difference in cyberspace

[CONDON@siena.edu]

HI All,

I've been thinking a lot about Dave Coogan's comment that
celebrating difference is reductive. I think I understand
what he means...or this is how I'm interpreting the remark:
calls for celebrating difference that don't also acknowledge
and address what gets in the way of celebrating don't 
help us to see and work on the problems in all of their 
complexity.  I think, similarly, that assertions about
the effacement of difference in cyberspace are  
not terribly useful if we are working toward a world in
which we don't think of difference as a thing to be 
tolerated or as a cause of or an excuse for violence (physical,
symbolic, systemic, or institutional), but as a good 
reason to be curious about, have respect for, and talk to
one another.  

One of the things I think is possible in offline writing
centers is a kind of dialectical tutoring in which the 
conditions under which writers write are the subject of
dialogue between tutors and writers as are the relations
between those conditions and the texts that writers 
actually produce. The point of this dialogue is to
help the writer (and the tutor) transform both the conditions
and the text.  

I think that computer technology tends to package our communication
in such a way as to more thoroughly mask the conditions under
which text is produced. As an example, it has taken me 
more than an hour to write this far in my post. My 11 month
old son comes to work with me. I have a helper who plays 
with him while I work. The arrangement is that Danny can
come see me or come to nurse whenever he needs to and this 
morning he is feeling rather Mommy-oriented.  I have stopped
writing several times to pick him up and let him see what
I am doing, to get him crackers and toys, and finally
stopped writing altogether for about 15 minutes while I
nursed him to sleep. Now, because my keyboard is a little
clattery, I am trying to type a little more slowly and 
quietly than I usually do so as not to wake him. This is more
than a sweet story about how Danny and I spend our mornings.
This is a story about not being able to afford (and not 
wanting) to place my child in daycare.  This is a story 
about adapting and forcing an institution to adapt to
nontraditional work arrangements in order to parent my
child as best I can, etc., etc.  If you were here with
me, tutoring me, my struggle to get time to write, the 
ways in which Danny's presence both inspires me and 
tests me as a writer would be clear.  In order for me
to communicate these challenges with you over email
I have to write for a lot longer (note the length of 
this post already:)). 

I think that when we tutor online, we need to be even more
conscious than we are in f2f tutorials of the necessity 
of asking writers to talk about the conditions under which
they compose. As a compositionist, I know that it matters 
and that I need to tell you because all of you aren't 
exactly like me, but other writers may not know. I want
to argue that in the absence of conscious, conscientious,
and critical awareness of difference and dialogue about 
difference, the default standards in place for judging text, 
for making decisions about how to respond to text, and for
teaching writers how to manipulate text are white, western
european, and male. So, if we are to avoid unconsciously
applying those standards, we need to be aware of them and
to make them part of what we examine with writers.

Also, I think we need to talk/write about the ways in which
our use of technology in the Academy extends the reach of 
multinational corporations into institutions of higher 
education and into the lives of our students.  I am not 
suggesting that we shouldn't use the technology or that
we could avoid using it even if we wanted to, but that we
can talk during online tutorials (and should talk) about
how computers are produced, who does the work of constructing
them (and how little those people are paid), who profits 
from their use, and those profits are used.  We are 
after all contributing to the construction of a market
for those corporations and I think we should be responsible
for talking with writers about what they are getting.

I think I have already taken up far too much of your time
with this post -- which is one of the pitfalls of taking
so much time thinking about what to write.

Warm Regards,
Frankie Condon, Director
The Writing Center
Siena College