Blogs

The journal Computers and Composition now has a blog! They're even using Drupal, which is now in its third year. I don't intend for this post to be so cheerleader-y; I'm not simply saying, "They have a blog! Yay!" I'm serious here: If this blog is updated often, linked to, and posted to by all the other rhetoricians and compositionists who blog or have more static web sites, that might take us closer to a new model of scholarly publishing--a true knowledge community, without the considerable lag time involved in most scholarly publishing. Peer review will still take place, of course, but it won't be blind (we'll see more accountability, and the notion of ethos will become more significant, I think), it will be more interactive, and we'll see ideas as they form and are refined by communal criticism.

In addition...I can't be the only one who's amused by the irony that C&C is published by Elsevier, yet they went open-source for their blog. A harbinger if I ever saw one--but I don't want to jinx it. :-)

Jane Bast has finished her graduate school applications and written a reflection on writing personal statements and will be writing more Chronicle "First Person" columns on applying to graduate school in the humanities. Those who followed the debate on Invisible Adjunct will find this latest column not all that surprising. Bast says:

I returned to my apartment and looked at my statement. Bill was right. It did seem naïvely idealistic. Too much like Dead Poets Society, and not enough like Discipline and Punish. As I sat down at my desk to begin again, I tried to channel my inner Foucault so that I could think about my work and my abilities with the appropriate critical distance.

Discipline, indeed.

Anyone got any good advice for me regarding preliminary examinations? I'm trying to assemble my reading lists now. In my program, we take one exam in rhetorical theory, one in technical communication theory and research, and the third in our specialty area (mine will be feminist rhetorics of technology/cyberfeminism). Depending on each committee's discretion, the student takes one 2-4 hour in-house exam and one 24-hour take-home exam in each area. In thinking about prelims, I'm wondering: Are there any "best practices" in selecting readings for your reading lists? How should I prepare for the exams, and for how long? Should I be thinking about questions I might want to answer? What form will the questions take? Something like this:

Is everyone blogging about knitting lately or what? Sheesh. :-) Now I have to join in. I recently started a pink and blue baby blanket for a friend of mine's lovely little fetus. While others have gone on to make more ambitious projects, like those that involve double point needles, four needles, patterns, etc. Not I. I've been knitting for about a year now, and all I know how to do are squares and rectangles using one kind of yarn. I can do the garter stitch and I can purl, and thus I can do stockinette as well, but I've still never done anything I imagined I'd do once I started knitting, like some fierce armwarmers or retro legwarmers. Oh well, this blanket'll keep me busy for a long time.

I have had well over 100 hits since this afternoon from an online sex, etc. magazine that's somewhat similar to Nerve. The site in question is a review of the Suicide Girls' Burlesque Show, which is coming here to the Twin Cities--not sure whether or not I'm going, though. I feel compelled to respond because I don't want it to seem as though I've given my imprimatur to what the author is saying, especially here (my emphasis):

"Now,
it's exceedingly hard to change what turns you on," I said.
"But you can go one of two ways on it: You can agree with Catherine [sic]
MacKinnon and Andrea
Dworkin that what acts out and reinforced the power structure
is immoral, or you can take a lead from sex-and-gender researchers
like Gayle
Rubin and Patrick
Califia and just accept that eros is value-neutral."

So, were
a half-dozen or more nubile young things covering each other with
chocolate syrup and writhing around onstage burlesque? Perhaps not.
Was it demeaning to women? Possibly. Was it art? Maybe. Was it hot?
Uh-huh. It was damn hot, even if I know that I only think it was
hot because I've been programmed that way.

It's not that I want to be essentialist or determinist here (those are the most deadly academic sins!). I don't agree with most of Dworkin or MacKinnon. This author is a smart guy, and I can tell that he's trying to yank my chain with the juxtaposition of "eros is value-neutral" with the waggish "I've been programmed that way." Yeah, yeah. But at least Dworkin and MacKinnon are questioning and critiquing why what turns us on turns us on. That, in my opinion, is a valuable endeavor, which I have said before. I agree with what Susie Bright once said, that the erotic is all about taboo. Sure, if everyone were swinging BDSM renifleurists, the ultimate turnon would be two virgins on their wedding night, consummating their love through a hole in a sheet. However, I am all for studying taboos in their sociodiscursive context.

Yesterday, I woke up crushingly depressed for absolutely no reason. I had parts of "Me and Bobby McGee" in my mind:

Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose...



I'd trade all my tomorrows for one single yesterday...

These lines were playing in a continuous loop, over and over like a pathetic scrolling marquee. Then I was absently flipping through a copy of BUST and saw a personal essay by a woman who had run away from home at age 15 and started hitchhiking all over the place. She said,

I left because my skin was on fire and everything broke my heart. I left because I could hear lust in the screech of a tire and craved it. I left because I was 15 years old and I was done with being a child.

Since the dark cloud was already there anyway, these sentences joined the marquee. I rarely get like that, and the first thing I want to do when I feel that way is try to shake it off. So I loaded my Winamp playlist of songs that cheer me up: "Let Me Blow Your Mind" by Eve featuring Gwen Stefani, "Family Affair" by Mary J. Blige, "Hypnotize" by Biggie, and "Head Over Heels" by the Go-Gos. (That Jerry Lee Lewis-esque piano solo will usually do the trick.) It didn't work. I tried to amuse myself by imagining making my students do silly things in class, stuff we used to do in my church youth group, like trust falls. That made me chuckle, but still didn't really get me over the hump. However, today I woke up determined to give my entire apartment a vigorous cleaning. I applied scalding, pine-scented, soapy water to everything, and now I'm much better, quite relieved. Here, then, is my valentine to myself:





Conversation heart maker via Feministe.

You are Merino Wool.
You are very easygoing and sweet. People like to keep you close because you are so softhearted. You love to be comfortable and warm from your head to your toes.


What kind of yarn are you?
brought to you by Quizilla



All true. :-) Via And She Knits Too!

I recently promised a response to Kenneth Burke's "Semantic and Poetic Meaning," from The Philosophy of Literary Form, and because I created an appetite for the response in your mind, dear reader, I shall now complete the form and fulfill your desire. (Ugh, that was cheesy, but I couldn't resist!) I responded to this prompt:

Toward the end of “Semantic and Poetic Meaning,” Burke comments on the relationship of Shakespeare to his villain Iago in Othello. Explain what he says. How does this example relate to the thesis or ideas presented in the essay? Is this an example of a Burkean irrelevant tangent?

Semantic meaning cannot account for poetry, motivated speech, sociopolitical context, the speaker-audience relationship, irony, attitude, implication, or moral significance. For example, the utterance “Where are the weapons of mass destruction?” has a very specific meaning for us. To understand that question fully, we must understand the chain of events leading to the September 11 attacks, the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Bush administration's rhetorical “war on terror,” in which they declared the existence of an "Axis of Evil" and claimed they knew for certain that several countries were in possession of weapons of mass destruction, including Iraq. We would have to know that Hans Blix conducted an investigation to try to find the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that he has not succeeded in finding them so far. We would have to know that “Where are the weapons of mass destruction?” is a motivated utterance—left-leaning citizens and “doves” repeatedly ask that rhetorical question in an accusatory manner, already knowing the answer.