FoolsCap

A response–or maybe, a harmonic reply–to Collin’s post here.  One thing that’s interested me, given my own educational history, is the curious phenomennon that Collin describes: namely, the conversion of the aspiring literary scholar to an aspiring rhet/comp scholar.

Collin, as I’m sure he knows, is not unique in this.  Jeff Rice and Richard Marback have described their own conversions to me, and I hear tell that even Gwen Gorzelsky began her studies as a student of medieval lit (as did friend and colleague Mary Karcher).  This, of course, prompts the question: what is compelling about rhet/comp work to lit folk?

For Collin, it was a realization that he could pursue an interest in literary theory while doing rhet/comp work (something that rings true for myself as well).  For my own history, in addition to the interest in theory, I’ve found that rhet/comp is also a good space for someone whose interests are. . .hm. . .to be kind, voracious, though some might say I’m terminally undeclared. Rice’s 6010 was a good place to get a feel for the variety of work being done in the rhet/comp field, so in that sense I owe Jeff a debt similar to the one Collin owes to Susan Jarratt (I too, have handy access to the readers from Jeff’s course).

A point, though, that I find interesting.  Collin’s introductory and closing comments:

I was thinking the other day about the choice I made to get into the Rhetoric/Composition game, and while it was undoubtedly a gradual and only semi-conscious process, I think I can pin down the semester that would feature in my Secret Origin.

At any rate, as a theoretically minded young MA student, SJ’s course convinced me that I could follow that interest in R/C just as easily as I could in literature, and while I don’t know that this counts as "conversion," it’s the one point I recall where I "chose" R/C.

I like, I want to point out, Collin’s use of the phrase Secret Origin, a little nod to comic book lingo that reminds me, again, that there’s a pleasurable synchronicity btw my own interests and those of other scholars. 

More significantly, however, is Collin’s emphasis on the "gradual and only semi-conscious" nature of his conversion.  In part, of course, this points to an assumption we have anout conversions as being a dramatic and epochal moment–archetypically, we might look at Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, right?  Blinding light, paradigm shift, voice from above.  While I do have the benefit of having gone through something like the Pauline epiphany (which you can reread here), I again find Collin’s description of the gradual conversion to rhet-comp eerily familiar, esp. given the juxtaposition between (for Collin) Susan Jarratt’s "Theories of Reading and Writing Course" and Edward Tomarken’s "LIterary Theory" course, much as Jeff’s "Theories and Practices of Writing" practicum was the same semester as Barrett Watten’s "Intro to Graduate Literary Studies" course.

What I also find valuable, of course, is that I have had the opportunity to blog through my gradual conversion, and, in fact, careful readers could probably point out moments on the blog that suggest the swing from lit/cult studies into rhet/comp with little difficulty.  Of course, speaking about the "conversion narrative" in this way makes it seem as though I’ve finished the process . . . in fact, I admit my ignorance of much comp theory and the occasional urge to turn back to the comforting arms of literary scholarship.

But then, I think: Nah.  I want a real job.

I’m not trying to describe a sense of personal kismet between Collin and myself, but I think the points of similarity between our respective conversion narratives are striking, and I wonder how many other rhet/comp scholars would describe a similar conversion narrative.

So, in that sense, I’m suggesting to the three or four of you that read this, that if Collin’s narrative or my own sound familiar, that you take a moment on your own blog to revisit the scene(s) of your own rhet/comp conversion narratives.

Because I’ve been acutely depressed for a while now.  Those who might be concerned, please don’t.  Just a passage I want to share.

From: Mitchell, David.  Cloud Atlas.  New York: Random House, 2004.

The love-lorn, the cry-for-helpers, all mawkish tragedians who give suicide a bad name are the idiots who rush it, like amateur conductors.  A true suicide is a paced, disciplined certainty.  People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness."  Career churchmen . . . go a step further and call it a cowardly assault on the living.  Oafs argue this specious line for varying reasons: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one’s audience with moral fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize.  Cowardice is nothing to do with it–suicide takes a considerable courage.  Japanese have the right idea.  No, what’s selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.  The only selfishness lies in ruining a stranger’s days by forcing ‘em to witness a grotesqueness.

So here’s some [further and more elaborate and specific] things I’ve gleaned from the C & W experience.

This conf seems to fall into a more practical area of the broader field of C&W, in that many of the presentations were oriented toward reporting on new software packages, new websites, classroom practices, online social trends, etc.  In addition to this, I observed a strong interest in literacy and literacy practices and how they’re changed by an engagement with computers and writing and associated pedagogical practice.  While all of this is of interest, I found it limiting in that I’m developing a keener interest in theory.  This suggests neither that the C&W presenters aren’t grounded in theory nor that I’m dissociating theory from practice.  Rather, I found myself longing for some presentations that were more invested in theory–part., of course, those theorists I’m interested in right now–and that used individual teaching practice or software models or whatever as examples of theory put into practice or as reflecting certain theoretical tropes or something.

Why?

Well I think part of it is that I’m still catching up to a lot of the folks at the conf, so there might very well be references to theory embedded in their talks that I didn’t recognize–what my class and I discussed as passive intertext (as opposed to active intertext–a great discussion, but I’m not sure, on second thought, if itext can be passive after all.  More later.).  So there’s that.  Also, however, other than outright stealing someone else’s assignment, I’m not really sure yet how to turn what I learn at a conf into my own pedagogy and practice.  This will come in time, I am sure, but for now (curiously) I’m more inclined to approach theory and make that work into pedagogy/practice.

The other lesson here, of course, is that one needs to learn the details/goals/strengths/weaknesses of confs just as one must learn the same of journals . . . if C&W is more praxis and empiricist, I might need to choose on occasion which I attend, esp since as Rice mentions, there will on occasion be scheduling conflicts.

What follows is some feedback and commentary on the panels I was able to attend.

A compendium of lessons learned and thoughts thunk during the 2007 Computers and Writing Conference, May 17-20, at bee-yoo-tee-ful Wayne State.

1. Holy damn, putting on a conference is a lot of work.  I do not envy the organizers of larger conferences (the Cs, for example) their task.
2. The best way to learn your campus is to tell a stranger where they’re going.
3. The Ferry Street Inn is on Ferry Street.  And, on Friday morning, had the most scrumptious fresh-cinnamon roll smell wafting through the lounge/dining area.
4. The C&W community likes the following stuff: free crap, beer, bowling, helpful grad volunteers, accessible parking.
5. The C&W community does not like the following: unreliable wireless access, the staff at the Towers dorm, lunch shortages, name-tag shortages, program shortages.  For all participants who suffered through these and other inconveniences: apologies and gratitude for your patience.
6. Geoff Sirc is, in person, as interesting and engaging as his writing and nowhere near as intimidating as his UMinn faculty pic.
7. Richard Doyle reminds me of a favorite line from <i>Hamlet</i>: "Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t."
8. Who is the fellow with the mutli-colored mohawk?
9. Oh, that’s [insert respected scholar’s name here]!
10. Helen Liggett is a terrifically nice person and I wish I had been able to make it to her talk.  Still, I had the chance to drive her and Keith Dorwick from the Ferry St. Inn to McGregor and had a nice chat about WSU landmarks.
11. If someone compliments me personally one more time, I’m going to get paranoid.  But thanks, Richard and Jeff, anyway–it meant a lot.
12. I think Vered would be huge here.
13. McGregor has the ugliest doors in Christendom.
14. A (partial) standing ovation from one’s peers and colleagues for all one’s hard work?  Priceless.
15. I love free books.
16. These publisher people are really helpful.
17. I’m horribly underdressed for this museum banquet.
18. A flitting uncertainty as to who’s faculty and who’s still grad students.
19. Open Source Software: I understand its importance and all, but I’m not sure I really quite care yet.  Although Pruchnic’s New Order-themed panel was pretty sweet–in particular, I liked the extrapolation from this one phenomenon to broader social/pedagogical/theoretical concerns.
20. If you want to, you know, attend panels, volunteering to work the conf is not the best way to do it.

Other thoughts that require more in-depth explanation:

I admit I’ve been hesitant to send out paper proposals/abstracts because I didn’t feel like I had had the necessary "Big Idea."  But from what I’ve seen during the conference, the BI doesn’t seem to matter so much.  This is in no way a diminishment of the work presented at the conference–all the panels I was able to attend offered creative, engaging, rigorous scholarship.  Rather, though, one thing I’ve learned from the conference is that the conf paper doesn’t have to be a major statement or a field-changing intervention, but rather can be a work-in-progress, some half-formed-thoughts, a way to present ideas and conjectures and get feedback from one’s peers.  A major relief, then, as I start hypothesizing ideas for next year’s C & W.

I am not a natural schmoozer, but need to work on it a bit.  The few participants I had a chance to talk to at length were gracious and warm, so I’m encouraged about future attempts to meet and/or greet.  I admire those whose crippling personal doubts and anxieties don’t stand in the way of successful networking.

My impression is that the event was a huge p.r. smash for WSU and the Detroit area in general.  Which, as we WSU students eagerly assured each other, bodes well for the next round of hirings and future grad applications.  In particular, conf participants seemed impressed by the dedication and efforts of the grad volunteers, by the accessibility of most campus points of interest, the close proximity of two bars to campus, the proximity of Detroit’s cluster of museums to our campus, and the attractiveness overall of Wayne’s cmapus.  This last point is of interest, I think, because too often Wayne folks take their surroundings for granted–at least I do.

I’m sort of getting sick of writing this, but I’ve more to say about various panels I attended, and a possible realization about a direction of study for yours truly.

I think it’s well understood.

I wish I could take my own frustration and anger more seriously, but I realize what a. . .I dunno–failure? joke? stooge? creep?. . . it would make me if I took it seriously.  Hence the ironic distance btw what I think and feel.

A friend once asked me if I ever felt depressed because I always seemed so cheerful.  I laughed in her face; I’m hardly cheerful.  Life’s a bad joke with no punchline, no gag, no payoff.  The only response to the arrogant presumption that my life (or anyone’s really) has any significance beyond daily toil is to recognize the absurdity of human endeavor and take delight in it–to champion the absurd fact that we exist in the first place.  It’s not cheerfulness, see–it’s desperation.

Recently, someone was alarmed by a playful little cartoon about suicide I posted here.  Hm.  Why?  That is, what would it matter to that reader, or to anyone, if I were to snuff it?

Some admittedly melodramatically grim thoughts tonight in part due to frustration with the Erb paper, but also in light of the VTech shootings.

I hate to blog about them (it seems like a cliche’–much worried hand-wringing about how I’m supposed to treat students and their writing after recent horrors).  Yet it prompts writing nonetheless, though not of the sort I imagine is being posted on other blogs.

I sympathize with Cho Seung-Hui.  This is not to say I valorize him or think of him as some martyr, but at darker periods of my life, I’ve been prone to the sort of dissociation that his writings and video suggest (and, in younger days, wrote similarly gruesome things).  I like to think that I wouldn’t go to the extreme that Cho did, of course–but who’s to say that until some strange confluence of events Cho didn’t also think himself capable of those deeds he has since committed?  Why does Cho become a killer and I don’t?

Because:

• I recognize as I’m not really as tormented as I sometimes make myself out to be.
• My rampant ego would never let me do it knowing that the names of massacre killers like Cho are quickly forgotten.  In two years’ time we’ll ask: remember when that Asian kid shot up that school?  Hence the enduring appeal of such colorfully named killers like Son of Sam, the Boston Strangler, or Jack the Ripper (my personal favorite).  Although none of these matched Cho’s body count, their work seemed personal, driven, motivated, in a way Cho’s random kill-crazy rampage can’t replicate.  It’s quality, not quantity, folks.
• Although I gave up religion a decade ago and profess to be agnostic, I can’t surrender the idea that such actions would mean damnation for a soul I’m not sure I believe exists.
• As silly as this sounds–I wouldn’t want my mother to be ashamed of me for doing it.
• It seems so juvenile, as though one is so weak and possesses so little control of one’s emotion that there is ultimately only one violent choice left.

None of the points above simply says: "Because it’s wrong."  Why?  An intentional omission?  A sop to moral relativism?  I suppose that the third point implies a moral judgment, but it’s the punishment I’m afraid of, not the transgression itself.

There are already two wikipedia articles about the VA Tech shootings.  It already has an official name: "The Virginia Tech Massacre;" Cho has been dubbed "The Question Mark Killer"–which sounds like a particularly redundant Batman villain to me.  But, putting the scholar hat on for just a moment (which means removing the lonely, angry, heartbroken stooge one) there is something to think about here–but it’s not (just) the role/duty of comp or English or whatever profs to catch these people.  Rather, it’s a matter of the need to label something, to give it a title and impose a narrative.

This week’s tragedy (a word I’m sick of hearing (both in light of VTech and in general) because it has a very specific meaning in literary study that almost never applies to the way it’s used in the news) is insensible if it is left to be understood and puzzled over as raw fact: a man shot and killed 30+ other human beings on a college campus.  But with a title, with nomenclature–"A Massacre!"–it’s easier to digest; we can assign roles to heroes and villains ("Boo!  It’s Question Mark!") and then claim to have learned something from this little morality play ("Don’t ignore the crazy desperate loner!").  Really, though, what lesson is to be learned from Cho’s rampage (another representation–Cho as bloodthirsty, insatiable madman)?  Be nice to people?  Hug your students?

I’m sure that the students and faculty and staff at VTech have some long and troubling weeks ahead of them.  I refuse to end this little screed with any call for resolution, healing, or (god forbid) a coming together in a shared renewal of our sense of human brotherhood.  Let’s do something wild–let’s deny any effort to make this event a story, a parable, a fable.  Let’s not learn from it.  Let’s let it linger and fester in the back of our consciences until we can’t tolerate its stench anymore–then, we’ll have learned something.  I don’t know what it will be, but it won’t be the tidy moral platitude that I’m sure we’ll soon see being attached to these events.

So I have a possible line on joining a 4C’s panel submission with some colleagues from Fresno (some of whom will be joining MSU in the fall).  The theme of the panel is "Writing the Material(ity) of the Body: Inscribing Change through Rhetoric(s) of Corpo(reality)."  I think this might be a good place to use the Lennon project–I’m thinking now of using the Lennon project to investigate the role corporeality (in this case, the celebrity body) in persuasion and rhetorical critique–and I could even do some new media work here by focusing on the role not just of Lennon’s body but specifically of his mediated body as the site for rhetorical critique–what Lennon does with his body should be what the reader-viewer does with his or hers . . .

Feedback from the unusual suspects is welcome–er, usual suspects.  That’s the ticket.

As a post script to an as-yet-unscripted post: the Lennon project is proving suprisingly versatile.  I’ve been able to think about in at least several dimensions thus far:

• as protest rhetoric
• as material/embodied rhetoric
• as mediated rhetoric
• as celebrity rhetoric
• as site of rhetorical critique
• as pop cultural rhetoric
• as entry into looking at historical rhetorical scholarship
• as avant-garde-influenced rhetoric

On one hand, I think it’s great that one project has proven so copious in terms of possible scholarship . . . maybe, in this instance, I can (finally) say I’m thinking rhetorically?

On the other . . . I don’t want to get known as "The John Lennon Guy" and have this one (versatile) project define my early scholastic career.  Similarly, I don’t want to get too absorbed in Lennon and lose sight of my other interests in metaphor, psychogeography, new media, and technology.  So, things to keep in mind.

So, astute readers will notice, I’ve deleted a recent post.  Why, Mitch? I expect those same astute readers to ask.

Some bits of my rationale:

1. I want to note it wasn’t a political decision.  That is, I didn’t remove the post because I was fearful of rubbing someone the wrong way or because I felt I was crossing some line I hadn’t intended to.  In turn, I’m not stressing this point in order to make myself seem like some fearless crusader for grad student autonomous speech or anything like that–’cos I’m not.  The post in question was carefully composed in order to show respect and appreciation for those faculty and colleagues to whom I made reference–so what I’m saying now is that I don’t think I crossed any line.
2. Faithful readers will no doubt recall the early days of FoolsCap when every other post was devoted to self-pity and professional anxieties.  Although I maintain that neither was my goal in the deleted post, several responses to that post felt like–and that’s my own feeling about them, not the authors’ intentions nor their motives–I had been reduced to a blubbering sop and needed consolation.  Having said that. . .those who responded to the post (all both of you), your words of encouragement etc. are greatly appreciated.
3. Nevertheless.  Grading student papers, I came across a fascinating typo that’s been stuck in my craw: "I happened to me."  There’s something there that I find compelling–that subjectivity/selfhood is an event that befalls us.  Heidegger writes: "A mood assails us."  I think there’s something like that Heideggerian moment happening here: there are times when, despite our best efforts to maintain whatever composure we fancy, moments of blatant self-concern and self-involvement and self-interest overwhelm us.  I think that is what sort of got reflected in the deleted post: I happened to me.
4. And, finally: I have sort of a fatalistic outlook on things: que sera, sera and so on.  Yet although I feel like our control over our fates and destinies is somewhat limited, one thing I think we have some control over–or at least I like to think we do–is how we represent ourselves.  And, in the end, that’s the most important reason behind the deletion: I just didn’t like the image of Mitch that post presented.  Two thoughts connected to this: First, a return to earlier comments about Meish.org … the blog is me(ish), it’s sort of me, parts of me etc.  And I want to control how much of me it is.  Second, and connected to that, the blog–or any writing space, really–is thus a metaphor for the writing subject.  Writing is the space where I am (me)diated.  Now there’s an idea to dig into.  There’s a potential something there, right, yo?  Assuming noone’s beat me to it.

Oh, and a shout-out to Rice: My copy of More than Cool Reason is on its way from the friendly folks at Amazon, along with Of Grammatology and A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds.  I’m planning a very theory summer reading list.