John Duffy is an associate professor of English and the O'Malley Director of the University Writing Program at the University of Notre Dame. He recently coedited the essay collection Literacy, Economy, and Power, and his book, Writing from These Roots, was awarded the 2009 Outstanding Book Award by the Conference on College Composition and Communication. Duffy has been an NCTE member since 2000.
How does a person who is content and who has led a life through many successful accomplishments teach others the rhetoric of virtue?
I knew I would love Duffy's article once I read "'we as postmodern skeptical academics,' as Patricia Bizzell has written, 'are habitually fearful that any talk of teaching virtue will tend to introduce exclusions, as socially privileged groups in our diverse nation arrogate to themselves the right to define what virtue is taught'"
I have a virtue that I attempt to adhere to in regards to my diabetic condition and whenever somebody writes to be read by an audience they enter into ethical decisions about the voice that they will use. Both my diet and a writer's voice are choices made best by rational decisions. To me then, Duffy's rationale for defining what it means to use rhetorical virtue as a basis for becoming a sound writer circumvents the postmodern political issues concerning virtue in a similar manner to my ethical decisions about what foods to eat. Having the appropriate disposition for choosing what works depending on conditions is almost always the best approach. What has politics and the perception of equality to do with writing when they are socially engineered by a ruling elite? To me, political issues are a waste of time unless you are of the class of people that can afford to pay for government regulations that benefit you. Why get pulled in a meaningless quagmire when there is real work to be done? I like Duffy's essay because it addresses real issues of life and education: "the activitie[s] of 'living well ' throughout a lifetime" (233).
The author's key term is "virtue ethics" which he defines throughout the essay mostly because the term has held various meanings. In Duffy's definition virtue ethics contain ideas about virtues that seem to be closely related to common sense: "virtues of reasoning well;" "virtues as cautionary folk wisdom;" "virtues as being the disposition to act in the right way;" virtues as "context-dependent . . . social in nature;" virtues are "learned;" they are "neither preordained nor immutable;" they may be "the traits, attitudes, and dispositions of character that we associate with a good person." And, virtue ethics takes into consideration both sides of an argument so as to open dialogue to the most reasonable solution or considerations.
I especially liked his placement of virtue ethics outside of "the particulars of human experience" (240) by using the reference to Kant who located them in human reason. He then discounts Kant's "'categorical imperatives'" and leaves his continuing argument on ethics of rhetoric to float effectively free from other forms of postmodern criticism. This is a strategic move on the part of the author because it allows him to address moral ambiguities as an "impetus for rhetorical action" (240). He then describes rhetorical ethics as being "committed to the health of the reader-writer connection" (241). Thus, he circumvents the wrath of the social justice brigade, offers a solution that preserves valuable time and energy, and provides wisdom to the real problem of how to be a good writer.
Finally, he addresses the cultural cognitive dissonance issues within public argument and the agreement and disagreement on "the nature of fact" or "what evidence counts as evidence" (242). By questioning whether postmodernist ethics are "adequate for addressing the particular circumstances of the current cultural moment," and by keeping his proposition of rhetorical solutions "a priori" he maintains the reader-writer connection and provides a reasonable solution developed exactly through the methods that he recommends. He follows his sound reasoning with the gentle conclusion that "we perhaps need another language and another form of rhetorical ethics . . . found in the language of the virtues" (244).
I am glad to be reading Duffy's advice just at the time that I embark on my final essay which attempts to navigate and maintain the same type of reader-writer connection.
This blog post is about an essay entitled "Translinguality Transmodality and Difference: Exploring Dispositions, Change in Language, & Learning" by Bruce Horner, Cynthia Selfe, and Tim Lockridge.
If I told you or showed you something would you know it like I do? How precise could I write it to make someone understand? If I told you what my love for my ex-wife might be described as months before our divorce would you know the meaning beneath the words? Could the words make someone else feel it? Would an image help? Perhaps a few thoughts of giving her a birthday card might explain.
I love to run.
My third ex-wife was born on 9/11 and for her last birthday during the time that we were together, I bought her a birthday card. And, I thought that I would write something on it to indicate the love that we had over the years. I tried to think of something simple, something concise. I thought that if I took all the words from all the books, notes, letters, emails, blogs, and tweets in all the languages that could be used to describe our love, the sum total of it all, and put those descriptions into a large blender with acetone, and then poured the mixture into a drying vat the size of an automobile, and once dry ran that through a junkyard compactor, and then exported the solid word mass to a Mexican prison where four prisoners at hard labor beat on it with sledgehammers until their parole dates, the last word-hammered letters to appear on top of the pulverizing anvil, the words so beaten by the wretched inmates into the letters best suited to describe our love, just before they vanished into a dry summer whirlwind of a passing dust devil, would spell “shit.” I could not just write shit on her birthday card any easier than I could tell her that I loved her, so I wrote "It is what it is" and threw the card away.
"Intermezzo essays are meant to be provocative, intelligent, and not bound to standards traditionally associated with 'academic writing.'
While essays may be academic regarding subject matter or audience, they are free to explore the nature of digital essay writing and the various logics associated with such writing – personal, associative, fragmentary, networked, nonlinear,
visual, and other rhetorical gestures not normally appreciated in traditional, academic publishing.
Intermezzo essays are meant to be speculative, exploratory, and a mix of the informal and the formal. Essays may come from a variety of disciplinary approaches or may mix approaches" (the authors).
This is what Intermezzo essays are and what they do.
">>Are published as open source texts.
>>Are freely available for download.
>>Undergo peer review.
>>Take advantage of online distribution in order to publish projects
quickly and efficiently.
>>Are designed for desktop and mobile digital reading platforms. >>Are assigned an ISBN number in order to provide authors professional
credibility and further accessibility to global audiences." --the authors' right angle brackets, not mine.
My first comments to myself while reading the authors' essay went like this: why the F couldn't they have formatted it like all the other essays that we've been reading. The sense is one of fragmentation and lack of direction which contrasts with their academically stereotypic style of diction. I looked up Blaise as a word that might apply, but muddled sterility seems clearer. Especially since, when I looked up Blaise, the definition stated "Blaise is a personal name (from Greek Βλάσιος, the name of Saint Blaise). The meaning of Greek Blasios is unclear." Which is not to imply one way or another if that is what the word means. It's just that nobody knows for sure what the meaning of the word is or was. It's unclear. Got it? And further, some but not all say that the good Saint is thought to have spoken with a lisp. I hope the rest of the essay proves this out--as if it is composed of saintly words spoken with a lisp; a solution to the problems that it raises.
"Huh?" I thought to myself, "how Blaise."
Key terms in the essay are multi-modality and multilinguality. Without researching multi-modality I assume the word refers to the modes of expression or rhetoric in a variety of digital mediums that an essay on the internet might employ. The word multilinguality is literacy in multiple formal languages. Later in the essay multilinguality inadequately addresses multi-modal communications and the authors consider transliteracy to get at multimodal meanings within online essays. The authors demonstrate their collaboration to create their essay through its appearance as a means to help people that read the essay to know exactly what they are talking about: how multi-linguality and multi-modal collaboration takes place as a form of contemporary communications. Their page layout adds meaning to their essay in a similar way that I've used the GIF images in this blog.
My answer to Bruce Horner's questions of "How do we learn to recognize the 'strange'/'new' in the 'familiar'/'old' and the 'familiar'/'old' in the seemingly 'new' or 'strange'" (12) follows:
And from my studies in medieval Digital Humanities, I immediately recognized the authors' use of mise-en-page as being at least 1,500 years old (familiar/old). Multi-modal communications are ancient as is multi-lingual communications. Translingual and trans-modal are the very nature of the medieval text via mouvance--from the oral to the textual--and from scribal variance.
Middle English Psalter, with a historiated initial C and marginal Latin rubric from around 1425
The authors acknowledge that medieval manuscripts demonstrate multimodal means but they don't go into it much (19). Some of the manuscripts are written in French, Middle English and Latin and the use of images in church stained glass as well as manuscripts, told stories to those who could not read. The medieval mind to me seemed to be dimensional in a kind of virtual reality way that allowed people then to communicate through systems that parallel online communications today. Not only were medieval manuscripts, as the authors point out, multimodal but they were multilingual and dimensional.
Below is a trilingual manuscript from http://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2014/08/parallel-lines.html About the manuscript they write "Harley MS 5786 is a trilingual Psalter, with three parallel vertical columns containing the Psalms in Greek, Latin and Arabic. The manuscript was made at Palermo, within the court circle of King Roger II, between 1130 and 1153. The Psalter reflects the multilingual culture of twelfth-century Sicily, which was inhabited by both Arabs and Greeks. It may have been intended as a homage to Roger’s dominion over southern Italy and parts of northern Africa and Byzantium."
Multiculturalism is not something new; neither is page-layout; nor are images that effectively express meaning. What is new is global communications over the internet through text, sound, and video. At first, I thought the essay was a basis for establishing a new pedagogy but it turned out to be a discussion/exploration.
The authors discuss the limitations of the words multilingual and multi-modal. Do I need to use words to relay their message or just write: standard language>>multi-lingual >>translingual and mono norm>>multimodal>>transmodal all based on disposition--the set of everything that leads to the creation of a work. At this point in the essay, I find the authors aggrandizing themselves.
I'll continue.
Around page 15 they realize the complexities of global communications systems vastly exceed the ability for people to completely understand how they are evolving and how persons currently interact with them. Tech is out of human control because of the massive scale in which changes take place: from the top down and the bottom up. The communications systems both human and technological constantly morph at increasing speed into something larger: within the fields of law, finance, technology, medical and so on. Nevertheless, the authors articulate a Marxist analysis of new media during their dialectics and continued to question some important issues that relate to the interdisciplinary nature of transmodal communications.
I like Marxist strategies for purposes such as shown in the video below. Beyond that, not so much.
The explication of why people understand different media differently because of who they are seemed obvious and the authors' use of reductionism to say that danger exists in treating "modes and media and languages as an array of discrete resources" rather than realizing their interconnectedness seemed superfluous (20).
I find Cynthia's comments bizarre as somehow trying to find a basis for the lack of trans-modal communications because of the "current political climate of the United States, [which is] too often influenced by combined strains of isolationism and arrogance" (25). Her comments seemed very isolated within the current death cult of academic multiculturalism and social justice. If you can't find a legitimate basis for refutation then as a last resort don't use a similar basis for your refutation otherwise somebody will surely accuse you of a microaggression. That is my suggestion to her. I mean what is gained by dumbing down an already substandard educational system. By expanding the educational system's teaching facilities to include more highly specialized courses that require an ever greater intelligence within the student populace, aren't you isolating it further from the likes of Deqa Mahammed's mother? To the author's credit, they (although I don't know if that includes Cynthia) acknowledge such problems later in the essay.
As I study more deeply into critical theories and the humanities within academia the more I see the intentional separation of the classes. In the late 20th century criticisms enhanced national elitism and today it destroys the middle class and serves global elitism. The trick played on the less fortunate is that today a global agenda hides behind a Marxist mask of social justice. History shows that this peculiarly lethal strategy leads to the grandest of all human atrocities. Is it ignorance of human psychology, or the lack of understanding of the collective psychological processes that led to WWII, or is it an intentional misuse of ideological criticisms by professors who know exactly what they are encouraging? Certain professors from UCLA who work with NGOs in South East Asia obviously are acquainted with CIA developmental programs and know what they are doing. For them, the promotion of a social justice regime here in America is intentional and a way to subvert democracy as a means to unite the world under global governance. I don't believe that is the case for most professors who are sheltered within academia and who have decent incomes. Employment and standards of living are stable enough and they don't have the time to become conscious of the socio-political environment outside of casual media encounters. Most of the students, unfortunately, have no idea as to what is taking place. Having expressed my concerns about globalism and elitism, I want to conclude by saying that I'm not necessarily opposed to an egalitarian form of global governance. The concern that I have is about getting caught up in the shuffle that is due to undemocratic social engineering efforts.
Some may say "Ray, that sounds a little paranoid to me. Do you think a conspiracy is taking place?" My answer is this, "In 2007, they hired me to work for them for a short period of time." I was well known for videotaping events from my work with the Linux Public Broadcasting Network and a little ole lady from Forbes's 100 list of "Who's Who" hired me to videotape a three-day conference in the mountains. The conference attendees which she later told me she had hand picked consisted of CIA, FBI, FEMA, three active duty Marines, IT personnel from Southern Bell, and various other sordid types. This group of people referred to themselves as a paperless shadow government that goes into any area of disruption and does whatever they need to do without leaving a trace. This was the prototype group for the Fusion Centers that are now spread across the United States of America.
John Carpenter in They Live (1988)
I found the authors' discussion of collaborative tools interesting. For my project group in the Digital Humanities, we use Ryver, Google Docs, and Google Drive. We have also used Github. Their discussion reminded me of discussions at the Linux Labs Users Group from 17 years ago where we discussed the same issues. Collaboration over the internet has been a function of the open source software community since at least the early 1990's. Their essay made me think of how distant English departments are from those on the frontlines of tech. Over 20 years of exponential change has taken place! This is not to say that the authors are not current just that the concerns that people have about online communications seems to remain constant. Today, the questions are being asked in an effort to facilitate communications technologies and to make them available through state-sponsored educational systems. Back then, we addressed these kinds of questions for our own special interest groups via chat boxes, and for me, it is interesting to see the questions now being asked by English professors.
I liked the essay and it gave me reasons to have some fun. I also enjoyed reading an exploratory, dialectical essay rather than an argumentative essay. In college, I always write argumentative essays and it is not natural for me. I want to consider things and what they might mean rather than practice arguing that something is so, or worse attempt to use words to convince somebody that I believe a thesis has something to do with the truth. Laws are for those who know how to use them against those who do not know how or cannot afford to use them. The problem writing argumentative essays is that I know that I'm being less than honest as soon as I stake a claim. It is not that justification for any claim may be considered as insufficient that is at issue, only that I know the counterarguments and possible consequences: the uncertainty of sequences that may follow. Argumentative essays are unethical in that way. An exploratory essay is relieved of the unethical nature of the argumentative essay, at least to a degree, and therefore capable of revealing more ethical/beneficial information.
In the end, the race to achieve cyber-immortality converged with nuclear annihilation. We lived and died forever.
"Jean Baudrillard (/ˌboʊdriːˈɑːr/; French: [ʒɑ̃ bodʁijaʁ]; 27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as well as his formulation of concepts such as simulation and hyperreality. He wrote about [many] diverse subjects . . . Among his best known works [is] Simulacra and Simulation (1981). His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and specifically post-structuralism." (Wikipedia)
I presented this essay to my Beginning Theory class. The following Youtube video preceded the reading of the essay. The video includes images from Peter Barry's book Beginning Theory (2009). By showing the video, I hoped to achieve a quick coverage of the concepts from the book; I attempted to tie video clips from The Matrix to the book and to the meaning of the word simulacrum. I was standing at a podium to the right of the screen at the time the video played.
Central to the theory of Baudrillard in Simulacra and Simulation (first published in 1981) is the term simulacrum: the singular form of simulacra. The word simulacrum becomes a kind of container sign for the inclusion of signs that have particular qualities of realness. Signs in the real have signifiers that represent real things such as flowers. Simulacra of the third order appear to represent the real through simulation but do not signify it. According to the author, the social stratum becomes increasingly hyperreal in complexity and artificiality as simulacra continually diminish the depth of meaning by overwhelming it with a plethora of representative simulations (2). To complicate things further, the word simulacrum has an attribute of numinosity built into its meaning since simulacra may be signs, images, or systems of models that simulate reality; and, as postulated by the author, “God himself [may] be simulated . . . reduced to the signs that constitute faith . . . a gigantic simulacrum” (5-6). Thus, difficulty in defining what the word simulacrum means is due to the way that Baudrillard uses the word as a monad--an elemental oneness--that collapses the real into an endless expansion of simulations of the real (monad).
Before going further into the complexities that underlie the meaning of the word simulacrum, the following example should help concretize what the author means by a simulacrum. The dollar as a fiat currency represents a simulacrum that is in a constant process of simulation. It ceaselessly simulates a real-world truth as an exchange of value, but the dollar does not have intrinsic value; its deepest truth is “In God We Trust.” The derived dollar's real-world value comes from exchanges with other fiat currencies. Dollars created as instruments of debt enter into existence as an electronic entry during the creation of debt obligations such as loans. Therefore, the dollar represents a simulacrum that simulates an underlying truth which does not exist. Financialization is sorcery of simulation at the highest level, and it threatens to destroy the social stratum through collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, naked short sales, rehypothecation and so on. In a sense, the financial industry is the glittering facade of a simulacrum; a hyperreal representation perpetuated through simulation.
The author’s reference to a system of signs that attests to God as "a gigantic simulacrum" positions Baudrillard to subvert grand narratives through postulates that question the meaning of reality and by his definition of the simulacrum as true. The epigraph to Simulacra and Simulation, which is a synopsis by Baudrillard of the “Book of Ecclesiastes,” affirms the vanity of idealizing so called truth. It states that “[t]he simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth---it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true. --Ecclesiastes” (1). The religious tone of his epigraph imbues itself into the meaning of the word simulacrum which is “true” while the grand narrative of the Bible as the actual word of God--the Truth—is negated by the words “it is the truth which conceals that there is none.” The epigraph suggests that the author considers The Bible and other religious doctrines--ideologies--as forms of second order simulacra (6).
Baudrillard’s attribution of the epigraph to “Ecclesiastes” seems to relate to the way his theory of simulacra and simulation parallels the phrase from “Ecclesiastes” that says “[a]ll is vanity” (English Standard Version, Ecc. 1.9). Many signs within modern social systems represent simulated versions of reality. These simulations are simulacra that conceal an absence of referential to the real. They save the reality principle at the cost of truth (13). Attempts to prove the truth in such a reality is vanity, and yet the “simulacrum is true” (1). To me, this statement indicates an attribute of representation inherent in a sign regardless of whether or not it references some reality is what is true. The idea that the simulacrum is true bears out whenever people make decisions based on representations of simulations that lack referential to the real. The simulacra become as actual as the real--the true.
In its more distilled definition, according to the O.E.D., simulacrum comes from the Latin adjective simulāre which means to make like, or to simulate, and is defined as “[s]omething having merely the form or appearance of a certain thing, without possessing its substance or proper qualities” (simulacrum). Accordingly, a photograph is a simulacrum. Baudrillard builds upon these definitions through a transgression into the realm of the gods where a sign’s reference to the depth of meaning ends. He introduces four phases of the image by using the subjunctive clause would be when he says “These would be the successive phases of the image” (6). Thus, his definitions of the phases of the image are expressions that are not known to be true within reality. Perhaps they would be true in the case that reality is a gigantic simulacrum. The “four phases of the image” are:
1 It is the reflection of a basic reality.
2 It masks and perverts a basic reality.
3 It masks the absence of a basic reality.
4 It bears no relation to any reality whatever; it is its own pure simulacrum. (6)
Analogies to the way the phases of the image represent things follow. First, a photograph of a flower reflects the underlying reality of a flower. Second, a photo-shopped picture represents the image with embellishments that mask and pervert the basic reality of the object photographed. Third, a virtual reality 3D Tilt-Brush painting of a flower signifies that it is real. It masks the absence of reality by way of a simulated representation. Lastly, to use an image from Barry, a “completely abstract painting” such as a solid colored mood painting by Mark Rothko bears no relation to any reality (85).
Baudrillard notes concern about the third phase of the image and simulation that is a third order simulacrum (6). Simulation without a signifier “is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality” (Baudrillard 1). The author goes on to say that “simulation is of the third order, beyond true and false, beyond equivalences, beyond rational distinctions upon which the whole of the social and power depend“ (Baudrillard 21). The example of the financial industry that I’ve offered authenticates Baudrillard’s concern. Banks have become too big to fail and their executives too big to jail. Although many examples in Simulacra and Simulation demonstrate how simulations negatively impact society, Baudrillard’s concern does not imply that third order simulacrum are destructive in and of themselves. His concern is more of a call to respond according to the nature of simulacra.
Baudrillard’s exploration into the nature of the simulacrum reverberates through the writings of other postmodernists that have built upon his theory. Nick Bostrom’s augment within his paper “Are You Living In a Computer Simulation?” makes three propositions about humans reaching a “posthuman” stage. He then concludes that “[i]t follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false unless we are currently living in a simulation.” In response to Bostrom’s argument Elon Musk, earlier this year said that “there is less than a billion to one chance that we are living in a base simulation.” In other words, there is less than a one in a billion chance that we are not living in a gigantic simulacrum.
Attempting to conclude the points I’ve covered in summary, to bring clarity to the term simulacrum, leaves me at a loss. My only response is, “The simulacrum is true.” Call it God if you like.
Works Cited
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Critical Theory. Manchester University Press, 2009.
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. The University of Michigan Press, 1994.
Bostrom, Nick. Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?. 2003, simulation-argument.com. Accessed 14 November 2016.
"monad, n. and adj." OED Online. Oxford University Press, September 2016. Accessed 14 November 2016.
Musk, Elon. “Is life a video game? | Elon Musk | Code Conference 2016.” YouTube, uploaded by Recode, 14 November 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KK_kzrJPS8.
"simulacrum, n." OED Online. Oxford University Press, September 2016. Accessed 14 November 2016.
When money loses its value, microaggressions and speech will be criminalized. The populace shall not accuse oligarchs of financial terrorism and war crimes. I am an individualist and believe in returning governance first to nation-states, then to states, then to counties, then to townships, and then to the people. I have zero hope for centralized governance, and instead, I promote the replacement of government with open source software, referendum, and the most faceless and omnipresent form of democracy possible: a world ruled by everyone. Centralized governments have been successful at killing hundreds of millions of people. The larger they are, the more they kill. When I see dangerous globalist ideologies, I am compelled to point them out.
Xiaoye You
Associate Professor of English and Asian Studies
English Honors Adviser
Penn State University
B.A. English Education, Gannan Teachers’ College, China
M.A. Applied Linguistics, Northwestern Polytechnic University, China
Ph.D. English, Purdue University, USA, 2005
Areas of Specialization
Rhetoric and Composition
multilingual writing, comparative rhetoric, world Englishes
In Cosmopolitan English and Transliteracy (2016) Xiaoye You argues for the greater inclusiveness of Cosmopolitan English and transliteracy into the American educational system. His book ties the term Cosmopolitan English to the word accent. The text made me think of my Chinese friend of forty years. A long time ago, when my friend lost his job at a place that we both had worked at, I talked with the owner of a different company who I was then working for to see if he would interview my friend. I needed to be relieved of some of my duties to attend computer networking technologies classes. The owner hired my friend despite the company's concerns about his Cosmopolitan English. It turned out that my friend remained on as the last employee at that company and continued working in his position after the owners sold out to a larger tech company. I also had a Chinese business associate who is a physicist at Jet Propulsion Labs. He was at the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Then, I thought of my English professor from Nepal who also has an accent, and I began to think about the complexities that surround Cosmopolitan English. To me, accents are outside of human relationships and more of an integration barrier both psychologically and pragmatically for those that must endure them. Professor You's book highlights some ways that Cosmopolitan English appears in media and literature. Although I appreciated the explications of the various manifestations of Cosmopolitan English, in light of the current lack of success of English departments to teach formal English, I found the author's prescriptive solution questionable.
The book is really a great read but by making Cosmopolitan English a construct supported by catch-phrase terms such as xenophobic, neocolonialism, racism, sexism, microaggressions, marginalized, privileged, othered and so on, the authenticity of the author's virtue-signaling becomes suspect to the possibility of underlying financial and positioning motives. The irrefutable nature of microaggressions lends itself nicely to divide and conquer strategies. Independent of the point of view of the one judging, claims of microaggressions may be made by anyone and everyone. Discussions about microaggressions shut down discourse and lead to aggressiveness because once somebody is told they are microaggressive the same may be said of the accuser: their claim is a microaggression. We might remember how U. C. Berkeley students shut down free speech earlier this year. A difference of political opinion stirred students to violence. Outrage over the greater issue of the assault on the constitutionality of freedom of the press became a minor public debate because of concerns over the microaggressive nature of the speaker's expected political speech. Had the author put his political opinions aside and stuck to the excellent demonstrations of how transliteracy is used to produce greater understanding I would have been entirely persuaded that transliteracy critiques are needed.
The author relegates people that speak with accents to an othered class of which he seeks a better political/educational solution than currently provided for within academia. Where the author sees social justice--a phrase used to mean fairness--as a top-down pedagogical approach, I see the injustices of divisiveness and am reminded of the false accusations that are accompanied by atrocities against people who have been singled out as those who do not conform to the social. The reason for my perspective is not due to the author's excellent methodology but rather that he relies on the aforementioned catch-all phrases as support for his propositions. My Chinese friend told me of the experiences he encountered during his membership in Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution. He had the responsibility of deploying plastic explosives: blowing up trains and bridges. My business associate from J.P.L. told me about the time that he helped carry four of his friends who were shot to the hospital the night the Chinese government decided to end the protest at Tiananmen Square. Three of his friends died. To me, social implies collectivism and social justice suggests collective justice. Collective justice is administered by a judicial system of laws and regulations and to consider one as being a microaggressor is outside of the scope of law since the accusations must necessarily be judged as subjective and therefore speculative. Microaggressions are not a credible reason with which to argue for fairness.
In regards to political/educational social justice, one must wonder about the financial and positional opportunities available to those that support the implementation of speculatively based educational programs. Motive becomes especially suspicious when the author plays on sentimentality to suggest that educational systems have a moral duty. Governments and institutions do not have the faculty of morality because they are not individuals. Collective entities crush individuality through pressures to conform; they stifle the individual and snuff out the source of morality. Morality is something that is earned by each person over a lifetime of psychological development, not by the force of law or the force of social conformity. An ethos--a natural understanding of how to play the game--within the global village of America has yet to supplant nepotism, and no amount of social engineering is likely to change that. Let us never forget that the path toward the extreme end of political/institutional social justice leads through the Cambodian killing fields of Pol Pot. My experiences inform me that people organically appreciate one another by living in multicultural societies such as Los Angeles: by working through life side by side. Had the author omitted his emphasis on social engineering as we-need-to(s), I would have found his book a more enjoyable read.
I appreciated seeing into the experiences that multicultural students have to deal with and I appreciated the way that the author brought out the potentialities of students through a synthesis of multicultural backgrounds. While reading through the examples of academic transliteracy writing, I realized the resultant meaning otherwise inaccessible and understood why people wrote in accented languages. Instead of reading or hearing a flat character stereotype, despite my familiarity with multicultural friends and associates, I more clearly recognize those behind the words written or spoken in Cosmopolitan English as being people that draw on useful and meaningful resources of more than one culture. Also, the examples of code switching were very enlightening because I noticed occurrences of it in many books and movies but never knew that it had a formal name. Despite the drawbacks mentioned above, I'd recommend the author's book to students that wished to know how English relates to multiculturalism.
One final note on Cosmopolitan English and Transliteracy is about the author's question which he says naturally arises: "why should we continue to emphasize a single dialect (Standard English) and a single style (formal or academic style) in the writing classroom?" (193). My answer to his question which, to me, does not "naturally arise" in light of his explications on "transliterate practices" is that English is a global language that unites all. By demoting English in favor of Cosmopolitan English educational departments across the globe would be participating in a return to national languages except for those countries in which English is the primary language. In English-speaking nations, students would be even worse students than they currently are. And, the author's proposition would benefit the larger number of Mandarin speakers more than any other language.
It is sad to see such an intelligent author mix his biased political views into an otherwise important book. I have placed Cosmopolitan English and Literacy into the most dangerous books section of my library because of its globalist top-down agenda. And, a little something to back my 7-year-old individualist claim that centralized governance can, and as I believe inevitably will be replaced by software. Harvard researcher Primavera de Filippi on Blockchain and the Quest to Decentralize Society
Notable awards Miguel de Cervantes Prize 1981 Nobel Prize in Literature 1990
Carlos Fuentes Macías was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are The Death of Artemio Cruz, Aura, Terra Nostra, The Old Gringo and Christopher Unborn. Wikipedia
Born: November 11, 1928, Panama City, Panama
Died: May 15, 2012, Mexico City, Mexico
Nationality: Mexican
Awards: Miguel de Cervantes Prize, Rómulo Gallegos Prize, More
Quotes
Writing is a struggle against silence.
I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.
What the United States does best is to understand itself. What it does worst is understand others.
Thinking About Damian Baca's Essay "Rethinking Composition, Five Hundred Years Later"
Damián Baca (PhD, Syracuse University) is author of Mestiz@ Scripts, Digital Migrations, and the Territories of Writing (Palgrave Macmillan), lead editor of Rhetorics of the Americas: 3114BCE to 2012CE (Palgrave Macmillan), and has published in JAC: An Interdisciplinary Journal in Rhetoric, Culture, & Politics, College English, and Dialogue. He works at the intersection of rhetoric, comparative technologies of writing in Mesoamerica/later America, and globalization. Generally, he looks to cultures across Latin America, the Caribbean, and U.S. Latinidad as a lens through which to complicate and inform two correlative domains of inquiry: The disciplinary formation of the study of alphabetic writing as it emerges during a crucial period of Western territorial annexation, and The imperial complicity between "racialized" subjectivities and economy, from the development of the transatlantic commercial circuit in the sixteenth century to the present stages of late global capitalism.
I enjoyed reading this essay because it brought to mind some questions that I had about whether or not it is possible to think in pictographs versus using an inner monolog comprised of words. My belief is that a person has the capacity to learn how to think in images rather than words because dreaming suggests that that kind of brain function already exists. I can easily imagine image sequences without using words, and technology allows for some direct although basic communication between humans and between humans and machines (see: "Tech That Can Hack Your Brain"). Technological development brings up another question about how much meaning is in the words that people use during the thought process of a so-called inner monolog. When the level of potentiality reaches a particular state, is the idea of a word even necessary to claim that people think in words? Since much of the thought process occurs subliminally, in a quasi-consciousness state, where competing potentialities of meaning behind each word-sign generates pathways to word formation, the claim to word choice is made quasi-consciously--without words. Is this not what the function of thinking is rather than an inner monolog? And, when in communication with others, the claim on diction is bound by external regulation. Thus words allow for the navigation or narrative of thought processes but thinking provides the means to alter the course of narration by better word choice or by chosing a completely different narration. Although words are the signs of language, and words direct the thinking process, we do not think in words. I realize my claim's counter-argument, but I'm differentiating between the thinking process and others' claim that we think in words, for the purpose of this post.
The Dresden Codex, first redrawing by Humboldt in 1810. Image Source Wikipedia
Baca's essay argues for the inclusion of historical pictographic languages into Rhetoric and Composition because of "moral and political responsibilities," but I thought of his paper concerning my search for what consciousness and meaning are. Although languages that enable communications constrain us, the thought processes of thinking are universal. Baca's essay states that "cultures across the Americas and the Caribbean maintained their own local, complex, and equally suitable tools of literacy [during the Pre-Columbian era]" (230). The image above written between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries depicts a way that the potentialities of thinking culminate in pictographs rather than in words. The question of whether or not words are necessary to claim that people think in words becomes, is it not possible to have the potentialities of the thinking process constellate into/onto pictographs, and what does this mean? The author refutes our present day Euro-centric rhetoric and suggests that digital, global communications through the internet allow for "adjustment to different media," and that "the multimodal, multilingual nature of Internet communications requires the introduction of 'new' mechanisms of handling information in different graphic forms and languages . . . --ideograms, logograms, iconography, pictograms, and competing alphabets" (234). The author also suggests that pictography is as "complex and equally suitable communicative form of inscription" as is the Roman alphabet. In light of Baca's claim, the image above made me think of how written languages might co-exist with pictographic systems and helped me think about my idea of thinking in images. Visual thinking is likely closer to the misty nature of quasi-consciousness, and therefore closer to the space where thinking rapidly converges into words. And, visual thinking potentially contains a sense of reality, and meaning equal to that of being a subject within a dream.
Taking this idea a step further into the realm of virtual reality and extrapolating it into a back and forth communication between two individuals that use storylines to get their message across, we can imagine what this might mean. A person in Syria walks into an underground storehouse containing poison gas: stashed for use by Al-Queda. Since he records his five senses real-time into a virtual reality accumulator that in turn authenticates his DNA certificate and transfers his experiences into an unhackable blockchain database, his storyline--the future use of the word narrative--is irrefutable. He sends this message to his associate in America who then experiences, without a doubt, the facts, as the Russians claimed, that the Syrian air force accidentally bombed a secret Al-Queda weapons depot. Would WWIII start in such a scenario? Fantasy aside, what are the benefits of using pictographs rather than language as a form of communication? The question may be answered by the Digital Humanities.
So, I thought about how digital humanities deformance criticism might be used to analyze pictographs of various cultures. Currently, I'm using deformance criticism to study medieval texts. We first take digitized texts written in Old and Middle English and strip them of all punctuation and then convert the words into tokens. The tokens are analyzed quantitatively to reveal things such as whether or not the Pearl Poet authored both Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Does quantitative data support the humanities claim that the Pearl Poet authored both books? If quantitative analysis of pictographic systems reveals meanings outside the realm of the humanities then might it give us an answer to how pictography might be a better communications system than language for the transmission of some meanings? Can we quantitatively reveal the thinking processes behind different pictographic systems of different cultures? What affinities exist between thinking processes, pictography and culture?
The next time a person asks me about what an English major studies I'll begin with a quote from Derrida: "Well, a text is not simply an alphabetic note or a book."
"Jacques Derrida (/ʒɑːk ˈdɛrᵻdə/; French: [ʒak dɛʁida]; born Jackie Élie Derrida; postmodern philosophy. (July 15, 1930 – October 9, 2004) was a French philosopher, born in Algeria. Derrida is best known for developing a form of semiotic analysis known as deconstruction, which he discussed in numerous texts, and developed in the context of phenomenology. He is one of the major figures associated with post-structuralism and post-modern philosophy.
During his career, Derrida published more than 40 books, together with hundreds of essays and public presentations. He had a significant influence upon the humanities and social sciences, including—in addition to philosophy and literature—law, anthropology, historiography, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, psychoanalysis, political theory, religious studies, feminism, and gay and lesbian studies. His work still has a major influence in the academe of Continental Europe, South America and all other countries where continental philosophy is predominant, particularly in debates around ontology, epistemology (especially concerning social sciences), ethics, aesthetics, hermeneutics, and the philosophy of language. He also influenced architecture (in the form of deconstructivism), music, art, and art criticism." --Wikipedia 2017 April 2
This week we had two articles to read on Derrida. I chose to write about the interview: "Jacques Derrida on Rhetoric and Composition: A Conversation" by Gary A. Olsen (1990). I refreshed my memory about deconstruction by re-reading "Post-structuralism and deconstruction" in Peter Barry's book Beginning Theory. I wanted a general understanding before proceeding.
I found the interview much to my liking and of particular interest was the way in which Derrida responded to questions in general. For each of Olsen's questions, Derrida began his reply by first explicating them in terms appropriate to make an answer to. I got the impression very quickly that questionable issues do not lend themselves to specificity and that a question attempts to frame a response that may be met with a concise answer but not so in the case of Derrida. Often his replies opened up the question to a broad range of considerations which he then responded precisely where suitable. His answers became an enlightening journey through his thought process and his knowledge. Derrida's frequent use of the word "simply" or should I say the phrase "not simply" emphasizes the complex lens through which he understands language. Conclusively, I claim that the value of Derrida's philosophy as associated with deconstruction is demonstrated clearly during his interview by Olsen.
Although Olsen's intent attempted to get Derrida to voice his opinion on how composition might best be taught in universities, Derrida responded in a very Derridean way: "'I would not rely on a model in which composition instructors are confined simply within one discipline; nor would I rely on a model in which they are simply dispersed, scattered among a variety of disciplines'" (2). I thought to myself how perfect an answer since any model or discipline is a structure within which composition (a structuring process) takes place. Structures imply a center that deconstruction has shown not to exist. So, the answer necessarily includes the lack of a center in which composition should take place. Subject to the complexities of Derridean thought, the author states "Derrida fully endorses . . . a" "writing-across-the-disciplines model" (2). So, we do get an answer albeit taken as a compromise or as an enrichment, to our preconceived notions.
Derrida touched on something of interest to me when questioned by Olsen: "if all of our knowledge and facts and reality are created by social groups, by discourse communities, then rhetoric is the key to it all . . . What are your thoughts about social constructionism?" (14). In my preface to my post on Locke, I asked the following: "What truth has the power to stand unchanged against reality? At least with well-founded rhetoric, one may find themselves as a great crusader who sheds light into the darkness of reality. What then when technology provides alternatives to unassailable reality? Shall rhetoric be the way, the truth, and the light?" And although I presumed that due to technological advancements artificial realities would soon be equivalent to what we now consider reality when I asked the questions, and despite the fact that I assumed my questions novel, I found that 'social constructionism' had already considered similar questions.
The guest's answer took place over some pages and boils down to reality not being equal to rhetoric. Derrida first responded, "that philosophy or thinking is [not] simply a cause of shared values" (15). His statement implies that things outside of the human sphere of control, such as biological ontogeny, broadly speaking, nature, and first-hand experience, impact philosophical consideration. To include what Olsen suggests by social constructionism Derrida divides the question into two. He says: "about rhetoric becoming the central paradigmatic, epistemic activity," "as . . . a formal superstructure or technique exterior to the essential activity, [that r]hetoric is something decisive in society" (15). He then states that he would be suspicious of what [he] calls "'rhetoricism'"--a way of giving rhetoric all the power, thinking that everything depends on rhetoric as simply a technique of speech" (15). This reply made me think of Burke and how most of what we know is a symbolic system and how rhetoricism is a technique used to manipulate that system without reguiring a differentiation between what is real and what is not. Undoubtedly, rhetoric has limited influence over the senses and first-hand observable experience. Derrida further distances rhetoric from reality by justifiably aligning it with speech acts by stating "speech acts, or performative speech acts, depends on conditions and conventions which are not simply verbal. What [he] calls writing or text is not simply verbal" (15). By breaking down Olsen's question into a question about Rhetoricism and about rhetoric Derrida successfully navigates the interviewer's assumptions and helped me to understand my concerns in the process.
John Duffy is an associate professor of English and the O'Malley Director of the University Writing Program at the University of Notre Dame. He recently coedited the essay collection Literacy, Economy, and Power, and his book, Writing from These Roots, was awarded the 2009 Outstanding Book Award by the Conference on College Composition and Communication. Duffy has been an NCTE member since 2000.
