This is the medium, right? This one?

I’ve always been resistant to suggestions that new media and new modes are the answers to disrupting old paradigms (admittedly, in the 5 or so years that I’ve thought about it…). They’ve certainly played their roles, and I know that American history is rich with stories showing how the right person (or people) with the right audience and a new forum at the right time has succeeded where those prior have failed. But they never seem to accomplish what they're proposed to accomplish, and I tend to think that progress is generally built from the tragedy of lots and lots and lots of public sacrifice, not necessarily new technologies. And because of this, a stubborn mindset, I’m resistant to accept Banks’ notion that a new approach to composition pedagogy--one that can weave together the diverse multitude of African American experience into a new, digital, multimedia platform--can achieve the type of liberation he sees as central and necessary to a new composition pedagogy and African American rhetoric. But I’m not sure.

Now, I need to admit that I value history and tradition. This isn’t because I yearn for stasis or the good ol’ days as so many others who claim to value history and tradition do--and I generally consider most stories that begin with “back in the day” to be romanticized or straight-up bullshit. Instead, it is because I see history and tradition as being a history and a tradition of both persistence and change. Things never fully stay the same, even when they crawl along slowly toward some teleological ideal, and what is often written off as ineffective in bringing about change is often written off prematurely.

This of course, is a central challenge to any call for a new direction. “How can we be sure that we weren’t on the right path? And since we’re having this discussion, the path we’re on clearly hasn’t been *terrible* for us….” But, to borrow the story of Dr. MLK, Jr., whom Banks cites frequently in Digital Griots, sometimes the old methods and the old technologies turn out to be the most effective recourse: mass protest, civil disobedience, public speeches, the FREE exchange of knowledge, endured violence, and so on.

The problem though, is that technologies and media change, and sometimes the inability to change with the technology curtails any successful attempt at change. Another problem, with this long history of technological/media change, is that it’s tempting (but sometimes appropriate) to view it as the catalyst or the causation for change. Dr. MLK, Jr. relied on new communications to coordinate his speeches, SNCC’s sit-ins, the freedom  rides…. And the footage that broadcast the dogs, the fire hoses, the beatings and batons to the formerly apathetic played a major role in achieving the successes of the Civil Rights Movement—granted, a movement that has been romanticized, exploited, and elicited a cultural backlash.

But in promoting the idea that the digital medium is the path to liberation and a new African American experience, Banks seems to overlook the tenuous history of this idea, one that was considered with print media, radio,  film, television, public speaking forums (religious, stand-up, so on), and the first twenty years or so of the Internet. Instead, what has happened has been a recurring tale of forum control and unjust economic conditions. To cite just one example, some thought film could be neutral ground for dialogue about race, a new way to share black experience, a new way to reclaim and preserve tradition. But Hollywood has systematically avoided funding black films, promoting black directors, and casting black actors (focusing on the history of black actresses in Hollywood reveals an even more disheartening story).

So, to reiterate, coming full circle on a tangent that might not contribute anything to our understanding of the text, I’m resistant to Banks’ proposal. I’m not sure if liberation begins in the composition classroom, a place where old hierarchies at least seem to have far too much influence regarding access, content, and instructors. I don’t necessarily disagree—my desire for social change has pulled me through my education—but I wonder if sitting where you’re not supposed to, saying what you you’re not supposed to, risking bodily harm to gather in mass, speak, listen, and share knowledge and experience are still not the best way to accomplish the types of things that Banks wants to accomplish. Sure technology helps facilitate this; but if the Arab Spring or the Civil Rights Movement are any indication, communication and coordination are only the beginning (it takes leg work), and we already have the appropriate technologies for those tasks.

Questions:

1. Can old pedagogies achieve what Banks suggests a new ,digital, African American remix pedagogy can achieve? (For clarity’s sake, let’s simplify this as black liberation or racial equality in the U.S.)

2. What are the strengths/weaknesses of this new pedagogy?

3. What ideals affect your interest in teaching English? And what has compromised or prevented your integration of those ideals into your teaching philosophy and practice?

Changing Attitudes and Sustaining Economies

Lessig's examination of economy types--commercial, sharing, and hybrid--offers an interesting starting point to discuss the potential of the digital culture market. He problematizes the popular notion that business models must function in the general ways that they have for decades--prosecuting “free-riders,” avoiding disclosure, essentially keeping the product and practices on lockdown. Lessig also identifies a few solutions--generally described as hybrid economies--to these current problems. In discussing the potential of these solutions, he notes how market incentives alone will not be enough to transform these economies, and he suggests that policy changes are necessary as well. However, in creating this binary, of the economic and the political, he overlooks the influential sociocultural sphere that is often resistant, or at least claims to be, to such transformations—and a good example of this exists in current debates over the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.

Of the many examples Lessig has cited as evidence for the possibility of new IP policy, generally of the willingness to share creative work freely among a community, he has thus far failed to acknowledge the intense opposition that this would elicit among many consumers in the U.S. (not just corporations). Whether or not this opposition is sincere in its condemnation of commons, collectives, or social services, as we’ve seen with recent health care legislature, there is a sizable portion of American culture intensely opposed to these types of things (though we know that media piracy knows no political boundaries). For some of these groups, the collective, common, and social are dirty words, too closely associated with Collectivism! Communism! Socialism!

The recent public discussions surrounding health care (no doubt heavily influenced by corporate interests, perhaps most by corporate media) show how nasty this opposition can be. During recent Republican debates, crowds applauded the idea of denying health care to dying citizens instead of sharing the burden of that cost. On principle. A recently proposed federal budget demonstrates this belief as well, cutting social services and the shared burden of those services seemingly out of respect for the principles of individual responsibility and economic freedom. Whether or not these protests acknowledge the idea of decades of corporate welfare is a moot point, because they are influential and they are used to dictate and defend government policy. In fact, many public figures on the left, most notably Van Jones, have argued that the failures of the first two years of President Obama's administration were the result of failures in motivating/activiting the people, and governing from above. For those seeking to change attitudes, popular beliefs and established cultural norms are major hurdles.

Furthermore, much of the popular culture consumed and shared (or stolen, given your perspective) contributes to this culture. Rap has become an avenue for many in the U.S. to wealth and leisurely living, or escape from poverty and menial labor, and not coincidentally, much popular rap glorifies these things (30 seconds or so should suffice):

                                               Fat Joe, feat. Lil Wayne "Make it Rain"

The same can be said about much of popular culture. Whether it glorifies the consumption of drugs, people (generally women), or everything, the appeals of popular culture often draw from the desires for easy living and conspicuous consumption. In a sense, much of the artistic output of our culture perpetuates notions of ownership, individualism, and consumption, and this creates something of a self-fulfilling prophecy concerning American attitudes toward culture and those who contribute to it. Many of them would and do say, do we really want to put Fat Joe and Lil Wayne in a position where they might not make it rain?

Add to this dilemma the extravagant culture that has become the norm among the culture industry—mansions, private jets, $25 million dollar salaries, $250 million dollar movie budgets, and so on—and current discussions of the American economy that ask “When will we return to pre-recession levels?” without considering for a moment that those pre-recession levels and practices were likely the very unsustainable cause of that recession--as many economists have noted...before being dismissed as socialists--and you can clearly see how much work needs to be done to reshape popular beliefs concerning IP in America.

So, to resist my inner Adorno and continue this rant, I’ll stop and ask my question:

What do you think is the most effective  way to go about enacting the types of changes in IP that Lessig seems poised to suggest (either in terms of influence, immediacy, or length of time)? In the legislature? In the courtrooms? In the classrooms? In the public commons, as a grassroots effort? All of them? Or something else?  

A Confusing Contemplation on the Ethics of Authorship

As we've been reading, the implications of our understanding and construction of the Author are far-reaching and potentially severe. Jaszi (who has a sweet DJ name) examines just a few of these implications in his discussion of Jeff Koons and his legal battles and offers an ironic view of Foucault's observation that the author arose in part as a way to punish author-criminals--the irony being that authors are now being punished for taking/borrowing from authors (that is the justification by prosecutors, i.e. publishers, anyway). Like Koons, other writers/Authors/authors have run into similar problems; but unlike Koons, I know more about others' stories.

In the 1960s, Lenny Bruce started to combine an interest in free-flow, improv jazz--something he'd picked up from the Beat poets--with observational, stand-up comedy. Comedy, as most of you know, tends to exploit audiences' fears and taboos for the sake of eliciting laughter. This has just been how comedy has worked for a long time. Bruce didn't invent that aspect of comedy--see Rabelais, Chaucer, etc. hundreds of years before; or the recent discovery of what many are calling the world's oldest Yo Mama joke (it involves her sexual activities and it comes from Babylon 1500 B.C.).

However, because Bruce's setups were longer and more complex than the older style of insults or setup-punchline, and because he fused those older comedic tropes of sexuality, death, and the body with profane language, he was labeled a "sick" comic, arrested multiple times, charged with obscenity and indecency, and spent most of his later years as a broke alcoholic in and out of court.

George Carlin, considered a Bruce protege, also had his nights in jail and days in court--and a response to one of his acts made its way to the Supreme Court and ultimately established the primetime family hour, i.e. no sex, profanity, etc. when kids might be watching/listening.

Another writer, Salman Rushdie, went into hiding in the late-1980s because a death sentence was issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in response to one of his novels, The Satanic Verses.

A few years ago, an Indian politician offered an $11 million bounty on the Danish cartoonist who depicted Muhammad in a position he didn't appreciate.

A few weeks ago, American media reported the deaths of Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik, two journalists covering the violence in Syria.

I could go on, but the point I'm trying to make is that writing and Authorship are very corporeal--as LeFevre (still and also a sweet name) has pointed out, describing writing as a social act. It does not merely take place in the textual record. And I think that this needs to be taken into account when we examine and redefine our constructs of postmodern authorship. So, my question is this: If writers live to write; brave death, injury, and exile to write; and sometimes experience death, injury, and exile because of what they write, how should this be considered when we define postmodern authorship? Do these dangers change how we view the Author-text connection, or how we assign the benefits of authorship (including ownership) to those who write or author?

It Takes a Village (a Village with Authors)

In my last blog post, I considered the possibilities of moving away from eulogizing the author and instead breathing life back into that position by suggesting an analogy of authorship based on an author-parent/text-child dynamic. In a couple of the readings since, most recently “Rhetoric in  New Key: Women and Collaboration,” I’ve seen how dangerously close this proposal nears the problematic “model of the author as God the Father of the Text” (274), which is how Toril Moi puts it. The problems with this type of model are easily discernible to anyone looking for how women or collaborative authors take part in this tradition, as Andrea Lunsford and Lisa Ede discuss, or anyone who recognizes more abstract and universalized modes of understanding (at least in academia and other intellectual bodies) that stress the social, the contextual, and the dialogic over the individualist monolith of prior authorship constructs. I do think, though, in abandoning that holy and patriarchal analogy, that an author-parent analogy freer from such phallic and absolutist description may be too quickly dismissed.

      First, most of us have heard or read authors consider a work “my baby.” Some of us may even feel that way about our own writing, recognizing what at least looks like invention or creation. This perspective, of course, can lead to a view that reduces creation to its most immediate, overlooking the necessary presence of a multitude of other factors, working collaboratively, in that creation. In terms of textual authorship, this involves the teachers who teach writers that language, the literary tradition, the readers who read that text, the printers who print it, the social, cultural, and historical moment offering exigence, and so forth.

     However, in recognizing that popular practice of conflating authorship/creation/ownership, as well as some of the ways the author-function works, I do think the parent analogy works. In fact, if we agree that authorship is collaborative and social, there may not be a better analogy for that process than human reproduction, one of the more basic and popular forms of human interaction. Fundamentally, human reproduction is collaborative: the process can only happen with at least two people, despite all of the advancements in modern science; similarly, our language is only our language in the way it connects us as humans (at least two), or symbol-using animals. And if we shift our focus, we can clearly see the presence of other factors (and people) at play, from something as physically basic as the ground we stand on and the air we breathe, to something social and biochemical like sexual or reproductive drive and the food we need to eat, or to something more cultural and social like maternity/paternity leave, the opportunity for daycare, the safety of communities, etc. The old quote, “It takes a village to raise a child,” comes to mind here, and emphasizes the presence and necessity of the community or the social, though it should be recognized that villages take just as much part in creating that child.

     Further, we can acknowledge the ways parents are used like the author-function. Authors offer categories we use to understand texts, to the point that we expect similarities, just as parents offer others the means through which to see children (assumptions about values, intelligence, etc.; someone to call in case of an emergency). To go further, consider the similarities in how extramarital children (described pejoratively as bastards--I've been reading A Song of Fire and Ice) and anonymous texts have traditionally been treated: is there anything more pressing than finding origins? Doesn't that lack of history suggest a lack of identity, or something cut off from tradition and history? Is it not often read negatively, the obvious example being that an anonymous text is dangerous or false?).

     Foucault also notes how the author-function is used to assign responsibility, just as parents take responsibility for their children until those children reach a point of maturity where they are expected to take responsibility for themselves, just as we come to see how texts operate separate from what their authors may have wanted or intended (though, if we consider the ways parents of criminals are treated, we know that this never occurs completely). Essentially, both the creators and the created are given agency—parents and authors, children and text—but we do not lose sight of the human influence that brought that text into discursive circulation.

     Why do I need to use this type of analogy? I’m not sure. It may be an issue of a propensity toward seeing and valuing the individual, which could very well and ironically be a result of my environment; or an issue of philosophy—Humanism, for instance—or asserting the humanness of human behaviors, like our language;  or something else entirely. But it is an analogy that, I think, both helps and limits my understanding of the principles of our class and readings. My questions for you, then, are as follows:

1. Do you see a movement away from the human in contemporary authorship studies? If not, do you think some (i.e. me) are conflating the human with the individual? Or the human with the patriarchal human?

2. Does the author as a parent, with the qualification that we avoid supernatural or patriarchal constructs, work as an analogy? What are the problems with such an analogy?

3. If you find yourself using an analogy to understand authorship, what is yours, and why do you think find it useful or appropriate?

*P.S. Late is late, but I apologize for limiting the time all of you had to read this post with it being as late as it is, especially after this issue was brought up in class last week. My schedule is being changed.

A Question about Satire, Intent, and the Dead Author

As many of the readings have reiterated, especially the first six chapters of Authorship in Composition Studies, contemporary literary and composition theory has generally agreed that the author is dead. Foucault famously predicted/suggested it, Barthes announced it, and scholars since have primarily either accepted that pronouncement or repeated it after searching for the pulse themselves. In just the first few chapters of Authorship in Composition Studies, Barthes and Foucault (and Eliot—though he seems to have been more concerned with lionizing or deifying authors and the literary tradition) are foundational to the arguments and methodologies of each essay. Rebecca Moore Howard uses the two to illuminate the distinction between author, writer, and student; Paul Butler draws from their texts in problematizing the distinctions between copyright infringement and plagiarism, as well as the apparent contradictions or hypocrisy in thought among some writing instructors; and so forth. This all makes sense in the poststructuralist, destabilized scholarship of contemporary scholarship, and this methodology reveals and has revealed much about the relationships between people, language, and texts; however, the author’s death is problematic for me—a relatively new observer of these conversations, and one who grew up being fascinated by my understanding of genius and auteur—because it does seem to overlook many of the ways we rely on our knowledge of authors to guide our understanding of texts; and in my interests, this may be no more apparent than satire.

      To better demonstrate what I mean, I’ll refer to a humorous case from the past month. On February 6^th of this year, a year-old story from The Onion concerning an $8 billion Planned Parenthood “Abortionplex” was posted to the official Facebook page for John Fleming, a Republican congressman from Louisiana, by Fleming or a staffer, along with the comment, “More on Planned Parenthood, abortion by the wholesale.” The story, as most know or expect, was satirical, poking fun at the contentious and politicized issue of abortion, publicly-funded healthcare, and publicly-funded abortion. The post was quickly removed, though not before it was recorded, and the situation has become funnier than the original Onion news story, if even in the most cynical of ways. Fleming has since been characterized as an idiot, moronic, foolish, and several other adjectives and nouns either highlighting his lack of intelligence, reading skills, or cultural awareness.

     It is not my intention to defend Fleming, so I won’t; but I bring up the story because I think it does show how knowledge of the author, however broadly defined (in this case a group author, as The Onion doesn’t provide bylines in its “news” articles), can be essential to our understanding of a text or the interactions between texts and other cultural bodies. The absurdity of The Onion story itself, along with other textual cues, may have offered enough of an indication that the story was false or exaggerated; however, if this reader whose reading was apparently distorted by politics and ideology had been familiarized with The Onion, if the reader had understood the author’s intent (which was to exaggerate/defamiliarize/lie with satirical comedy for the purpose of eliciting laughter, and perhaps changing attitudes), this probably would not have happened.

      I’m only beginning to dig into my understanding of the event, and the dead author, so forgive the holes or fogginess of my logic, and I do realize that many could point to those textual cues in the story, or the body of work produced by The Onion, as more important than any notion of authorial intent. However, I think this example, among others (Why do we assume Swift never meant to eat children?), does show how certain modes of writing problematize our understanding of the dead author or author-function, especially when the roots of these texts involve people trying to connect with other people, traversing the general confines of time and space, in this case one person or group trying to make others laugh.

     So, my questions are as follows: 1) Are all genres, modes, and styles of writing subject to the same conceptions of the author or author-function? 2) If the exodus from authorial intent has occurred for the sake of highlighting and understanding the complex ways texts and language and people interact, could it be more appropriate to move away from eulogizing the author and instead focus on the life of the text, perhaps using the analogy of the author-parent/text-child? 

     This is the link for The Onion story: http://www.theonion.com/articles/planned-parenthood-opens-8-billion-abortionplex,20476/

Brandt, Letters, Signatures, Authenticity

I am teaching a persuasive letter in my English 120 classes this semester primarily as a way to teach genre, persuasive strategies, and rhetorical situations, but also to satisfy my interest in community involvement/discussion. Like the other assignments of the semester, at least among some of my students, one of the problems I run into with this unit is convincing my students that writing and sending letters to community leaders—be they political, business, religious, etc.—is a skill/knowledge with “real world” implications. I note the ways protests, boycotts, and even………letters can bring and have brought about change, and we talk about the importance of discussion and informed opinion in democratic systems of government. As a way of informing my teaching, I’ve also increased the amount of time I commit to such forms of involvement, sending letters and emails primarily to political representatives. A response that one of these representatives recently mailed to me, along with my teaching of the unit, then influenced my reading of one of our assignments this week—which brings me to Deborah Brandt’s “Who’s the President?”

Brandt’s discussion of ghostwriting offers an intriguing glimpse into an occupation with tremendous sociological and philosophical implications that I’d never contemplated before—Polanski didn’t really mine that territory in The Ghost Writer. Brandt’s essay, drawing from her experiences interviewing a variety of ghost writers, examines some of these implications, noting the different ways ghostwriting demonstrates some of the values associated with authorship, some of the ways literacy operates in personal and business relationships, and some of the more notable examples of the ways literacy and authorship are exploited and used to exploit. However, I was most struck by Brandt’s mention of “the symbolic value” of the author as demonstrated in organizational thank you letters: ghostwritten, printed on stationery, and sometimes signed by a president, sometimes signed with “a machine with a fountain pen rigged up to imitate the president’s signature” (560)—which brings me back to the letter that was sent to me.

Just as I assumed that the email I sent to Senator Conrad wouldn’t actually be read by him—though I imagine North Dakota is one of the easier states in which to fulfill such a responsibility—the letter that was sent to me in response offered a printed signature and the knowledge that “wnll” typed it. I assumed that Conrad would never read my letter, if not for the time commitment or monotony of the task, then at least someone like wnll simply throwing away my possibly paranoid screed about the NDAA and civil rights. However, the likelihood that the letter was ghostwritten in part or in whole, as a general response to the topic, and the fact that it offered no real signature, instead only an attempt to mimic a real signature and all that it means, now makes me certain that he never did. Putting aside how this type of action influences my students’ questioning of the “real world” applications of yet another writing assignment, I’m forced to consider how Senator Conrad hears from his constituents if not by letter, email, or phone. I’m sure this includes poll results and representations in media, which is disconcerting, but it also then leaves primarily political fundraisers, which is even more disconcerting, and public meetings, which are frequently avoided by politicians because they attract political extremists, as Minnesota Representative Collin Peterson suggested in 2009.

So, if this at least suggests how very little correspondence actually occurs between democratic representatives and their constituents, and how the authenticity or integrity of that correspondence is publicly questioned, how does this affect the way we trust and value personal, written communication? Echoing Brandt’s conclusions, do these examples of breakdowns or exploitations—as well as those in the world of ghostwriting—change your opinions? Does this show how easily authorship and writing can be used to exploit? And if so, does this change the way we view the author-function, perhaps not in the light of Foucault, who in part focused on the way it was used to control dissidence, but also as a way to authenticate communication and thus promote discussion and community?

Davin's Post, Authorship and American Political Texts

As last week’s readings (primarily sociological and philosophical) and this week’s readings (primarily historical) have shown, the notion of authorship carries several implications: Foucault’s “What is an Author?” offers an examination of the ways authorship has been used to legitimize texts and to control dissent; Eliot’s piece contemplates the idea of genius, or “individual talent,” relative to the substantial body of work in the long history of literature; Barthes’ “The Death of an Author” echoes Wimsatt and Beardsley in its treatment of the limitations an author imposes; and this week’s readings trace the legal definitions of the author via copyright law, with notable stops highlighting Samuel Johnson’s ghostwriting in the prelude to an execution, Wordsworth’s famous perspective on the cultural value/role of the author, and an interesting observation concerning the “battle [that] is shaping over the future of the Internet” that is even more interesting in the wake of recently proposed legislation SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act). <(That didn’t feel like one sentence while I was writing it.) However, because I’m interested in political texts and culture, I think it would be interesting to highlight what I’ve been thinking about concerning intellectual property and the construct of authorship, if only to give myself a baseline from which to begin the semester’s enlightenment.

Because it is an election year taking place in the context of increased political awareness, if not involvement (the Tea Party, Occupy, the aftermath of Citizens United—the bill that injected even more anonymous money into American politics), because this awareness/involvement has given increased volume to more political positions and proposals (including those on "opposite" ends of mainstream politics), and because American political change must always pass the Forefathers’ litmus test, the interpretation and appropriation of Jefferson, Washington, Paine, Adams, Franklin, Madison, etc. will play an increased role in American politics, society, and culture. Anyone watching the (insert choice adjective here) political theatre already knows this has been a major consideration among the more popular discussions of DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act), the tax code, foreign intervention vs. isolationism, "the pursuit of happiness," freedom of/for/from religion…. Certainly, these discussions are affected by personal ideologies influenced by strong religious considerations and forged in a culture that has championed the individual, free enterprise, and the Judeo-Christian tradition most loudly; however, they also stem from an interesting definition and perception of author, definitions that sometimes seem to border on religious reverence, and definitions that have tremendous implications, even for those who don't know about these discussions, or don't care.

So...to try to pull this together, I wonder what type of larger ideological considerations form our definitions of authorship, and in looking at the way American Revolutionaries and early statesmen are used in argument today, how can discussions of political authorship inform our discussions of authorship in other areas, and vice versa?