Re: to read or not to read...

[Cynthia Haynes <cynthiah@utdallas.edu>]

On Mon, 24 Mar 1997, Eric Crump wrote:

> I'm gonna put myself in this camp, but I would describe the key
> characteristics differently. Clarity, interactivity, and brevity are
> important, maybe, but I  think of them as subordinate to: provocativeness,
> engagingness, openness.
> 
> And those qualities rest not so much on whether the presentation is read or
> talked but more on whether it serves as a provocative and compelling
> invitation to a conversation. The main difference, rather than reading vs
> talking, is probably whether the presenter is playing a performer/lecturer
> role (providing information and ideas) or a catalyst/facilitator role
> (using information and ideas to instigate conversation). I happen to prefer
> the latter, whether I'm presenting or participating.

I agree totally, Eric. The provocateur role, however, is often perceived
in negative ways...that is, if they have used terms that provoke the
audience in negative ways (as some have argued in this discussion), it's
the classic double bind...damned if you do, damned if you don't. If you
stop to define a term...you know how time flies in a presentation. I often
preface my talks with the invitation to discuss some of the finer (ie
narrower) points during the discussion period after a talk...saying that
much of the argument is necessarily telescopic given the time limit, etc
etc. I often feel I'm like a skipping stone across a placid lake of ideas
when I deliver conference presentations.  I feel that it's a given that
there will be discussion afterward that will allow us all to dip into
parts of the lake we skipped across.

> This probably has less to do with whether one approach is better than the
> other and more to do with what kind person I am, my predilections and
> abilities. I'm a lousy lecturer, but I can keep a discussion going. You can
> see why I'd lean toward conversation, eh? :) And I am very impatient.
> During a given 30 minute talk/paper, I lose interest 10 times, think of
> responses I'd like to make 12 times, get distracted twice by the blue jay
> in the tree just outside the window, fill three notebook pages with
> doodles, wonder when lunch is five times, etc. I may be ADD, I don't know.
> I don't care. I wanna be *involved* in a more substantial way than just
> listening. But my preference for interaction does not devalue listening or
> impinge upon the preferences of people who want to listen. We simply have
> different preferences.

You and Jeanne must have compared notes :) This issue of interaction is
important. For example, I noticed on the call for papers for the National
Writing Center Conference in September there is a specific place on the
form where we have to indicate in what ways our proposed presentation will
engage the audience interactively. We seem to have moved now to having
this item as part of the decision-making process for submissions.  I find
that troubling. Not because I am against interactive presentations, but
because it 'feels' mandated...and I do not know how the conference
reviewers of submissions define interactivity...I do not know what they
'value' in this regard. I'm all for change.  But mandatory interaction
will not bring about change...it will only (possibly) bring about lots of
interesting statements on the submission form.  Maybe we should convene a
session at the NWCA on the 'rhetoric of interaction' and let the
organizers respond to this issue?

> Perhaps we'd ought to pay more attention, as presenters and as audience
> members, to the implications of the various formats at conferences. For
> instance, if I go to a panel, I should expect longer, more complex,
> *delivered* texts. When I go to a forum, I should expect brief &
> provocative talks with plenty of opportunity to converse. When I take
> expectations for one into the other, I'm bound to be disappointed, but my
> disappointment and dissatisfaction ought to be read as functions of the
> disjunction between expectation and actuality, not an indictment of the
> actuality itself.
> 
> I shouldn't blame delivered papers for being delivered papers (that would
> be kind of like criticizing apples for not being oranges)!

Amen, brother :)

> >To those of you who prefer 'moving' presentations to the kind of
> >presentation you would prefer to read in a journal instead, I want to ask
> >this: By what standard of 'value' are you measuring what moves us, and to
> 
> Um, I'm not sure this is really an answer to your question, but all I can
> think is that moving is its own measure. That is, if it moves us to
> participate, it has succeeded as something intended to provoke movement,
> interaction. I have trouble thinking of or describing some kind of external
> measure to be applied to that situation.

I agree, Eric.  I almost added to this question about being moved
something that Lester Faigley discusses in his book _Fragments of
Rationality_ (and that appeared earlier in CCC as "Judging Writing,
Judging Selves")...and that is his study of Vopat and Coles' book _What
Makes Writing Good_.  Faigley found that there was an interesting
disjunction between what leading compositionists teach and the kind of
writing they actually value.  Many of them included sample student papers
that were examples of 'honest' writing, writing that moved them, writing
in which students' internal voice is heard more clearly, etc.  It made me
question my own assessment practices.  I have to be careful when a student
paper moves me in some way, careful in the sense that my having been moved
is difficult to extend into my assessment of the piece of writing. It was
this difficulty that I spoke of in my first post about hearing papers that
move us...the pathos factor is a tough issue, and one that I haven't
resolved for myself.

> >what end is our having been moved as opposed to our having been exposed to
> >ideas and thinking packaged as 'writing' a preferable experience at a
> >conference?
> 
> I hesitate to accept the opposition here. Or at least, I don't want to let
> it stand as inevitable. It's quite possible these days (see "Responding On
> (Off)-Line to Three Works in Progress" http://www.hu.mtu.edu/cccc/97/)
> which you participated in, Cynthia, as an example of including both ends of
> the opposition: in this case extended texts (ideas packaged as writing)
> preceeded and informed the f2f event (an opportunity to move and be moved,
> to interact, to converse). I didn't make the f2f session, unfortunately,
> but the structure of that session, both its online and onsite components,
> suggests that packaged ideas and live ideas are not mutually exclusive any
> longer.
> 
> We can have our cake and eat it too! ;)

I hope that this opposition I set up was seen as simply stating the
opposition I was hearing in the various posts.  I don't accept the
opposition myself, either. Thanks for mentioning the session on
"Responding On (Off)-Line to Three Works in Progress" because, as you
know, our own session conflicted with that one, so we could't attend. The
interesting thing is that many other disciplines hold conferences this way
(thought not necessarily through online access to the papers in advance).
They require papers in advance, distribute the papers to the attendees and
respondents in advance, and then at the conference the papers are not
read, they are discussed.  Of course, this would be unwieldy to say the
least, for a conference like CCCC.  That's why it was encouraging and
refreshing to see this kind of session in Phoenix. I'd be interested in 
hearing from those who may have attended it.

> >Ophelia:
> >
> >"My honour'd lord, you know right well you did;
> >And with them words of so sweet breath composed
> >As made the things more rich: their perfume lost,
> >Take these again; for to the noble mind
> >Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind."
> 
> Eric:
> 
> "Hey Ophelia, if Hamlet doesn't want to play,  take his gifts and give them
> away.
> 
> Give them to someone who will like them and will want to reciprocate. Start
> a conversation in which the vocabulary is gifts, things and words, and the
> real gift is the conversation, given by and to whoever becomes part of it.
> 
> Tell Hamlet to take a hike."

As usual, Eric, you always crack me up :)


Thanks,

Cynthia

_____cynthiah@utdallas.edu______
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