Blogs

Was just clicking through my block of links to online journals, and I noticed that there's a new issue of Genders. I skimmed a couple of articles and plan to come back to them later:

• "Quality Postfeminism?" Sex and the Single Girl on HBO by Diane Negra (an analysis of the "pathologizing [of] single femininity" in Sex and the City alongside contemporaneous films)
• Dialogues between Paul Virilio and Chela Sandoval: Towards a better understanding of uses and abuses of new technologies by Ingrid Maria Hoofd

I've been meaning to post these notes since January, if only for my own edification as I study for my technical communication theory and research preliminary exams, which are scheduled for July 27-28 (the 24-hour take-home exam) and July 29 (the 2-hour in-house exam). But hopefully they'll help someone else who's trying to explain his or her proposed research to an advisor or committee, too. The notes are from Helen Longino's Feminist Theories and Methods class. I found it to be an excellent laying-out of the differences and overlaps among empirical, interpretive, and analytical/theoretical research. The taxonomy focuses on feminist research, but you could easily substitute concepts and objects of study.

Empirical Research

The questions: How things are/were, e.g. distribution of wealth, gender roles in different societies, prevalence of spousal abuse. When or how did institution X emerge? How has it changed over time? What are the effects of intervention strategy Y? What there is, how it works. For example: How has women's activism changed over time? What changes have been introduced because of women's activism?

Jason Kottke has some thorough coverage of the Plain Layne hoax, which has also been reported in City Pages. There was a discussion about taking bloggers at face value over at Lauren's some time ago too. The basic rundown: Odin Soli, a 35-year-old man living in Woodbury, Minnesota, kept a blog as Plain Layne, a young woman with a tumultuous life. From the City Pages article:

Despite the moniker, Layne was anything but plain. Within the past few months, she recounted a rape that she suggested led her to lesbianism, became engaged to a formerly straight woman, suffered a dramatic breakup with said woman (partially because her fiancée resented being dissected on Layne's site), hooked up and noisily quarreled with a girl from her work cafeteria, met her birth parents for the first time, got involved with a risky internet startup, and had a ton of hot sex (which, because of her linguistic flourishes, was often hottest when solo). All that while keeping up a high-volume website of 5,000 unique visitors per day and middle-managing an IT group for "Minicorp," a large pseudonymous company that from her descriptions sounded like 3M or Cargill or Honeywell. In short: Anaïs Nin, I'd like you to meet William Gibson.

In addition, Layne had profiles on Orkut and Friendster. I'm following the discussions of Layne because I'm still thinking about how to defend the kind of research I want to do against those who look askance at internet research--against what I call the authentication imperative. Arguments have been made that there's a degree of fiction in every representation of self online; you're always only presenting a part of yourself. I'm not sure how persuasive they are for a lot of people, though. Does Turkle discuss this issue in Life on the Screen? What other internet researchers have written about the authentication imperative?

Update: More at Netwoman and at Trish's place.

...Thomas Benton asks. I miss IA; she'd get a great discussion started on this topic. Benton asks us to review this taxonomy of cult tactics and see if it sounds familiar.

Behavior control: "major time commitment required for indoctrination sessions and group rituals"; "need to ask permission for major decisions"; "need to report thoughts, feelings, and activities to superiors."



Information control: "access to non-cult sources of information minimized or discouraged (keep members so busy they don't have time to think)" and "extensive use of cult-generated information (newsletters, magazines, journals, audio tapes, videotapes, etc.)."



Thought control: "need to internalize the group's doctrine as 'Truth' (black and white thinking; good vs. evil; us vs. them, inside vs. outside)" and "no critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy seen as legitimate."



Emotional control: "excessive use of guilt (identity guilt: not living up to your potential; social guilt; historical guilt)"; "phobia indoctrination (irrational fears of ever leaving the group or even questioning the leader's authority; cannot visualize a positive, fulfilled future without being in the group; shunning of leave takers; never a legitimate reason to leave"; and "from the group's perspective, people who leave are 'weak,' 'undisciplined.'"

'Fraid so.
Edited to add: Like Dennis, I'm having a pretty good experience. Some days this taxonomy does indeed strike me as familiar (especially the guilt part), but on the whole, I like grad school, and I think Jeff makes some good points about the article.

John Lovas has posted an excellent overview of blogging. I must make one correction, though: John writes, "One of Clancy's many ground-breaking moves has been to post the answers to her doctoral exams on her blog, letting the rest of us in on her integration of important reading in Rhetoric and Composition." Thanks, but I don't think I've made any ground-breaking moves, particularly not this one--the first (and only) person I know of to post her preliminary exams is the brilliant Cristina Hanganu-Bresch. That being said, I'll post mine when I take them, which will be in early August.

Since I started living by myself, I've taken to dancing in the mornings. Privacy is a wonderful thing. :D Does anyone else hop out of bed, crank up the music, and start dancing? Dance while you make coffee, etc? Here's one of my morning playlists:

US3 - Cantaloop
U2 - Numb
Tupac - California Love
Sugarcubes - Birthday
Stone Temple Pilots-Big Bang Baby
Rufus Wainwright - Instant Pleasure
Robbie Williams - Rock Dj
Peter Gabriel - Digging in the Dirt
The Notorious B.I.G. - Hypnotize
Mary J. Blige - Family Affair
Go-Gos - Head Over Heels
Eve featuring Gwen Stefani - Let Me Blow Your Mind
Big Tymers - Still Fly

I highly recommend it.

Today I've been poring over pages and pages of past preliminary exam questions and devising my own to send to my committee for consideration. Most of the questions are derived from the old exams, slightly tweaked to accommodate my interests. I wrote a few of them myself. Any suggestions? [Edited to add links to the reading lists: rhetorical theory and tech comm theory and research. Gender and CMC list is coming.]

Rhetorical Theory

1. Consider Cicero's De Oratore as a response to Plato's critique in the Gorgias.
2. What does Cicero mean by “eloquence”? Does the concept have implications for the understanding and teaching of rhetoric today?
3. Select two canonical works by classical male theorists, e.g. Gorgias's “Encomium of Helen,” Plato's Gorgias or Phaedrus, Aristotle's Rhetoric, Cicero's De Oratore, and indicate how you would teach them from a feminist perspective. In each case, indicate why you are doing what you do.
4. Select two canonical works by modern theorists, e.g. Burke's Rhetoric of Motives, Habermas' “What Is Universal Pragmatics?”, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's The New Rhetoric, Bakhtin's “The Problem of Speech Genres,” and indicate how you would teach them from a feminist perspective. In each case, indicate why you are doing what you do.
5. Burke directly addresses technology as a social commentator, a philosopher, and a rhetorical theorist. Discuss his approach to technology in each of these roles and comment on its importance to rhetoric as practiced by bloggers.
6. What theoretical concepts within the rhetorical tradition are most important to the creation of an adequate rhetorical theory of blogging practices? What, if any, traditional concepts does this new technology render obsolete? (More detailed treatment of fewer concepts is preferred to less detail and more concepts.)
7. Assume that nothing of the Aristotelian corpus survived except the Rhetoric and that we knew nothing of Aristotle's political views. Agree or disagree with this statement: “It is difficult to imagine a theory of rhetoric less congruent with modern feminism(s) than that set forth in the Rhetoric.” Defend your view by making specific reference to Aristotle's text.

Here are some more old photos; I'll keep these up, I promise. :) These are both of old friends from college; the first was taken in Nashville, and the second in Florence, Alabama, at the same abandoned warehouse.