Clinamen

Early in my graduate career, a professor pointed out one of my verbal ticks. When I wasn't sure about my evidence for a particular claim, I would use the word "seems." I would say something like: "This seems to indicate that..."

This was good to know, and I now keep an eye out for it. I don't just remove "seems" from my sentences. I revisit those sentences and try to figure out why I'm unsure of that argument at that moment.

My newest tick is "certainly." I use this one when I want to say something like "I recognize things are complicated, but I'm going to state things very clearly anyway." So, I'll say something like: "Certainly, Wikipedia takes account of credentials in certain ways, but..."

Again, this tick seems to indicate a lack of confidence. As my dissertation director has pointed out, I use the word "certainly" at the precise moment that things are far from certain. I'm currently excising the word "certainly" from much of my dissertation.

In July, I pointed to the door to Parlin Hall as the central front in the war between Rhetoric and Literature. Here's what that door looked like until a few days ago:

Here is what that door looks like as of today:

The Department of Rhetoric and Writing talked to the Dean's Office and the Physical Plant people to get this changed. Apparently, I was not the only one to notice this door - many people brought it to the attention of the department.

My post in July used this door as an opportunity to riff on the history of our little disciplinary rift, and this new version changes things...but only a little. They changed "composition" to "writing" (we dropped "composition" from the title a couple of years ago), but it still looks a bit like these are three items in a series (English, Rhetoric, and Writing). Also, I ran into Linda Ferreira-Buckley, our Department Chair, right outside the door today and I pointed out that writing was still banished to the bottom of the door. She had a different take: "No, Jim. It's the foundation."

This was a nice reminder: maybe I should stop being so damn cynical.

As I walked into Parlin Hall today to work in the CWRL, I came upon a new door:

The text on that door is new. And check out the right-hand side:

"English, Rhetoric
and Composition"

One might argue that it's the same door, but it seems pretty clear that the (performative) rhetoric at work on this door has transformed things. A couple of things worth noting here: The "Division of Rhetoric and Composition" is now the "Department of Rhetoric and Writing." So, the stenciler (or, perhaps more accurately, the person who gave the order to stencil) got that last word wrong. Further, the door reads as if these are three words in a series rather than two entities. FURTHER, isn't it interesting that Composition is all by its lonesome on the bottom line? That bottom line from which compositionists can cry "I'm being marginalized!" And that top line from which "English" can say to "Composition": "Get some graduate students and adjuncts to teach that crap, will ya?"

My point is not that Compositionists are whiners or that "English" is filled with elitists. This may or may not be true. What's more important to me is this: How productive is this debate (if it's even a debate...maybe it's just bickering)? Aren't we past it? I have this sense that a younger generation of scholars is emerging that is not so invested in this fight - that this group of scholars wants to figure out how these different entities - English, Communications, Speech, Rhetoric, Writing, Composition - fit together. Then again, maybe these disciplinary fights are how disciplines determine their boundaries

One wonders how Maxine Hairston would react to this new door.

[Warning: As you can probably tell from the title, this is a blog post that is meant to kick start writing. This means that it involves rambling. Be advised.]

Okay, so I can't quite get things rolling on this summer writing thing. I find myself wanting to read a lot (and not even doing that), and I (of course) find myself inspired to write at strange moments. I'm hoping that the blog will trigger some things for me.

In a moment of frustration yesterday - as I looked at a list of rhet/comp. citations on intellectual property, rhetorical agency, and community - I went back to Ulmer's Internet Invention. I've been thinking about using this book for my Computers and Writing class in the Fall, and I'm working my way through it. I've also been wanting to start in on some of Ulmer's work anyway, and this seemed like one way to do it.

So, this got me thinking that I should start my own "wide image" or "mystory" as a way of triggering my writing process for the dissertation. Ulmer's concept of Mystory is a response to Hayden White's assertion that history would be written differently had it been developed in the 20th Century. Ulmer attempts to develop a method of "electracy" (as opposed to literacy), and I find his model really intriguing. It allows students (and instructors) to discover the ways in which knowledge is structured in the different spheres of their life: career, family, entertainment, community. Following Kuhn and others, Ulmer encourages us to look at the stories/artifacts/people that shape each of these spheres. What tropes drive our research? How do disciplines create knowledge? Ulmer has us looking for our "image of wide scope" or "themata": "the clusters of presuppositions and 'gut' assumptions which each scientist has about the universe" (Briggs qtd. in Ulmer 20).