Context

I am becoming a big fan of Latour – not only of his ideas, but also his wit, clever phrasing, examples, and use of exclamation points. Working through my thesis while reading this book has also given me a lots to think about in terms of the sociological dimension of my project.
Most saliently in this section, Latour discusses how sociologists place actors in Contexts. As he says in his typically deadpan tone: “At Context, there is no place to park” (167). When I first began reading for my thesis, I questioned why a researcher my choose to focus on the specific composing processes of a small number of students (such as in Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater's Academic Literacies). It seemed difficult to say something significant from such a small sample. But I found that in choosing to focus my study on a type of writing, I often had to elide the unique stories of individual students, focusing instead on Trends, Patterns, Themes, and indeed Contexts. And if I had to do the whole thing over again, I might just choose one or two students to focus on. I wonder if my impulse to do so stems from a resistance, similar to Latour's, of assigning actors to a context.

Still, the reason I chose not to focus on those individual stories is that at the end of the day, I wanted to find out something useful to my teaching. (I think this is the goal of much ethnographic writing research). My same concern remains for Latour: Generalizations may be artificial, but they are also helpful.

I'm also wondering about how avoiding Context keeps us from cynicism (which may be bred by an approach like Berlin's). If we stop seeing people as “products” of a context, does the lead to a more optimistic assessment of them? Or is this all a superfluous exercise in (Hairston alert!) “celebrating diversity”?

Interestingly, one of my student interviewees objected to a writing assignment, not unlike Berlin's, that asked her to research the larger social and historical context of one of her favorite articles of clothing. She's 19, but she sounds very Latourian, or maybe like one of Latour's Actors, desperate to be understood on her own terms. I quote her eloquent and significant argument here because it so clearly epitomizes the struggle that arises between the personal and the academic: students feel that the academic research alters the existing personal meaning.

Each garment has its own history for me, and I know the story of the garment and
I know the very specific cultural context of that garment because I wore it. And
for this paper I had to draw out and almost remove the personal aspect of it and
look for broad historical and broad cultural context which in some ways is
artificial . . . and so I just knew that a lot of things I was saying in this
paper, I was putting someone else's opinion on it and it wasn't necessarily
true.

Foucault/Latour judo

I had the same reaction that Chad had to the absence of Foucault in the work of one so concerned with mapping associations--especially when reading We Have Never Been Modern. There Foucault is nary mentioned at all there, whereas in Reassembling he is regulated to footnotes, though at least still present. Latour seems to acknowledge Foucault's influence, his brilliance and his absence, in a way, in the footnote on 86. The footnote is to the following: "To the studied and modifiable skein of means to achieve powers, sociology, and especially critical sociology, has too often substituted an invisible, unmovable, and homogenous world of power for itself"; and the footnote reads:

That this lesson is easy to forget is shown dramatically by the transatlantic destiny of Michel Foucault. No one was more precise in his analytical decomposition of the tiny ingredients from which power is made and no one was more critical of social explanations. And yet, as soon as Foucault was translated, he was immediately turned into the one who had 'revealed' power relations _behind_ every innocuous activity: madness, natural history, sex, administration, etc. This proves again with what energy the notion of social explanation should be fought: even the genius of Foucault could not prevent such a total inversion.

It seems as if Latour does not bring Foucault directly in because Latour feels that Foucault's work has been so overdetermined, in a way--that it has so much baggage associated with it is a more honest way of saying it--that to bring in Foucault explicitly runs the risk of bringing in these associations which would lead many down the wrong path, so to speak. I think Latour acknowledges Foucault's influence however--and it seems to me that he does a bit of judo, to extend Chad's metaphor, in letting the reader go through his own work without bringing in Foucault except as in these digressive, suggestive footnotes. I hope so, any way, as Foucault is on my cmap for next week.

LaTour in Practice?

Recent comp/rhet theorists, working against (somewhat) the expressivist approach of the 1970s, have sought to deconstruct the privileging of the "I" in the traditional essay. Thus, I see some similar goals in LaTour's de-centering. I do see how the LaTour reading fits 8040 nicely: we have been examining the social turn, so why not look at a text that questions the very notions of "social."

I did wonder if we find some sort of practical use in LaTour's book. How might LaTour's restructuring of the social help us as composition instructors? Does LaTour's work have any benefit for the first-year comp classroom? I'm tempted to leave that question hanging in the air, but I guess that I should take a stab at answering it.

In terms of what comp teachers can come away with, I think there's value in being challenged to rethink one's seemingly "natural" foundations. LaTour, by causing us to question what is the social, also causes us to question other issues, such as making the student the center of the essay. Progressive instructors, for instance, have designed assignments where students do not write from their point of view; in fact, they are encouraged to write from the point of view of someone entirely different from themselves. Collaborative assignments--not just busy work in small groups--can also helps students see value in writing that doesn't privilege the "I." In technical writing, for instance, this is common.

Regarding the first-year comp classroom, I wonder if there's a way to design an assignment inspired by LaTour's ideas. No mention of LaTour would ever occur in the class, of course, but perhaps there's a way to present a case study or example where students clearly see that what they assumed was the social is in fact much more complex. They then could be encouraged to make their own connections out in the world. This, in some ways, is a twist on Berlin's assignments in Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures. But instead of examining texts (readings, films, television) as a way to comment on, for instance, class issues, the examination of texts would force students to reconsider their ideas about sociality. Or do you think this is all over the typical freshman head?

Foucault as Latour's Mr. Miyagi?

One of the interesting parts of reading Latour has been to see his way of incorporating other scholarship. In Reassembling the Social, he's careful to acknowledge some of his influences, which include an eclectic range, Tarde and Diderot and many more, but he includes fewer names than, say, LeFevre. This becomes even more interesting when he defines a text that renders a network as one that, basically, shows its sources. He seems to do that less than some, but to wield his mentioning of others as a sign of ANT authenticity--not in an inauthentic way, at all, just as a special kind of mention. Instead of the normal parenthetical citations and quotes, he sets his sources off in boxes and footnotes.

This leads me to wonder who his primary influences might be, and to wonder about the presence of Foucault. My knowledge of Foucault's influence on ANT extends mostly to Law's use of him, in the one essay I've read, but some of Foucault's broad contributions seem to ghost the ANT project: his problematization of traditional systems of power, his persistent representation of complexity, and his refusal to essentialize or totalize. I could see Foucault teaching Latour how to fragment traditional sociology's practices, and represent that in writing--the post-structuralist equivalent of catching a fly with chopsticks . . . except, as Donna very helpfully pointed out last night, the post-structuralist project of applying broad terms to define things is one of ANT's main bugaboos.

If anyone has any thoughts, or would like to extend this to other martial arts metaphors :), I'd be grateful.

Thought collectives and notebooks

Wow, there’s some good insight in the writings this week. Well, there probably always is, and I just miss it. Anyway. . .

On page 112-113 Latour talks about Fleck and Wasserman, and within that marked off reading I found something I though was very interesting. He quotes Fleck stating, ‘Truth is not ‘relative’ and certainly not ‘subjective’ in the popular sense of the word. It is always, or almost always, completely determined within a thought style. One can never say that the same thought is true for A and false for B. If A and B belong to the same thought collective, the thought will either be true or false for both. But if they belong to different thought collectives, it will just not be the same thought’ (113-14). What this quote did was bring me back to our discussion of Crowley, and the fact that were such different readings of her work. There is a difference in our “thought collectives” and this is why we read it differently. No form of logic, reason, or affective rhetoric can change these different readings, because our thoughts on the matter are from different collectives. What I would like to know, is if this is a real reason for different readings of different situations, is how or if “thought collectives” can be combined, changed, or whatever. Is a thought collective the same as a “social” group, (I know bad word), or is a thought collective a part of a larger collective. It’s an interesting concept, and one I wouldn’t mind exploring more thoroughly.

My second thought is about the notebooks Latour suggests that be used when examining the social. He states, “By contrast, it seems too often that sociologist of the social are simply trying to ‘fix a world on paper’ as if this activity was never in risk of failing” (127). However, further on he talks about getting back to basics, and maintaining four different notebooks during research. I have no doubt that everything is data, and by keeping track of everything one would accumulate good sources. But his notebook idea is very complex, and the only seemingly basic component is the fact he’s using paper instead of bites.

Did anybody else think the notebooks were a bit much?

Latour, LeFevre, Scott

Going into this reading, I was pretty convinced that I’d wind up throwing away everything in Reinventing the Social. I figured that it would contradict what I already believed about the social. I assumed that it would raise some interesting points, but that I would ultimately have little use for it in my own work. It turns out, I was wrong. Perhaps I’ve unjustly colonized/appropriated/co-opted Reinventing the Social for my own purposes, but I now see it as completely compatible with works such as Invention as a Social Act and "Rhetoric as Epistemic”.

I think each work problematizes the idea of authorship. Invention as a Social Act, by LeFevre suggests that all invention (especially the kind supported by Durkheim) is a result of social processes. Each and every writer or actor is capable of influencing and being influenced by every other actor. “Rhetoric as Epistemic,” by Scott, similarly argues that ideas and knowledge are created through the symbolic interaction of human beings.

While I have little doubt that Latour would take exception with much of the language in these two texts, I think he actually has a lot in common with them. He clearly appreciates the idea that any particular text is a result of a multitude of actors who are connected in very complex ways. For instance, he says that a quality text highlights “the ability of each actor to make other actors do unexpected things” (p. 129). He calls a text, “a test on how many actors the writer is able to treat as mediators and how far he or she is able to achieve the social” (p. 128-129). In other words, a connection to other authors and actors is a necessity that ought to be recognized and encouraged.

Here’s the thing: I don’t really know if I’m right about all this, but if I really follow Latour it might not matter. He probably didn’t expect me to compare him to LeFevre and Scott. How about that for movement and energy? Anyway, I’d really like to know if people think I’ve misappropriated and misinterpreted Latour here. Sometimes I can’t tell whether this guy is really enthusiastic about a point in which he believes or is just using hyperbole to show me how silly something is so that he can refute it.

Latour vs. Lefevre and Berlin

An early question of the semester was to consider how Latour would trouble, if not overhaul, the other social rhetoricians who would have mainly banked on what he would call the “sociology of the social” as opposed to the “sociology of associations.” When Latour suggests that “if you still believe groupings exist ‘by themselves,’ for instance the ‘individual,’ just try to remember how much labor had to be done before each of you could ‘take your life into your own hands,’” he seems to be treading close to our previous understanding of the social turn in rhetoric and composition (32). Why should we privilege one author as the author of a text? Is it just ego and tradition and a preference for sole credit that makes us refuse to acknowledge the vast network of collaboration that accounts for a published work? Latour poses considerations that mirror these and others we generated early in the semester: “How many admonitions from parents, teachers, bosses, partners, and colleagues before we learned that we had better be a group of our own (the ego)? And how quickly we forgot that lesson” (32).

However, as Latour begins to outline his five uncertainties (1. no pre-established groups; 2. actions and agency are uncertain and must be newly explored since we cannot attribute either to the social; 3. objects have agency or at least play a role beyond mere symbolic projection; 4. based on the previous three, agencies must never be introduced as matters of fact so much as matters of concern; and 5. as we move to “deployment not critique” and making the “social” first vanish in order to trace a network, we must undertake the writing of “risky accounts” that may often fail), we see that we are far from the comfort zone of Lefevre, Berlin, etc. Likewise, when Latour describes action as that “which is not fully transparent” (perhaps an understatement where the traces and uncertainties head) and that he wishes to “render them visible again” with his “odd expression” actor-network theory, we see that there is much in previous social-epistemic rhetoric that would be made to vanish so that something else—some network, trace, or reassembled association of the social—could become visible again. (44).

For a slightly more specific example, we could glance back at Berlin’s rhetoric. In his “Postmodern Predicament” section, after discussing Scholes’ “Textual Power” and Burke’s terministic screens (all language is ideological, all language “serves as a terministic screen”), Berlin argues that

“no single person is in control of language. Language is a social construction that shapes us as much as we shape it. In other words, language is a product of social relations and so is ineluctably involved in power and politics. Language constitutes arenas in which ideological battles are continually fought. The different language practices of different social groups are inscribed with ideological prescriptions, interpretations of experience that reinforce conceptions of what really exists, what is really good, and what is politically possible” (Berlin 92-93).

Latour would seem to agree that “no single person is in control of language,” but he would likely counter Berlin’s follow-up that “language is a product of social relations” and how “ineluctably involved” we can then say language is in “power and politics” (92). Latour might say that language produces the “social relations” and the constructs or figurations of “power and politics” as entities that then inform and shape what we’re trained to look for in language (trained, perhaps, by Berlin). Still, Latour might like the phrase about “interpretations of experience that reinforce conceptions of what really exists” to the extent that this opens the debate about ANT theorists “forgetting ‘power relations’ and ‘social inequalities’” (86).

Lefevre would be even more problematized by a Latourian analysis, as she privileges an a priori understanding of the social. Even as she examines a social perspective of rhetorical invention that seeks to overturn the long history of “composition” being “rooted in radical individualism,” she still suggests that the social act of writing is “one in which individuals interact with society and culture in a distinctive way to create something” and, in so doing, Lefevre seems guilty of the move Latour decries in social theory: the one where social theorists “never seem to tire in designating one entity as real, solid, proven, or entrenched while others are criticized as being artificial, imaginary, transitional” (Lefevre 121; Latour 28). Lefevre, and inevitably a Marxist such as Berlin, cannot avoid discourse that privileges either the “society” (in which individuals must “create”) or an already existing base and superstructure. Latour would seem to lead both theorists (and their students) to where the controversies arise in assuming a fixed, stable, identifiable notion of “society” or “late multi-national capitalist logic” and then ask that their associations be retraced without these “invisible hands.” Latour would also ask that students further disassemble the traces and previous associations before arriving at a (teacher-pleasing?) conclusion as to how “our society” has constructed inequalities within the judiciary or has only “fixed” racism by burying it deeper into the subsurface. He asks instead that we merely “leave aside all underlying frameworks” as the professor suggests to the Ph.D student in the “interlude” dialogue (156).

Latour pt. 1

I wrote a paper on Latour a couple of years ago--and I used Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia for it, so I really enjoyed reading Chad's post. The main text of Latour's that I wrote about is We Have Never Been Modern, which I've referenced a couple of times before and which I think could be a productive text to bring in alongside Reassembling the Social, as I think the former really informs the latter. I had written out a long post comparing the two texts, finding ways "in" to Reassembling through We Have Never, but as I was about to post it, I thought better of it. I've been sitting on it for a couple of days now and I think I'll instead wait until next week--when I'll be facilitating the discussion on the second half of the book--to go ahead with it. I'm not sure if everyone will agree that it's necessary to bring it in, as I do, and I don't want divert *any* attention from the excellent work that Chad has done in directing the trajectory for this week.

I do want to say a bit about it in terms of where Latour himself brings in We Have Never along with something Faith commented on in her great post. Faith talked about the affinities she sees between what Latour is advocating and ethnography, and that speaks to an affinity I see as well and that Latour himself comments on a few times. Anthropology was one of my majors as an undergrad because, as I took courses that were cross-listed between English and Anthro (usually with a focus on Linguistics--my third major--or Folklore Studies), I saw how useful anthropology's use and development of the concept of culture could be in what I myself wanted to do. Latour sees this, as well, I think, and he uses it as a way to get into what ANT can become in terms of an alternative to modernism (including sociology). In Reassembling, he observes that ANT is "nothing but the recasting of the central hopes of social science" and that the latter has suffered from "a sort of confusion of duties... that their job was to define what the social world is made of... the task of politics" (40); and that "some sociologists, tired of the revolutionary period, found a way to shortcut the slow and painful process of composition and decided to sort out by themselves what were the most relevant units of society" (41). Latour goes on to comment on what he sees as the prime significance of this moment:

The simplest way was to get rid of the most extravagant and unpredictable ways in which actors themselves defined their own 'social context'. Social theorists began to play legislator, strongly encouraged in this endeavor by the state that was engaged in the ruthless task of modernizing. In addition, this gesture could pass for proof of scientific creativity as scientists since Kant have had to 'construct their own subject'. Human actors were reduced to mere informants simply answering the questions of the socilologist qua judge, thus supposedly producing a discipline as scientific as chemistry or physics. Without this strong obligation to play the legislating role, sociologists would not have limited the first obvious source of uncertainty, cutting all the links with the explicit and reflexive labor of the actors' own methods.

Here Latour goes on to contrast sociology's "first source of uncertainty" with the approach of anthropology, which did not suffer from this mistake as

Anthropologists, who had to deal with pre-moderns and were not requested as much to imitate natural sciences [I'd disagree with that, but that's another matter], were more fortunate and allowed their actors to deploy a much richer world. In many ways, ANT is simply an attempt to allow the members of contemporary society to have as much leeway in defining themselves as that offered by ethnographers.

Latour then explicitly connects this sentiment to his work in We Have Never, asserting that, "If, as I claim, 'we have never been modern,' sociology could finally become as good as anthropology."

In We Have Never, Latour sets up what he sees as society's tripartition of networks into "facts, power and discourse" which he believes anthropology has successfully negotiated and rightly sees as interconnected, a feat he wishes for ACT. He begins by asserting (on page 7) that

Either the networks my colleagues in science studies and I have traced do not really exist, and the critics are quite right to marginalize them or segment them into three distinct sets: facts, power and discourse; or the networks are as we have described them, and they do cross the borders of the great fiefdoms of criticism: even though they are real, and collective, and discursive.

Rather than taking an approach of naturalization, socialization, or deconstruction, ANT sees networks as being all three: "Is it our fault," Latour asks,"if the networks are simultaneously real, like nature, narrated, like discourse, and collective, like society?" (ibid).

Latour then credits anthropology with having offered a way through the crisis of the tripartation:

This would be a hopeless dilemma had anthropology not accustomed us to dealing calmly and straightforwardly with the seamless fabric of what I shall call 'nature-culture,' since it is a bit more and a bit less than a culture.... Once she has been sent into the field, even the most rationalist ethnographer is perfectly capable of bringing together in a single monograph the myths, ethnosciences, genealogies, political forms, techniques, religions, epics and rites of the people she is studying. Send her off to study the Arapesh or the Achuar, the Koreans or the Chinese, and you will get a single narrative that weaves together the way people regard the heavens and their ancestors, the way they build houses and the way they grow yams or manioc or rice, the way they construct their government and their cosmology. In works produced by anthropologists abroad, you will not find a single trait that is not simultaneously real, social and narrated.

If the analyst is subtle, she will retrace networks that look exactly like the sociotechnical imbroglios that we outline when we pursue microbes, missiles or fuel cells in our own Western societies. We too are afraid that the sky is falling. We too associate the tiny gesture of releasing an aerosol spray with taboos pertaining to the heavens. We too have to take laws, power and morality into account in order to understand what our sciences are telling us about the chemistry of the upper atmosphere.

Yes, but we are not savages; no anthropologist studies us that way, and it is impossible to do with our own culture—or should I say nature-culture?—what can be done elsewhere, with others. Why? Because we are modern. Our fabric is no longer seamless. Analytic continuity has become impossible. For traditional anthropologists, there is not, there cannot be, there should not—an anthropology of the modern world... The ethnosciences can be connected in part to society and to discourse...;science cannot. It is even because they remain incapable of studying themselves in this way that ethnographers are so critical, and so distant, when they go off to the tropics to study others. The critical tripartition protects them because it authorizes them to reestablish continuity among the communities of the premoderns. It is only because they separate at home that ethnographers make so bold as to unify abroad.

Latour goes on to make the move that in order to do such an ethnography of the modern world, the word "modern" itself has to be renegotiated (hence the title of the work). I'll save all of that for next week--I just wanted to bring in the part of We Have Never that I see as relevant to what Latour is discussing in terms of anthropology in this part of Reassmbling.

Action and Motion and more from Ted Kennedy

Perhaps I’ve developed a sort of trained incapacity where I see Kenneth Burke in everything I read, but I find it very difficult not to be reminded of Burke when I read Latour. When Latour talks about “actors” I’m recalling the distinction between action and motion that Burke has laid out, as well as his pentad as a means for understanding people’s motives or accounts of events.

This week in qualitative research methods over in the Communication Department we debated whether or not communication scholars ought to be considered scientists. I see this same discourse in Latour’s book. In class, I argued that we shouldn’t be considered scientists, nor should we want to be. For me, social sciences tend to reduce everything humans do to motion. The idea of motion seems divorced completely from that of free will, and would render all human action completely controllable and predictable. But Latour writes that when people “engage in providing controversial accounts for their actions as well as for those of others,” “traces become innumberable and no study will ever stop for lack of information on these controversies” (p. 47). This sounds to me like action. Burke too believed that human action was far more complex than social scientists might have us believe. I think it is absolutely crucial that we understand that actions require thought and motive, motion however does not. Human beings have incredibly complex reasons and purposes for acting as they do, and I feel that Latour is sufficiently appreciative of this idea.

When Latour talks about appreciating the accounts people provide for events in this world, it is hard not to think of Burke’s pentad (act, agent, agency, scene, purpose). These terms were suggested by Burke as a means for understanding the way people account for events and acts in our world. One excellent study that utilized Burke’s pentad described how when accounting for the death of his young female passenger at Chappaquiddick, Ted Kennedy privileged elements of the scene in order to minimize his own involvement or fault (here's the speech). But while Burke’s system would seem to compliment Latour’s philosophy, one must also heed Latour’s suggestion that “we have to resist the idea that there exists somewhere a dictionary where all the variegated words of the actors can be translated into the few words of the social vocabulary” (p. 48). Latour might very well object to using just five key words to explain any one individual’s account of an action. For that matter, it seems that Latour’s problem might lie more generally with the limitations put upon us by language itself.

In short, I like the way Latour appears to be privileging the perspectives of human beings. I also think he’s got something in common with Kenneth Burke. I think a lot of science attempts to impose our own perspectives and understandings on the world. Latour, with all his talk of uncertainties and controversies seems to advocate against this impulse. But this lease Latour to argue against all sorts of criticism and unfortunately, I still don’t think I’m ready to ditch the critical approach I’m so accustomed to. What if the associations we trace from people’s accounts appear to be harmful or destructive to themselves or others? Of course, there is way more at stake in a question like this than whether Ted Kennedy is a boozer and a womanizer.

Ling, D. A. (1970). A pentadic analysis of Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s Address to the people
of Massachusetts, July 25, 1969. Central States Speech Journal, 21, 81-87.

LaTour and Readability

Maggie writes, "I must say my own understanding appears to come and go in various parts of the book."

I feel your pain, Maggie. On the one hand, I find LaTour's writing pretty reader friendly, given that he's A) a theory guy, and B) he's French! Usually, such a pairing makes for difficult reading, but LaTour often sounds down to earth ("If this looks like splitting hairs, well it is, but this is because the tiny difference in direction taken by the two sociologies is no larger than a hair's width" (39)), and his sometimes colloquial style is definitely reassuring--no real struggling to make sense out of long, twisting, convoluted sentences as in Derrida or Foucault.

Which reminds me. There's this Lydia Davis short story, "Foucualt and Pencil," where Davis, who is also a translator of French (she has a new translation of Proust's In Search of Lost Time which is supposed to be pretty good), pokes fun at the experience of reading Foucault:

"Short sentences easier to understand than long ones. Certain long ones understandable part by part, but so long, forgot beginning before reaching end. Went back to beginning, understood beginning, read on, and again forgot beginning before reaching end. Read on without going back and without understanding, without remembering, and without learning, pencil idle in hand. Came to sentence that was clear, made pencil mark in margin. Mark indicated understanding, indicated forward progress in book."

I thought some might enjoy the levity there! Plus, we're supposed to be looking for webs of meaning, and this whole discussion of LaTour and the readability of theory in general traced an association, in my mind, to the Davis story. Okay, back to the program...

On the other hand, I do find the LaTour rough going in that, as with most theory, I still find that I understand things at the surface level much more than at the detail level. Yes, LaTour's surface is friendlier and easier to read. There's little of the, as Davis pokes fun at, having to consistently go "back to beginning," but I still have that sort of "Okay, I understand the gist here, but could I really put this into practice?" feeling. I'm still making my way through Part I, however, and I assume that the book takes the reader through some more specific examples or case studies before it ends.

Overall, though, I find the LaTour reading much less ominous that I had feared (or that I had felt after reading his introduction weeks back).

Help with LaTour

If anyone's having difficulty making it through the first hundred or so pages of LaTour, you might want to skip to the section On the Difficulty of Being an Ant, where LaTour imagines a conversation between himself and a PhD student trying to understand ANT. I found it much easier to understand than the preceding sections. ANT's ideas seem to be most clearly expressed in the form of debate or conversation. Also, this section makes apparent the problems of ANT – that it's not really a theory and everybody (namely, thesis advisors) want a theory.

I could certainly see the influence of LaTour's ideas about social science in the methods textbooks I read to prepare for my thesis. His ideas of letting the actors speak for themselves become particularly relevant in ethnographic writing studies, where a teacher-researcher finds it much easier to be relevant by arguing “what's wrong” with student writing rather than understanding the students on their own terms. I liked his emphasis on writing and his appreciation of complexity – I think that the effort not to reach a resolution has gained a lot of ground in the field too. I wondered how he might feel about the use of academic discourse as a whole, not just that of social scientists, and the merit of teaching students to enter discourse communities. As with the halfway point of the Berlin book, I am interested to see if he'll attempt examples of what he's advocating for.

Oh what a tangled web we weave,

I am impressed with Chad’s obvious understanding of ANT. I must say my own understanding appears to come and go in various parts of the book.

On page 22 LaTour gives five uncertainties: the nature of groups, the nature of actions, the nature of objects, the nature of facts, and the the type of studies done under the laboe of a science of the social. This is one of those things that actually makes sense to me, however, I’m unsure of how it is more salient when combined with ANT than when discussed under the term “sociology.” It is because there are such uncertainties within groupings of the populace that “social sciences” came into being, is it not? I probably misunderstood something.

Latour states,”The task of defining and ordering the social should be left to the actors themselves, not taken up by the analyst. This is why to regain some sense of order, the best solution is to trace connections between the controversies themselves rather than try to decide how to settle any given controversy” (23). I believe this to be very true, but then when I began to think about it I began to wonder which analyst had taken up what controversies to settle. I really can’t think of an example, which is my point, and I wondered if one of you braniacs out there could give me one.

He also states, “To use the word ‘actor’ means that it’s never clear who and what is acting when we act since an actor on stage is never alone in acting” (46). Some of me understands this, and parts of me don’t. (The left hand and the right big toe are the dissenters). Anyway, what I would like to know is if me means an individual does not know when he or she is acting of their own accord. Is everything we do a reaction to something or someone else? On the one hand I can buy that, but on the other I wonder if this is the case, is there ultimately the singular self? But then, perhaps that is the question at hand.

When talking about “The Third Source of Uncertainty” LaTour explains that objects can be actors, too. He describes this as an association between entities which are in no way recognizable as being social in the ordinary manner, except during the brief moment when they are reshuffled together” (65). These items have something social through the modifications made throughout the whole place in the organization of all the goods. These minute shifts reveal to the observer which new combinations are explored and which paths will be taken (65). I liked this example in that it made the term “network” very clear to me. It also made me wonder how in the world anyone would be able to trace a “complete” network of anything. It would wind up being an extraordinarily vast project.

Ah, well.

Map, Essay, References

I have no good reason for why I didn't post this until now. But feedback is definitely welcome. It'll be called something like "Fantasy Theme Analysis and Invention as a Social Act." Maybe.

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Symbolic convergence theory suggests that people come to share consciousness about their worlds by sharing symbolic material such as stories, jokes, analogies, etc. Shared meanings give a group its purpose and identity thereby allowing them to reach consensus and achieve true unity. In short, symbolic convergence allows people to share worldviews. Ernest Bormann first noticed and explicated the phenomena while examining small group communication but quickly expanded the theory to apply to rhetorical criticism. Bormann’s colleagues Donald Shields and John Cragan also made careers out of applying and expanding the concept. Scholarly research has demonstrated that fantasy-theme analysis, which is the primary means for studying symbolic convergence theory, is particularly useful for examining how group members communicate with each other and with those that they are trying to persuade.

Joshua Gunn is perhaps the most vocal opponents of symbolic convergence theory and fantasy theme analysis. He’s gone back and forth with Bormann and Bormann’s colleague’s on the pages of the Quarterly Journal of Speech about the merits and inadequacies of this particular communication theory. One of the aspects of the theory that is most often is disputed is the degree to which people actually share dramatized narratives (fantasies) and “chain” their ideas and experiences among one another. Some have gone so far as to question whether the existing examples of fantasy theme analysis are truly indicators of collective action, or just evidence of the work of a few individuals. These objections seriously question the integrity of symbolic convergence theory, which I believe still has plenty of potential for explaining human interaction. Therefore, I’d like to rescue the theory from its detractors.

In my paper I will strengthen symbolic convergence theory by introducing the idea of rhetorical invention, which ought to be familiar to any and all serious rhetoricians. Karen LeFevre has argued that invention is a social act. Writers such as George Herbert Mead and Emile Durkheim have suggested that all rhetorical invention is a result of social processes. Therefore, a theory of (social) invention can expand the way scholars think about symbolic convergence. Symbolic convergence happens in places other than just small groups. Anytime people share ideas, or ideas can be demonstrated to permeate the consciousness of a particular group of thinkers, I would argue that symbolic convergence has occurred. Definitions of symbolic convergence need to be expanded in order to accommodate important theories of rhetorical invention. Some types of convergence are perhaps less direct than what was originally posited, but they are nonetheless forms of convergence.

In conclusion, symbolic convergence theory was once an exciting new idea in communication and rhetorical studies. However, serious criticisms of its validity have injured the theory’s reputation. There is absolutely no doubt that fantasy theme analysis has fallen out of favor with communication scholars and rhetorical critics. These ideas are not used or published as often as they once were. However, an understanding of invention as a social act can significantly bolster a symbolic convergence theory by understanding the way the social is responsible for the creation of all knowledge and therefore all symbolic material. This can free up the theory and the primary means for studying the theory (fantasy theme analysis) for use once again.

Preliminary Bibliography

Benoit, W. L., Klyukovski, A. A., McHale, J. P., & Airne, D. (2001). A fantasy-theme analysis
of political cartoons on the Clinton-Lewinsky-Starr affair. Critical Studies in Media
Communication, 18(4), 377-394.

Bormann, E. G., Cragan, J. F., & Shields, D. C. (2003). Defending symbolic convergence theory
from an imaginary Gunn. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 89(4), 366-372.

Bormann, G., Knutson, R. (2002). Why do people share fantasies? An empirical investigation of
a basic tenet of the symbolic. Communication Studies, 48(3), 254-276.

Bormann, E. G., Cragan, J. F., & Shields, D. C. (1996). An expansion of the rhetorical vision
component of the symbolic convergence theory: The cold war paradigm case.
Communication Monographs, 63, 1-28.

Bormann, E., Cragan, J., & Shields, D. (1994). In defense of symbolic convergence theory: A
look at the theory and its criticisms after two decades. Communication Theory, 4, 259-
294.

Bormann, E. G. (1985a). The force of fantasy: Restoring the American dream. Illinois:

Southern Illinois University Press.

Bormann, E. (1985). Symbolic convergence Theory: A communication formulation. Journal of
Communication, 35(4), 128-138.

Bormann, E. G. (1982). Fantasy and rhetorical vision: Ten years later. Quarterly Journal of
Speech, 68, 288-305.

Buber, M. (1970). I and thou. New York, NY: Charles Scribners’ Sons.

Durkheim, E. (1954). The elementary forms of religious life. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.

Durkheim, E. (1966). The rules of sociological method. New York, NY: The Free Press.

Fisher, Walter R. (1984) Narration as human communication paradigm: The case of public
moral argument. Communication Monographs, 51(1), 1-22.

Foss, K. & Littejohn, W. (1986). The day after: Rhetorical vision in an ironic frame. Critical
Studies in Mass Communication, 3, 317-336.

Gunn, J. (2003a). Refiguring fantasy: Imagination and its decline in U.S. rhetorical studies.
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 89(1), 41-59.

Gunn, J. (2003b). Response. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 89(4), 373-373.

Knuepper, C. & Anderson, F. (1980). Uniting wisdom and eloquence: the need for rhetorical
invention. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 66(3), 313-326.

Larson, R. (1972). Some techniques for teaching rhetorical invention. Speech Teacher, 21(3),
303-309.

LeFevre, K. (1987). Invention as a social act. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.
Mead, G. (1934). Mind, self, and society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Putnam, L., Van Hoeven, S., Bullis, C. (1991). The role of rituals and fantasy themes in teachers’
bargaining. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 55, 85-103.

St.Antoine, T. J., Althouse, M. T., & Ball, M. A. (2005). Fantasy-theme criticism. In J. A.
Kuypers (Ed.), The art of rhetorical criticism. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

ANT against itself

I wanted to contextualize the Latour reading for this week with some basic facts about actor-network theory (ANT), maybe selfishly :), since you guys should not feel obligated to read a giant blog post about it. These definitions draw on Latour's remarks in the intro and first part, and also add those of ANT's other founders and scholars. Our discussion of the social in Latour got me interested in ANT, the theory for which the book is meant to serve as an introduction. My discussion of his part 1 on Monday night may draw on some of the same material I'm offering here, so apologies for any repetition.

The most basic fact about ANT is that it doesn't exist, according to Latour's essay, "On recalling ANT." He problematizes it systematically, showing why it's not a theory, why the uses of the terms "actor" and "network" are inaccurate, and even why the hyphen between them doesn't make sense. The proper term, as he has insisted over the years, is "actant rhizome ontology," and he actually says, in the essay, that ANT has stayed in currency, as a term, because it sounds better than ARO.

Since we're reading an introduction to ANT, written by him almost a decade after that essay, the term clearly shows something of a comfortable fit, but Latour's ambiguity points back to one of the basic aspects of ANT, in the little that I've read: the documents tend to marvellously imitate the networks that they describe, reversing their conclusions, striving for complexity. The most consistent conclusion in the essay mirrors the one in the part of "Reassembling the Social" that we're reading for Monday: ANT functions, not as a theory, but as an ontology, or way of describing being, that critiques traditional notions of the social.

John Law, the other key figure in ANT (according to Jeff Rice), offers similar
caveats about ANT: it can't be essentialized, since complexity is one of its key features; it can't really be seen as a theory, since that would imply some fixed idea that might take away from its emphasis on fluidity; and it should not exist, as a term, but does for the sake of convenience. Again, this approach to ANT really metarhetoricizes the ANT conception of the network: it doesn't hold a consistent reality, and any motion toward a stable idea is a convenience.

As in Latour's essay, though, Law offers a couple of key features of ANT. First, it emphasizes "relational materiality." This means a couple of things, from what I can gather. First, these guys draw on Foucault's idea that relationality, the idea that we're defined by each othher, applies to much more than just language. In ANT terms, this extends further--they see the networks that we live in being defined by things other than language, but also other than individuals. Second, ANT emphasizes "performativity." That means that relationality is defined by performance--there is no static network of connections that we exist in; the network is performed. Law, and other ANT theorists, don't see the individual as a fixed site of social construction, but as something much more dynamic.

Aside from Foucault, the thinkers who seem to have clearly influenced ANT are DeLeuze and Guattari. Their ideas about social structure have given rise to ANT's conception of the network, and to the "actant-rhizome" idea. That idea basically says that society can be seen in two ways: as arboreal, meaning hierarchical and beaureaucratic; or as rhizomatic, meaning indeterminate, acentric, and dynamic. Latour's references to them show his continuing sense of debt.

If ANT is perplexing at all to you, as it has been to me in reading "Reassembling the Social," it may help a tad to know that that perplexity is part of its mission. It doesn't so much offer a set of tidy ideas as do the postmodern thang of problematizing long-standing ones, and offering hints of revolutionary alternative. ANT's influence seems to have been pretty intense in the quarter century that it's existed, possibly mostly in sociology, and in contributing to our understanding of networks. However, Latour stresses the difference between ANT's sense of network and the computer network that has so informed popular understanding. The network that they talk about is transformative, dynamic, fluid, and holds none of the illusion of fixity commonly ascribed to the virtual world.

My understanding of ANT is definitely teeny, and please feel free to chime in, add, or correct any bogus info above.

Neocon definition redux

http://www.slate.com/id/2161800?nav=tap3

Seeking Agora in the Heartland: A Case Example

Hi,

As I mentioned in class Monday night, having just driven through the following scenes with Crowley’s book and a gallon of coffee at my side, I decided to make the following collation one of my blog entries this week. I’m not trying to win the Russell Award for posting early and posting often (if that in-joke still plays), but I realized that much of what follows has a short web-life. That is, I was going to keep this brief and tidy by linking us to these passages, but some have already disappeared and, perishable as news is, I believe the article I conclude with will not be available by the weekend. Mea culpa in advance for the length of this entry.

Though each of the following restates the story line, I’ll mention that Soulforce Equality Ride made Springfield’s Central Bible College a stop on their nationwide tour. I’m not interested in presenting all of this to stress how pro-gay rights I am in a week when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has made it pretty clear he isn’t. I don’t even like the language of “pro-” discourse as my white liberal guilt often arises as self-consciousness (ie. “Hey all my gay friends, I am so“pro-” you and your rights!”). I am interested in offering a case example (something we asked of Crowley) of how the divide in civil/civic discourse is partly temporal and results from a lack of postmodern agora—-places to stand that are both “inside” (inevitably) and “outside” (idealistically) the already colonized space of participants in a discourse (or, I suppose, “armed combatants in the eminent war of words”).

I’ve tried to offer a counter-balance of optimism (something else we asked of Crowley) by culling mention of other denominations, blogs from the “Equality bus,” and a newspaper passage about another Soulforce “event” where, seemingly, more productive civil discourse was achieved-—due partly to an agreement to share space (i.e. at Dordt College in what is listed as “Sioux Center,” Iowa, perhaps as a typographical conflation of Sioux City and a campus “Sioux Center.” Either way, I like the accidental emergence of “center” in this context).

In reprinting what follows, I’m don’t want to denigrate or simply “pick on” a place, its faculty, or people I know due to the decisions of its administrators, mission statements, policy rhetoric, etc. (Homosexuality is made coequal to gambling and drinking on pg. 3B; two days later it is equated to the “immorality of adultery” on pg. 1A). Instead, I’m interested in how both groups engage in a territorial rhetoric reminiscent of what we were reducing to absurdity in Crowley (i.e. “The Christians are coming! To arms, fellow liberals! Man the gates!”). I freely admit I’m on the Soulforce “side” yet question the approach of both sides in negotiating public and private space before any “densely articulated ideologies” can be leveraged.

From the CBC homepage, a well-publicized memo from Jim P. Vigil, Vice President for Student Development:

“Central Bible College is making preparations for a possible protest outside its campus, located at 3000 N Grant Ave., by members of the Soulforce Equality Ride. Despite this, the College will still hold a regular day of classes on March 12.
“In the fall of 2006, a representative of the Soulforce Equality Ride contacted Central Bible College to inform the College about the group’s bus tour schedule and their intention to hold a series of events on our campus.

“The Central Bible College reviewed the Soulforce Equality Ride information, their event plans, their materials from their web site and reports from 19 institutions who were confronted during last year’s Equality Ride tour. Last year during their first Equality Ride tour this group made stops at 19 campuses in which there were a total of ninety-nine arrests. This group has contacted Springfield Police Department notifying them of inevitable arrests on that day.

“After this review, Central Bible College decided to decline the request and the Equality Ride organization was informed of this decision. Central Bible College does not intend to allow these individuals to come onto our campus and offer the legitimacy of any kind of official forum. Despite the verbal and written decline, members of the Equality Ride still intend to visit Central Bible College on March 12.”


*I’ll only highlight “making preparations for a possible protest,” “19 institutions who were confronted,” and, of course, “the legitimacy of any kind of official forum.” I guess I’d also marvel at the irony of his surname being “Vigil.”

Consider, too, the shorter version as dispatched in an in-house email from CBC security and later leaked to the web. Note the ideological impasse delicately implied by “we would not change what we thought about the matter and we are not interested in a dialogue with them.”

From an in-house CBC security email:

“A group known as soulforce is coming to CBC on March 12, 2007. They sent a letter to the President expressing a desire to dialogue with our students about being Gay Christians. They do not like our CBC's statement on the homosexual lifestyle and want us to accept them as fellow Christians.

“They were sent a letter informing them that we would not change what we thought about the matter and we are not interested in a dialogue with them.

“They are coming any way and called the Chief of Police and told them they were coming and expected to be arrested.”


Consider, then, the only related blog entries I could find on the Soulforce website:

From Amy Brainer-Medillin, one of 52 Soulforce “equality riders,” blogging from the bus last week as it leaves stops in Madison and Milwaukee:

“For me personally, these two days in Madison and Milwaukee have served as a period of both rejuvenation and reflection. I recall the apathy we encountered at Notre Dame and ask myself whether prejudice is better served by hostility or by passivity – by a physical or verbal attack, for example, or by invisibility and silence. Can inaction be violent? After Notre Dame, I believe that it can – indeed, that the choice NOT to act, speak, welcome, listen, hear, think, reflect, question – is often the most violent and damaging choice of all. The absence of space is a psychological barbed wire fence, as limiting to the human spirit as any prison.

* * * *

“May questions and conversations like these multiply across and beyond the campus. May the students who spoke out so courageously call on that transformative sense of self as they use their bodies and voices to create space where none is granted.”

* * * *

From the same blog written this week as the writer, Abigail Reikow, left my hometown. (Please note that while the local media didn’t report it, a “common space” was offered by the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Springfield):

“It has only been over a week since we began and I already miss my family. That feeling of loss, however, was rectified today when the Equality Riders arrived at the First Unitarian Universalist Church here in Springfield, Missouri. We were welcomed to their congregation this morning, greeted with smiles and affirmed with a service titled “The Inherent Worth & Dignity of Me.” Together we sang, shared stories, and were even the privileged audience of a poetry reading from one of the congregation’s members. While my family rests miles away, it is comforting to know that family I had never met rests within pocketed communities that punctuate the plains of the Midwest.

“We were provided lunch following the service, including two vegan dishes to accommodate the dietary needs of certain riders, an effort that required certain members to stay awake half the night when they had realized that they had forgotten certain ingredients. A small detail it seems, but is helps to illuminate the way in which we were welcomed and embraced today during our visit. As we laughed about it over lunch, I looked around and realized how long it has been since I have been in a church that felt like home. I have spent half my life as a member of numerous congregations but always feeling like an outcast, even as a heterosexual. At twenty-two years old I am, after today, reconsidering my stances on serving as a member of a spiritual congregation.

“We returned to the church later this evening for a candle light vigil that Equality Riders opened in a singing of “Amazing Grace.” Our directors led a discussion concerning relentless non-violence and civil disobedience for those members who demonstrated interested in visiting Central Bible College with us tomorrow morning. This congregation, in realizing the lack of welcome we may possible face, will send some of its own members to stand beside us tomorrow outside school parameters. To emphasize our mission, philosophy, and the necessity of this movement, the directors revisited the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King by reading passages from “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” I turned around in my pew to witness the movement of spiritual energy that fluctuated throughout the room, finding comfort in the expression of a common conviction: truth is found in movement and transformation requires tension.”


**OK, so for Faith this example offers positive news from the Land of Lakes, for Maggie the continuing impact and affect of “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” for Chad an echo of the key question as to how discourse is “better served by hostility or by passivity,” for David a mention of yet another Christian denomination whose tenets I can’t explain, for Mark an example of discourse within the worship space of a congregation, a la your great Ted Kennedy example, for Court I deleted the gross misreading of Habermas at the end of the CBC security memo, for Aaron “Amazing Grace,” which I have the Man in Black singing somewhere, and for Donna, beyond the Madison reference and the power of blogs, a Massumi-lite reference in the final statement: “truth is found in movement and transformation requires tension.”

* * * *

I’ll conclude with a sample of the rhetoric from the purportedly objective staff writers at the local newspaper:


Anonymous staff writer for The Springfield News-Leader:

- Monday -- The approximately 30 Soulforce riders, as well as local supporters, will meet at 10:30 a.m. in front of Central Bible College, on the sidewalk on the north side of Norton Road, about one and a half blocks east of Grant Avenue. Following a brief news conference, some of the group members will step onto campus and risk arrest. The rest of the group will continue to stand off campus until at least noon. They will then move to Panera Bread, 2535 N. Kansas Expressway, at 2 p.m., where students are invited to talk with them.


(So, Faith, you can add Panera Bread to your list of postmodern agora, right after MySpace, Facebook, some blogs, and the Speaker’s Circle.)

And finally. . .

Linda Leicht, news and feature writer for the Springfield News-Leader:

Headline: Gay-rights group plans Monday visit to CBC:
But the college won't allow them onto school grounds, citing group's methods.


"About 30 Soulforce Equality riders will arrive Monday at Central Bible College hoping to have a "conversation" about the school's position on homosexuality.
They will more than likely be arrested, said one of the group's leaders

"They're so fearful of the issue of homosexuality that even one of us coming on the campus ... for a respectful dialogue" is unacceptable, said Curtis Peterson, 22, of New York.

"Ron Bradley, campus pastor, said the Assemblies of God Bible college is not taking an "antagonistic posture" toward the group, but they are not welcome on campus.
"We have no difficulty discussing this issue (of homosexuality)," said Bradley. Instead, it is the organization and its method that led to the decision, he said. "Their track record has been ignoble at best."

* * * *

"Soulforce is an organization started by the Rev. Mel White, who worked for evangelical Christians — including the Rev. Jerry Fallwell — before coming out as a gay man. Its mission: "... Freedom for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people from religious and political oppression through the practice of relentless nonviolent resistance."

"The first Soulforce Equality Ride was held in 2005. This year, the ride includes two buses, with about 30 riders on each, that will visit 32 schools around the country, including Baylor University, Bob Jones University, Brigham Young University and Central Bible College. The schools were selected because they are perceived as having policies that are homophobic.

"Bradley rejects that description of CBC. Homosexual activity, along with behavior such as drunkenness, adultery or theft — "any sort of behavior that is not Scripturally endorsed" — is subject to disciplinary action, he said.
But discussion of issues of sexuality is not off-limits at the school, Bradley said. "You have to," he said. "That's part of life."

"The school does not want the Soulforce riders to lead that conversation, however.
"Our concern, having studied their patterns," said Bradley, "is while their initial contact calls for dialogue, their pattern has been much more combative and on some campuses, deceptive."

* * * *

"Some will step onto campus, said Peterson, who has twice been arrested for trespassing during Soulforce activities. He explained that the action is "civil disobedience" as used during the civil rights movement.
Peterson, a gay man and the son of a Baptist preacher, has been in contact with Springfield police and is aware that they have been called by the college to keep the riders from coming onto college property.

"We go out of our way to be in contact with the police," he said. "We are not violent, and we always submit to arrest."

* * * *

"Not every college has refused to admit the Soulforce riders. Last week, the group visited the campus of Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa, for what one pastor described as "the biggest day of spiritual growth that campus went through all year."

"Although the school, affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church, originally declined to have the group on campus, when administrators realized that the visit would take place regardless, they decided to welcome the riders.

"We made the choice that it would be a more effective Christian witness to interact with them on campus," said Ken Boersma, vice president of student services.
The college provided faculty, staff and students who served as hosts for each individual rider as they accompanied them on campus for a day of planned activities.

"We decided to share our Christian commitment in a way of being gracious to them," Boersma said.

"The school presented its own position — that sexual activity outside of marriage, including sex with someone of the same gender, is grounds for dismissal — during a panel discussion attended by students and invited guests.

"The Rev. Aaron Baart, who pastors a church in the community, was among the panelists representing the school's position. He said he expected anger and deep emotion but discovered that the students, faculty and the Soulforce riders were all "very respectful."

"Following the campus activities, Baart invited the students and riders to continue the dialogue. "It is a reality in our culture," he said. "They have to learn how to dialogue on it in a constructive and respectful manner."

"Baart was pleased with the university's response. "I think Dordt did a great job," he said.

"Not everybody in the community was as welcoming. Three men in pickup trucks harassed the group at their hotel and defaced their bus by writing insults and obscenities.

"But that, too, offered the school an opportunity for Christian witness, Boersma said. In addition to the college issuing a public apology on behalf of the community, Dordt students washed the bus."


* * * *


So there's some broader coverage that suggests not all Christians, fundamentalist or otherwise (and I belong to none of these churches), are essentialist or hard-wired into the apocalypto-network. Likewise, not all of the Soulforce members are ipod-toting Abbie Hoffmans hellbent on getting arrested in each town (though, potentially, some may be). Here, too, is some glimmer of a successful space located within the supposed “opposition’s” territory.

Well, let me vow to never go on at this length again. I’m sorry if I wore out the Down Arrow on anyone’s keyboard.

Read you soon,

Kevin


* * *

Abstract and WC...

Hey guys and gals--I passed this out last night, sans works cited. I still can't get the Cmap to post, so if anyone has insight into that process, well, great.
*****************************


Lefevre, in the chapter from Invention as a Social Act where she deals with implications, brings up issues for the general classroom that become more salient if writing is to be considered more social. My research question regarding these classroom practices is, in general, what does the writing classroom look like if we choose to utilize her line of thinking? More specifically, what happens to composition as a discipline if we begin to consider writing and the teaching of writing as more of a social act, rather than the banking method?
I’m seeing several paths that seem to diverge from this line of thinking. One reaction is directly (to me at least) connected to the catchphrase that I’m seeing in the educational literature (Bain, Light) that we should, as educators, “meet them (students) where they are” and then scaffold them closer to where we would like them. If we are meeting writing students, particularly in first year courses, where they are, then (again, to me) Cultural Studies seems to be one of the places to go. I believe this is where Berlin goes as well, in chapters six and seven of R, P, &C. his mediums, that is, including radio, television, and film, rather than staying within written texts, seem to be connected. While his aims have seemed to high, the content, I think, is very justifiable, particularly given the research work going on in higher education.
The other path(s) that I see in connection with Lefevre’s ideas are the WAC and WID concepts. If we don’t buy the idea of cultural studies, (or even if we do) then the students’ needs must be addressed in their content areas. The social nature still remains, as does the writing, but within and across disciplines, which, again, comes up in the educational literature concerning student success. (Suy, others)
After tackling these ideas, my primary goal is a picture of the “social pedagogies” that would enliven a freshmen writing course. My goal here is to deal with the implications that Lefevre raises, and actually design the course that both maximizes the “sociality” of invention and writing instruction, as well as minimizes the issues that this design inherently brings with it—authorship issues, evaluation, etc.
I hope to be able to take these three ideas and somehow meld them into a useful shape—the shape of a freshmen writing course, complete with syllabus and general assignments, much the way Berlin presents his courses in R, P, & C.

Bain, K. What the best college teachers do. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2004
Bazerman, Charles & Russell, David R. Landmark Essays on Writing Across the Curriculum. Davis: Hermagoras Press. 1994.
Bean, John C. Engaging Ideas. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 2001.
Berlin, James A. Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures. West Lafayette: Parlor Press. 2003.
Hayakawa, S.I. Langiuage in Thought and Action.—other info coming soon.
LeFevre, Karen Burke. Invention as a Social Act. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. 1987.
Light, R. J. Making the most of college: Students speak their minds. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press. 2001.
McKeachie, W. J., & Svinicki, M. (Eds.) McKeachie’s teaching tips (12th ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 2006
McLeod, Susan H., Erica Miraglia, Margot Soven, Christopher Thaiss (Eds.) WAC for the New Millennium. Urbana: NCTE. 2001.
Salzmann, Zdenek. Language, Culture and Society: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology.—other info coming soon
Villanueva, Victor. (Ed.) Cross-Talk in Comp Theory. Urbana: NCTE. 2003

Bruno and Edith: Abstract and Bibliography

Hi,

I only had a copy of the following abstract for Dr. Strickland last night, though I did distribute my colorful if tiny CMAP, which I have attempted to include above. Also, Dr. S., I may have clipped the version 1.2 bibliography to my abstract and what follows is version 1.3 (a few more sources added).

* * * *





Agency within the “Silent Organization”:
Reassembling a Rhetoric of the Social in Wharton’s Age of Innocence.

Although it is commonplace to associate Edith Wharton with a literature of the social, critics have disagreed sharply as to how resolution in Wharton’s narratives either reinforces a deterministic naturalism or provides a rich critique of the “complex web of social forces” commonly ascribed to late naturalism. As early, defining critics of Wharton’s work, R.W.B. Lewis, Blake Nevius and Margaret B. McDowell each explicated The Age of Innocence (1920) to suggest that Newland Archer, as a surrogate for Wharton, can only glimpse “hieroglyphics” of the social and is too much a product of its “old decencies” to articulate an escape from—or destination outside—the hidebound New York of Wharton’s youth. Likewise, Donald Pizer, in his famous case for The Age of Innocence as a work of “perfected naturalism,” argues that Wharton’s novel “demonstrates the constraining power [of the social] over individual desire and destiny” (162).(1) Feminist critics (Showalter, 1985; Goodman, 1990; Erlich, 1992) have attempted to account for Wharton’s reification of the social as a result of Wharton’s attempts to engage and transcend—more Ellen Olenska than Newland Archer—the dominant male literary traditions, most notably the influence of her friend Henry James, in her effort to articulate “the social” as a construct and not an inescapable determinant of identity or gender.

I would argue that Wharton employs a rhetoric of the social to resolve in her fiction the struggle over agency and “fixity” we may observe in her letters, autobiography, and later criticism, especially French Ways and Their Meaning (1919) and The Writing of Fiction (1925), which bookend the writing of Age of Innocence. The recent work of Bruno Latour, particularly his view of actor-network-theory and how we assemble, disassemble and reconstruct the social, can illuminate ways in which Wharton offers agency to characters and objects that embody “the social” beyond symbolic projection. Without recasting Wharton as a proleptic ANT theorist, I will explore her attempts to move past an acceptance of the social as a unified force accountable for material consequences in terms of how Latour accounts for this history of an error in his sociology of the social. Wharton, as her letters and criticism reveal, was more interested in "tracing associations" that merely reproducing the social hieroglyphics, or the "silent organization" sans translation or analysis. Although Latour, ANT theorists, and some social-epistemic rhetoricians use literary language to describe networks outside the literary (primarily networks of science and technology), I am also proposing that actor-network-theory is well-suited for troubling the begged premise of the social in American literary naturalism and that Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, as one inheritor of the naturalist gaze, is well-suited for testing key assumptions of actor-network theory.


To provide context and exigency, I will draw on what I’ve termed “the establishment of the social” in the Wharton scholarship above. I will also focus on articles by Hoestaker (2005) and Luckhurst (2006) who have linked Latour to semiotic analysis and “scientifiction.” Additionally, I will respond to Singley’s appropriation of Bourdieu’s habitus (2003) as one means of articulating how “Wharton embraces fluid rather than fixed notions of culture in her fiction and life” (495). Finally, I will develop this “Latourian analysis” in dialogue with related poststructural influences (Jameson, 1981, 1992; Baudrillard, 1977), social-epistemic rhetoric (LeFevre, 1987; Berlin 1996), and social constructionist scholarship in American literary history (Budd, 1995; Grenier, 1993; Kaplan, 1988). To convey some of this dialogue, I have mapped a network of associations on the diagram I distributed (see above).


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(1) Pizer’s rhetoric, though foundational to the study of American literary naturalism, seems guilty of treating the social, as Latour suggests, “to be always already there” at Wharton’s disposal (Latour 8). This is clearest when Pizer asserts that “though it seldom expresses itself either in open prohibition or direct punishment in The Age of Innocence—the world that Archer describes as a “silent organization” of habit, custom, and assumption—exerts a web of compulsion that powerfully shapes and controls individual belief and behavior in the most vital areas of human experience” (Pizer 164).



Bibliography

Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulations (The Body, In Theory; Histories of Cultural Materialism). Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan, 1995.

Bell, Millicent. Edith Wharton and Henry James. New York, George Braziller, Inc., 1965.

Berlin, James A. Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Reconfiguring College English Studies. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor P., 2003.

Budd, Louis J. “The American Background.” The Cambridge Companion to American Realism and Naturalism: Howells to London. Ed. Donald Pizer. New York: Cambridge UP, 1995.

Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: U of California P, 1969 1950).

Erlich, Gloria C. The Sexual Education of Edith Wharton. Berkeley: U of California P, 1992.

Goodman, Susan. Edith Wharton: Friends & Rivals. Hanover, NH: Hanover UP of New England, 1990.

Grenier, Richard. “Society and Edith Wharton.” Commentary. 96.6 (1993): 48-53. A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton. Ed. Carol Singley. New York: Oxford UP, 2003.

Hostaker, Roar. “Latour—Semiotics and Science Studies.” Science Studies. 18.2 (2005): 5-25.

Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act.Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981.

---. Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP, 1991.

Kaplan, Amy. The Social Construction of American Realism. Chicago: University of Chicago P., 1988.

Kellogg, Grace. The Two Lives of Edith Wharton: The Woman and Her Work. New York: Appleton-Century P, 1965.

Knights, Pamela. “Forms of Disembodiment: The Social Subject in The Age of Innocence.” The Cambridge Companion to Edith Wharton. 20-46.

Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network- Theory. New York: Oxford UP, 2005.

---. We Have Never Been Modern. Trans. Catherine Porter. Boston: Harvard UP, 2006.

LeFevre, Karen Burke. Invention as a Social Act. Carbondale: Southern Ill. UP, 1987.

Lewis, R.W.B. Introduction. The Age of Innocence. Edith Wharton. Critical Edition. New York: Scribner’s, 1968: pp. xii-xiii.

---. Edith Wharton: A Biography. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.

Long, Lisa A. “Genre Matters: Embodying American Literary Naturalism.” American Literary History 19.1 (2007): 160-173.

Luckhurst, Roger. “Bruno Latour’s Scientifiction: Networks, Assemblages, and Tangled Objects." Science Fiction Studies. 33.1 (2006): 4-17.

Martin, Robert K. “Age of Innocence: Edith Wharton, Henry James, and Nathanial Hawthorne.” Henry James Review 21.1 (2000): 56-62.

McDowell, Margaret B. “Newland Archer’s Limited Views.” Edith Wharton. Boston: Twayne Pub., 1976.

Nevius, Blake. “The Low Rich Murmur of the Past.” Edith Wharton: Studies of Her Fiction. U of California P., 1953.

Nowlin, Michael. “Edith Wharton’s Higher Provincialism: French Ways for Americans and the Ends of The Age of Innocence.” Journal of American Studies. 38.1 (2004): 89-108.

Pizer, Donald. The Theory and Practice of American Literary Naturalism. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1993.

Sand, Andrea J. “Wharton’s The Age of Innocence.” Explicator. 62.1 (2003): 23-25.

Singley, Carol. “Bourdieu, Wharton and Changing Culture in The Age Of Innocence.” Cultural Studies. 17 (2003): 495-520.

Showalter, “The Death of a Lady (Novelist)” 1985 (still locating*).

Thomas, J.D. “Tribal Culture, Pantomime, and the Communicative Face in Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence.” Edith Wharton Review 22.1 (2006): 1-5.

Wharton, Edith. The Age of Innocence: A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Candace Waid. New York: Norton, 2002.

---. A Backward Glance. New York: Scribner’s, 1934.

---. The Letters of Edith Wharton. Eds. R.W.B. Lewis, Nancy Lewis, and William R. Tyler. New York: Scribner’s, 1988.

---. Collected Stories: 1911-1937. Ed. Maureen Howard. New York: Library of America, 2001.

---. French Ways and Their Meanings. New York: Appleton, 1919.

---. The Reef. New York: Appleton, 1912.

---. The Writing of Fiction. New York: Scribner’s, 1925.


* * *

Research Question, Abstract, Concept Map Stuff, and Bibliography

Final Paper CMAP Analysis and Abstract

CMAP

My map shows me that I have a good sense of fiction’s historical tradition, both with its older roots—Poe’s unity of effect and Henry James’ “The Art of Fiction”—and its newer discourses (Madison Smart Bell, Charles Baxter, Rober Olen Butler). What this map clearly reveals, however, is a lack of texts on the social. Some of the material we have read in class might help me (LeFevre addresses creative writing, for instance), but I obviously have to find rhetorical/theoretical texts that help deepen my understanding of creative writing pedagogy and how the social might fit within such a pedagogy. The Anna Leahy edited text looks promising since it seems to reevaluate the creative writing classroom for the 21^st century.

Abstract

In her book Invention as a Social Act, Karen LeFevre writes, “While literary academicians and fiction writers are often wary of each other, one point on which both camps can agree is to be suspicious of anyone who talks about the need of readers.” LeFevre’s comments are both true and false. On the one hand, creative writing appears to resist the social. Landmark essays on creative writing, such as Frank O’Connor’s “The Lonely Voice,” buttress the notion of the creative artist as a shipwrecked soul, marooned from the rest of society. However, most contemporary literary writers have at least a passing familiarity with theory, as evidenced through the “moves” contemporary writers make or resist: an avoidance of closure, a resistance to epiphany, an embrace of playfulness, a disavowal of symbols, the joyous deconstruction of the author as know-it-all. Literary fiction, then, is deeply indebted to contemporary theory (though literary fiction tries to avoid didacticism). Why then do current notions of creative writing (invention, pedagogy, what-have-you) turn away from recognition of the social? How can the binary of individual artists vs. outside society be breached, made more complex? Thus, my tentative research question is as follows: how can contemporary notions of the “social” fit within a contemporary creative writing pedagogy?

Bibliography

Baxter, Charles. Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction. St. Paul: Graywolf, 1998.

Baxter, Charles, Peter Turchi, eds. Bringing the Devil to his Knees: The Craft of Fiction and the Writing Life. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2001.

Bell, Madison Smart. Narrative Design: Working with Imagination, Craft, and Form. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000.

Berlin, James. Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring College English Studies. West Lafayette: Parlor P, 2003.

Butler, Robert Olen. From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction. New York: Grove Press, 2006.

Cixou, Hélène. Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. New York: Columbia UP, 1994.

Gardner, John. The Art of Fiction. New York: Vintage, 1985.

James, Henry. “The Art of Fiction.” Tales of Henry James: The Texts of the Stories, the Author on His Craft, Background and Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1984.

Leahy, Anna, ed. Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom: The Authority Project. North Somerset, UK: Multilingual Matters, 2005.

LeFevre, Karen Burke. Invention as a Social Act. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1987.

May, Charles, E, ed. The New Short Story Theories. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 1994.

O’Connor, Frank. The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story. Hoboken: Melville House,

Poe, Edgar Allen. “The Philosophy of Composition.” Essays and Reviews. Ed. G. Richard Thompson. New York: Library of America, 1984.

---. “The Poetic Principle.” Essays and Reviews. Ed. G. Richard Thompson. New York: Library of America, 1984.

Sparks, Debra. Curious Attractions: Essays on Fiction Writing. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2005.

Court's Cmap, Abstract and Works Cited

I'm hoping that my Cmap is accessible--when I clcik on the question mark icon it takes me to it, and I hope that's the same for everyone else. I think I'm the only one using Thinkature instead of the other site, and that's probably the source of my woes. I also have the flu, so my thoughts are muddled--I'll do my best to be clear.

Preface to abstract: One thing that has interested me for quite some time is the role of the university within democracy. In terms of rhetoric and the social, we have seen this concern arise several times in the texts that we have read, specifically in terms of critical pedagogy. At the same time that this pedagogical role of rhetoric within democracy is being theorized, there is a sense that liberal democracy is itself being interrogated--we have seen this in the Crowley reading, of course, but I believe that Crowley's concern is part of a broader issue (the culture wars, of course, but there are other variations... the Habermas-Lyotard debate, for example, was largely couched in terms of the limits of Enlightenment positivism and liberalism). There is, then, an ongoing reconstitution of society, of the social, and here Latour's work is indispensable. For my research paper, I want to investigate the role critical pedagogy might continue to play in terms of the reconstituted social in terms of enacting democracy in the classroom. My research question, then, is given that rhetoric and democracy are intimately related, yet that the social is being reconstituted, what is the role of rhet/comp classrooms in serving as sites for enacting democracy?

Abstract:

The role of rhetoric is central to the liberal democracy of the United States. Rhetoric is used at all levels of government--it is used in crafting legislation, it is used to persuade juries and justices, it is used to persuade the country to go to war. An ability to engage rhetoric--to use it, critique it, synthesize it with one's own beliefs and past experiences--is arguably crucial to one's role as a citizen. This centrality of rhetoric, of language, in the enacting of democracy is thus a concern for those concerned with the teaching of rhetoric and language--as Gerald Graff asserts in his "Foreward" to Richard Ohmann's _English in America: A Radical View of the Profession_, "...whoever controls language controls the way we think and act. With the massive expansion of American democratic education in this country, school and college English teachers have considerable opportunity to shape the way young Americans talk, write, and think about the world. That is no doubt why the teaching of English and the humanities has become a major battleground in the recent war over culture" (ix). This "recent war of culture," however, has foregrounded critiques of liberal democracy from various corners. Sharon Crowley, for example, outlines what she sees as an emerging Christian fundamentalist hegemony which advocates values incompatible with those of liberal democracy, while Slavoj Zizek sees liberalism as hopelessly mired in capitalism, which is itself a fundamentalism. There is a challenge to liberal democracy on broader grounds--that of a critique of the Enlightenment project of modernity-- made to various degrees and ends by figures such as Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. Part of this critique involves the positing of the social construction of identity and of knowledge itself--philosophers of science such as Thomas Kuhn and Richard Rorty have engaged the social construction of scientific knowledge. Reason, liberalism, positivism--all are being interrogated. One might say that they have been exhausted, just as the social sciences have been exhausted in the view of Bruno Latour. Latour concedes that work within the social sciences has been productive, but the very success of these efforts has led to a point where constituents can not be separated from the social domain--the connections between these constituents have to be retraced, reconfigured, reconstituted in order for us to understand society as it now exists. As a point of departure, then, it seems productive to integrate Latour's Actor Network Theory and his ideas in _Reassembling the Social_ with those of critical pedagogy in order to address what role rhetoric and composition is to play in the enacting of democracy as the "war over culture" is waged in classrooms and other social spaces.

Critical pedagogy includes within several figures and their individual approaches. A survey of the most promising among them might prove productive to engaging the reassembled social in an effor to enact democracy. Paulo Freire's _Pedagogy of the Oppressed_ immediately comes to mind, as does a work highly iinfluenced by it, bell hooks' _Teaching to Transgress_. The _Rhetorical Democracy_ project headed by Gerard Hauser can contribute much, as can James Berlin's work, as well as work collected in _Composition and Resistance_, edited by C. Mark Haulbert and Michael Blitz. Other authors whose work in engaged pedagogy is to be considered include Andrea Greenbaum, Patricia Bizzell, Richard Ohmann and Gerald Graff. A related thread to consider is how the writer/rhetor can be regarded as the subject of contending social forces--this thread dovetails with other theories of social construction that have been considered and writers in this vein include Kurt Spellmeyer, David Bartholomae, and Karen Burke LeFevre.

Another thread that might be productive in exploring the intersection between the reassembled social and critical pedagogy is the role critical theory might explicitly play. One emergent quality of society in the past few decades has been the foregrounding of pluralism, though pluralism is arguably itself a democratic principle. Pluralism has played out in terms of identity politics and multiculturalism, and while these developments have proved problematic, an offshoot of each is the possibility of hybridized identities, such as Gloria Anzaldua's Mestiza identity in _La frontera_/_Borderlands_. Anzaldua, in fact, epitomizes the matrix of identity that exists between race, gender, class and sexual orienation (one might add ideology, as well). The hybrid--or even cyborg or post-human (Donna Haraway's and Lyotard's terms, respectively) is arguably the model citizen of the reassembled social: the hybrid serves as metaphor for what constitutes the reassembled society.

Works Cited:

Anzaldua, Gloria. La frontera/Borderlands. San Francisco : Aunt Lute Books, c1999.

Bartholomae, David. Writing on the Margins: Essays on Composition and Teaching. Boston : Bedford/St. Martins, c2005.

Berlin, James A. Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction In American Colleges 1900 1985. Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, c1987.

Berlin, James A. Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English, 1996.

Bizzell, Patricia. Academic Discourse and Critical Consciousness. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York :
Routledge, 1990.

Crowley, Sharon. Toward a Civil Discourse: Rhetoric and Fundamentalism. Pittsburgh, PA : University of Pittsburgh Press, c2006.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York : Continuum, 1986, c1970.

Graff, Gerald. Professing Literature: An Institutional History. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Greenbaum, Andrea. Emancipatory Movements in Composition. Albany : State University of New York Press, c2002.

Habermas, Jürgen. “Modernity—An Incomplete Project,” reprinted in The Anti-aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, edited by Hal Foster. Seattle: Bay Press, 1983.

Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press ; Cambridge, England : Polity Press, 1989.

Haraway, Donna. “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s,” reprinted in The Haraway Reader. New York : Routledge, 2004.

Hauser, Gerard A. and Amy Grim, Eds. Rhetorical Democracy: Discursive Practices of Civic Engagement: Selected Papers from the 2002 Conference of the Rhetoric Society of America. Mahwah, N.J. : Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003.

hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York : Routledge, 1994.

Hulbert, C. Mark and Michael Blitz, Eds. Composition and Resistance. Portsmouth, NH : Boynton/Cook, c1991.

Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1970

Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1993.

Latour, Bruno. Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press ; [Karlsruhe, Germany] : ZKM/Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, c2005.

LeFevre, Karen Burke. Invention As a Social Act. Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, c1987.

Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, c1984.

Ohmann, Richard. English in America: A Radical View of the Profession. New York : Oxford University Press, 1976.

Smit, David W. The End of Composition Studies. Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, c2004.

Spellmeyer, Kurt. Common Ground : Dialogue, Understanding, And The Teaching Of Composition. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice Hall, c1993.

Zizek, Slavoj. Welcome to the Desert of the Real!: Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates. London : Verso, 2002.

Borradori, Giovanna. Philosophy in the Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. Chicago: University of Chicago