Gallagher's House

I have to admit that I enjoyed our conversation on Thursday (symposiums aside) perhaps most of all of our classes. Though, at times I felt as if we were interrogating Chloe... Who are you? What do you want to express? Tell us everything so we don't have to resort to drastic measures. I don't care a lick about the Geneva Conventions, I'LL THEORIZE YOU if you don't tell me what I want to know.

I felt like the conversation was fascinating, though. I've always been curious about potentiality and singularity, questions of the self and subject, and even though I feel like a blundering idiot when I talk about it, I enjoy the muck and mire of it. Of feeling my way through. Gut first. Words stumbling to catch up with the rest of me. 

For me, asking if the venue had an effect is very different from asking if the change of venue did. Or more accurately, if our changing the venue had an effect. When I think about the first question, I think about things that wouldn't have happened if we hadn't been at your house. We wouldn't have seen your (Gallagher's) daughter walk in and out of the room seven times, as if she were fascinated by seeing you in teacher-mode. We couldn't have had the same awkwardness about seating: not having enough, bets on whether or not I would sit in the big black chair, or the ability to disappear comfortably into the room's decor. 

In many ways, the place worked the exact same. It was a room, uncomfortable for some of us (perhaps those seated on the floor or Erin, who I never think was sold on the idea but was an excellent chap about it), where we talked about some ideas. Holding some ideas back because we were worried they might sound to others. Or waited to talk because we couldn't really understand what people were debating (or felt like people were talking past one another). Or chose not to talk because we didn't want to share our brilliance. After the class, I still had conversations with people about the things we talked and didn't talk about. A meta-commentary about the conversations we did have occurred. 

I do feel like there was a difference, but it is hard to put my finger on what it was. I feel like our changing the venue gave it an... affective energy... ew, gross... I sound like a mystic... But it did. It was less the place, and more that we'd chosen it. It might have been a joke of sorts, but it was a joke we had control over. And I think it is too easy to call it "just a lark" - though that might be exactly what it was. I realize fully that I am... how should I put this... a little weird. Rather than a classroom malcontent who stirs up trouble, I'd like to think of myself as a classroom miscontent who just disrupts the standard flow in generally innocuous ways. 

But I think there is a benefit to this. Occupy Gallagher's House didn't fit the usual scripts for how students behave in class. Both the blog effort and the class where we went to your house. Because it didn't fit the scripts, it gave it a different affect. When blogging, I felt so nervous and awkward about how you'd respond - much like when I wrote a Manifesto Against Inquiry Notebooks. And even after having verbal confirmation from everyone that they would do it, I know that people waited to post because no one wanted to be the second person to "Occupy." Even though they had it worked into the post. (I cite Chloe and Donna) The awkwardness/excitedness/whateverness and energy is akin to "breaking the rules" - despite having broken none. And when people talked about it, they'd talk about it in the same way. Do you think he'll be mad? (As if we hadn't completed the assignment) 

Breaking with the script, involved crafting a different relationship and, I would say, a different identity. Not that the group action would create the same identity. I think I can say fairly confidently that I am as much a joke to the other students as I am a colleague, that Occupy Gallagher's House was undertaken at least as much to humor me as it was actual interest in occupying your house. But breaking with the scripts provided room to craft a different social identity because the rules of the game, the scripts for how to act in class, were disrupted. 

The funny thing about being in your house was that the scripts weren't disrupted for us. But they were for you.  And it was visible in the briefest of moments. When your daughter was in the doorway of the kitchen, for example. And while it might not have been a disruption for you, watching you balance your different roles disrupted our (or at least my) perception of how your authority works. Similarly, when Kristi was doing her symposium, you took on the role of a student (until you started checking your watch that is). Perhaps that was part of your chuckle when I asked you if you wanted to be my partner, a recognition of the change in roles. Or it might have been as much an of-course-you'd-be-the-one-I-work-with chuckle. How people interpret and engage the disruption of scripts will of course vary. Scripts are comfortable, as are the identities and power relations they bring with them. Some might not be comfortable with upsetting it. Or might not even notice it if they interact in the same way. But I think the space opened up is useful. 

Another thing I find useful about the mere joke of it all is it binds the class in a very interesting way. Ask anyone in the class. This class feels different from most. It's in part because of the space you allow for these shenanigans. And I think, in part, because of the innocuous disruptions that happen in the class. My being a joke lets people laugh at something together as a group. Even if it's a rolling our eyes kind of way. And this makes me sound like a wise and magnanimous puppeteer of people in your classroom or an eccentric martyr, but for me, it had nothing to do with how people respond, binding the group, etc. It never has. I just wanted to do it. To see how it would work out. 

In Honor of the Occupation...

Occupy Academia: A context-changing analysis of contextualizing nano-informatic structures

Cham, J. G.*, Slackenerny, M. A. and Smith, B. S.
*California University of Technology, Pasadena, CA
Stanford Institute Center, Palo Alto, CA

(Received in final form 21 October 2011)

Abstract

This paper presents an alternative visual web-enabled interpretation of the short-based graphical sequential narration titled Occupy Academia (OCC). It is hypothesized that use of this secondary interface suffused with third-person linguistic usage and academic spatial distribution will provide improvement in perceived acumen generated from stochastic interactions with supervisory archtypes found in learning environments. Results show that persistent exposure to phdcomics dot com (PDC) is mildly correlated to jocular deportment, which suggests improvements in temporal-delay behavior of bounded activity.

A Comment Originally Intended for Chloe's Blog...

So... this post started out as a comment on Chloe's post. But then it kind of snowballed. So, I felt bad and moved it here.

I guess I am curious about all this real Chloe and authentic Chloe. It sounds as if we are talking about some deep buried kernel of a self, like an Eden, and if we could just get to it... well... then, then things would be good. Perhaps this is a bit radical of a claim (then again, perhaps not), I don't know that I believe in that kernel. For anyone. I/we/he/she/it is multiple, enacted in each different performance. Each facet of our ecology might lead us to enact a different I, but we (or I) don't have to present them all at once. It would even be disadvantageous to do so at times. Or more often pointless to. (Why should I bring up LARPer-James-persona Zukie, a love-able, charismatic, and idiotic orc, in this post?)

I think that kernel might be what Kells is trying to get at with "how do students enact... who they are," but think that misses part of the point. And it is connected to the rights-based approaches to fixing exclusions of representation within modern liberalism. Modern liberalism relies on centralized identities (that kernel) to extend rights and representation to groups that were formerly excluded. For example, in America, originally only white men could vote - then black men - then white women - then black women... And we see protections from discrimination extended in a similar way - race, gender, sexuality, disability, etc. Proponents of this system say, oh, yes, it's flawed, but it's getting better each time it expands. Just give it time. This is true. It does get better with time, and there have been enormous improvements.

In this system the individual must take a feature of their personhood as (at least a major part of) the kernel of their identity. By doing so, they gain the stable ground (in a group, after a long struggle) to pressure for representation within and protection by the modern liberal state. With this approach come the problems and complications of identity politics and coalition politics. But I think Chloe's, may I dare say it, angst about representing herself - her identity- her, shall we collectively shudder, authentic self - a self she "can't really remember" - also emerges from this. Rather than leaving identities dispersed, asynchronic, multiple, and constructed by the relations and interactions with various and sometimes conflicting aspects of one's ecology, centralizing a identity that is supposed to capture all of these aspects is impossible. Something is always left out. This could create a nostalgia or a sense of loss, a desire to cling to who one really is. A desire to create a homogeneous history of one-self rather than an asynchronous we-self that exists at certain points, then doesn't, then does again, never lost, just not present. Centralizing identity removes the focus from presentation in its full multiplicity, making the beautiful play of presentation into a cheap and tawdry farce, a performance that always leaves us (me?) wanting more.

I don't actually know that that makes any sense writing this out. But... I'm going to continue anyway.

Within a Kellsian approach as we are talking about it, we seem to be talking about finding our own language (see Kristi's comment). Wasn't the point of Gallagher's activity several weeks back that we all speak many languages and Englishes. Wouldn't a translingual approach - or any approach that really appreciates difference rather than similarity - be less about mashing them into one voice - even for one person - and more about celebrating the various kinds that can be put to use in various ways as a resource? The act of centralizing them into one voice - even if we give up the idea of one, authentic Chloe - seems to accomplish the same thing as centralizing identity. Especially since we have a drive to connect language with culture and voice with self - another odd set of connections that I'm not sure I'm comfortable with. Does this make any sense to anyone else?

I'm not sure what to do about feelings in this though. I think some of our feelings about identities could be explained by this process of centralizing identity and language in modern liberalism. The worry about not being "black enough" or "gay enough," feeling a pressure to perform in certain ways. The drive to excavate a history of a social group - revision historiography - would create a sense of continuity that the multiple, distributed, and asynchronic identity does not.... I don't know that I like this as of yet.

"The language [I] use depends on whom I write to or what I want to search or research about. In terms of English, I often do three things: (1) e-mail contact with my international friends, (2) searching for shopping information on-line, and (3) academic writing." (Yi-Huey, quoted in Hawisher, Selfe, Guo, and Liu, 74)

The summer I moved to Boston, I did two things of note while not wandering the dark streets of JP: read Capital v.1 and figured out how to illegally download Rosetta Stone v. 3. Fifteen blogs, three viruses, and ten anti-virus blogs later, and I had successfully downloaded Rosetta Stone, installed the crack that gave me access to more than its trail levels, and began talking awkwardly to my computer in incredibly rusty German. Rosetta told me that I could not pronounce my R's - especially in the word lehrerin. She and I chatted about my favorite colors, reading books, buying groceries at the supermarket, cooking in the kitchen, and going to the movies. We really were hitting it off, chatting almost every day. I felt things were going well. But then... (and isn't there always a but then...) school began to pick up, I met some people who were a bad influence (graduate students)... I have a litany of excuses, but our budding relationship died. I have been lucky enough to have a friend in Germany, Miriam, with whom I can occasionally practice my German. We, too, chat about films, but usually French New Wave (she loves Godard where Rosy would watch any ol' movie). It is always a very different kind of German from the kind Rosy and I used to speak.  My brief fling with French the next summer went much the same way, only without a connection or link to someone else.

Perhaps this is an odd way to talk about learning a language, but I can't help but feel like my relationship with Rosetta Stone is important. When I read about the information age, or new media, it is always focused on how the "connections and resources that structure the lives of individuals" and how these "connections and resources are linked ... to the related ... formations that structure the information age" (76). Which sounds good, but the taxonomic categorization of "both personal and economic" - human relationships and technologies/mechanisms/resources - seems odd to me. It seems to always dedicate human-human relationships as the goal. Resources and the economic, technological literacies, etc. are always tools that help one achieve better networks between humans. That focus seems to hide things, but I'm not sure what.

I built a relationship with Rosetta Stone. I certainly spent more time chatting with it than with girls I was going on dates with (sad though that makes me to write). I was grumpy when I started writing this post (and I still am to a degree), so I'm tempted to say that the relationship I built is a codified social relation dreamed up by individual workers in corporations which embody the ideological influences and values of the place and time in which it was created; if a group of Tibetans were to develop a language acquisition software, what conversations would we have? But I don't know why I am tempted to say that this is bad. People who live partially in the realm of fantasy - for example, those who live for their time in Adria, the world of Renaissance reenactment, started in So Cal - build relationships. And its not just with the people there, though it is tempting to shrink it down to that. The thing that most people find odd about it is their relationship with the time - a snapshot of history which has been codified historically, much like how the snapshot of German language has. Does that invalidate the experience or its use? I loved my time with Rosy. And believe it or not, I'm not being facetious.

For most of my usage of other languages, there is no dependence on "whom I write to" or speak to. When there is, it is a radically different experience. I'm a radically different person.

An Unexpected Value in Studying Composition

A package arrived for me and was left on the front porch today. Someone tore it open. But left it because the content was "The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College, 1875-1925: A Documentary History." A benefit of studying composition: things you find valuable are so boring to others that they aren't worth stealing even after committing a felony.

After the string of burglaries, I figured I should share this uplifting story.

Prendergast vs Trimbur?

So I've been reading the beginning of Manuel Castell's Communication Power, and I think I'm starting to understand exactly what about the division Gallagher was drawing between Trimbur and Prendergast that was starting to bother me.

Gallagher set up a transition narrative for how we talk about and understand language use with three stages. (1) We used to search for an underlying universal grammar (which linguists still search for). (2) We stopped looking for pure language and began treating language in terms of discourse communities (Burkean Parlor). Here, it wasn’t that language was a specific way universally and structurally, but that it had certain conventions for proper use that allowed you to get access to a community’s conversation. These conventions were contextually determined, but there were centers or clusters of conventions (see Trimbur’s issue with Kachru on p. 110; replace nation with community and you have it). (3) This second approach to language excludes many uses of English that don’t fit the norm of whatever community we are looking at: “The establishment of a new variety of PCE, in other words, requires working out a relationship of mutuality between a variety of language and its host population that, as Pennycook puts it in his critique of the very idea of national varieties, ‘leaves out all those other Englishes which do not fit the paradigm of an emergent national standard’” (118).  The shift to networked understanding of language recognizes the splintered and disconnected spread of capitalism and language, acknowledging the disconnections as well as the connections through the idea of the splintered metropolis. By thinking about the use of language through “styling” rather than a type of language as we tend to when we talk of “varieties” or “flows,” we can more effectively represent the circulation and enactment of English in not only South Africa but “the splintered metropolis of globalized capitalism” (119).

We thought about Prendergast in terms of the second category of how we’ve approached language, and Trimbur in terms of the third. When we were talking about how Prendergast and Trimbur approached language, our conversation centered on language like "spread" and "distributed."  When we talk about language as spreading, we use a metaphor of territory - though, perhaps because I'm hungry, I'm now thinking of spreading butter over bread. Language starts in a central space and moves to other places, filling in the gaps and crevices of a society slowly. This way of talking about and conceptualizing language solidifies language as a concept separate from practice and encourages us to assign agency to language (maybe). And this issue is compounded when we analyze, use, or believe the myth of a standardized English. SAE moves and spreads, and it forces people to adopt the language. So the consequences of this approach to language can be thought of in terms of the following: 

1.     It solidifies a language as something that can exist separate from practice by social actors in a specific context. 

2.     It gives agency to language over people.

3.     When coupled with the idea of a standard or native English, it encourages assumptions about correctness and deficiency, and those deficiencies can be assigned to people, to language practices, and to social markers like geographic origin, nationality, race, gender, etc. 

4.     In neoliberalism, deficiencies are most commonly discussed in terms of effective tools for accomplishing something. The modernization project. So language spread throughout time (a la Baca) can be thought about in terms of periods: Christianizing, Civilizing, or Modernizing. But each of these hinges on superlatives and comparatives - better or best. 

5.     These superlatives and comparatives do much of the work in establishing center/periphery relations by metaphorically territorializing language and assigning values to different locations. Even without our realizing it.

6.     Because of this valorization and territorialization, English’s spread is considered inevitable.

7.     With this way of discussing language, consequences number 3-6 become the focus of scholarship and conversation - either disproving myths or focusing on the relevance of the myth in everyday life.

8.     As a result of the emphasis on a language removed from practice, we forget to look at innovative ways in which language is being used now and opportunities for gaining agency (cue Trimbur).

I think this division Gallagher created was exaggerated (I don't think he necessarily believes that Prendergast thinks of language as having agency and people not in quite so stark of terms as depicted here) in part to bring up a point about approach to language. But, as I think Brandon's comment about agency being limited points out, not all agencies are created the same. The question for me is why - what is limiting. 

If agency is one’s capacity to act to bring one’s will, interests, and/or values to fruition, agency is at its core about relationships and power. Agency is about one’s relation to social structures (or, to put it another way, one’s position within competing institutions, organizations, networks, social actors, etc) and to what extent this relation affects your ability to influence other social actors/structures. Castell defines power in a similar way: “power is the relational capacity that enables a social actor to influence asymmetrically the decisions of other social actor(s) in ways that favor the empowered actor’s will, interests, and values” (10).

Two things I appreciate about Castell’s approach to power relations at the beginning of his book are (1) his focus on human actors rather than disembodied powers like an apparatus or institution and (2) his emphasis that one’s “relational capacity of power is conditioned, but not determined, by the structural capacity of domination” (10, my emphasis). As Castell explores exactly what he means by a social actor, he points out that social actors can be individual or collective, organizations or states, etc, but he argues that “ultimately[…] all organizations, institutions, and networks express the action of human actors, even if this action has been institutionalized or organized by processes in the past” (10-11). Institutions, states, organizations, and networks are in a sense the partially crystallized power relations of human actors in some capacity – even if the originating human actors are long dead.

Castell’s emphasis on “conditioned, but not determined” leaves room for resistance to domination. Domination is a power relationship supported by two main mechanisms of power – violence (or the threat of) and discourse. Violence can be understood fairly easily in terms of force and coercion. Discourse can be understood in the drive of institutions to “construct meaning” in service of specific interests and values. Think Foucault. This is where we get the compliance and acceptance of those who are dominated.

When I take this and think back to the issue we discussed about Prendergast vs. Trimbur, I have issue with how our conversation seemed to say that there is no use in studying language the second way. While I do appreciate the third approach to language’s innovation and perhaps more accurate representation of language usage and its critiques of the ideas of varieties of English (poor ol’ bastardized versions Darwinian metaphors) and flows (mistaken assumptions about the homogenization of space), I worry that tossing the second approach to the side entirely would lose something incredibly important. A standard language might not exist. A central discourse might not exist. But their discourses structure and construct how people understand and interact with the world. While it would be logical then to argue that we should critique the discourses and change them (which we should), it is not as if they are simply discourses. Types of English (that may not exist as a living English, but still exist in codified form like classical and ecclesiastic Latin does) are spread through institutions that actively promote a specific understanding of English. Publishing companies that produce grammar and style books, for instance.  Educational non-profit organizations.

It is right to critique how the way we talk about language can lead to assumptions of inevitability and universality. It is right to critique how our scholarly approaches can create communities that exclude in the process of including and legitmating Englishes (Trimbur’s response to Kachru). But that doesn’t mean there isn’t space for the kind of analysis that challenges these institutions and discourses that do materially exist (even if in a globe-hopping way). 

Space, Place, and Gallagher's House

When speaking about how "the reform of the maturita would rearrange social relationships in the country and would (contrary to the promises of the Ministry) alter the culture," Prendergast focuses initially on the ability to share student information as a form of social security for students, how this information "had become a casualty of the postcommunist transition" (122). However, then she makes an odd transition that I don't know what to do with. She says "Tellingly, when the groups arranged their exam environments, each group had its own idea of where the desk should go, and of how the chairs should be arranged, but all agreed there should be flowers somewhere in the setting, because there always were. The exercise could not proceed without the flowers, a symbol of cultural continuity for which no instrumental purpose need be offered and no international endorsement given" (122). Within the place of the testing site, social groups differed greatly on how to arrange it, but one point of unity for them is a use of the space that is not instrumental. This seems particularly important to me because even at the heart of instrumentalism – the location of assessment, an assessment largely constrained and created by non-Slovakian forces (i.e. EU’s CEF, British Council, etc.) – the use of the space within the location became a micro-site of resistance. Assessment and neoliberalism’s drive to account for everything (even the human in the economic) is subverted. Flowers are something with “no instrumental purpose.” The location and usage of space got me thinking about spatiality in general. Especially after Charlie’s great post last week.

I find I rarely go into anecdotes about my students, but here is an opportunity too perfect to not. Right now, I'm working with an AWD student - we'll call this person Prime - who's an architecture student. He's interested in researching what he calls "Post-apocalyptic architecture" - by which he really means a paper on sustainable architecture in extreme environments that uses a zombie apocalypse as an attention getting device. Toward the end of our conference the other day, we were chatting about what exactly was meant by sustainability. Prime said that sustainability was about maintaining live-able levels of resources - food, water, climate, shelter - in order to let life continue. Some of the principles for planning sustainable architecture were understanding the material constraints and resources of the environment, the orientation of its elements, etc. I responded by asking him what kind of life are you saving? Prime looked at me confused and said, what do you mean? I replied, I understand the importance of saving lives, letting life continue. But it seems like that task is impossible without thinking about the way of life you're preserving or creating through the architecture. What kind of relationship with the environment does the architecture encourage? How does the architecture facilitate cultural traditions (i.e. where is the village chief/priest/matriarch's building located and what does it look like compared to the others)? How does the architecture account for, encourage, or discourage religion or other cultural traditions? By sustainable do you mean bare subsistence or will the community cultivate and stockpile specific surplus resources? What type of economies and social relations do these create? If you stockpile resources, do you need to build additional security from outside communities? How does this encourage people to look at others? Life without a way of life is a comatose patient on a table.  Each of aspects of a way of life is highly dependent on the organization and arrangement of social space. And whether you factor it into your design or not, the design affects these aspects of the community’s life. Prime responded, “that’s an interesting way of looking at it.” And the subject dropped.

To me, location seems to have a huge impact on people’s identity, their social relations, the kinds of connections they form with nature, processes of production, etc. How their daily lives are (re)produced. But to Prime, these are all unnecessary concerns for sustainable architecture. I feel like Prime and I are approaching the topic with two very different sets of concerns, much like how the Slovaks and the international agencies and organizations approached assessment. And even though I am his teacher… in control of his grade… for whatever coercive affect that might have on how he approaches my class… the micro-economy of my classroom – what it values, what it questions, what it does – is still undermined by the bigger economy of American architecture as a field. But I have no idea how one could resist it. Perhaps, much like the test planners, I can’t. Not really. But perhaps I can only hold out hope that the use made of the space is different in some way. Boy… that’s really depressing. I don’t like that.

Let me think… so while I alone might not be able to change the space of something, perhaps – and this might be the idealist Marxist in me coming out – banded together with others, we could. For example, I hate giving presentations in the Barrs room. And to be honest, the idea of presenting in the new conference rooms just as dismal. A little brighter. But too hot and stuffy to be pleasant. The locations seem clinical and dungeonly at one and the same time. The locations don’t seem to promote the kind of atmosphere and interactions we say we want when sharing our ideas. When I picture sharing ideas there, I feel like I need to be on guard, fully formed, prepared to defend any challenges. In the Barrs room, it feels like I’m facing a firing squad with a blindfold on. In the conference room, I just imagine the blindfold will be removed. The kind of academic community I’d want to live in would be one where sharing ideas was among friends; one where we’d joke about my verbal flubs as if over coffee rather than sit silently as I wade through the next 5 minutes of my presentation. I guess in a nutshell, I’d want the academic community to literally be having a conversation, having fun, and relaxed. But in the locations we have in the English department, this does not seem possible. But why should we be limited to these locations? Why not present in a new location? Say, at Gallagher’s house. This may or may not surprise you, but I have long imagined what Gallagher’s house would be like. When they moved from Nebraska to Massachusetts, one of his daughters started a newsletter to stay in contact with old friends. And as time progressed, she talked with Gallagher about how the genre was changing to fit the situation. She was only… how old… 11? 14? Something like that. What about his home, the things that fill it, how they are arranged to emphasize and de-emphasize things (i.e. like where is the tv?), the people living there, how they interact, would lead a girl to imagine something like that? Hearing stories of the conversations he has with his daughters makes me feel like his house would be a great place to have smart academic conversations and presentations, relax, and joke around. Isn’t that what we want?

Defining Otherkin

For those of you who don't know, I'm exploring a cultural subgroup right now that call themselves otherkin. Right now they are debating what otherkin should be defined as. One person defined it as "Otherkin are people who believe themselves to be something other than a human being on a spiritual, psychological, energetic and some even on a biological level, and choose to identify with that non-human fragment of themselves to the point where they count it as a permanent and ingrained part of their personal mythology and/or identity." ~ Miniar/Freetha 


Here was my response. Otherkin is an interesting term.


When I hear kin, my mind thinks of kinship – the historic way in which social groups defined belonging. You belonged with your family because of some shared origin – biological, cultural, or historical. Kinship is usually talked about in terms of things like marriage and who it’s okay to sleep with (jokes about the taboo of sleeping with your cousin). But it can be thought of in terms of the Adam and Eve story which give humans a different origin from animals, giving humans souls (no souls for animals!) and dominion over animals. Kinship can be based on philosophies, like those of Kant and Descartes, which argue that humans belong to a superior and different category of “being” than animals because they have language and rationality. These cultural qualities supposedly cannot be found in animals; therefore, humans are distinct (and superior) to animals. Descartes went as far as to say that animals are machines, and their cries of pain are the same thing as the noise a clock makes when its gears aren’t in alignment.

How we define kinship-boundaries has almost always led to a difference in how the excluded group is treated. When the conquistadors would sleep with the Amerindians, the mixed-blood children were considered defective, just as the Amerindians were, because of the shared blood. And the human-animal division has long allowed the use of animals as machines to do work or to justify animal suffering for human gain. Just as the narratives of racial origin justified the slavery and exploitation of people.

I think if we make otherkin a quality that defines a person’s identity we will run into problems. Whether it’s a choice to be otherkin or not? What “others” count as otherkin (e.g. do machinekin count)? How authentic is someone being when they say they are otherkin? These concerns would be especially important if otherkin ever push for rights specific rights down the road.

But if instead of a quality, we make it about being open to other ways of defining and thinking about kinship, we get rid of those issues.Otherkin don’t talk about souls in the same way Christianity (and most other Western religions) do. Their souls were previously animal,astral being, or another creatures’ souls. People who identify as otherkin feel an affinity and belonging with other creatures that traditional human-only kinship didn’t account for or allow.

I guess what I’m saying is… I understand not wanting it to be a static belief system like a religion because those become exclusionary really quickly. But I’d be wary of talking about it like a quality that defines a person’s identity, too. Identity qualities lead to exclusion just as easily. Perhaps it is a critique of old forms of kinship and openness to accept those who it leaves out.

I don’t know that I have a good definition here. But these seem important to keep in mind. Especially if “going public” is ever going to be an issue that tries to fight discrimination or prejudice. Are you fighting for who you are at your core? To which I wonder, can we ever know that because it always seems to change for me day to day. Or are you fighting against a way of thinking that excludes people? Making space and accepting what fills it…

Defining Apparatus

Prendergast begins by noting that this is not a book that is concerned with "defining the effects of linguistic imperialism related to British and american colonial and neocolonial activity" (19). Instead, she's interested in the effects of "Soviet imperialism on English and English language learners" (19).  I feel like this is an important distinction because, when we tend to talk about the role of English in globalization, we tend to speak with a finger-wagging tone toward "English" or America or Britain or Composition or Capitalism - as if they were the sole arbiters and creators of English-ness. If that makes any sense. But what I think Prendergast's book does a remarkable job of doing is noting the multiple players involved in the construction of the various "imaginaries of English" (52). The geopolitics of language is not the geopolitics of English. And the geopolitics of English is not merely the geopolitics of (neo)colonialism. It is a conflict among different apparatus.

The apparatus - a delightful, obfuscating word - is almost always the same in structure and function, but the difference is to what extent do those operating in the apparatus use its various tools of control and whom is being targeted as unnecessary or marginal. Foucault is perhaps most known for his talking about the apparatus, but I haven't ever seen him try to define it. Deleuze tries to define it in Thousand Plateaus noting that a "social apparatus consists of lines of force" that "act as arrows which continually cross between words and things, constantly waging battle between them." The links define categories, "correct" curves, connect tangents, establish boundaries and spaces, and it is through this defining of space that is internal to the apparatus and space that is external to the apparatus that the apparatus itself is formed. Just as how power is formed. They both emerge from the spatial defining of knowledge. In "What is an Apparatus?" Agamben argues that there is a link between the Greek oikonomia (a word which refers both to the home [oikos, I believe] and economy) and the Latin dispositio (where Foucault gets his dispositif or apparatus), between the economy and apparatus. From what I can tell, he defines apparatti? apparatusses? as "literally anything that has in some way the capacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control, or secure the gestures, behaviors, opinions, or discourses of living beings."

It is through various apparatuses that the various imaginaries of English get defined. But the various apparatuses use different tools through which to create their definitions. In Soviet control, English was unnecessary and therefore okay to let shrivel and die through bureaucratic run-arounds. It was an existence that could be killed, but not sacrificed... Maybe... Maybe not... During the establishment of ethnonationalism, the nomination of Slovak as a national language seems at the same time to be a deliberate choice to make language a central part of national identity that allows an aspect of culture to become something that can be "left" to shrivel and die or systematically destroyed. Western capitalism establishes the periphery as well. Except instead of using language as an explicit connection to one's centrality, it uses one's geographic origin. One speaks English, but one is still from Eastern Europe. Or one speaks medical English, but not business. While in the imaginary defined by the Soviet apparatus all Englishes were defined as external and dangerous (or revolutionary and culturally free [pending on the person]), in Western capitalism various Englishes have become part and parcel of the division of labor. They are central to the linking and establishing of the a capitalist apparatus. But in each, the apparatus captures English(es) and puts it (them) to use for a specific purpose (e.g. the Soviet apparatus used English to mark out enemies of the party).

Perhaps the divergent experiences of the people could be defined in terms of the relative power and influence of each apparatus on their understanding of how the lines and links are formed. Maria understood the cultural utopia of America as part and parcel with English. However, as she adjusted to the new apparatus of Western capitalism, she discovered that language was not the only line that defined whether or not one is on the inside.

Prendergast's Great Names for Cars and/or Hazing Techniques:

1. The Educational Apparatus
2. The Velvet Revolution
3. The Velvet Divorce
4. The Imperious Vanity [of the administrative apparatus]

Networks and Links

Much like Chloe, I've been thinking about how networks and links continue to pop up in our readings. I'm not quite sure where I'll get with this line of thought either.

Dingo seems to pitch networks as a method for getting at neocolonialism. The "transnational networks symbolize the concentration of economic and political power of some countries and limitations on others. Some portions of these networks may be dense and clustered, others more dispersed. Communicative networks, as Grewal points out move logics from one node of power to another" (493). I guess this explanation makes me wonder what is dense or dispersed. What exactly are the "linkages among nations?" If we are talking about capital flows, communications systems (a la Outfoxxxed: The Rupert Murdoch Story), international policy apparatuses (i.e. GATT, WTO, the G8 [or now G20], IMF, World Bank, etc.), military presence, etc., fine. And I think this is what she means (though perhaps not military) because of her later reference to "policy networks" (494) and her focus on Bretton Woods. But... how exactly do these linkages "revise the familiar hierarchical top-down model of economic development wherin one nation controls, has power over, and directly influences another" (493). I mean, it removes the military might of traditional colonialism (kindof) because that is found mostly through privatized militaries and international peace-making forces, but aside from the direct threat of death via bullets, it's the same isn't it? The Washington Consensus is still top-down economic development where one nation (the US) controls, has power over, and directly influences another. And while microloans might have been invented in the global south, they have become a part of the Washington Consensus. As dingo notes, they are deployed to construct markets, but at the same time ensure that the markets (and those within it) are structurally marginal - what Ananya Roy has called "poverty capital" and the creation of the bottom billion market.

I guess I don't see what the revision is in Dingo. She seems to have just shifted the scale a bit. The hierarchy is still there in exactly the same formation as before. An elite group controling and influencing another. The same structure appears when networks are mentioned in Royster, and she argues that acts of civic engagement must recognize and utilize these networks: “Uses of public literacy are likewise compelled to recognize these interconnections. As Paula Mathieu and Diana George warn, “successful circulation of public writing is not achieved by going it alone, but through networks of relationships, in alliances between those in power and those without, through moments of serendipity” (144)"  (Royster 141). Reading Royster, it seems that she takes the approach that it is a "necessary evil" to work within the interconnections already there. We have to take advantage of the resources as they are already being used and hopefully can manipulate them in a way that is culturally sensitive and effective. There is a pyramid in which all of the material, economic, social, and whatever else power is controled by elites and passed down through these interconnections. Since all the power and resources emerge from the top, one must use the linkages they are using. Having read the Mathieu and George piece, I'm not sure that this is exactly what they are going for. But it's been too long since I read that to talk about it here.

I wonder if there is a way to imagine networks that doesn't recreate the hierarchies that we are picturing. Gallagher had an aricle in CCCs this spring that talked about how the rhetoric of the Spellings Commission undermined teacher expertise and decision-making power when it came to assessment (forgive me if I butcher this). The legislators and policy makers were the top of the pyramid and the students and teachers were the bottom. As a way of combating this power relation, he argued we could think about a school through the logic of the network. Rather than thinking of verticle hierarchies, we could think of horizontal structures. Rather than thinking of individualized positions, we could think about teamwork and collaboration. The danger of the network is that flexibility is useful to companies because it allows them to shift to wherever labor and work is of the least cost to them without regard to the workers. But the network isn't necessarily good or bad. It's just there. Teachers can use the same logic of the network to gain agency in debates about education policy, arguing that because they have the most linkages to different groups affected, their location and relations put them as the true experts. This should give them more clout in discussions about education policy than less.

If I remember right, the work Gallagher does with networks is radically different from the way networks are employed in Royster and in Dingo. For these authors, networks are already established material connections - through ownership of communication companies, martialling of money, or international policy. With this perspective, one cannot help but resign oneself to working within the system as is; a dutiful but subversive cog in the machine. But Gallagher sets up an alternate paradigm of values through network logic, one which clashes with neoliberal network logic, by starting with what the issue is (assessment of student writing) and looking at who has the most connections to people with stakes in the issue. Royster and Dingo's usage seems to be a bit fatalist to me (and I realize it's odd to group them together). I viscerally associate it with the logic of the trickster in discourse, another figure I'm skeptical of. But... I think I'm running out of steam... I guess this might just be an angsty post about why we start using new terms, like network instead of hierarchy, if we aren't doing something new with them. Maybe there's something else in here, too. I don't know.

How to Value the Other

"I'm curious why James uses 'narcissism' when talking about 'how much of ourselves we see in the Other.' Isn't the very point of doing that act ('seeing yourself in the Other') to be reflexive and see both similarities and differences in someone as elements in interactions? In essence, I see narcissism as an elitist ideal where one values themself more than others, and I think this conflicts with how I imagine Spivak, for instance, to define 'seeing yourself in the Other.' Rather than conflating self/other i see this as a way to expand our conceptions of both of these terms and their relations to each other, whatever that may be." --Jess Pausek
....


I'm still not happy with my answer here. But perhaps I can use this as a productive discomfort for thinking about how Lillis and Curry are different in their presentation of findings from Canagarajah. Perhaps. 


Both the texts are ethnographies. And their ethnographies seem to fit with James Holstein's idea that ethnography is a form of critique. The critique is not about what is right or wrong in the world, but it is a process of de-familiarization. Both texts we read seem to take what is familiar about knowledge production and make it strange. And Canagarajah also seems to push ethnography to suggest reforms as well. We see him struggle with his role as double agent, trying to frame himself as an "insurgent architect" (an image I pull from David Harvey's Spaces of Hope). By insurgent architect, he doesn't mean an architect, but he means everyone involved in the production of space and spatial relations. We see Canagarajah trying to be both a cog in the machine, and able to move that machine, to change it. That to me is a useful conceptualization of these ethnographies. 


Another thing that is interesting... and perhaps full of tension... is how these ethnographies are not really focused on locations and the people in them. They are focused on circulations and processes, on how knowledge is produced, circulated, and valued in different areas of the world. For both, the topic seems to be the globalization of publishing and knowledge production as a set of ideas and practices revolving around language usages. Bound up in this is the dynamic circulation of different types of capital - social capital, monetary capital, cultural capital. So, we see the scholars wrestling with academic prestige, cultural authenticity, and material constraints. But... at the same time... the ethnographies themselves are participating in an active process that makes hitherto invisible subjects (both in terms of the people they represent and the topic they explore) visible and knowable to the knowledge making processes. So, we see scholars of the Global South who historically have been (are?) excluded from publication being made know-able and creating space for their integration into publishing. The ethnographies participate in making the global know-able. 


This bring to wonder how we can move from an ethnography of locations (where we focus on a people in a place) to an ethnography of circulations. Particularly, how universals are constructed and circulated. How something like "English as lingua franca" is constructed and then circulates. How something like "global publishing is for new findings" gets constructed and circulated. So, not just how the market is created, but how its rationals are constructed and circulated. I worry about this type of ethnography because it seems in the shift from location to circulation we run the risk of losing touch with the Subaltern. Losing touch with the Subaltern is an anxiety that haunts Canagarajah, felt in his colleagues dissent and his pushy justification for the "necessary evil" of publishing speak to this shift. This shift (in the ethnographer's role as insurgent architect and in focus of study) seems to make the audience for both Canagarajah and Lillis and Curry the embodied expert, the editor who sets up the process of knowledge production. People who are a part of the apparatus of power, but who are at times able to articulate a critique or engage in acts of subversion. For example, even within the anonymity of review processes, "editors certainly have access to scholars' identities, and editors play a powerful role in mediating reviewers' practices and decisions generally" (Lillis and Curry 149). This is fine, as long as the acts of subversion encouraged or the critiques made are viewed as legitimate and proper by the Subaltern themselves. In this way, I agree with Canagarajah that it is a necessary evil. But at the same time, I wonder how much the form of presentation - how the two texts were written - dramatically affects the legitimacy and proper-ness of their critiques and encouragements.


Canagarajah lays out all the data he was hoping to gather on page 14 and how it changes to more of an auto-ethnography or mangled practice by page 20. Lillis and Curry seem to have a more traditional ethnography going for them - with multiple interviews that they can analyze. Twelve subjects interviewed that are cited, if I remember right. However, the two texts read dramatically different in how they present their ethnographies. Canagarajah tells stories about other in third person. He tells personal accounts. He reflects on the situation. But he doesn't quote his periphery colleagues very often at all ("his indian colleague from immunology" perhaps shows up the most). Nearly everything is narrated and framed through Canagarajah's interpretive lens.  He crafts a portrait for us of life in Jaffna. He crafts a portrait of the cultural complexities. The dominance of Canagarajah's voice throughout might explain C's student and A.J.'s response. His writing from his perspective ends up speaking for his colleagues. But Lillis and Curry seem to go out of their way to quote and integrate the words of their interview subjects, providing profiles and integrating their subject's words into analysis.  


I guess what all this rambling has led me to is what form should representing another take? Pastiche? Dense quoting? Speaking for? What is gained through these choices? And what are the ethical binds that happen because of these choices? 

since feeling is first - e.e. cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
when Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

and death i think is no parenthesis.

Commenting on Papers...

Distributed Cognition - Matsuda = X

Sitting in French class, I think I realized exactly why I was so disappointed with Matsuda. And it may or may not have to do with my issues in the post below with how we frame or think about a problem. Matsuda spent most of his time doing one or two things. One, giving us the language for what we do (i.e. direct instruction, indirect instruction, socratic methods, etc.) and connecting that with how it is percieved and recieved by second language users. Two, pointing out that we need to change how we interpret second language user's responses to our strategies because we are too likely to judge them as inferior, unintelligent, or untalented because of miscommunications or poor choice of strategies for their particular needs. Neither of these really suggests changes to the processes of tutoring or teaching composition. They both largely raise awareness. If someone is to blame for second language user difficulties, the location of the blame is with the individuals and their social relations. (Though, I admit that in his example of himself and his tutor, Kim was it?, he said that she was doing everything by the book [i.e. Lerner, et. al.'s book]. He also explicitly connected our harsh grading of grammar without teaching it to how teachers think about students, other disciplines, and the job market, and he argued multiple times that we are too quick to judge second language users as inferior or unintelligent because of their responses or lack of responses (both written and verbal) in class.)

This fits most clearly into the second of the three approaches to framing the problem of writing and publishing within Western conventions that I talked about in the last post: (1) apolitical/free market, (2) social relations, and (3) systems theory/distributed cognition. Framing the problem in terms of social relations would make the strategy of raising awareness effective because largely the problem isn't with the tools or processes (though these can always be improved). Instead, the problem lies with how the tools are used and how the feedback is interpreted. However, if the third approach I talked about (distributed cognition) were applied here, raising awareness would only be part of the solution. The biases against second language users and the drive to interpret their feedback in the way that we do is not solely because of who we are or the culture that we grew up in. It would also be fostered within us by the system/tools/processes - as these are the first thing that elicit and filter feedback from students. If we teach a specific thing, we are asking for a specific thing. And we measure that thing in specific ways. If the process of translating thoughts into the written page is complicated by writing in a second language, why would the process of translating thoughts into written English be further complicated by the purpose that demands the writing's creation and the tools through which we gather and interpret it? Getting rid of grammar instruction and evaluation might be a radical idea that addresses part of this, but we are still left with the stated goals of the teaching of American academic writing that we find in texts like WoR by ol' Barty and Petrosky. We teach to fit in to a specific group's genres. How can we expect a prejudice against students to disappear when we keep taking diverse students, some of whom grew up navigating these genres and some of whom are first experiencing them, and molding them to fit what we think American academic writing is? It seems to me parts of the system itself would need to change to eliminate prejudice and discrimination. It can't just be raising awareness.

Conventions, Serviettes, Distributed Cognition, and Fault

This is a warning that this will be a very bizzare post. This is a warning because most of you are not used to reading the ramblings of this partially sane graduate student. Poor, old Gallagher, on the other hand, has become used to my antics and idiosyncracies.

As I read Canagarajah, I feel very weird. That might be a weird thing to say in a post that is supposed to "think through ideas," but if Canagarajah is all about the position from which a writer is coming from and the materiality of publishing, this is the materiality of me. I feel weird reading him. Not in a I'm-a-bad-person-because-I'm-the-man kind of way, and not in a awkward-guilt kind of way. I feel as if I see similarities in how Canagarajah thinks about issues with how I do at times. And I'm not sure this post will make any sense, but Charlie's post has made me start considering different ways in which we talk about the same phenomena, how these metaphors or frameworks impact the values we place on it, and how they affect the assignment of agency and blame. Perhaps I should be more specific.

Charlie: "As I read this, I was struck with how I have always sub-consciously viewed conventional standards in writing to be apolitical; applied indiscriminately to everyone partaking in a particular intellectual exercise, the entire group is subjected to the same restraints."

James's Mind: "How curious... Maybe its the ornery, paranoid Marxist in me, but I always viewed conventional standards as a tool of those in power used to maintain their power. As class divisions deepened in England and America, there was an explosion of books about etiquette. While the elites signified their power and maintained a distance from the lower classes through certain social and linguistic conventions - Emily Post and Amy Vanderbilt's guides both encouraged the use of the term 'serviette' instead of 'napkin' when in certain milieus - the lower classes hoped that by learning them they could pass and gain social mobility and standing. The serviette is Western academic conventions."

Charlie: "Going a step further, I would argue that this illusion of increased access has effectively cemented the elite, exclusive nature of Western journals."

James's Mind: "Wow... Creepy... I just thought that. Get out of my head."

(a moment passes)

James's Mind: "But wait... I feel like that discription seems to put a lot of agency into the hands of Western journals. Or elites. Even in the case of serviettes, I can't help but wonder about how the processes and conventions operate on those with power as well. Just like the coercive law of competition in capitalism (even if the capitalists want to play nice with workers, they can't because they won't maintain enough competitive edge to remain part of the capitalist class.)" [My mind does have asides in it's internal dialogues]

This left me pondering for a while. Here I had the beginnings of three ways of looking at conventions and processes. (1) As neutral and blanket applied. Much like aestheticism in art. (2) As politically invested perspectives that "constitute discourse" and perform "ideological functions" (83). More specifically with a the-man-is-keeping-us-down vibe (go revolutionary mythologies!). And (3) as a process and system of knowledge production that was constructed to vet knowledge, but is biased because of its historically situated construction (one undoubtedly that was originally biased against people who were not elite). That perspective though does not necessarily lend to finding fault with the people. Which is perhaps why Canagarajah focuses on conventions and journals.

This third perspective got me thinking about distributed cognition - especially since Canagarajah calls the conventions "a way of thinking" (83). From what I can remember about distributed cognition, it can be categorized in several ways: (1) cognitive processes can be spread across people and/or animals, (2) cognitive processes may be spread between the internal and external (brain structures and the environment), and (3) cognitive processes occur throughout time in such a way that the products of earlier events change the nature of similar events. Conventions and publishing processes could be thought about historically through this framework. They were originally how knowledge was vetted by an elite group of people. This how became externalized and institutionalized in procedures and journals. This "way of thinking" - literally embodied in the submission process - is biased, especially against those who it was opposed to at the time of its creation (e.g. women and their battle against the blind review process in the 90s). The old biases in the process affect the nature of similar situations, like the encounter of scholars from different cultural contexts that the original process did not anticipate, even if the scholars running the process are liberal minded people who don't assume a scholar from China is "inferior" because his/her writing doesn't match convention. The result is the same because part of the thinking structure is the same. The processes themselves literally filter and value the knowledge without human agency. To a degree.

I feel like option 1 for interpreting the situation is... well... naive. Which isn't bad unless one has been afforded a view or experience of the system that should challenge that perspective. But it seems to support the kind of "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mentality. Or the idea of a free market in which intellectual ideas compete on the basis of their merits alone and the best ideas win and the best ideas lose and there is nothing else but good common sense and the mystical hand of the market guiding us. By treating conventions as an equal playing field, this approach focuses solely on mental concepts and eliminates the material constraints that form social relations. It puts the blame on those struggling against material constraints. I feel like option 2 is a bit reductive - even though it is always my gut reaction. It so heavily focuses on social relations (and perhaps the myths of revolution) that it overlooks how the processes impact everyone involved. It tends to put the blame on those who have power or success in the system, regardless of their situation. I feel like option three... I'm not sure. It seems to have the most balanced approach to me. But at the same time, the emphasis on the system risks removing agency or blame from the people do have some control over how the system is run. Yet, at the same time, it's focus on the processes seems to lend itself to reforms that are more likely to be implemented because it isn't blaming the people with control over the system (as much as my gut reaction does anyway).  It does allow leeway for not all in power to be prejudiced, but it also argues that prejudice still exists - as part of the system, and as a result of the system in the minds of those who use it.

I'm not happy with any of them though. I'm not sure what to do with this.

Dodging Questions

Matsuda, Matsuda, Matsuda, Matsuda, Matsuda, MATSUDA.... Well... Several things come to mind when I think back on lunch and the two talks I was able to attend:

1. Damn that guy ages well. I hope I look that good when I'm his age.
2. Using google search to learn articles... Freakin' brilliant...
3. He was surprisingly shy at lunch.
4. I felt like he analyzed his audience well for the two talks I saw: the public lecture and the tutoring lecture. But, and perhaps because of that, I felt like his talks just covered basic stuff about working with second language users. Affirming, yes. Comforting, yes. Refreshing (my memory), yes. But exciting or new, no. 
5. I wish he'd been able (willing?) to respond to Gallagher's repeated questions about changing the university. While Matsuda seemed interested in what a diversifying student population means for how we teach and think about students, Gallagher seemed to want to start a conversation about what we teach and how the linguistic practices of the world and of the diverse student population (declining [social] capital of American English, the linguistic legitimacy of other languages and Englishes, preference for functional Englishes for economic gain, etc.) should make us alter it. That is, what our curriculum is, how we actively involve second languages/Englishes in composition, how would we assess this kind of composition, etc.
6. I wish I wasn't bashful sometimes. I know, shocking, but I am on certain days, and so I didn't feel comfortable asking questions like I usually do.
7. When he spoke about how a Chinese student with a certain proficiency in their language might have an easier time transitioning to writing in English than another Chinese student, I took him to mean that the literacy practices that are common across languages are what we do (and should be) teaching. Analysis of the rhetorical situation and whatnot. We should teach those literacy practices first, then formal language.
8. But he also seemed unwilling to discard formal language instruction. His emphasis on not grading grammar if we don't teach it doesn't necessarily mean we shouldn't teach it. It just means if we don't we shouldn't punish students for not knowing it. Where is the balance between these two for him?

All this rambling is to say... Meh. My response to his presentations are perhaps best summed up by "Meh." He is an excellent presenter. His technique great. His demonstrations captivated the audience (esp. the hand to you chin one). He's more articulate than I normally am. However, his content was safe. It was as if he was trying to catch everyone up to where we are for certain in knowledge: don't assume students are dumb or inferior because of errors; don't grade something you don't teach; do recognize that American English is at the very least declining as a global lingua franca; do realize that English teachers are the harshest judges of ESL writing and that is largely due to our desire to help them... But he was unwilling to venture out into uncertain territory, to make claims about what changes should be made. To all the Trekkies out there, he wouldn't boldly go where (hu)mankind had never gone before. I think his talk was great - especially for people who haven't had much exposure to ESL tutoring and teaching scholarship - but he was no James Tiberius Kirk.

A Week of Manifestos

*Note: Sorry about the length. But there's a comic at the end. 

Villanueva’l s question from “Rhetoric is Politics”: “How do nice people abide by and maintain not nice things, like a system in which certain groups are consistently relegated to the bottom of the structure in disproportionate numbers?” (Powell 2)

There are two things that jumped out at me from this week’s readings. First, they all provide responses to oppressive language practices. Baca takes our minds back to the early stages of European colonialism and the brutal, violent takeover of a civilization which began with the gatekeeping device of the Reqeurimento. Life or death. Speak well enough to convert or death. “This legacy is partially why the Eurocentric myth linking the Western Roman alphabet – and eventually, English alphabetic literacy – to agency, and democracy can potentially mean little, and when it does, it brings with it baggage of global proportions” (230-31). Powell’s nation-based focus on the oppression of Native Indians implicates those of us who stand idly by Academic imperialism. Horner, Lu, Royster, and ol’ Joe Trimbur take issue with perceived norms of SAE or EAE, arguing that this fallacy allows for the marginalization of languages and students as either deficient, incorrect, or inferior to the “norm” and ignores the actual conditions in which language operates. These norms are historically contingent and constantly changing, and adherence to SAE or EAE does not ensure effective communication – especially in a country (and a globalized economy) where various languages and Englishes proliferate and non-norm versions are preferred among certain groups.

Each promotes a rhetorical response. Baca argues that new technologies use pictographic manuscripts that have the potential to “resume historical trajectories independent of Western global expansion” (whatever page 5 is in the pdf). Powell argues academics should adopt trickster rhetoric that works within and outside the system, ironically pulling at and cutting across the narratives that string together our rhetorically created reality. It should inhabit the “wild space over and between sounds, words, sentences, and narratives.” Horner, et. al. argue for a shifted perspective of translingualism that values linguistic difference as a classroom resource rather than a problem to be corrected. Each of these seems a bit sketchy to me.

Baca’s belief that we can resume historical trajectories independent of history seems… well… ridiculous. You can’t erase the past 500 years of colonialism and start from scratch. That’s like Marxists who dream up utopias of what could be without engaging the current material conditions of the situation. Perhaps a more generous reading of Baca is that he believes technology has allowed people to puncture the monolithic dominance of Western alphabetic and literacy by returning images to a central place in communication, and that has opened space for making his topic an area of study. He is engaging in what Powell described as the two responses to a lack of American Indians: a collective effort to re-create those voices, and as an effort to penetrate and thereby legitimate the counter stories, seeing them as explicable objects of study.” I am sympathetic to the desire to escape the idea that entering the public sphere with sufficient literacy leads to power. It’s like a classic critique of Habermas. There really isn’t a space in which you can leave behind social signifiers that influence how those in power hear your message. No matter how fluent you are. You’re always marked as not those in power in some way. But I’m skeptical that technology is a fix (which I’m not sure he’s arguing, but I get the feeling he’s more gung-ho about it than I). Technology seems to me to have emerged as another part of the public sphere, but one just as politically, economically, and socially connected to the Western history of colonialism as alphabetic literacy was originally. Who gets it? Who sets its dominant conventions that make certain websites seem gross? Where is this power centralized? Is it possible to use the internet to create a counterpublic to this dominant group… yeah… sure… but you could make the same claim about the practice of literacy, alphabetic or no. It was possible to create counterpublics that continued to use pictographic language. But in both cases the sustainability seems questionable and the material risk to one’s life seem obvious.  Powell and Horner et. al. both work within the national frame. Both argue for a specific language practice and interpretive schema that will (hopefully [though for Powell, questionably]) affect change that will lead to less… bad things happening… But both seem to put their hope once again into a rhetoric that they doubt. Powell seems accepting of the likely possibility that her words will not move us at the end. Horner et. al. notes that “dominant ideology is always indifferent to the invalidity of its claims.” While Horner et. al. say that we need not accept its sway, one cannot help but ask how do we fight it? Relying on rhetoric to persuade academics or policy makers by engaging in the public sphere seems to run into the same conflicts that the use of pictographic writing gets on the internet. Both can’� t erase the social signifiers that mark them as marginalized perspectives, and thus engage in public dialogue from a weakened position for changing behaviors and policies. Hence, the indifference. It’s as if each approach, Baca’s pictographic writing, Powell’s trickster rhetoric, and Horner et. al.’s translingualism each argue that a letter to the editor will change things, but differ on what the letter should say and how it should say it.

Another qualm I have with Horner et. al. is their adherence to the nation-state framework. Baca at least notes that we must also interrogate why and where for a new geography of reason and invention, a geography that cannot be divorced from economy and the material realities of living experience which are undoubtedly legitimate components of rational thought.” Implementing translingualism seems like a good idea. But I worry about companies viewing translingualism as a costly endeavor. Potential miscommunications internally and externally. Increased use of materials (paper, etc.) because of language uses, clarifications, etc. The additional time spent during these semiotic negotiations. The expense of adjusting policies, providing training about language policies, etc.  Global capitalism is so incredibly fast and flexible geographically with how it rearranges to reduce costs that it seems unless translingualism as a policy was globally implemented, companies would literally change locations. The US, as one of the largest economies, may (and I’m not sure to what extent) be protected from this corporate flight, but even within states and regions, companies shift to cut costs. I guess I’m not being clear right now, but I wonder to what degree using the nation-framework as the starting place weakens the effectiveness of the solution argued for by Horner et. al.

Finally and relatedly, the second thing I noticed is that, despite all of their references to war, violence and death, the material consequences of English-only policies on immigration, education and economics, and bodies, bodies, bodies, bleeding bodies that are unseen and unheard, there are little to no references to bodies in their solutions.  When there (in Powell), they are justifications for the approach, not part of the solution. If rhetorical approaches to change language practices and language policy is limited because of the concerns I have about the public sphere, how can material bodies make this visible? (Read: protests). This is of course complicated by my qualms about the geography of global capitalism, but how might we reimagine locations of protest to deal with the new forms of capitalist production that are emerging. If we can’t rely on the factory as a location of protest because it is too easily closed and moved (it is cheaper to close and move a factory that is protesting than to break the protest), how should we imagine organizing protests? Who should protest and where? Food is produced across multiple states, in multiple places, and moved through multiple modes of transportation, could we organize along chains of production? The logistical costs of shifting that many different operations would be crazy hard to swallow.