Rhetory

I’ll be off next week, touring some campuses. I’m becoming more self-conscious about my narratives here, and more nervous about joining a new tribe. Jill remarked regarding narrativity and blogs, that now that she’s got her Ph.D. that she is wondering about what sort of narrative construct she might use. It made me think—did I ever have a narrative construct for my writing here?

I don’t think so. I’ve just been blogging thoughts as they occurred to me. I’ve compiled papers out of things written here, saved reactions to books I’ve read, reacted to some of the discourse in this arena, and generally just putzed around. There are groups of narratives which step forward and back in the field, and overall I think that the discipline of writing so consistently has really helped me in my efforts to express myself clearly. But I find myself really not wanting to blog about grad school in general, or the topics in my field. I think it’s because I’m allergic to all the posturing.

Everyone seems to want to prove how smart they are, especially when they’re not that smart. Most of the big noises I hear about “electronic discourse” are from people who don’t write every day on the web, or even occasionally, except when they are preparing for a conference presentation. I’m tired of watching people talk about software that they have only tangentially used as an excuse to theorize about it. Writing doesn’t really seem to matter to them as much as an excuse to score cool points because they are hip to the latest trend. Users and theorists are almost always at a distance, even though the discipline of rhetoric proclaims itself as a matter of praxis.

I can’t help but feel that what I write here is really so much juvenilia. Sometimes it’s outright wrong, and other times it leads to dark alleys. Exposing yourself in public has many hazards, not the least of which is that people might think you are stupid. It takes courage to dare to be stupid. Perhaps that’s what seems so lacking in the academics I read online sometimes. Fear of being stupid drives people to shut up. Better to have your mouth closed and be thought ignorant than to open it and remove all doubt. This is a border I cross all the time. Now it feels like I shouldn’t. I don’t like that feeling.

I won’t allow myself to become another Stepford academic. One thing that I grow increasingly sensitive to is the rhetoric of advocacy, of the constant insistence that the hegemony is always bad, and that resistance is good. It is the act of resistance that reaffirms the dominance of the dominant. They all play the same tune, as they march to the academic flavor of the week, and become what they behold.

I’m interested in how writing and images work. “So, you’re focused on cultural rhetoric then” one of them said. “No,” I answered. “Most of the people on our campus are split between cultural rhetorics and digital rhetoric.” I’ve been thinking about that comment a lot. I can’t for the life of me see how such a split is possible.

I suppose I could chalk this up to my fear of joining any club that would have me as a member. It seems kind of mean-spirited, but I don’t really mean it that way. I just think that excessive “community” stifles innovation. So many people just parrot back the flavor of the day, rather than really discussing or considering it.