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.