A word is worth 1,000th of a picture— Ian Baxter

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Look at any word long enough and you will see it open up into a series of faults, into a terrain of particles, each containing its own void. This discomforatory language of fragmentation offers no easy gestalt solution. — Robert Smithson

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The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the “state of emergency” in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the war against Fascism. One reason why Fascism has a chance is that in the name of progress its opponents treat it as a historical norm. The current amazement that the things we are experiencing are “still” possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. This amazement is not the beginning of knowledge— unless it is the knowledge that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable.

Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History

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No account of the history of philosophy can be oriented to history alone. The consideration of the philosophic past must always be accompanied by philosophical reorientation and self-criticism. More than ever before, it seems to me, the time is again ripe for applying such self-criticism to the present age, for holding up to it the bright clear mirror of the Enlightenment. Much which seems to us today the result of “progress” will to be sure lose its luster when seen in this mirror; and much of what we boast of will look strange and distorted in this perspective. But we should be guilty of hasty judgment and dangerous self-deception if we simply ascribe these distortions as opaque spots in the mirror, rather than to look elsewhere for the source.

Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment

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I say, then, that in hereditary states, accustomed to their prince’s family, there are far fewer difficulties in maintaining one’s rule than in new principalities; because it is enough merely not to neglect the institutions founded by one’s ancestors and then to adapt policy to events. In this way, if the prince is reasonably assiduous he will always maintain his rule, unless some extraordinary force deprive him of it; and if so deprived, whenever the usurper suffers a setback he will reconquer.

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

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Equal

Teaching research writing has evolved for me in bizarre ways. Because it is an intro class that crosses many subject fields, it seems pointless to spend too much time on specific databases or tools. Communication isn’t only about tools; it’s about attitudes and strategies for dealing with other people’s attitudes. I make it up as I go along, but I thought I might write down some of what I’m doing now.

The first concept I try to explore is people’s feelings about genius. The majority always seem to agree with Harold Bloom’s attitude. There are some people who are just special— above the norm. More and more, I find this incompatible with the idea that “all men are created equal.” Equal is a valuation, as is genius, and valuing things quickly becomes complicated. What constitutes a genius? A shifting cultural celebration of some values over others. I can only fall back on one of the earliest definitions of genuis— similar to genii, it simply means spirit. Can one person have more spirit than another? I don’t think so. It’s just that some can express it better than others, and we find ourselves drawn to some spirits more others. Genius— like heroism— is a rhetorical concept.

If these things are established rhetorically, then it seems essential to examine how language works. To that end, I use Orwell’s Politics and the English Language and Toni Morrison’s Nobel Lecture. Orwell’s essay, despite its gross errors and conservatism makes an essential connection between thought and language, and the deadening nature of hollow political rhetoric. These days, in particular, I think this is an important issue to raise for anyone who steps into a voting booth. Morrison’s essay places control where it should belong, in the hands of the public, which must question in order to know. These first exercises are meant to get people questioning their beliefs about ideas that they take for granted— only “writers” should care about writing— that writing, like genius, lies outside what regular people should aspire to know.

After this, I examine some effective political rhetoric— starting with the US Declaration of Independence. This requires some deep historical context, to show that it isn’t a document that just emerged from the pen of a genius, but rather is built from an avalanche of commonplaces developed in other political precedents. It’s also a nearly perfect example of the syllogism, of inescapable deductive reasoning. Then, to show that imitation isn’t a bad thing, I teach the Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments. This one is far more accessible to students. It also shows just how long the fight for women’s rights actually took, and that freedom as they know it is quite a recent development.

The only weird thing about using this group of essays is that it can seem like I’m teaching political science rather than rhetoric. However, when it comes to ethical and logical arguments, political documents are a great place to turn for both good and bad examples. I teach them as arguments, not as politics. To counteract the heavy weighting on the political side, this time I decided to try something completely different when I turn the emphasis to pathetic argument— seduction poetry.

To this end, I use Christopher Marlowe’s The Passionate Shepherd to His Love and Sir Walter Raleigh’s The Nymph’s Reply and compare them with John Donne’s The Bait. The Donne poem, I hope, is even more effective in Arkansas. How many love poems are written with a fishing motif? The most common problem in arguing issues that students feel passionately about is that they alienate anyone who might feel differently, by assuming that their audience feels the same as they do— if this is the case, why write?
Donne is incredibly shrewd in shifting the power to the maid he wants to seduce, rather than assuming that he has the power. I hope that this will encourage the writers to think about what they can gain by granting that their opposition has some power too.

What is a more common reason for persuasion than getting laid? Besides, it’s a great break from all the politics.

I am not teaching creative writing. I am teaching writing that works. Research writing begins with questions, and ends with actions— not answers. That’s the hurdle I’m trying to cross, and this is the twisted way I’ve chosen to get there. I’m sure I’ll change things every time I teach the class, but for now, I wanted to mark this down. I want my students to climb down off the ivory tower notion that only geniuses are worthy of writing, and learn to make reading and writing work for them. That’s the real equalizer.

Culture Wars

Just a quick note in response to Jonathon: I have been looking at Ph.D. programs with a great deal of fear, for most of the reasons detailed in the Chronicle article. I am a bit of a traditionalist in some ways (some New Critical habits stick), in that I prefer to read primary texts rather than dense piles of writing about writing. The departments at my school (University of Arkansas at Little Rock) are fractured in amazingly complex ways.

The British literature specialists are mostly traditional— though my mentor was a Duke Ph.D. from the early 90s with a big po-mo background. The Americanists are a more volatile bunch who practice cultural criticism more than close reading— though they inflict it more through lecture than assigning critical texts. Around ten years ago, the Rhetoric Department was split from the English department— and most of the heavy gender/technology people went there. So, the conflict between canon and theory is mostly fought in the American Lit portion— most of the people there specialize in ethnic literatures, so there is no canon to teach if they stick to the “traditional” road. A person can, however, get a degree without reading much in the way of theory at all. Having no “canon-wars” to fight, the rhetoric people are mostly docile regarding shoving theory down people’s throats— though they have a definite political, social-constructivist, agenda.

I’m not allergic to heavy theory. I am however, concerned— like the writer of the article with the loss of primary texts in favor of theory. My notes on Darwin from a few days back were a response to what I felt was a misreading by a prominent gender theorist. The current situation makes me deathly afraid of many English departments. That’s why I really want a program with a strongly rhetorical focus for my Ph.D.— I want a job. A conventional degree in literature is usually a bad way to be assured of employment.

Technical writing is the hot field right now, field, though I just can’t bear to give up literature. That’s why I’m thinking more of a focus on a texts/technologies and cultural studies track. It’s sort of a combination of art/literature with professional/technical work. The problem is finding a department that doesn’t think this conflation is a contradiction incapable of resolution. I find it easier to fit in with the more theory-oriented crowd even though my views on literature are perhaps more traditional. I cannot see myself as an juridical aesthete, however— I’m much more practically minded. What this really means is that I don’t want to do Marxist or feminist or historical dissections of literary works per se, but instead try to figure out how specific works fit in a broader context of communication strategies— rhetoric, not traditional literary study. I don’t want to have to defend any canon, though there are many canonical figures that I love. I am very afraid of the politics that lie at the end of any path I choose.

English departments are scary places. The only plan I can think of to make it through is to try to understand just what the agenda of the place I’m headed is. Regardless of the label they hang over the door (Rhetoric, English, American Studies) I want to make sure that I’m not signing up to be an exponent of anyone’s ideology. I want to do research and teaching, not preaching or theory-mongering. I think that is still possible in many departments across the US— just not all— and that is the real shame.

Politicizing Sex

More queer theory: Monique Wittig’s “One Is Not Born a Woman” travels some disturbing theoretical ground. The opening approach, common to most of the pieces I’ve been reading, is the destruction of “women” as a racial group of a special kind— a natural group considered to be “materially specific to their bodies.” She asserts that the presence of lesbian society destroys the “social fact” which constitutes women. The argument is that women are socially made as an idea of nature, and they are socially, not biologically, compelled to conform to expectation. The presence of lesbians is said to refute the concept of a natural essence which women are a manifestation of.

Wittig assaults the feminist notion of the biological nature of women because it relies on the normative presence of heterosexuality as the foundation of society— a biological essence, as it were, and a generative hypothesis which requires the biological differentiation of the sexes to posit an origin for society. Wittig wishes to remove both matriarchy and patriarchy from the social equation.

Wittig rejects “natural history” as a force to be dealt with at all. She wrongly cites Darwin’s opinion “that women were less evolved than men”— actually, rereading him I find that he didn’t consider them much of a factor in evolution at all. However, Darwin seemed to be deeply troubled by the inconsistencies of sexual behavior and secondary sexual characteristics as a part of his evolutionary theory. Sex and natural history didn’t get along well; even Darwin admitted that. “Sexual Selection” was a secondary force, and only slightly developed this in his theories. Like many people, I think she unfairly makes Darwin a whipping boy.

Instead of natural history, Wittig substitutes “materialist history” to explain the origin of sexuality as oppression. Gender is a mark bestowed by an oppressor. The “myth of woman” is only a mechanism by which women are appropriated by the dominant discourse. Wittig speaks authoritatively regarding race, claiming that “there was no concept of race before slavery.” I find this argument specious, because slavery has been a part society from the beginning. However, using the definition erected, it becomes only logical that lesbians, because they are neither men, nor adherent to the “myth of woman” are not a product of nature— they must be something else, because there is no nature in society.

Wittig seeks to construct “women” as a class, not as a gender. Lesbians thus form a sort of underclass to women, whose rebellion is a political rather than sexual struggle. They reject the normative “roles” they are supposed to play. The struggle, in these terms, is not an eternal one— but instead a class struggle for recognition. But before it can be that, it must be a struggle for an identity, outside the normative myths provided by society. The polemic she promotes is to destroy “woman” as an inclusive myth.

To destroy “woman” does not mean that we aim, short of physical destruction, to destroy lesbianism simultaneously with the categories of sex, because lesbianism provides for the moment the only social form in which we can live freely. Lesbian is the only concept I know of which is beyond the categories of sex (woman and man), because the designated subject (lesbian) is not a woman, either economically or politically, or ideologically. For what makes a woman is a specific social relation to a man, a relation we have previously called servitude . . .

I really have some major problems with her reduction. Most lesbians I’ve met enjoy the sensual myths of femininity, just not the political ones. Most of the radical theorists I’m reading really seem to want to abolish sex, period. I can’t see that as a solution. Most people (except gender theorists) seem to enjoy sexual myth-making.

Darwin on Race and Sex

Primarily some excerpts from Origin of Species that I may want to do something with later:

Continue reading “Darwin on Race and Sex” →

Perversity

Silence is sexy. “Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt” (I don’t recall the source). I can embrace that thought. I cannot, however embrace the idea that silence can somehow be a perversely declarative utterance.

In linguistics, a declarative is a particular form of utterance that can be said to constitute a truth condition by its performance— the test is the insertion of the word “hereby” into the phrase without disrupting the meaning: “I hereby promise”. . . “I hereby declare” . . . “I hereby christen,” etc. A moment of silence contains no verb, and in my opinion is not a declarative utterance. It does nothing, except sit there looking sexy and allowing you to construct interpretation based on inaction. Tom asked, “Silence isn’t always silent, is it?” No, it isn’t. The declarations inferred are deafening. But it’s just sex, you know? It isn’t truth. I think the world needs a little truth to go along with the sexiness. But then, I suppose hiding behind silence is an age-old thing.

To Nobodaddy

Why art thou silent and invisible
Father of Jealousy?
Why dost thou hide thyself in clouds
From every searching Eye

Why darkness & obscurity
In all thy words & laws
That none dare eat the fruit but from
The wily serpent’s jaws
Or is it because Secrecy
gains females loud applause

William Blake, Rossetti Manuscript (E: 471)

Public Sex

I read the introduction to Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex by Pat Califa with great interest. One of the striking things about the work of Jame Pennebaker, which I previously considered in a class on “Writing and Healing,” is scientific evidence that repression=bad for you, health-wise. Califa’s “Introduction: Or It Is Always Right to Rebel” gestures at the same issues. The title’s reference to “radical sex” is meant to question the way that society assigns privilege based on adherence to moral codes. Califa’s identification of herself as a “sex radical” is clarified through a history of her professional and personal involvement.

She describes her growth as beginning with “getting tired of the lies” (xiii). Califa came out as a radical because of “the destructive impact of the ‘feminist’ antiporn movement” on the lesbian community in San Francisco. “They attacked anybody who argued with them as an advocate of violence against women, a child molester, or (gasp) a sadomasochist” (xiii). Califa calls this response “storm-trooper tactics.” Califa sought a vehicle for public criticism of these people (xiv). The assertion she wanted to put on the table was this:

“I don’t think pornography causes violence against women. I don’t think feminists should ban pornography. This is a right-wing, homophobic, misogynist ideology. I think the only problem with pornography is that there isn’t enough of it, and the porn that does exist reflects the sexual fantasies of aging Catholic gangsters. I do some of the things that you find so scary when they are depicted in pornography, and I refuse to be tarred and feathered and ridden out of the lesbian ghetto on a rail.” (xv)

After publishing her first article, she was threatened with the cancellation of the publication of her book Sapphistry, a lesbian sexual manual. It was published but got vicious reviews. “But the real dykes, both feminist and nonfeminist, didn’t care what the self appointed leaders thought” (xvi). Califa characterizes most early lesbian professional publishing as “assimilationist” (xvii). The question Califa wants to pose is:

Why can’t sex be honored for its own sake, instead of being prettified by the euphemism “the erotic” and being blurred with human experience that are necessary and worthwhile, but not orgasmic? (xix)

Califa details her choice to concentrate on disenfranchised people and topics, because the mainstream feminist literature tends toward the non-sexual aspects of relationships (xx). In many ways, I can celebrate this— but not without wondering if it isn’t just another manifestation of the American penchant for rebellion at any cost. Califa argues that concentration on the core of human experience rather than the fringe is “pathetic crap” when “what we do in bed is illegal in about half of the states” (xxiii). The 1994 preface is filled with desperation: “I no longer believe a cure or a vaccine or even a treatment for AIDS will be found, no matter how much money the government throws at it” (xxv). Califa argues for prevention, and the acceptance of sex as a central part of “deviant” life:

We need the euphoria of the orgasm the way a junkie needs a fix, to kill some of the pain of being outcasts. And so we keep on dying and killing each other before we die. Because we believe we deserve it. (xxv)

Self-loathing is merged with the American ameliorative impulse: “If we cannot be our brother and sister’s keepers, then we do not deserve to live in sunlight” (xxv). She claims a sense of triumph, in that her “insides and outsides match” (xxvii). The ideology expressed in this preface is contradictory, conflicted, and passionate. While she claims that “the force of women united to defend one another” is a “divine” energy, she also argues for separatism, of fracturing out organizations for “lesbians only” (xxix). The tortured psychology behind this preface is as fascinating as a train wreck.

The poignancy of the close of the 1994 preface “Today, at the amazing age of forty, I am trying to cause as much trouble as I did when I was twenty-five. Fifty should be awesome, and sixty incendiary” (xxx) is amplified by her admission, in the 2000 preface, that she is suffering from an autoimmune disorder. One thing seems sure: this book won’t be a dull read.

Group Writing Activities

I was asked in one of my classes to respond with my thoughts on group writing activities, and to detail my experiences with them. I decided that I would archive it here. Reading it back again, I realize that I did not make it clear that I feel that they are a valuable real world writing practice. However, in the academic environment I think they fail— that is the important distinction.

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I feel they [group writing activities] are rarely successful, unless done among people who are equally motivated and at the same stage of educational development. They privilege the vocal, and minimize the contribution of those who are at lower levels of development in the pursuit of affirmation. They increase the disparity between those who can and those who can’t. However, collaborative writing can be highly successful among those of different skill types where distinct and individual functions with some degree of autonomy are assigned. I have great reservations about the focus on group writing in lower level courses, where skill levels and types are difficult to discern; while it is useful to use reading groups, I think writing groups grossly fail.

The majority of my experience in the English department was in a seminar group environment. It was quite successful. My group experiences in the Rhetoric department were horrible failures, with only two exceptions: A group presentation in Rhetorical theory (graduate level) where each group member explored a single topic (not a writing project), and Advanced Expository writing with Dr. Herrmann. Again, the class with Dr. Herrmann was more of a seminar-reading-response type atmosphere, rather than collaborative writing.

I believe that writing is individually constructed but socially constituted. Too much emphasis on either pole is dangerous. If the project is to constitute meaning, then group-work is essential for effective communication. However, the production of a text is an individual activity necessarily deals with the metalepsis of individual cognition of a perceived audience. Group writing does not remove this limitation, but usually exacerbates it by introducing a sort of noise into the process of invention, in the form of contradictory perceptions of the audience envisioned. Unless bound together by distinct individual talents (distributed cognition) toward a distinct action-oriented end, group writing fails. Loose structures, facilitated by the expressivist turn in most compositionists, thwart the distinctness needed for successful group projects. Group writing is a poor fit to most current pedagogy, but it is forced there by a poor understanding of social constructivism.

In my experience, most group writing activities are purely bullshit sessions. I have generally taken a submissive role: if there is a dominant voice, I will listen and do whatever task they decide for me. In the case of the Rhetorical theory assignment, my task was “Jeff improvises for fifteen minutes.” I could handle that. The dominant voice prepared a beautifully choreographed presentation, built from individual tasks. In undergraduate groups, the lack of motivation and the absence of a complex task made it easier for me to just complete the “group” assignment myself, and allow the rest of the group to coast along with me. I refuse, in most cases, to step up to be a dominant voice. I spent many years as a manager, and a trainer. If tasks assigned in school were complex, and people in the group had differing skills to access, I would have done what the dominant voice in my graduate group did. This, in my undergraduate experience was never the case. Given the simplistic nature of the tasks involved, there was no need for distributed roles. To assign them would be an unnecessary imposition of my character on the group. It was easier just to complete the assignment myself. I did not come to school to relearn “manager-mode.”

Information Heroes

A while ago, I stumbled onto Edward Tufte. It was a welcome relief for me, to hear someone argue for three-dimensional design principles in a time when the prevailing currents in web design were toward flat display, and the suppression of things like shading to give depth to a display. I still think that sort of approach to web design is a flat-out bore. I bought Envisioning Information and was really thrilled by the graphics, though I must admit his approach is way outside my skill range in creating graphics. Imagine my surprise when Tufte was nearly demonized in my document design class— everything I had read up to that point was overwhelmingly positive.

Visual language: Global Communication for the 21st Century by Robert Horn is one of the texts for the class. At first glance, I found the book to be really ugly. It uses tons of clip-art images, repetitively. I was not at all upset about the sheer density of the graphics, but rather the downright commonplace nature of the graphic usage. Reflecting on it now, I can see that using “canned” imagery was part of his point. Textually, however, it’s an easy book for me to like— it uses a foundation from linguistics to argue that the combination of text and image is a sort of creole language, with its own syntax and morphology.

Comparing and contrasting the two approaches to information design it seems that both Horn and Tufte want to disrupt the myth of transparency in communication— Tufte uses breathtaking aesthetics, whereas Horn uses sheer density to force a reader to contemplate the surface of the text, rather than just extracting the information behind the text. These approaches stimulate the same sort of oscillation that Richard Lanham’s “at / through” is all about: separate means, same ends. In conversation with Professor Kuralt, it occured to me that it’s also a manifestation of the different heroic types I’ve been trying to resolve. Tufte is nearly Byronic— championing individual artistry— whereas Horn is more of a democratic/communistic hero type. Clip-art is within everyone’s reach. From a theoretical standpoint, though I find him visually repulsive, Horn is a lot easier to defend.

Resisting the mainstream avalanche of canned templates, clip-art, and Microsoft wizards is an assertion of individuality. However, study of the visual effect of the commonplace does seem more productive than just staring in awe at the works of distant artistic “geniuses.” Perhaps the key is some sort of balance between them. It’s nice to have another point of view.

An Accurate Deception

For those who are interested, I have written summaries of four articles which attempt to define “literary journalism.” Of my readings this afternoon, however, the most interesting was a piece written by my professor Dr. Charles Anderson: “Coming into the Country . . . and Living There: Literary Nonfiction and Discourse Communities” (1991). Dr. Anderson proposes that literary nonfiction can be roughly divided into a tree:

The collision of “literary journalism” and cultural criticism is not demarcated by any of the articles I read earlier. Like the evasion of philosophy sketched by West, there seems to be an evasion of the term “criticism” by most people who attach the label of journalism to nonfiction. I would call people like Didion and Wolfe cultural critics, not journalists.

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