Re: e-mail tutoring

[Sara Kimball <skimball@uts.cc.utexas.edu>]

I guess my point is that those differences are *there* enacted in
language, no matter what we do.  Sure, one can create a character in a
MUD, but frankly, I find it hard work to maintain the character unless
it's somehow me but simplified and with some aspects exagerated.  I'd also
say that working online from a writing center immediately anchors the
interlocutors in the identities of writer and writing center consultant.
And I think it should.
Sara

On Mon, 3 Mar 1997, David J. Coogan wrote:

> Bill -- I think you're right -- the type of community building that MCI
> apparently has in mind DOES try to background or erase difference.  And I
> don't think Sara or I were trying to create an MCI version of email
> tutoring.  But I do think that simply celebrating differnces is equally
> reductive.  I am reminded of bell hooks, I think, who described herself in
> a creative writing course, in college, deliberately NOT using black
> vernacular, being coaxed by instructor and classmates to try using her
> REAL voice.  What seems most instructive here is that noone would have
> pressured her to assume that voice had she not been present, physically.
> 
> Dave
> 
> On Mon, 3 Mar 1997 CONDON@siena.edu wrote:
> > 
> > I just wonder what's so great (and what's at stake in claiming
> > that there is something great)  about there being "no bodies. No 
> > genders. Just minds."  What's so wrong with my body (or 
> > any of our bodies, for that matter) that there is 
> > a (cyber)space place in the world which is better because
> > or our physical absence (or the absence of physical difference)??
> > 
> > Can we imagine or construct a cyberspace writing center where difference can
> > be maintained, celebrated and integrated into our ways of 
> > speaking, writing, and being? 
> > 
> 
>