Date: Sun, 22 Oct 2000 23:31:08 -0500
From: "Mary Ellen Pull"
Subject: Re: Handout

Myka Vielstimmig "A Play on Texts: Rhetorics and Poetics of Discourse"

One of the "two or three key issues" that I can identify in this work deals with the debate about the complexity of classifying discourse into neat little categories of rhetoric/ poetics/ exposition/drama, etc. (similar to our modernist/postmodernist debate) . All of discourse (in the broad sense of communication) is very complex. We use metaphors in daily speech; we play on word meanings; some even try to wax eloquently in research papers.

We don't simply "create" and then "edit." We mix genres--we are in constant re/creation just like we are never "finished"--just done. In the field of composition, what does it mean to "get it right"? In the area of composition, I can be a relativist--words can be written in black ink on white paper, but they are seldom black and white. I agree that "every utterance is rhetorical" and that "every utterance is also political" as well as "poetic" (134).

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--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?

Mary

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