Note to Selfe: Beware Doxa

Cynthia L. Selfe’s “Technology and Literacy: A Story About the Perils of Not Paying Attention” shows off a wide range of persuasive and rhetorical moves in order to prove “the moral of [her] story” (which she states plainly “up front”), that “as composition teachers, deciding whether or not to use technology in our classes is simply not the point—we have to pay attention to technology” (1166).  It was a very interesting (eerily time-machine like) experience to read Selfe’s nearly two-decade-old treatise on the simultaneous importance and danger of technology as it permeates (perhaps infiltrates) the field of English/Language Arts/Composition studies.  A lot has changed since 1999, and a lot hasn’t; indeed, many of the problems Selfe describes are ones we still grapple with today (e.g., equitable, fair distribution of technology and technology-based education). 

Perhaps the most intriguing concept from “Technology and Literacy...” was the word “doxa,” which she borrowed from Pierre Bordieu, and denotes, “A position everyone takes so much for granted, is so obvious, that people no longer even feel the need to articulate it” (1166).  Doxa comes up again later in the essay—albeit not by name—and reminded me of today’s social media and smart phone addicted generation to whom these “literacies” are second nature.  Even more interestingly, Selfe cites books as forms of technology—which totally blew my mind! 

These examples and countless others give Selfe’s argument a sense of well-made balance that avoids polemical assertions (almost to a fault) by doing more than simply acknowledging a counter-argument with a cursory, throwaway line or two.  What Selfe does instead (and this is where the aforementioned “fault” may enter the picture) is to operate as a rhetorical moving target, shooting her own argument in the foot and moving on before repeating the same technique again.  For example, her thesis is ultimately that the use of technology in an English classroom setting is already “doxa” (a subtle rhetorical move in itself), and that the “main point” is to pay attention to technology itself.  Over the course of her defense of this thesis, Selfe details many negative elements (pitfalls, precautions, etc.) of technology without ever going into great detail about its potentially positive aspects—maybe subtly arguing that the positives are, simply put, obvious.  The use of technology, then, isn’t Selfe’s concern; rather, she subtly uses traditional logos in order to reach what I saw as her “secret” thesis that:

We need to resist the tendential forces that continue to link technological literacy with patterns of racism and poverty.  We need to insist on and support more equitable distributions of technology. (1182)

Selfe repeats this refrain of “we need” often over the last few pages of the essay in order to ground the text in call-to-arms territory as opposed to mere academic theorizing; indeed, Selfe’s not-so-hidden agenda is ultimately more humanistic (and socio-political activist-based) than it is pedagogical.

You, Talking to Me

No apologies for the pun in the title.  Ok, maybe a small apology only if you promise to keep reading.  You see, my viewership numbers are down, so I really need you to keep reading this and to like it and to share it.  Please!

            Neediness not too different from this exists across the Internet without question.  Why is that, especially when neediness and shameless self-promotion are usually viewed as negative characteristics in the “real world”?  The answer to this question, imaginary reader, forms the basis of the biggest hole in Xiaoye You’s Cosmopolitan English & Transliteracy: if you build it, they won’t necessarily come.  What do I mean by this, you ask?  Allow me to explain at what I consider to be “A”-worthy length/depth.  This is, after all, an assignment.  And my blog, after all, is read by precisely no one outside the small confines of our Spring ’17 ENGL 651 class at CSUN (so far as I know, at least).  After all, I have to be constructing these sentences for a reason, right?  If you’re still reading, that means you’ve trusted me this far, so I urge you to hang on just a bit longer.

            Returning to the hole in You’s argument, I just want to say (type) that I agree with most everything he says.  However, the problem with “new media” technologies is that the intended interconnectivity can backfire as equally and oppositely as it can “fire.”  In my own experience with blog-type class assignments, they work only under a set of necessary circumstances: 1) the posts must be graded for accountability purposes, 2) the grades should come from a clear rubric and/or set of expectations, 3) the professor/teacher must respond promptly (even if that response is only the assignment of a numeric or letter grade), and 4) students must be held clearly responsible for responding to one another’s posts.  Like load-bearing support beams on a wobbly building, if any one of these four pillars is missing, the structural integrity of the classroom’s blog environment will collapse like Barad-dûr after Frodo drops the Ring into Mount Doom.

            (Still hangin’ in there, reader?)

            You spends a great deal of time discussing how these digital media can work well, but what about when they don’t?  What about those classes where Barad-dûr has fallen but the professor (perhaps not unlike a heavy sleeper aboard the RMS Titanic), has no idea?  You does a great job of highlighting the benefits of “direct experience,” and discusses at length the importance of “establishing an infrastructure for exchange.”  However, as I said (typed) before, “if you build it, they won’t necessarily come.”  There are certain instances where I feel like I’d be equally well served to deposit my blog post on http://screamintothevoid.com/ than on a legitimate blogging website because the result will be the same either way: no one will ever read my writing, and the same sense of power and agency that new media purports to create will inevitably crumble.  Or, to reference the metaphor I began parenthetically at the beginning of this paragraph, maybe I’m just the sleeping passenger on the RMS Titanic who wakes up always already underwater.

            Regardless, “real” social interaction in the classroom is often sacrificed at the altar of the Internet, and the issue of whether our English is “cosmopolitan” and fluid enough deserves to be considered only after the issue of ennui, of Screaming into the Void, is settled.  In short: You's talking to me, and I'm talking to you. 

Freenglish!

The readings for this week (and our class forum discussions) were exceedingly interesting to me—especially in the context of the film Arrival.  For starters, I just wanted to mention the high probability of an *actually* universal language made possible by future technologies that render speech & writing obsolete. Trials with mice, for instance, are already proving that information can be electronically "programmed" into living beings, so it's not too far fetched to think that in the next ~100 years, humans will be instantly "downloading" concepts like calculus into their brains and communicating with one another telepathically via iPhone 100 cerebral cortex implants. Or something like that.

Until that time arrives and humans are stuck with our mortal shells, however, I agree with the notion that it would do us well as a species to be more accepting in terms of our grammars. The dichotomy of "right" and "wrong" grammar deserves the same overhaul as the oppressively rigid hierarchies that operated behind the scenes of sexuality, race, and gender for centuries (and still do to this day). The “cosmopolitan” communication advocated by Xiaoye You, I think, offers a great opportunity for beginning this endeavor of deconstruction.

For my purposes going forward after this class, this act of deconstruction logically leads to a “non-blanket” approach to teaching writing/composition/rhetoric. America has a proven track record for being about as flexible as a brick. One-size-fits-all cookie cutters might be all well and good for actual baking purposes, but this approach falls far short of meeting the educational needs of the multitudinous clusters of diverse groups across America (and the world at large).  Student compositions need to feel “real” outside of the classroom, and this, I think, is an area where Rhet./Comp. programs could flourish–by enacting a cosmopolitan, decentralized, bottom-up (student-centered) approach to pedagogy, classrooms need not fall prey to the well intentioned (maybe?) but misguided top-down government attempts at cookie-cutter standards.

All of this reminds me a lot of the Linguistics class I’m taking this semester, and the concept of I-Language (until Apple monopolizes it as “iLanguage”) wherein each speaker/writer/reader/listener of a language has a distinct, unique version of that language which is enough to communicate with others, but that can never be 100% identical to anyone else’s. I’m also reminded of a grammar course I took here at CSUN where the professor commented that grammar only exists so that we can understand one another. Lots of quirky/strange linguistic-y things congeal within this concept, but, as always, our brains come to the rescue by smoothing over the endless differences in language (including accents and dialects) in order to grant us a greater capacity for comprehension across I-Languages.  In this way, English has always been, is, and will always be cosmopolitan—regardless of whether or not we acknowledge it. 

The Roots of Reality

V.N. Volosinov’s Marxism and the Philosophy of Language exists as a bridge between multiple disciplines.  Reading the first chapter especially interested me since I’m also enrolled in a Linguistics course this semester (ENGL 604), and many of the concepts Volosinov discusses reverberate beyond the boundaries of our 651 course.  Human language (especially spoken language) seems to be, for Marx-via-Volosinov, the primary core of existence; indeed, without the powers of communication bestowed upon mankind by language, no dialectical (social) progress would be possible between and among groups of humans.  Volosinov beautifully summarizes language’s impact on ideology, arguing:

[Ideology’s] real place in existence is in the special social material of signs created by man.  Its specificity consists precisely in its being located between organized individuals, in its being the medium of their communication.  Signs can arise only on interindividual territory. […] It is essential that the two individuals be organized socially, that they compose a group (a social unit); only then can the medium of signs take shape between them.  (Volosinov 12)

Volosinov’s underlying idea here is, ostensibly, that the term “ideology” can roughly be defined as “the special social material of signs created by man.”  This conclusion might seem obvious, but most groundbreaking discoveries (e.g., that the Earth is round and not the center of the universe) usually appear this way in hindsight.  Furthermore, Volosinov seemingly elevates communication to the highest level of significance in terms of the development of any ideology; indeed, Volosinov argues that:

Every ideological sign is not only a reflection, a shadow, of reality, but is also itself a material segment of that very reality.  Every phenomenon functioning as an ideological sign has some kind of material embodiment, whether in sound, physical mass, color, movements of body, or the like.  In this sense, the reality of the sign is fully objective […] (11)

I’m reminded here of John 1:1 from the Bible, which states, “In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God.”  When Volosinov argues that words/signs are “fully objective,” he simultaneously presents words as physical objects while defending signs as verifiable, unquestionable entities (as opposed to something speculative or opinion-based).  Through the use of signs, humans not only “reflect” reality (a la Plato’s cave-like “world of appearances”), but we create and revise reality through ideology over time.  Spoken words, then, act more like Derrida’s notion of the “transcendental signified” (i.e., universal truth) than shadow-like distortions and reductions of Absolute truth.

            In terms of rhetoric, Marx-via-Volosinov’s perspective on the value of mankind’s capacity for meaning-making offers an intriguing conclusion: if socio-cultural ideologies (and their changes over time) are based on signs, and rhetoric depends on the use of signs for persuasion, then rhetoric, through Aristotelian syllogistic logic, is capable of both creating and revising ideologies.  Rhetoric’s value, therefore, is validated.  Moreover, Marx’s assertions should serve as inspirations in times of great anxiety and precautions in times of great joy because signs, as we’ve seen, are malleable, and to reinscribe a sign is to redefine its ideological (and/or political) value.