But this is what we are facing: a conception of literacy that is democratic in the fullest sense of the word: something we create together. (Vielstimmig 110-111)
"youth" are portrayed either as leaders in embracing democracy-enhancing technologies or as victims of chaotic platforms that erode our ability to communicate effectively and coherently. (Alexander 35)
"Isn't it possible that the singular state an intent channel flipper falls into is not, as it is often described, evidence of a 'short attention span,' but, rather, of a new kind of attention?" (Wittig qtd. in Vielstimmig 90).
Look at my cute little comic book "youth" trying with all their little attention spans and their chubby cheeks to make sense of all this new media. Are they victims or freedom-fighters? Jonathan Alexander warns us that "the figure of 'youth' is mobilized to attract attention to the debate . . . "
I was never all that interested in comics until the last few years, in which my partner has started reading them voraciously and my sons have turned into superheroes. The first graphic novel I read was The Watchmen.Do I have your attention?
". . . and perhaps even to claim a high moral ground in forwarding a disinterested position: After all, participants in the debate are arguing about our children's future" (36).
I watch my eldest son play Star Wars Legos on our XBox and feel guilty as well as amazed. I check the clock regularly because I have been warned against allowing him too much time playing video games. Perhaps I am a bad parent for allowing a six year old to play this at all. But look at him go! He has mastered the game, unlocked all its secret whatevers, and he feels damn good about it. I wonder how much the warnings from well-meaning parents have to do with their own discomfort at their inexpertise and a nostalgic longing for the good-old days that we all know never really existed?
So why are my digital youth represented here in comic book form? I was struck by Cheryl Ball and Ryan Moeller's analysis of a video by Robert Watkins called "Words Are the Ultimate Abstraction: towards using Scott McCloud for teaching visual rhetoric."
Watkins uses many different media (a variety of music, film, text, digital images...) to illustrate and argue that we must teach new media literacy through new media composition, and that this is a pursuit that should be taken up by English Studies. Watkins begins his exploration with Scott McCloud's book, Understanding Comics, which Watkins uses in composition courses to teach visual rhetoric. Comics, of course, are, and
have always been, multimodal and collaborative, and as such may be a perfect avenue into "new media" as Anne Wysocki defines it.
Watkins uses many different media (a variety of music, film, text, digital images...) to illustrate and argue that we must teach new media literacy through new media composition, and that this is a pursuit that should be taken up by English Studies. Watkins begins his exploration with Scott McCloud's book, Understanding Comics, which Watkins uses in composition courses to teach visual rhetoric. Comics, of course, are, and
have always been, multimodal and collaborative, and as such may be a perfect avenue into "new media" as Anne Wysocki defines it.Detour/Confession
Here is a page from the book. You probably can't read the words, but that is okay because what I want you to notice is the way the pictures build on each other. They effectively zoom out frame by frame moving left to right and then top to bottom. In the first frame of the page, you may not know what you are looking at, and you certainly do not know who is talking. By the second frame, your attention is drawn to what eventually is revealed as background action (if there can be such a thing in this kind of composition): someone fixing a fallout shelter sign. By the last frame on the page, we realize that the person talking is across the street from the "action" we've been "watching." See the man sitting on the curb, reading a comic? In the next page or so we will jump into his reading consciousness and follow the comic book within the graphic novel, which weaves in and out of the whole text. I was flabberghasted by the postmodernity of this reading experience and I was quite literally overwhelmed by the sensory information I was receiving. I did not know how to read this text. I had to slow down and examine every picture, every word. Contrary to the limited attention span the new "digital" media is accused of causing, I was forced to be much more deliberate in my reading.
So, comic books being multimodal, multivocal, visual, textual, aesthetic, and collaborative, they may offer a framework for viewing and creating new digital media, and for understanding the ways in which this new media influences literacy. Vielstimmig asserts that the "ethos of the net is a 'collaborative' one" (91). I argue (and perhaps Watkins does also) that this is also the ethos of the comic.
I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the "new" assumptions I'm reading: "new media," "new essay," new "digital youth." Comic books are not the only "old" form that is multimodal and collaborative. More to the point, there have always been associative ways of writing and thus of comprehending. Here are a slew of quotes juxtaposed for you to make connections with and among: GO ASSOCIATE!
Ball and Moeller describe Lyotard as having "painted a depressing picture of adult education “a la carte,” whereby a student can pick up the skills she needs while bypassing the critical thinking bar in the university buffet (or production) line" (n. pag.)
"That's part of the problem: the old genres contain it. In other words, it seems pretty obvious that if we want traces and resonances of these collaborative processes--this collective intelligence?--represented textually, [materially?] we might have to invent new genres that wouldn't contain it, might have to refigure old genres so that they couldn't contain" (Vielstimmig 91 italics original).
- Do comic books show traces and resonances of collaborative processes?
- Are there no old genres that resemble new media texts?
- What would it mean to "refigure old genres so that they couldn't contain"?
- Is this a new way of thinking of writing and of literacy?
- Or has writing in a way always been collaborative, but we have been clinging to the romantic notion of invention by an individual self?
I think the quote from Lynn Z. Bloom is revealing: "Middle class composition teachers, ever Emersonian in spirit, stress the importance of self-reliance ('Your work must be your own'), even in nominally collaborative classrooms" (qtd. in Vielstimmig 96)
Emerson is always with us, isn't he? And romantic notions of how we write on our own. No work is entirely our own, as much as we hate to admit it. I think what I think because of many influences in my life, including textual influences. I express myself in writing the way I do because of another and overlapping multitude of references, many of them written. We are always borrowing, we just forget where we are borrowing from once it becomes part of our own thinking.
"All writing is pseudonymous" (Vielstimmig 97).
I am reminded while reading the Vielstimmig piece of Jane Tompkins's essay "Me and My Shadow"
(this is a link to the first page, for the entire article visit JStor through the library homepage). Tompkins wrestles with her own multi-vocality within this piece, describing herself as two separate writers: the academic essayist and the private diarist. We are always balancing many personae in our writing and therefore many voices.
(this is a link to the first page, for the entire article visit JStor through the library homepage). Tompkins wrestles with her own multi-vocality within this piece, describing herself as two separate writers: the academic essayist and the private diarist. We are always balancing many personae in our writing and therefore many voices.
Is all writing pseudonymous? collaborative? multi-vocal? Should it be?
I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the "new" assumptions I'm reading: "new media," "new essay," new "digital youth." Comic books are not the only "old" form that is multimodal and collaborative. More to the point, there have always been associative ways of writing and thus of comprehending. Here are a slew of quotes juxtaposed for you to make connections with and among: GO ASSOCIATE!
The assumption or implication propounded here, I believe, is such "associative dynamics" are purely "free form" and thus without meaning; in other words, in embracing the freeplay of meanings we lose our ability to discriminate, and thus to make critical judgements. (Alexander 40)Can you do it?In other words, coherence isn't universal, but situated, varying according to the choices and sophistication of the writer, but not in ways suggested by the collected lore of handbooks. (Vielstimmig 100)In fact, one characteristic of contemporary essays is the attempt to cast the widest net of associations possible, then struggle to bring the gathered ideas into some meaningful relation. (Hesse 36, emphasis mine)But, like the newspapers of 100 years ago, this new type of communication is messy and difficult to control. Not like literature that comes neatly packaged between hardcovers with already internalized instructions for consumption. (Ball and Moeller n. pag.)If there is a difference between consumption and production, my suggestion is that we are "trained" associatively in consumption--we are trained to read poetry and fiction. (Vielstimmig 107)
Ball and Moeller describe Lyotard as having "painted a depressing picture of adult education “a la carte,” whereby a student can pick up the skills she needs while bypassing the critical thinking bar in the university buffet (or production) line" (n. pag.)
So all of the texts I've dabbled in for this blog deserve a lot more attention each individually, but that is not what I'm doing here. Instead I will pose some closing questions drawn from all of them:
- Is there a connection between Alexander's discussion of the rhetoric of "youth" and the discussion we have been engaging about the rhetoric of "literacy"?
- What is an essay? Is there a new essay and an old one? What do we write? What do our students write?
- What is this?
- Should we expect something more from webtexts than what we generally are getting?
- Can poetic and rhetoric be separated? can they be combined?
Consider the following link (click here)in terms of the questions Vielstimmig pose (112):[This link goes to Kairos. Click Kairos at the top of page and then find "Pulling the Difference" by Patricia Webb Boyd--the link does not connect directly to the article]
- Are the modes of discourse working cross-genre? Do we see poetic at work?
- Do we see the associative and multivocal?
- Is this an example of "writing for the screen"?
- Is there evidence (traces) of the process?
Finally, what's the difference between digital youth and Sonic Youth?
Works Cited:
Alexander, Jonathan. "Technology, Literacy, and Digital Youth." Digital Youth: Emerging Literacies on the World Wide Web. Cresskill: Hampton Press, 2006. 33-67.
Ball, Cheryl and Ryan Moeller. "Converging ASS[umptions] between U and ME; or How New Media Can Bridge a Scholarly/Creative Split in English Studies." <http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/convergence/index.html>
Hesse, Douglas. "Saving a Place for Essayistic Literacy." Passions, Pedagogies and 21st Century Technologies. Ed. Gail Hawisher. Logan: Utah State UP, 1999. 34-48.
Vielstimmig, Myka. "Petals on a Wet Black Boug: Textuality, Collaboration, and the New Essay." Passions, Pedagogies and 21st Century Technologies. Ed. Gail Hawisher. Logan: Utah State UP, 1999. 89-114.
Works Cited:
Alexander, Jonathan. "Technology, Literacy, and Digital Youth." Digital Youth: Emerging Literacies on the World Wide Web. Cresskill: Hampton Press, 2006. 33-67.
Ball, Cheryl and Ryan Moeller. "Converging ASS[umptions] between U and ME; or How New Media Can Bridge a Scholarly/Creative Split in English Studies." <http://www.bgsu.edu/cconline/convergence/index.html>
Hesse, Douglas. "Saving a Place for Essayistic Literacy." Passions, Pedagogies and 21st Century Technologies. Ed. Gail Hawisher. Logan: Utah State UP, 1999. 34-48.
Vielstimmig, Myka. "Petals on a Wet Black Boug: Textuality, Collaboration, and the New Essay." Passions, Pedagogies and 21st Century Technologies. Ed. Gail Hawisher. Logan: Utah State UP, 1999. 89-114.
10 comments:
It didn't turn out quite like it looked in the preview window. There's a weird gap in the quote from Alexander at the top of the post. Anybody know how to fix that?
Lydia, everything looks good to me. I guess I am the wrong person to ask about technical problems....
(anyway, here is my post)
I want to jump into the conversation by saying that I found Lydia's post extremely interesting. Her comments regarding stereotypical notions of writing as a product of the authentic self have my brain bubbling in various directions ...
1. I think of the longstanding image of the writer as a reclusive individual ... the writer as an inventive genius who shuns society to write in seclusion ... perhaps locking herself or himself away in an dark room with only a typewriter and bottle of cheap wine.
2. I think of Vielstimmig's suggestion that (American) students are taught to "resist collaboration." Perhaps we, as Americans, unintentionally promote individualism. Can we, or our students, ever truly get away from this mindset?
3. I think of the American myth of the rugged individual who pulls herself or himself up by their bootstraps and makes it on their own
4. I think of writing and ownership (especially Vielstimig's suggestion that all writing is pseudonymous).
5. I think of the many ESL students that I have taught who are perplexed by American definitions of plagiarism.
Thanks, Lydia ... great post! My brain is tired now ...
Looks like the gap fixed itself somehow. I realized just now that the link to Kairos was not going where I wanted it to, so I included some updated instructions for where I was hoping you'd end up. Sorry about that.
"So, comic books being multimodal, multivocal, visual, textual, aesthetic, and collaborative, they may offer a framework for viewing and creating new digital media, and for understanding the ways in which this new media influences literacy. Vielstimmig asserts that the "ethos of the net is a 'collaborative' one" (91). I argue (and perhaps Watkins does also) that this is also the ethos of the comic."
I found this section of Lydia's blog to be extremely well put, so much so that I stopped reading to respond. I was given a copy of The Watchmen at the beginning of the summer, and I couldn't put it down. This blending of reading and watching, and the way it forces us to "be more deliberate" in our reading, to use Lydia's words, is a wonderful example of how new media challenges us to rethink what literacy means today, and what it will likely mean going forward.
Here's a link to a movie trailer you might enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONQ3Zgy195Y
(I'm not sure if that will post as a link. You might have to do the copy and paste thing.)
I also think Todd's thoughts are pretty important. This idea of pure individuality that we are pushed to accept contrasted with the fact that we can never truly attain absolute ownership of our writing, or even our own thoughts, for that matter, is a debate that is earning ever-increasing attention both in and out of the classroom, and rightfully so. How we write, how we interact, how we teach; these are questions whose answers expand and become more and more difficult to hold onto with the invention of each new mode of communication.
But I should stop here and finish reading Lydia's post. More later.
“It is always a pity to spoil an old joke, especially one that belongs to one’s own profession, which has been repeated time and again, for generations, whenever a teacher of Greek is concerned with the passages in question; but when the hearty laughter is over and the last echoes of it from our obedient pupils have faded away, let us examine the Greek again…” Aristotle, Poetics
ONE
He talks of cornfields, and it ends with a train to somewhere. There he is—that guy striking out into the great American who-knows-where-but-not-here to make a name for himself, to get away from the town with so many impatient hands, so many Christs, and so many crucified. They never seem to “see” things the way “you” do, the way I do. Instead, they wonder when they will get on that train. They don’t tell you about the dangers of martinis. Those things can kill you.
Nobody wants them to know that it doesn’t happen like this unless you’re Sam Walton. Even then, he could get a line of credit. Does anyone make a clean break from poverty, or do the literate like to tell the literate that the poor do “rise up,” at least when it comes to the folk in Winesburg, Ohio?
The American Dream
Am I overemphasizing or quoting Miller?
My students never seem to understand the Russians. They are suspect of men and women who drink hot tea with milk and enjoy toast points with caviar and whatever else they eat that comes in tins with letters that look something like ours printed across the label. They do not trust Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, and they do not understand why so many young men in officer uniforms sit in drawing rooms. They cheer, instead, for Chekhov’s sleepy little maid.
“Hush-a-bye my baby wee,
While I sing a song for thee.”
TWO
And yet I can’t help thinking back to the mention of patriarchy and hierarchy. Someone said it…wrote it…and I do not think of the young. I think, instead, of foot-warn marble, frescoes painted in wet plaster—to your right: the fiery pits of hell, demons pulling hot pitchforks of entrails out of young, strapping lads as you near the altar, the rood screen. A man speaks backwards, into the narthex: Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem, Creatorem caeli et terrae. Et in Iesum Christum, Filium eius unicum, Dominum nostrum, qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto… I think of the men, the women, the ones with walking sticks and muddy feet, mouthing the words and wondering what they mean (knowing that whatever it is behind the screen is saying something important). As they stand there, they sway in time with its long O’s and soft U’s and, in time, respond with the “Amen.” They leave with the vision of angels ascending, wing tips plastered at right angles toward the vaulted ceiling. Do we speak of the youth because of the inherent “hope” implied, or would we rather not remember those old, withered souls mouthing along somewhere in the back pew. What happens when the screen comes down? What happens when we hand out the translation?
(Hello. Meet Margaret. She is a nursing student from Nevada. She is getting her online degree because she wants to buy a new car and get good insurance. My assignment is: “Something called a process essay. Whatever help you can give.” She is a mother of four, and she likes to watch Mama’s Family. She does not know how to double space, so she hits “enter” between every line. Her essay is number 1367.)
“Hush-a-bye my baby wee,
While I cook the groats for thee…”
THREE
I turn the page, and young Indiana Jones falls into a pit of rattlesnakes. I backtrack, my finger greedily marking the last page “just in case”, and he rides with Pancho Villa through a desert sunrise. The heat makes wavy lines radiate from black and white palominos. It is wavy-line hot, and it is time to take on a scouting mission with the tail of the brigade, dark men with large mustaches whose hands grip the reigns of their horses in a way that makes me want to keep young Indie beside Pancho instead. Who cares if the route is one day longer this way through the scrub and the brittle-snap prairie grass? Surely nothing will happen to him between here and the border.
Who says there is no interactivity in text? The author wants to play with me, and all of these wavy lines are making me thirsty for some Kool-Aid—the blue stuff. If only my brother hasn’t left just that one inch in the pitcher.
“Hush-a-bye my baby wee,
And I will sing a song to the.”
Lydia, what a creative and sensually appealing blogpost: color, comics, audio, video, photos with superhero headlines superimposed--you've captured Vielstimmig's sense of multivocality beautifully, and blended academic reflection with personal expression, like Tompkins.
I think Alexander is right about "the figure of youth" being used to justify a puzzling "disinterested position" (on the part of whom? non-youth?) (mis)read as "high moral ground." I'm glad you included that quote in your opening.
Like Brett, I agree that your discussion and integration of comics and visual analysis make excellent points about their multi-modal, multi-vocal, and collaborative ethos (if you haven't read it, I recommend Alison Bechdel's _Fun Home_--you can borrow mine if you like). Yet, this type of text (comics, specifically, but anything that emphasizes the visual) seems still to be not taken as seriously in academe as an essay, thesis, dissertation (exclusively) of words. I think the reasons why have to do with your question about the (problematic) rhetoric poetic split.
Before I go there, though, I want to say how I also admire Tompkins's "Me and My Shadow" and have tried to, in the spirit of Tompkins, emulate and even build on that idea of multivocality in conference presentations I've done recently. Tompkins seems to conduct a dialogue between *her* academic logos and personal pathos *selves* to make a point about the "disinterested" academic (dare I say, rhetoric? although I must say I am quite passionate about my rhetoric ;) and passionate personal (poetic). Tompkins convinces me in that piece that yes, rhetoric and poetic are split, but that's the problem: they shouldn't be. They need each other to be most effective.
This makes me think of Todd's comment about American individualism, the contra-collaboration spirit iin which we live and work, how this affects plagiarism rules and confuses ESL students whose cultures are more collaborative.
One last thing: I want to say that what I think you did is an essay of sorts, an interactive, reflexive, visual and (yes! NEW) essay. It is not an essay by traditional standards, and I agree with Hesse that we need to save a place for that traditional essay, for it is very valuable. Writing is a powerful metacognitive act. But along with that, I think we need to work toward integrating visual awareness and new media into our teaching and composing.
Like everyone else, I agree this posting is a wonderful blend of the options you had at your disposal as well as a delightful metaphor paired with the readings.
There is one question I want to focus my response on: "the human worker becomes a machine. Do you think our students are in this position? How or how not? Are we?"
I think our students are machines. Machines conditioned or programmed to perform within set perimeters prescribed by the academy. Students are conditioned, a term I do not use lightly, to write the way instructors or teachers want them to. Further, students are conditioned as consumers of the culture and even of themselves. I'm not sure how Adorno (and the entire Frankfurt School) would respond, but I'm sure the term commodification would spring up.
How often do we see a student who is truly unique? Not in dress or personality, but in outlook on the world? Most of the students I've taught rely on their parental units to tell them (or program, like a machine) what to think and why to think it. These readings certainly raise the questions that underlie our educational institutions, which Ball and Moeller suggest in their article with tenure and reading of digital scholarship.
Are we machines? You bet we are. We are as ingrained as our students are. We still carry the baggage of our familial relations and experiences, and these influence how we interact with technology and with everything else.
One of my concerns is that our educational system is not designed to handle change. It has been confined to dusty, old books recessed into libraries that students still dig in card catalogs to find--and even that is well known to be haphazard. We rally behind computerized classrooms and digital texts and new media, but we've seen far too often few of us can adequately use these confounded things. In our very class, we all had a learning curve to create this postings or to access the blog or wiki.
Don't misunderstand me, I'm not in any fashion against the advancement of technology, especially when it is related to learning, but the problem is that the advancements of technology come at us so fast, we don't have time to absorb, understand, and figure out the old version before a new version is introduced (even if the "new" version is supposed to be easier to maneuver).
In many ways, I'm reminded of my time as a youth reading and collecting comic books. I would read every word and if I didn't follow the text, I would refer to the picture. Nevertheless, I would always look at the pictures before I bought it and then, after the purchase, read the text to get the story. It was the pictures (read various forms of media) that sold me, but it was the text that told me something.
Namaste.
Rock.
Will technology bring on greater access to and understanding of information (Alexander 37)? I say it has and will continue to, but what about all the info trash and useless (or deceptive) bits out there on the web and in digital media all together that Ebersole warns us of? Certainly we should be apprehensive of how youth interact with the internet, as in the case study of high school students on the internet interacting with "educational material" about a fifth of the time, the rest spent on commercial sites. But don't be apprehensive to the point of shutting out the potential gains. Advocating that educators dispel their fears to a certain extent, Taylor and Ward ask educators to "embrace the uncertainty" and C. Selfe reminds us to be "paying attention" to the uncertainty in our direction with technology, but most importantly to what it has to teach us. While Plato feared a future where nobody could recite the Iliad because of writing taking the place of memory, there is the present fear that writing will be replaced by iconic media, but it's an irrational fear, one that comes from an ignorance of how text and images can extend each others' modal capacity for communication. I really like what Giroux had to say about all this; he finds that, "youth's literacies are shaped not in the classroom, but in the mass media" (Alexander 38). The emphasis on subculture and teenagers' journeys to find themselves have increasingly been tread on the paths of technology, and media. This is certainly apparent in Lydia's graphic novel example. Who's to say that's info trash? Probably someone ignorant of the value of such media, and with the inability (or impatience) to carefully consider all that's going on in those four frames.
Furthermore, Embracing the new media and technology will lead us to a more realistic understanding that individuals (romantic notion) contribute to communities of information, as the university emphasizes, rather than a free standing, arrogant perspective that as writer's we take raw material and shape it into something completely new as if we were born with a conversing community in our heads. The web's ability to expedite our interactions will not only keep community thought tightly linked, but also assist us in valuing collective knowledge.
Nice work today, Lydia!
Rock makes an interesting point about the way our students are conditioned to be consumers. This ties in with Alexander's and Postman's point that children "deeply conditioned by the biases of television" are illiterate in their inability to "organize thought in logical structure" (39). When teaching, I often feel like a saleswoman, trying to sell the basic principles of writing to my students as they look at me glassy-eyed, hoping that I will add some special effects to my bit. When asking them to discuss an issue of some complexity (e.g. what a feminist is or what popular representations of black people are), they look at me dumb-founded, like I am a T.V. or monitor and they are waiting for the answer. I wonder if the lack of critical thinking skills has resulted from students' relationships to technology or if most first-year students have just not developed such skills.
Referencing Birkerts, Alexander writes, "instead of the 'private self' contemplating rationally, we have pleasure-seeking youth insisting on 'immediate gratification'" (42). The myspace/facebook phenomenon is an example of this--suddenly the private can be very public. Web 2.0 has allowed us to control how others perceive us. It freaks me out a little to think about others (my "friends") looking at my facebook page and seeing snip its of my private life, and for this reason, I will not be friends with my current students... I am getting away from my original point. Call me a technological nay-sayer, but the concern Alexander highlights seems legit. Now that students have instantaneous access to information, it worries me that they will lose ability for critical, original thought. While I think the "new essay" is compelling (incredible post Rebecca... you creative writers are so much better at this), I wonder what would happen if the new essay became an acceptable academic form. If my students turned in an essay in Vilstimmig-form, I would cry. How could I grade such a thing? Could I tell the difference between something that was thoughtfully put together and complete hodge-podge?
Jules makes a very important point about students (and maybe even, to some degree, our) critical thinking skills. I, too, have encountered the "TV" stare from students--their mouths are a bit open expecting some delicious morsel to cross their expectant lips instead of synaptic activity in their cerebral cortex (with their respective mouths in a slight pout of pondering). This conundrum for us as scholars and teachers is paramount because technology continues to make things easier. Let me elaborate: some of the "skills" we needed years ago, which included problem-solving, deconstruction, construction, and risk analysis, have eased considerably in our culture. When was the last time you changed a tire? Or your car's oil? How about planted a tree (to shade your home)? Baked cookies from scratch?
The point is that these skills (and hundreds more) have left many of us. I have NO idea how to change my oil. Of course, I have a basic sense of what needs to be done, but I don't have the tools to complete the task, nor do I know how much oil I need to do so.
Although not strictly critical thinking, I trust the point is clear.
Namaste.
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