My Archives: November 2004
Monday, November 29, 2004
Hypertext
Johndan is kind enough to post a previous talk on hypertext. I want to engage with some of his ideas (in what I hope will not be read as agressive/attacking...just responses):
Johndan writes about hypertext hype and the fall-out from that hype:
* Hypertext was merely a metaphor, a set of suggestions for thinking about communication.
* Without degenerating into teleological argument about Perfecting True Textual Practices, I want to suggest that hypertext was just a set of training wheels, a choreographer’s chart, a libretto. We were supposed to be doing something with those suggestions, not merely going through the motions.
My initial response is to disagree with the first point, and sort of agree with the second. First, I don't see hypertext as a metaphor. Nor do I see it as just a practice. Instead, it engages with (or generates) a logic different from that of print. That has been the most difficult concept for hypertext theory to understand; get over the “neat-o” aspect of non-linear story telling, and start to see the bigger consequences of linking/networking.
The second point: yes, to a point. The training wheels metaphor only works if we recognize that the potential of new media (which we can represent here somewhat in hypertext) is still too new to understand its overall impact on cultural structures and thinking.
The biggest problem, though, I find in these observations is
Too much reliance on early hypertext theory; i.e. Joyce et al. Their emphasis on "liberation" and "power" took hypertext in the wrong direction. Nelson's vision was less about these points than about learning and discovery.
The quickness to name a "post-" stage. Wait a minute. Post? Man, we aren't even in the pre yet. That his students say: "what's hypertext?" speaks to that point. Most folks are on the Web since a bit after '93. Eleven years max. Those creative writers and academics who fooled around with Storyspace and HyperCard early on (or who read Nelson's early work) were the serious minority. We are not in a post stage by any means. It's too easy to name post / death stages these days. Coover did it, and was terribly wrong then as well.
"All texts must constantly be connected up to each other, fragments at a time." Yes. Here is where we begin to think how hypertext can take us out of textual practice and into organizing social/educational structures. Network theory is helpful here. Collin's work is as well.
"Hypertext can remind us of the need to rearrange and forge new meanings, but in the end it’s only one other closed structure." This doesn't mesh with the Web, weblogs, networks, etc. It's not closed at all. Storyspace and Eastgate's other products are closed. WebCT and Blackboard are closed. The Web, in general, isn't. That some sites close outside linking is true, but the structure is not a closed one.
"At the same time, if we acknowledge that linking to someone’s texts requires an ethic of reference, how do we construct that ethic?" As soon as "ethics" comes into play, I feel uncomfortable. Shades of conservatism here...19th century morality re-emerging in cyberspace. Uh oh. Kill the beast before it has a chance to survive.
" What happens to evaluation (of students, of academics, of anyone) if every text bleeds into every other text? " And the other big pitfall - particularly in education (and composition studies): the need to assess and evaluate. We aren't even sure of what it is that is going on (note how uncomfortable the institution is with digital culture, sampling, hip hop, etc.) and we want to box it up and assess it. That means only one thing: the terms of assessment will be made based on previous logics and models. I.e. - we read the digital solely through the lens of print. For why this is wrong, see Harvard's English A, trying to understand print through the logic of oral assessment.
More later.
Posted by jrice @ 09:37 AM EST [Link]
Sunday, November 28, 2004
Posted by jrice @ 01:38 PM EST [Link]
Friday, November 26, 2004
Holiday Doings
Heard "Alice's Restaurant" on the radio."
And I said, "Obie, I can understand you wanting my
wallet so I don't have any money to spend in the cell, but what do you
want my belt for?" And he said, "Kid, we don't want any hangings." I
said, "Obie, did you think I was going to hang myself for littering?"
Heard Frank Zappa's "Lumpy Gravy (Part One)" on the radio. Nothing to quote, but let me ask you this: when was this last time you heard Zappa on your radio? Thought not.
Read David Levy's Scrolling Forward and David Weinberger's Small Pieces Loosely Joined. Two popular/academic hybrids (more on the popular side) that I am late reading. Levy has the edge regarding how he contextualizes technology and writing. Weinberger falls apart when he gets cheesy towards the end. Weinberger's best point is that the Web is about imperfection. Here's where composition gets new media wrong. It still tries to read new media through the lens of print: standardization and exactness; i.e. perfection.
Reading Jeff Noon's Pollen. Noon is still the weirdest writer ever. The plot involves hay fever, dream feathers, dog-human mongrels, zombies, taxi cabs....no one can summarize a Noon book.
So much football. Someone explain how Texas can miss the extra point and still get one point because A&M picked it up in the end zone and was tackled? That's a safety? Huh?
Tripel Karmeliet. Not the fanciest Belgian, but still good.
Posted by jrice @ 05:57 PM EST [Link]
Thursday, November 25, 2004
Holiday Treats:
http://www.ruben.fm/format.html
Posted by jrice @ 10:30 AM EST [Link]
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Conservatism
Another popular trope adored by The Chronicle is the liberal professor and the conservative response. It's a simple binary triumphed by the right: the university is too leftist. The left responds: we are the only place of dissent. But both sides support conservatism, whether or not that conservatism be leftist or rightist. Both struggle to preserve political positions without critique. I find little difference between the two.
Once the political becomes the focus of any course, the inevitable dissent will surface. So avoid the political? Not at all (and you can't anyway - even if you say you are avoiding it). While those who find rightist politics worth adhering to need to look closer at their positions and assumptions, so does the left as well. I tend to focus more on the left not because I am on the right (I'm not) but because the left claims to hold the critical tools needed to fight conservatism. Unfortunately, it is not as hip to apply those critiques to itself. Whether those critiques need to be more fully addressed to the complexity of economic/global relations or pedagogy, leftist positions seem (excuse the generality) to not be interested in self-critique. “But we are being critiqued! We can’t critique ourselves too!” Yes, you have to as well, or you run the danger of supporting stagnant positions and upholding tenets whose basis is in serious need of question. The James Berlin dilemma here is: it’s not just the “students” who need to learn how to question and critique; it’s us, too. Otherwise, we adopt the same type of conservative position. Plagiarism, political adherence, pedagogical sameness. The instructor documented in the Chronicle piece, then, needs to look at the kinds of positions she celebrates as true; it’s easy to say the students need to do that (they do), but the PhD needs to do it even more because of the cultural capital, critical ability, and position she maintains, all of which allow her to do this more readily.
Posted by jrice @ 10:31 AM EST [Link]
Sunday, November 21, 2004
Collin nails the issue of plagiarism nicely.
Posted by jrice @ 12:50 PM EST [Link]
Saturday, November 20, 2004
Mayhem in Motown
Dang. That was ugly. Collin talks about it too. You're not supposed to like this kind of thing....but man, was it wild. Ron Artest jumps into the stand after getting hit with a drink and clocks some fan. Jackson and O'Neal throwing punches. O'Neal is drenched with beer as he makes his way through to the tunnel. Fans hitting other fans. Cats and Dogs, living together. Poor Larry Brown, in the words of Bill Walton, can only look on in dismay.
My take: no apologies. Let it go. A little bit of excitement in the Motor City. Not excusable, but thrilling nevertheless. The worse thing that can happen is that this leads to yet another morality excuse - BAN ALCOHOL IN THE ARENAS. NO CURSING. WIPE YOUR SHOES.
Fighting is part of the thrill of competition. Hockey is nothing but brawls. Fight Club puts it all out there for us to enjoy. Fighting: the great rhetorical tradition of battle - by way of Walter Ong. Hell, who hasn't wanted to clock someone at some point in his/her life just for the hell of it? You lookin' at me? POW. GET OUT OF MY WAY. POW. Wallace shoved Artest in the face for all the right reasons. Artest is a punk. Talented, but a punk.
Let's not start getting melodramatic here. Fans fought players. Boo hoo. So what? Any one who's stupid enough to pick a fight with a guy who's 6'6 or taller/over 250 pounds and athletic deserves a whooping in return.
Posted by jrice @ 09:15 AM EST [Link]
Friday, November 19, 2004
Mos Def
Mos Def's New Danger reminds me a lot of The Roots' Phrenology. Live music/rock/blues/funk mixed with rhymes. The album hooks are great. "Life is Real" and "Sex, Love & Money" are two of the better tracks; Mos Def signs from the position of "The Boogie Man" - an almost alter ego echoing K.C. and the Sunshine Band to the extreme (note the "Sunshine" track - though it riffs off Hair and The Fifth Dimension).
But that's where the comparrison with The Roots stops. Mos Def is too obsessed with the business, complaining about everyone and everything. Seems he feels ripped off and track after track asks for "his money." Even with amazing tracks like "The Easy Spell" still sitting heavy with me, I can't shake this Sinead O'Connor meets Nobody Loves Me thing: whoah is me. I'm a star. I don't get paid. It's like hearing Latrell Sprewell complain that his mutli-million dollar contract wasn't extended or Keenan McCardell refusing to play - even though he's under contract - because he wants mo' money. Still, the disc is one of the better hip hop discs to come along lately, not as intense as anything Madvillian or Jaylib spin, but still up there.
Posted by jrice @ 09:25 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, November 18, 2004
Conservatism/Morality
No better example than how puritan this nation is going than the uproar over last Monday's Monday Night Football intro. I understand Tony Dungy's critique, but the other critiques about the sexual nature of the promo are troubling. Everything is taboo these days regarding sex; any mention or suggestion of sexuality is considered off-limits. Show a boob; pay a million dollar fine.
It's easy to attribute such thinking to the Bush administration, but I would rather see the parallels in education (of course) where morality is at the center of the literacy mission (Christian values) and also the center of how writing is often taught in textbooks. Being fair. Seeing both sides of the issue. Avoiding fallacies. Being rational. Being reasonable. To me, these pedagogical tropes are no different than the controversies surrounding so-called sexually explicit material surfacing during prime time television. What is it that is being feared? Children watching? No. That’s a circulated cliché. Morality? Yes. And the morality of textbook dogma (fairness) really differs little from the morality preached by the FCC. MNF’s intro is being framed in a writing textbook language of morality – it’s not rational or fair to show prime time viewers a woman slipping out of a towel.
These are conservative positions, conservative in a Republican way, sure, but also in the sense of preservation/conserving. That preservation may be imagined (“the way things once were”) but the imagination keeps alive a troubling situation for rhetoric and discourse in general. It is sneaky conservatism because few want to argue against “being fair” or “reasonable.” Yet fairness is an imagined position, a moral position. Morality is a dangerous aspect of conservatism.
Posted by jrice @ 02:33 PM EST [Link]
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Holy Smokes:
http://www.greyvideo.com/
Posted by jrice @ 08:24 PM EST [Link]
How Images Think
Reading Ron Burnett's How Images Think. Burnett introduces the concept of reverie as part of an understanding of imagery.
Images are thought about as both the site of meaning and the reason why viewers have certain experiences and not others. Images, it is assumed, are the place where the exchange begins. In contrast, reverie is about the interplay among thoughts, daydreams, listening, and viewing, and it is part of a continuum into which some images fit and others don't
I like this excerpt because of how it treats the image but also how it can be generalized to the overall image of a given topic, idea, concept, notion. To that, I place the image of the writer. To employ reverie to imagine writers is to juxtapose the daydreams, thoughts, views, etc. It is not to uphold empirical study on its own (this number of writers composed this number of times in this number of situations) because such an image is limited as gesture. The lone standing empirical model only poses an image of student writer, a problematic position since it situates writing only with a classroom (a false binary regarding composition/composing). The daydream model, on the other hand, opens up all kinds of writerly images (like Frank Zappa!). Reverie, Burnett states, is about “being entertained” and as Ulmer argues, the invention practices of electracy (or whatever you want to call electronic meaning making) can be found in the realm of entertainment. Imagine, then, the student as Frank Zappa composer…
Posted by jrice @ 02:54 PM EST [Link]
Monday, November 15, 2004
Zappa
Arete has this nice quote from Frank Zappa on composition.
I just happen to use material other than notes for the pieces. Composition is a process of organization, very much like architecture. As long as you can conceptualize what that organizational process is, you can be a ‘composer’—in any medium you want.
Zappa and composition. Imagine composition studies teaching Sheik Yerbouti? The pedagogy of "Broken Hearts Are For Assholes" or "Bobby Brown Goes Down." Puns, allusions, mockery, fused styles....I like it.
Posted by jrice @ 10:28 AM EST [Link]
Sunday, November 14, 2004
Posted by jrice @ 03:35 PM EST [Link]
Ol' Dirty Bastard
Ol' Dirty Bastard is dead.
From Wu Tang's "Shame on a Nigga":
Ol' Dirty Bastard, live and uncut!
Styles unbreakable, shatterproof
To the young youth, ya wanna get gun? Shoot!
BLAOW! How you like me now? Don't fuck the style
Ruthless wild!
Do ya wanna getcha teeth knocked the FUCK out?
Wanna get on it like that, well then shout!
Posted by jrice @ 12:14 PM EST [Link]
Saturday, November 13, 2004
Literacy
I'm thinking about literacy these days.
Maybe because I was hired within a "digital literacy" initiative.
Maybe because I have been reading posts on WPA-L about technology and outcomes.
Maybe because of a recent NCTE bulletin which arrived in the mail yesterday. Big heading: "Taking a Look at Literacy Coaching."
But most of all, maybe because I don't think there is such a thing as literacy.
By that I mean: the conditions and terms which gave rise to a concept we now identify as literacy no longer exist. The means by which we produce and understand knowledge are different today than they were in the 19th century. Using the language of 19th century literacy initiatives to make sense of technology and the overall technological apparatus in existence today no longer works.
I see.....
The idea I am working with is based on the notion of conservatism. By that I don't mean Republican politics/right wing campus stances/etc. I mean preservation. The desire to preserve a position regarding knowledge acquisition. When composition begins to think through the influence of technology, for instance, it does so through a conservative lens (technology outcomes interpreted as basically the same as non-technology outcomes: students will learn how to critically analyze information that….students will understand purpose and audience…blah blah blah). This conservatism is centered around the concept of literacy.
Multimodal. Multiliteracies. Visual Literacies. etc. They are all still concepts of literacy.
What we experience today does not necessarily erase much of what we have traditionally attributed to literacy and literacy studies (thus, it doesn't set up a binary division) but it also doesn't necessarily include all of what we have previously understood as literacy. Key figures in understanding what is going on include McLuhan (of course), Ulmer (of course) and big parts of the 1950s/60s Toronto School of Media and Communication. I find poststructuralist thinkers relevant as well, particularly Barthes, for the ways that their writings often move around the traditional categories associated with literacy acquisition. The punctum is not a literate convention of meaning making – it resists the referentiality literacy contends as central to such processes. If I was more of a D&G person (and maybe I will have to return to them again more seriously since the Convergences crowd influences me greatly as well), I could think about how key D&G concepts like nomadology/affect are anything but literate as well.
The challenge is to situate the conservative influence of literacy studies and work out – if not to break out of it – how to respond to it, counter it, teach beyond it….(?)
Yup. I smell project here…..
Posted by jrice @ 08:57 AM EST [Link]
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Arafat
It finally happened.
The moment of relief felt upon Arafat's passing quickly slips into apprehension.
Arafat was the worse thing to happen to the Palestinians. Few will admit it; few will break the taboo in Arab society of condemning a charismatic leader, of breaking the persistent cult of personality which drags Arab culture to the brink of death again and again. Few will come out and say what should have been said long ago. Arafat is the curse of the Palestinians.
He did everything himself to prevent the creation of a state; he chose a blind policy of war and terror which only created a simulacra of struggle. When negotiations were on the verge of a peace deal and a settlement which did require serious comprise from both sides and recognition that the facts on the ground have changed for both sides’ long standing ideological positions, Arafat went back to terror and erased every single success gained. The infrastructures the Israelis built for him: gone. The money the Israelis gave him to create security and society: gone. The joint security patrols to keep the peace internally: gone. The economic cooperation and planned development parks: gone. What was gained? He put his people into even more misery, making Gaza even more of a hell, denying his people access to jobs and futures, encouraging the murder of innocents - Israelis through suicide attacks, Palestinians through the expected and anticipated reprisals. And all the money? Stolen. Suha lives the queen life. The average Gazan has little to eat, no sewage, and maybe running water. Good job, Arafat.
And now the cult of personality will rise in his ashes. The world quickly forgets the wrong this man did. The Arabs he fought against will attend his funeral. King Abdullah going to Arafat's funeral? Yo, King. This guy tried to kill your father and take over Jordan. Remember that?
And now what? Will those within the Palestinian hierarchy have what it takes to finally move outside of Arafat's crippling sphere of influence and make a real peace? Or will they continue the death policies of suicide attacks and reprisals? Will they end the propaganda of hatred which has saturated their culture long before 1967 (and folks, the PLO is a pre-1967 creation)? Will they move out of a global vision of class - one which makes the U.S. class issues miniscule by comparison - by recognizing and living with the other (Said's failure to recognize Arab otherness of outside cultures and religion)?
Arafat is dead. He let his people suffer and die because he didn't have the courage to build a nation, recognize the Jews right to their homeland, and deal with the internal economic and religious conflict within Palestinian society. Instead, he chose to die a martyr. Look at me, confined to a compound by the big bad Jews, dead without a state, worship me, idolize me, memorialize me, even though I have kept your suffering going. And that is the real shame of his rule.
Posted by jrice @ 07:32 AM EST [Link]
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
Annotating Images
Using DHTML (see, it ain't dead yet!) to annotate images a la flickr. Very nice. I can see this used in a punctum-like assignment, but many other kinds of image-based writings as well.
Posted by jrice @ 08:00 AM EST [Link]
Monday, November 8, 2004
Very seldom do I venture publicly into politics, and even less often do I come out publicly regarding the world of the Middle East - a world I have strong passion about for all kinds of personal reasons. But this article in the online New Yorker about Israeli author Amos Oz touches on much of what I feel as well. Oz (also one of Israel’s great novelists) offers some fine observations and discussion. When friends chide me/laugh a bit about my taking Matthew Abraham to task on Pre-Text for his Re/Interview with Chomsky and Finkelstein, what I think folks aren't seeing is the complexities of the situation I wanted Abraham to turn to for discussion instead of mere Israel-bashing (which is what he did in his narrow questions). And this is much of what Oz touches upon as well: the situation is more complex that the critiques realize. How easy it is on both the right and left to reduce complex conflict to a moral high ground of right and wrong. But how even easier to now erase one group's right for nationalism (Israel) by favoring another's, to write out one history by writing in another, to become the very racists one supposedly want's to defeat. Instead of vocalizing the difficult histories which generate nationalisms, instead of addressing the long standing existence of peoples in a region, and instead of acknowledging the agencies of many parties (and not just Israeli and Palestinian), the dominant voices - and here I unfortunately must address mostly the left's self-righteous behavior - make errors in judgment which equal the very same errors we easily attribute to the Bush administration's failed foreign policy. This is seen as well on the often fair minded attempts of Crooked Timber to engage in discussion. Even if the intent is good (and I say that only because of a caveat the editors put out regarding comments), the discussion quickly falls back on the very problems Abraham is guilty of propagating: using the wrong language to describe the situation, innacurate historical readings, but most importantly, the very racist discourse it is tempting to work against.
When Arafat dies, I'm sure I'll have more to say as well.
Posted by jrice @ 03:58 PM EST [Link]
Sunday, November 7, 2004
What a great conference
Posted by jrice @ 04:21 PM EST [Link]
Monday, November 1, 2004
Started the site for next semester's 7020 course. SIGN UP so it goes!
Posted by jrice @ 04:23 PM EST [Link]
Strike a Pose
I was intrigued by this Boing Boing post this morning. The first part is the focus on web favorite/copyright guru Lawrence Lessig posing; the second part is the parody (adaptation) of that pose for other purposes. That one's pose can be iconized is important to digital production; Madonna encouraged the world "to strike a pose" but more broadly, the terms of the digital involve posing, boasting, self-advertising (Mailervision), and other related features. All of this extends to the notion of alter egos and the digital, a hip hop/DJ trope where identity and writing merge into something else (what Turkle did not recognize even in her identity related studies of chat rooms/MOOs/etc.).
This brings up the question of attitude (what Ulmer calls "mood"). I find relevant work in Burke's Attitudes toward History where Burke writes:
This is the “gentleman’s” subtle form of boasting. He practices long and hard, he becomes an adept, he assures you that he is a veritable tyro – and then you play, and he beats you. In case you win, that also has been taken care of. (Burke 48)
In a piece called "Writing Detroit," I extend Burke's observations towards a writing the city idea, juxtaposing the "boast" with Eminem and Henry Ford "boasting" as a grammar, or my own "boast" of Detroit as digital rhetoric (the boast as outside of traditional argumentation/narrative writing).
Marc Augé calls much of this (or similar to this) the "pose" of the non-place. And there I find the Lessig image again - a pose as rhetorical presence. Hands to temple. Perplexed. Intense. Deliberative. If they are "visual icons" as the Boing Boing post claims, then they are appropriative gestures (like Warhol borrowing Elvis) to be re-inserted/imagined for visual, digital work. They are recognizable (icons) and writing moments to be re-invented.
Strike a pose. Nice name for a new media composition book...maybe....
Posted by jrice @ 10:15 AM EST [Link]
[Archive Index] [Main Index]
