Date: Tuesday, October 24, 2000 3:32 PM -0500
From: Kevin Brooks
Subject: Re: Myka V's latest

Kevin:
Classifying discourse is always a problematic endeavor, but I think we agreed last night that what M.V. is doing is more poetic than most academic writing--so poetic as to raise the question, is it academic? These kinds of classifications can become important and highly politicized when you are trying to write a Master's Paper (what if you want to be "personal/poetic" and your committee wants you to be "objective/academic), but of course you never know you've crossed a line until the (academic) police show up.

Mary:
Of course, the "new essay" is part of this piece: "We are arguing for a hybrid textuality that brings rhetoric and poetic together. Eventually (where was that?)we say 'that new essay (call it what you will) . . . includes poetic *and* rhetoric, privileging neither, invoking each that they might together express what cannot be represented without the other' ("Petals" 114)" (129). This essay is not tied to hypertext--it existed before computers as "Legal writing in the stature or the contract" (130). The author/s involve technology further into this discussion: "So if we think about poetics and electronics in the delivery of academic essays, we are asking oursleves about the form/s of writing that electronics might suggest, prefer, or privilege" (134). They claim that "electronics rewards--or claims to reward--a different kind of text and >a different kind of performance" (134). Thus, the question: "Is there a genre (a form, a poetic) most representative of cybertexts?" (135). Re/enter the debate about e-mail influence on discourse.

Kevin:
Right, they, and maybe we, keep coming back to this question: does the medium make a difference? Does the medium really suggest/prefer/privilege some types of discourse, and not others? That was my question last night, too: if we take the "electronic/computer revolution" seriously, do we need to start rethinking our writing? Our writing assignments? Michael Joyce, in his highly poetic essay (notice that it was also generally disliked), called for us to "write back to the web" before it became television: something we merely watch and don't create.

One answer to the question--does the medium matter?--is "no," the medium will just provide the content we deliver. The other answer is "yes": electronic mediums prefer or privilege discourse that is visual, that is moving, that is exciting. This issue involves a question of the medium's agency, its ability to act on us. I think we like to think that we are in control, and Joyce and Yellowlees and I think really just about everybody concerned about electronic literacy is trying to say "we have to take control of this thing, we have to make it what we want it to be rather than simply let it evolve willy-nilly, or worse, let CNN-Time/Warner-Disney-NBC-Microsoft colonized it (although it might be too late to prevent this)."

I guess I try to tackle the problem rhetorically: I can see some good reasons for treating the web much like print: I can keep production costs down on the Red River Conference Proceedings, and I can get that material to a potentially vast audience. It is good material, I think, just not particularly hypertextual, not particularly new in format. I would also love to make the proceedings more hypertextual, I would love to have presenters rethink their papers in more poetic and non-linear ways, or simply in more visual ways. One article, by Cass Dalglish, does that (includes a Flash movie); this year's proceedings will have some video clips to go with essays about movies (I hope). I'm not sure how much those clips will add to the "value" of the essays, but I do feel like the medium is calling to me, saying "make use of me, do something different." If academics want to hold the line--"we want substance, not glitter"--our experiments might fall short (although Cass's movie is great substance). I think Y&S are saying we want both--substance and glitter. Baudrillard would probably say the glitter is the substance.

That was probably an unnecessary digression. Let me just add, as I think I have said in class, that I generally treat web writing in stages. I ask my first-year students to simply post linear essays because I do think asking them to think about other ways of writing is hard. I ask fourth year students, and we are asking each other, to think more hypertextually, to think about ways of writing that will go beyond the familiar. I am taking for granted the fact that writing in the future will be different--I might be wrong.

Mary:
Kevin--is there another side of this debate? Do you know of any experts who >argue against Spooner and Yancey? Perhaps I should attempt to find articles >from the opposition?

I don't know of any one who has specifically argued against them. The responses to "Postings" tended to agree with both of them, although all offer slight critiques as well. You could certainly find a general "opposition" to their ideas among the red feminists who would probably see their work as "ludic," as playful, and not sufficiently addressing the problems of access, of social change, etc. You could also find a general opposition among traditionalists of various stripes--those who have no use of computers, those who distrust the performative aspect of their work, those who distrust collaboration. You would also find a general opposition among those who believe we need to provide students with more immediately useful skills and training. Jeff Smith, I believe, would be the most recent and most powerful supporter of that position. In many ways, you seem most interested in the very basic, and very important question, "what is composition?" You could re-visit Bartholomae (who Sirc says has little use for computers), Sirc, Y&S, Jeff Smith, and find yourself somewhere in that mix. I don't know if that helps much.

The other issue you seemed to be responding to last night was the one you started this message with: Poetics. Is there a place for poetics in composition? If so, what is its position? This might be a more narrowly focused version of "what is composition"? Many people are interested in recombining poetics and rhetoric (Y&S for sure); some want to keep them separate, either because they are quasi-Marxists who want to focus on work, or they are liberal-capitalists who want to help students become efficient participants in the new economy. OK, somewhat simplistic account, but I need to get going and start a new message for everyone.

Kevin

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