Re: difference in cyberspace

["David J. Coogan" <coogan@charlie.cns.iit.edu>]

Hey there, condon@siena!  Great to hear from you again...

--Dave

More down below - - - 

On Thu, 6 Mar 1997 CONDON@siena.edu wrote:

> 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.  

-->  This is . . . yes, what I meant.  And I think problematizing
difference means much more than taking an agonistic stance on it, but
valuing the questions posed more so than the answers received.  This
agenda doesn't--at least I don't think--have anything to do with
cyberspace.  We're still obligated to think through difference online,
nevermind what MCI says.  But unless one imagines writing as a pure
representation of the self, we will have to do some serious reflection
about our stock tutoring responses (examined or unexamined) relating to
gender, race, ESL,
class, age, and so forth.  I mean, we have to imagine who we are
responding to without recourse to their body, their accent, their dress,
and so on.  To me, that's not necessarily a bad thing.  It forces us NOT
to be reductive.

> 
> 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.  
> 

--> well yeah, not to mention the relationship between the tutor and the
student.  That's always interesting to think about.  I also like the
ways silence can work in a face to face tutorial--that uneven process of
thinking through together, in the presence of another.  So much is "said"
without words.  But Frankie, don't you think it's possible to do what
you're suggesting online, too?  I mean, what prevents you from engaging
that dialectical process, analyzing the conditions in which students
write, online?

> 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 

-->  You mean to say that (let's assume for the moment that I don't know
you :-)  ...that the technology doesn't allow you to present your REAL
self to me, and the REAL circumstances of your self-presentation?  

I don't know about that!  Really, think about it from the student's point
of view.  Do you ever ever see these conditions?  Are you
there when they go thru their notes, sit thru lectures, fumble through the
readings and assignment sheets, procastinate, get coffee, draft, etc...

Maybe you see parts of it. Maybe you can ask questions about these and
larger questions about college writing in general. But I don't know if the
writing center
is any more natural or transparent than email here.  To me, it's just
another mediating environment. 

> 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:)). 

--> or to put it another way, you would have to decide, consciously, to
present those writing conditions as part of your persona.  Sure, if you
were the student you could simply plop down with Danny and your situation
would be obvious to me. (I could stereotype you easier?)  But I rather
like  your description of Danny and your mornings writing.  How come Mike
isn't in the narrative?  :->

> 
> 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.
> 

-->  True.  You have my vote.  I'm just trying to think of better ways to
do it.  I know Becky Rickly has an email launch from her web site at ECB
that prompts students for info about their writing.  This is a start.


> 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.


--> Interesting angle.  I hadn't thought of that but it makes great sense.
In _Evolving Perspectives on Computers and Composition_ (Selfe and
Hawisher, 1991), Nancy Kaplan does an interesting analysis of bitnet: who
uses it, how they get to use it, what constitutes a "message", and so
forth.  This seems like the kind of thing you're after.  Her piece is
"Ideology, Technology, and the Future of Writing INstruction."  
 > 
> 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.
> 
--Not at all, Frankie. Keep 'em coming.  And let's hear from Danny!

Best,


Dave Coogan