Aha! The inspiration was my enjoyment of the style of the articles.

Digression: My first attempt at creative writing….no wait, my first attempt was a story I wrote about a Panda Bear trying to outmaneuver a Mongoose (I think, now, that I was merely ripping off Rikki Tikki Tavi).

Revision: The attempt at creative writing that I want to talk about…I, at 9 years old, saw a tiny white mouse fed to a snake (name: Alice Cooper). The grotesquely unhinging jaw, the distorted lump, half wiggling as it is forced down the snake’s throat- not even its throat, but as it is squeezed along inside the lengths of the snake’s body- haunted me. I cried inconsolably.

Not allowing the matter to rest, I obsessively recalled the memory and found it ghastly and selfish to pretend it had not happened (at this point I must have been unaware of the dynamics of meat production, for I didn’t become a vegetarian for another few years. I made no connection between my own eating habits and the snake or I would probably have become intolerable to my caretakers). It seemed to be horrible to go on with such a tragedy in the world.

I would right (or do I mean write?) this wrong. I set about telling the story of the mouse’s life, to make known he who was, now, no more. It would be my first, my finest, my only novel. I got as far as chapter one.

Story: Mouse, I forget entirely what I named him, but he had a name, no doubt, one that shined with nobility and excellence (or, more probably, it was stupid) had a little sister (very much like me). The two would play marbles together until the fateful day when prized marble went missing… Finis…

I think my plan was to make the mouse go in search of the marble and thus be captured, taken to pet store and meet with doom, but I could never get beyond the first part. I lost my inspiration when my childish resilience would no longer allow me to obsess about the mouse, or maybe I found I preferred to let him live, to ignore the fatality of death that unhinges its jaws before us all. In any event, it was prematurely cut off.

Conclusion: My business as a creative writer has continually been cut short. Is it that I lack the inspiration that I facetiously claimed a debt to in ‘a retraction’? To be guided to find it again in an assignment like the alter-ego/mystory would be excellent fun. I would like to try it someday. Or perhaps in the essays read for last week, I saw the potential to yield to my impulses to creatively write the wrongs of the world while still doing so in a $cholarly way.

In the recent blog, “warning: vital questions sure to keep you up all night”, one “rroma” made the claim that she had read Corder and Bishop and that they were the fodder for her otherwise immaculate reflections.

This is simply not so.

RRoma should have said it was Corder and Brodkey to whom she owed the debt of inspiration.  It is this reporter’s duty and pleasure to correct the error and apologize for any misunderstandings however trivial or grand that resulted there from.

Upon reading Bishop, RRoma realized her mistake and, overcome with embarrassment, has retired from public life until full penance can be served, leaving only this statement behind as a legacy of her self-condemnation: “Upon being told by certain anonymous persons to merely ‘edit’ the mistake away, I was aghast at the potential of the blogging medium to, not only allow me to erase my errors, but also to manipulate the past in a way that print is less ready to allow.  To do this is to welcome the sordid reality of shifting truths that looms ahead in a rather frightening manner! I am resolved to stand by my error, even as I experience the shame it has caused!”

Our staff is confident that the yearning for expression that rroma feels will soon put an end to this self-imposed exile and will be happy to report as soon as new information becomes available.

Some of our readings thus far have described the splits among departments which necessitate the WAC program etc. to combat the dissociation that has taken place. “But, what about within the department?” I wondered as I read Bishop and Corder and found myself pulled in a variety of directions. To follow rules while writing creatively? To write with articulated outlines, overviews and defined objectives while commending maverick-ism? To romanticize the past or to idealize the future? Surely the English Department is suffering from a psychotic break with reality.

There are, as we all know, many subsets in our discipline: literature, rhetoric/composition, creative writing, folklore, African Diaspora, linguistics, critical theory (did I get them all?) with more and more division as one goes.  If literature:  what period, British, American, some unspecified other?  If creative writing:  poetry, creative non-fiction or fiction? If the other ones (which I don’t know enough about to break apart): similar examples?  There should be a workshop:  Writing Across the English Department.

Not only must we break into separate factions, we are asked to do so as quickly as possible i.e.:  At welcoming party meant to acquaint the uninitiated with the department, one is asked by dozens of impressive and intimidating persons: What’s your area? (my reply) A blank look, thank you.

We then cling to this definition of self at all costs and once having declared oneself of a certain sect, it seems assumed that one is already an expert in it and is thrown into classes where jargon is considered common knowledge and conversation seldom stops to catch one up.  So, in the confusing and segregated corridors, we cling to the path that we have found- or perhaps stumbled upon- for fear of being further lost and thus miss valuable opportunities to explore other options.

In doing so, it becomes hard to recognize the points of interaction: how does studying rhetoric result in a creative essay, how does obsessing about rules result in prose?  How do we reconcile the creative voice of the student with a class expected to teach correct academic writing? Why do the creative writers (as Eric describes) get to hang out in dark pubs smoking cigarettes and being generally gritty while literature people have nicely brushed hair and a list of conference presentations that occurred somewhere in a romanticized past that I am not a part of? 

In any event, both Bishop and Corder seem to have made some sort of commendable re-integration of these intra-departmentally (to say the least) severed selves.  They simultaneously have dirty little secrets to tell while having clean, college-ruled notebook paper on which to tell them. And somehow both ended up at the same conclusion: we are doing something wrong.