In order to fully understand composition, we need to consider the role of circulation. Miller and Shepherd in their article "Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis or the Weblog" complicates some of the conversations we've already had about the field of composition. Writing that circulates in the public domain changes our understanding of audience. Academic writing is geared at one audience: the teacher. But, non-academic, vernacular writing posted to the Internet is reaching a wider audience that the writer feels both distant from and deeply connected to. As Miller and Shepherd write, "They are addressed to everyone and at the same time to no one" (1451). Thus, thinking about blogs here, the shift in audience also means we need a new understanding of community. Circulating writing digitally allows individual writers to understanding themselves in relation to a community: "The two former purposes function intrinsically, providing heightened understanding of self through communicating with others and confirmation that personal beliefs fit the social norms" (1456). This notion is not unlike Bruffee's notion of normal discourse. My question, though, is how this information can be used to help our various pedagogies. Writing blogs in an academic setting doesn't seem to necessarily have the same benefits.
Of course, technology plays an enormous role in both the field of composition and in the literacies people develop. While Selfe and Hawisher consider literacies within the global digital divide, Porter considers the ways technology influences our writing habits and processes. The typewriter, for example, required retyping when a mistake is made. Using the computer, however, makes writing more efficient and streamlined. Computers also change our composing spaces. They allow us to do our personal work from the comfort of our homes, which also reduces the face-to-face community interaction. But technology also complicates our notions of community and collaboration by establishing new connections that are introduced through new forms of communication: email and discussion groups. In fact, Porter concludes that the digital revolution can be attributed to the networked computer and the contexts it creates both socially and rhetorically and its impact on publishing practices.
Likewise, Selfe and Hawisher conclude weatlh, education, and basic computer skills play an enormous role on whether or not an individual will develop digital literacies. In addition, where individuals are located both locally and geographically has an enormous influence of their access to technology and their access to opportunites, like blogging, that would build digital literacy. In order to understand literacies and the way writing gets published and circulating online requires seeing literacy as a set of practices and values that are situated historically, culturally, and materially.
Thinking about writing in the public domain blurs the distinction between public and private writing and complicates our previous understanding of composition.
Short answer: composition would not exist were it not for circulation.
Longer answer: think about it. Without circulation, there is no reading/writing public. There are no communal standards of grammar, design, media, etc. There can be no issue of private vs. public, because there is no public. I mean, there is a public, but there is no public writing/composition. And without public writing, can there be private writing? If we have no environment of writing or composing (in which each of us is a participant by means of circulation), then we have no understanding of what writing and composing are. If there are no books, magazines, emails, blog posts, love letters, etc., there is no writing, no idea of writing, no need for writing. Circulation is the foundation of composition. Another way to say it is that composition without circulation is an exercise in solipsism.
Now, since we do have circulation, I suppose it's a good idea to talk about how different kinds of circulation play different kinds of roles in composition. And I think the issue of circulation is an interesting one in light of the reading for the week, because although they all clearly deal with circulation, they do not do so explicitly, nor would I immediately see their relationship with that term right away. So kudos to the asker.
One audience to consider for this question is the field of composition scholars. The intro and chapter on activity theory show us that texts in circulation are dependent on the activity systems in which (and across which) they are circulated. For comp. scholars, then, we can use activity theory and the case study of the Irish history class as a way to think about the different systems our students are operating in and how the texts (i.e. surface markings) and contexts (e.g. discussions, activities, assignments, conferences, etc.) of our classes might be interpreted, managed, dealt with, or applied by students in our class who live in those different systems. Which on our part requires more attention and research into the different systems that are out there.
Leigh did a better job speaking to the other two articles than I can, so I'll just leave it at that for my answer.
I fundamentally agree with Stephen’s succinct theory that “composition would not exist if it were not for circulation.” Indeed, Bazerman and Russell contend that without circulation, composition is dead (because activity theory is predicated on the relationship between texts and between texts and composer/audiences and rejects the notion that any composition can be read in isolation). This is something I greatly agree with because composition itself, as the production of texts, seems to be born of an intrinsic human need to put pieces of the self down on some sort of material, to leave something behind, to be remembered, to be seen, and thus, to be known (Miller and Shepherd). So, it seems that circulation, putting that text or composition out “there” (wherever “there” might be), is the final step in any composing process. As Miller and Shepherd illustrate, this raises extremely important questions about what sorts of texts should be produced and circulated. Like Leigh, I’m simultaneously interested in and skeptical of using blogs in an academic setting. As the authors illustrate, blogging fulfills a psychological and sociocultural exhibitionist need, something they argue is the result of the current cultural moment. Though I do use blogging (through an external source) to fulfill the “journaling” requirement for my class, because I teach strands that are heavily influenced by digital media, I always have to be careful to post topics or ask questions that allow the students to voice their opinions, but not tell me things about them I don’t want to know. If given the opportunity, they will overshare – something that tends to be the tendency with all blogs. However, I prefer blogging to the old school, comp notebook journal, because it uses a public space, allowing them to have public opinions and to voice those opinions beyond “the boundaries of the classroom.” Yet, like Leigh states, it’s still for an academic purpose. So, I wonder if there’s any way to negotiate the public space of blogging and the private (exclusive) setting of the classroom. Though I try (desperately) to break down the walls that separate the writing my students do for my class and the “real world,” academia, at the undergraduate level at least, privileges the “context as container” notion that Russell and Yanez discuss in their chapter. Sadly, I don’t think this is something that can be changed in a system that values the numerical importance of a GPA. Grades are, after all, my students’ primary motive.
Circulation is all tied up in the crazy network of subjects, exigencies, conventions, resources, and more that makes up composition. Circulation should be considered alongside audience—circulation can, at some points, help us clarify our audience. I agree with Leigh that “writing that circulates in the public domain changes our understanding of audience.” Personally, I think blogging in academic setting can produce the same sort of self-clarification and social validation that perhaps is reached by non-academic blogging. For instance, checking back through the comp. theory blog posts for any given week can help me see how my thoughts aligned with others’ responses, providing “confirmation that personal beliefs fit with social norms” (or, less attractively, perhaps confirming the opposite). What I write on an academically focused blog tends to be my personal thoughts on academic material, which I would argue still can help me understand myself and my own composition in relation to a community. My blog posts for the course do this in a way my SRRs don’t, due entirely to the widened audience and exchange the blog’s public circulation provides.
I like Stephen’s move “to talk about how different kinds of circulation play different kinds of roles in composition.” Circulation seems to play the role of gatekeeper in composition. Leigh mentioned Selfe & Hawisher’s discussion of digital literacy being dependent on opportunities. S & H’s description of “true access” names factors that affect it: “computers and connections, capacity, trust, appropriate technology, content, affordability, local economics, legal and policy framework, demographics, and political empowerment” (1526). The results and assumed value of a composition is often dependent on how something is circulated. Additionally, true access to a variety of global, digital circulation methods and circulated content is often assumed necessary for production of compositions with assumed value. For example, if I circulate an article I’ve written on clowns playing banjos by posting it on my personal blog, emailing it to random people, and leaving print copies on cars parked at Publix, the article will probably be assumed by recipients to have little value. However, if “Clowns Playing Banjos” is circulated by publication in a peer-reviewed clown magazine, it will be received outwardly by the readership as holding some value. Also, my circulation goal will affect my whole writing process, because circulation informs the rhetorical work a composition can do.
I think Elizabeth's point about cultural capital in circulation is an important one. There is a perception of value at work in how far and how deeply texts circulate, especially digitally. The sea of information that exists on the internet is such that to get recognition requires hoping for the best and relying on the crowd to somehow discover you (usually by blogging about cats and recipes), or hitching your wagon to an already burning star on the web (a blog aggregater like HuffPo). Because there is so much out there, readers assume that the bulk of it is worthless and rely on arbiters to find "good" stuff: either friends, the anonymous crowd, or already established media sites. A new blog springs into existence every second and there is little chance of most of them finding broad circulation.
What is interesting to me is the volume of content that goes onto the internet that, paradoxically, creators don't want circulated. How many horror stories do we hear about people posting compromising pictures on Facebook, or writing defamatory screeds on their blogs, or attacking friends, family, and coworkers on a web forum. Closer to home, some got into a little trouble in recent memory by hosting a Facebook group dedicated to all the stupid things their students said or did (while stupidly leaving the group open to the public...). It is as though, when composing, some people definitely desire circulation but only a limited, safe kind, which is basically impossible. I think what digital technology has done is eliminated the idea that publication can be local and small-scale. There is always the chance that your creation will catch fire and be spread across the whole planet. This is great for people who want their work recognized... and terrible for people who weirdly want both recognition and privacy.
In _Nexus_ Mark Buchanan writes: "No amount of information at the level of the individual species or economic agent can hope to reveal the patterns of organization that make the collective function as it does." Buchanan goes on to argue that what we need to be paying attention to is the "delicate design of the entire network." This argument is grounded on the idea that there are ways to understand networks regardless of their specific components -- ie the materials that comprise them or or circulate through them. Often referred to at the "small-worlds" idea, implicit to this argument is that there is a "deep truth" to be reached that illuminates an “innate intelligence” of networks -- a way clarifying what otherwise appears as "mind-numbing complexity."
Well, what does this have to do with circulation? I’ll admit that while on one hand I’m tempted to clumsily reflect on the serendipity of circulation, our readings for this week illustrate for me the ways in which circulation is neither serendipitous nor determined. Circulation is, however, a topic that requires a look beyond the composing practices of the individual and instead to the multiple paths of circulation and the actors in this circulation.
When Selfe and Hawisher make their 5th observation and draw on Gidden's structuration theory, they bring to light the ways in which unintended consequences are not synonymous with serendipity. Drawing our attention to the ways that people "both shape, and are shaped by, the social systems within which they live," Giddens enables Selfe and Hawisher to bring together structure and process. While neither is independent of the other, structure and process remain tethered in a way that Stephen points out is mutually constitutive. Here, the process being that of circulation and the structure being the paths of circulation.
The erratic and asymmetrical nature of these paths -- in terms of both speed and actual distance -- is most clear in Selfe and Hawisher's examination of circulation across the global divide. However, Miller and Shepherd approach this same relationship from a somewhat different perspective when they write that the generic conventions of blogs enable them to function as “a site of relative stability." In the context of this post, then, we could see how genre is perhaps a communal exercise in developing organizational structures that stabilize -- structures such as those discussed by Buchanan that are actually not “mind-numbingly complex” and do have an innate intelligence.
We perhaps also see this desire in the contradictions that are experienced by "Big Picture People" in general education. Here, Russell and Yanez write: "We need a way of going beyond specific interpersonal interactions (the unit of analysis of transmission models) to understand ways broader social interactions, mediated through various tools, condition interpersonal interactions." While Stephen and Logan have already mentioned the role of activity theory in this, genre emerges as a way of participating in these seemingly unwieldy activity systems -- bringing some “stability” to them. However, even when we look closer at genres and the activity systems that they participate in, we see the circulation of texts through these systems as at once determined by and determining of these systems. So, according to Bazerman, as genres "form systems that follow and mediate the work pathways within and among activity systems," aren't they also formed by the pathways they mediate?
Finally, this brings me to one potential way of reading Porter’s biographical lead-up to what he sees as the need for a theory that "looks closely at the socialized writing dynamic and the conglomerate rhetorical dynamic of readers, writers, and users.” Perhaps, his experience in this “socialized writing dynamic” is itself an illustration of the ways in which his experiences with the circulation of his own texts participated in both the emergence of new genres, but also reflected a more broad social need to stabilize through conventions of composition what might have otherwise felt like an unstable writing environment, or network of circulation.
Short answer (punning off of Stephen’s post): we would not exist were it not for circulation.
I was fascinated by Miller and Shepherd’s article, specifically the discussion of the cultural factors that led to the emergence of blogs. If genres are always “sites of contention between stability and change” (1464, Berkenkotter and Huckin), then some rupture in the stability led to the emergence of the new blog genre. The authors conclude that the blog genre is almost a backlash against a postmodern philosophy which emphasizes “plasticity” and “multiplicity of the self” (1469). They argue that the distinctions between public and private, mediated and unmediated experience, have blurred so much that we found ourselves within a “culture of simulation” (1470). Within this culture, voyeurism and exhibitionism emerged as legitimate subject positions (1457) and nothing is real unless it is viewed by others. The private is only real once it is public and vice versa; thereby, we have a difficult time distinguishing between the real and the simulated.
Within this frazzled and schizophrenic non-reality, blogs emerged as a way of constructing a stable, fixed, and identifiable self. The blog is an attempt to locate the real. This is sort of the modern version of Plato’s cave allegory, one of the founding assumptions of Western philosophy that postmodernism rejects. Blogs, therefore, are an attempt to “establish the self against the forces of fragmentation, through expression and connection, through disclosure” (1469).
In a interesting but troubling way, composition returns to expressionism—this desire to speak the true, the transcendent self into being. Much like pop music, blogs are efforts to define and justify the self as unique and part of a community that recognizes and appreciates individuality. There is an odd tension, as the authors point out, between the individual and the communal in the blog world. Listening to current popular (and irritating) songs on the radio reveals this familiar expressionist value of speaking the self. The artist encourages ‘You’ (speaking to some a member of her community perhaps?) to love yourself, recognize your self worth, etc. More subtly and artfully, blogs fill a similar function. I agree with Miller and Shepherd that blogs contribute to the “art of the self,” to the American fascination with defining who we are. And perhaps this new blog genre was necessary at a time when our identity was less clearly defined than ever.
While the popularity of blogs is indisputable, the totality of cyber-English seems to raise a different concern when it comes to circulation and composition. Selfe and Hawisher call it the “linguistic imperialism of English.” If one must have knowledge of English to have real access to technology, how democratic is technology? On one level, circulation seems to encourage community-building and self-hood, but on the other hand there are ideologies (sometimes pernicious colonial and capitalist agendas) that travel alongside these seemingly democratic technologies.
Elizabeth's point that circulation should be considered alongside audience is well taken, and it echoes my ideas about the ways writing is inherently social and communicative. Circulation is a key corollary or sidecar to audience—if writing is not put out there, it's not read, and if it's not read, it's dead. Even if it's only circulated back to the writer (as when I recently read my own truly horrible and embarrassing adolescent poetry), composition seems to demand or require at least the possibility of an audience.
So much of the academic writing I read seems to be intended for the amorphous and imperious teacher-reader who constantly seeks to find, harangue, and lay waste to errors of usage, grammar, and critical thought. My students' papers, especially their in-class essays and longer academic papers, often seem devoid of any identifiable writer's voice and aimed at some vague and generic audience. However, their journal responses, composed on on computers and submitted online, are often full of quirky comments, ironic observations, questions addressed to me—really me, Ms. Spradlin, not some nebulous Teacher—and to themselves. The titles they give these responses to the literature they've read are sometimes humorous or demonstrative of their feelings at the time they were composed (such as, "THE LAST JOURNAL EVERRRRRR!!!!!"), and the tone of many of these writings is recognizable as the students' own, reminiscent of the voices I hear in class. This discrepancy between the dry-as-dust, monotone essays and papers and the lively, personal journal responses seems to result from my students' perceptions of the circulation of these writings (which is based on the means of composing and submission of the different texts). It seems to me that my students perceive that the essays and papers are circulated only within our closed academic environment—only to The Teacher—and that the journals are more like blogs and (potentially) circulated to the whole of the Interwebz.
Miller and Shepherd's meticulous discussion of the advent of the blog genre illuminates the reasons for my students' distinctly different ways of writing in the two modes, essay and journal. The idea that writing online offers both the intensification of self through public disclosure and the apparent privacy of virtual communication explains precisely how and why people tell so many secrets online. Circulation makes both the connection and community and the personal expression and self-construction of blogs possible. Without the audience and the means to reach it, the (apparently contradictory) functions of blogs could not be fulfilled. Old-school diaries and journals may have been written, as Miller and Shepherd suggest, with an eye to a possible audience other than the writer herself, but that audience could only be a mere glimmer in the diarist's eye; bloggers have a built-in potential audience from their first posts and links.
Selfe and Hawisher's case studies also suggest that circulation and audience are key factors in developing digital literacies. Both Dipo and Pengfei sought out friends who used computers, both used computers to communicate with their families and friends, both used their computers to do school work and to create and access and circulate various texts for various audiences. Porter's forays into composing with computers were socially situated in labs and with groups of colleagues who were exploring similar activities and possibilities.
So ditto Stephen's short answer: Without circulation, composition would not exist.
As those before me have noted, composition and circulation are inextricably linked. What I think is also intriguing is the relationship between composition and kairos and how this relationship affects circulation. Miller and Shepherd describe kairos as “both the sense in which discourse is understood as fitting and timely—the way it observes propriety or decorum—and the way in which it can seize on the unique opportunity of a fleeting movement to create new rhetorical possibility” (1452). That kairotic moment that a composition responds to is affected by the available means of circulation. How that composition is circulated, and by what vehicle, dictates how an audience understands the text. For example, Miller and Shepherd refer to the student who “had only told a few friends about her blog and ‘didn’t intend for it to reach a wider audience’” (1450). In this situation, kairos was in action, provoking the student to respond to a particular situation. For one reason or another, she created a blog and its content; she created discourse which seized an opportunity for rhetoric. The blog provided this student the opportunity to respond, and, as a result, her audience became much more than just herself and a few friends: her blog caught the attention of the FBI. The contents of her blog circulated beyond herself and beyond her intended audience. Her composition, which materialized as a result of the effects of kairos, eventually circulated to the authorities. This example demonstrates how responding to a particular kairoitc moment can be complciated, especially if the composer is creating texts and discourse that could in fact circulate to a larger audience, which then in turn creates a larger context. The interconnected relationship between kairos, composition, and circulation is networked and very complicated, and should therefore be analyzed more critically by composers.
Kat's point is particularly interesting, especially within the context of circulation. I've also had a similar experience with my student papers vs my student blogs. No matter how much I push them to consider a specific audience, even in our expose' assignment where they have to actually choose a publication their piece would appear in, their papers are often quite vague. Their blogs, or even sometimes their discussion board posts on Blackboard (although much rarer) is often loud, jovial, irreverent, and introspective.
I think circulation even goes back to our previous entries on collaborative writing. Bruffee pointed out that writing must have a conversation, it must have this rhetorical context, a reciprocated audience, otherwise it's dead. Even when we write to ourselves, we are engaging ourselves in a conversation, one that could sometimes be fruitful but will often be myopic and shortsighted. The Internet and other technologies open up this door, and help us understand the intertextuality of activity systems in a very dynamic way.
Miller and Shepherd's look at the blog serve to illustrate how this emergent textual circulation can be both empowering and largely misunderstood. Why does someone feel more secure writing explicitly private information on a LiveJournal blog open to the millions of LJ viewers on the Internet, but is terrified at sharing such information in a personal essay in their ENC1101 class? As Miller and Shepherd point out, it is at this intersection of private and public spheres that our identity is most troubled and called into question. Circulation on the Internet can help affirm our identities, but posting our blogs within a sea of other blogs can also work to shroud them within a dizzying cloud of HTML. No matter what type of text it may be, the audience is always perceived, even if said audience doesn't participate.
The Selfe and Hawisher case study showed very interesting correlations between this digital literacy and personal identity. While the point was made that the "digital divide" is a weak term, one that can't be understood without taking into account wealth, geography, location, education, and other factors, it also helps one look at emergent identities without the global Internet culture. Dipo, in an advantageous position where he had a computer in his home at an early age, first took to it as a means of playing games. Pengwei, only getting access to computers later on in college, used it as a communication and learning tool. In modern times, when video games are routinely played online, to the point where they have their own local/global communities, or when communication and learning tools exist within thousands of fragmented forums and networking sites, both individuals may find their sense of identity molding with these communities as much as their own geographic ones. If Dipo found World of Warcraft before he found Microsoft Excel, would his identity have been different? If Pengwei found Facebook before he found engineering software, would his identity have been different? At what point does this circulation turn identity into an analogous concept?
I think that is a question that modern composition classes try to answer. We ask students to understand writing in different genres, do different audiences, using different rhetorical tools so that we can give them the foundation to engage and impact the intertextual circulation running rampant throughout our world. Today that circulation manifests itself on the Internet, the digital literacy center of the planet, and our students need to know the language so they can have the agency to engage in discourse with these literacies.
Well, it seems like Stephen is the man of the hour this week, since I'm far from the first to call on his post in my own response. In my case, I take his point that we should talk about different kinds of circulation. To add to that, I think a fundamental question when we discuss circulation is "circulation of what?"
In terms of composition, the most obvious answer to this question is circulation of texts. And while we're on the subject of texts, I have to take issue with Bazerman and Russell's definition of texts as "alphanumeric marks on surfaces." This definition limits the possibilities of the term considerably. Not only does it exclude images, but it would seem to discount digital, and especially networked, items from being considered texts. I'm typing this blog entry into a text box (oh, hey ...) but it will look different once I finish and post it. And even if my own computer monitor might be considered a surface (although, I find this questionable since I'm not inscribing something onto the glass itself, but rather, as it were, typing something "in" the screen) then these alphanumeric marks are not limited to a single "surface," but rather available to multiple surfaces through the connection offered by network technology.
So, that was a long adventure into the nature of texts. Long story short (too late) I would advocate heavily for a more malleable definition of "text." However, I would also argue that it is not only texts that circulate, and not only textual circulation that we might be concerned with in composition.
Russell and Yanez offer a case study that seems particularly productive to an exploration of what else might circulate in the world of composition. For one thing, people circulate. In this case, most obviously, people circulate through different writing contexts. Beth moved between high school writing, journalistic writing, and academic historical writing. Genres also seem to have circulation. For example, the "book review" takes on new meanings and purposes as it circulates through different contexts and in the hands of different writers (and readers). Indeed, it seems possible that any of the constituents of the activity system might be able to circulate.
Selfe et al. also seem to address the idea of the circulation of people. The geographical, linguistic, and technological circulation (although, also, the circulation of technology into locations and to different people, of course) seems to be an important factor in their discussion of the digital divide.
Miller and Shepperd emphasize that the blog phenomenon seems to be the result of the synergy between a particular cultural moment and a technological one. At a time when the divide between private and public was already breaking down, internet technology offered a way for intensely private thoughts to be circulated in a highly public manner. In this case, it does seem to be the increased mobility of texts, which is to say its circulation, that seems to be the key type of circulation here. Also at play in the blogging situation is that the means of circulation became available much more widely. With the advent of easy blogging software, anyone with an internet connection and the ability to type could theoretically circulate to millions without the mediation of television producers, book or periodical publishers, etc.
Overall, it seems that Activity Theory's focus on contexts and how different constituents of an activity system may move between and among contexts is tied to an idea of complex and multiple circulation.
It seems to me that technology influences circulation and circulation influences genre, all of which play a role in composition. One of the questions for the writer, especially those who wish to reach the masses, is how to reach the widest audience in the least amount of time. New technologies create opportunities to increase circulation (printing press, movies, radio, television, internet). Porter writes, “From the scenic perspective, writing is not only the words on the page, but it also concerns mechanisms for production (for example, the writing process, understood cognitively, socially, and technologically); mechanisms for distribution or delivery (for example, media); invention, exploration, research, methodology, and inquiry procedures; and questions of audience, persuasiveness, and impact. From the scenic/contextual perspective, writing technologies play a huge role—especially in terms of production (process) and distribution (delivery).” Of course, as new technologies arise there is a possibility for new genres become circulated as well, which is the case with the weblog (Miller & Shepherd). When new genres arrive new complications for composition may also arise. Leigh points us toward this issue in Miller and Shepherd when she quotes, “They are addressed to everyone and at the same time to no one" (1451). So the genre of the weblog, which is a result of opportunities for wide and fast circulation, has complicated the field with new ways of considering (or not considering) audience in writing. This week’s readings also made me think back to the discussion last week about what literacy is doing to us. I think another way of framing this question would be what is technology or what is genre doing to us. Miller and Shepherd also address the genre of reality in television and blogging. With the rise in popularity of the reality genre, society is becoming more voyeuristic according to Shepherd and Miller, so much so that ways of knowing have shifted, “Seeing is knowing, not just believing.” Of course, without the wide circulation of the reality genre in composition (visual and print), this shift may not have occurred on such a wide scale (it seems almost epidemic at times). This of course brings us back to the idea that circulation complicates composition.
In order to fully understand composition, we need to consider the role of circulation. Miller and Shepherd in their article "Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis or the Weblog" complicates some of the conversations we've already had about the field of composition. Writing that circulates in the public domain changes our understanding of audience. Academic writing is geared at one audience: the teacher. But, non-academic, vernacular writing posted to the Internet is reaching a wider audience that the writer feels both distant from and deeply connected to. As Miller and Shepherd write, "They are addressed to everyone and at the same time to no one" (1451). Thus, thinking about blogs here, the shift in audience also means we need a new understanding of community. Circulating writing digitally allows individual writers to understanding themselves in relation to a community: "The two former purposes function intrinsically, providing heightened understanding of self through communicating with others and confirmation that personal beliefs fit the social norms" (1456). This notion is not unlike Bruffee's notion of normal discourse. My question, though, is how this information can be used to help our various pedagogies. Writing blogs in an academic setting doesn't seem to necessarily have the same benefits.
ReplyDeleteOf course, technology plays an enormous role in both the field of composition and in the literacies people develop. While Selfe and Hawisher consider literacies within the global digital divide, Porter considers the ways technology influences our writing habits and processes. The typewriter, for example, required retyping when a mistake is made. Using the computer, however, makes writing more efficient and streamlined. Computers also change our composing spaces. They allow us to do our personal work from the comfort of our homes, which also reduces the face-to-face community interaction. But technology also complicates our notions of community and collaboration by establishing new connections that are introduced through new forms of communication: email and discussion groups. In fact, Porter concludes that the digital revolution can be attributed to the networked computer and the contexts it creates both socially and rhetorically and its impact on publishing practices.
Likewise, Selfe and Hawisher conclude weatlh, education, and basic computer skills play an enormous role on whether or not an individual will develop digital literacies. In addition, where individuals are located both locally and geographically has an enormous influence of their access to technology and their access to opportunites, like blogging, that would build digital literacy. In order to understand literacies and the way writing gets published and circulating online requires seeing literacy as a set of practices and values that are situated historically, culturally, and materially.
Thinking about writing in the public domain blurs the distinction between public and private writing and complicates our previous understanding of composition.
Short answer: composition would not exist were it not for circulation.
ReplyDeleteLonger answer: think about it. Without circulation, there is no reading/writing public. There are no communal standards of grammar, design, media, etc. There can be no issue of private vs. public, because there is no public. I mean, there is a public, but there is no public writing/composition. And without public writing, can there be private writing? If we have no environment of writing or composing (in which each of us is a participant by means of circulation), then we have no understanding of what writing and composing are. If there are no books, magazines, emails, blog posts, love letters, etc., there is no writing, no idea of writing, no need for writing. Circulation is the foundation of composition. Another way to say it is that composition without circulation is an exercise in solipsism.
Now, since we do have circulation, I suppose it's a good idea to talk about how different kinds of circulation play different kinds of roles in composition. And I think the issue of circulation is an interesting one in light of the reading for the week, because although they all clearly deal with circulation, they do not do so explicitly, nor would I immediately see their relationship with that term right away. So kudos to the asker.
One audience to consider for this question is the field of composition scholars. The intro and chapter on activity theory show us that texts in circulation are dependent on the activity systems in which (and across which) they are circulated. For comp. scholars, then, we can use activity theory and the case study of the Irish history class as a way to think about the different systems our students are operating in and how the texts (i.e. surface markings) and contexts (e.g. discussions, activities, assignments, conferences, etc.) of our classes might be interpreted, managed, dealt with, or applied by students in our class who live in those different systems. Which on our part requires more attention and research into the different systems that are out there.
Leigh did a better job speaking to the other two articles than I can, so I'll just leave it at that for my answer.
I fundamentally agree with Stephen’s succinct theory that “composition would not exist if it were not for circulation.” Indeed, Bazerman and Russell contend that without circulation, composition is dead (because activity theory is predicated on the relationship between texts and between texts and composer/audiences and rejects the notion that any composition can be read in isolation). This is something I greatly agree with because composition itself, as the production of texts, seems to be born of an intrinsic human need to put pieces of the self down on some sort of material, to leave something behind, to be remembered, to be seen, and thus, to be known (Miller and Shepherd). So, it seems that circulation, putting that text or composition out “there” (wherever “there” might be), is the final step in any composing process.
ReplyDeleteAs Miller and Shepherd illustrate, this raises extremely important questions about what sorts of texts should be produced and circulated. Like Leigh, I’m simultaneously interested in and skeptical of using blogs in an academic setting. As the authors illustrate, blogging fulfills a psychological and sociocultural exhibitionist need, something they argue is the result of the current cultural moment. Though I do use blogging (through an external source) to fulfill the “journaling” requirement for my class, because I teach strands that are heavily influenced by digital media, I always have to be careful to post topics or ask questions that allow the students to voice their opinions, but not tell me things about them I don’t want to know. If given the opportunity, they will overshare – something that tends to be the tendency with all blogs. However, I prefer blogging to the old school, comp notebook journal, because it uses a public space, allowing them to have public opinions and to voice those opinions beyond “the boundaries of the classroom.” Yet, like Leigh states, it’s still for an academic purpose. So, I wonder if there’s any way to negotiate the public space of blogging and the private (exclusive) setting of the classroom. Though I try (desperately) to break down the walls that separate the writing my students do for my class and the “real world,” academia, at the undergraduate level at least, privileges the “context as container” notion that Russell and Yanez discuss in their chapter. Sadly, I don’t think this is something that can be changed in a system that values the numerical importance of a GPA. Grades are, after all, my students’ primary motive.
Circulation is all tied up in the crazy network of subjects, exigencies, conventions, resources, and more that makes up composition. Circulation should be considered alongside audience—circulation can, at some points, help us clarify our audience. I agree with Leigh that “writing that circulates in the public domain changes our understanding of audience.” Personally, I think blogging in academic setting can produce the same sort of self-clarification and social validation that perhaps is reached by non-academic blogging. For instance, checking back through the comp. theory blog posts for any given week can help me see how my thoughts aligned with others’ responses, providing “confirmation that personal beliefs fit with social norms” (or, less attractively, perhaps confirming the opposite). What I write on an academically focused blog tends to be my personal thoughts on academic material, which I would argue still can help me understand myself and my own composition in relation to a community. My blog posts for the course do this in a way my SRRs don’t, due entirely to the widened audience and exchange the blog’s public circulation provides.
ReplyDeleteI like Stephen’s move “to talk about how different kinds of circulation play different kinds of roles in composition.” Circulation seems to play the role of gatekeeper in composition. Leigh mentioned Selfe & Hawisher’s discussion of digital literacy being dependent on opportunities. S & H’s description of “true access” names factors that affect it: “computers and connections, capacity, trust, appropriate technology, content, affordability, local economics, legal and policy framework, demographics, and political empowerment” (1526). The results and assumed value of a composition is often dependent on how something is circulated. Additionally, true access to a variety of global, digital circulation methods and circulated content is often assumed necessary for production of compositions with assumed value. For example, if I circulate an article I’ve written on clowns playing banjos by posting it on my personal blog, emailing it to random people, and leaving print copies on cars parked at Publix, the article will probably be assumed by recipients to have little value. However, if “Clowns Playing Banjos” is circulated by publication in a peer-reviewed clown magazine, it will be received outwardly by the readership as holding some value. Also, my circulation goal will affect my whole writing process, because circulation informs the rhetorical work a composition can do.
I think Elizabeth's point about cultural capital in circulation is an important one. There is a perception of value at work in how far and how deeply texts circulate, especially digitally. The sea of information that exists on the internet is such that to get recognition requires hoping for the best and relying on the crowd to somehow discover you (usually by blogging about cats and recipes), or hitching your wagon to an already burning star on the web (a blog aggregater like HuffPo). Because there is so much out there, readers assume that the bulk of it is worthless and rely on arbiters to find "good" stuff: either friends, the anonymous crowd, or already established media sites. A new blog springs into existence every second and there is little chance of most of them finding broad circulation.
ReplyDeleteWhat is interesting to me is the volume of content that goes onto the internet that, paradoxically, creators don't want circulated. How many horror stories do we hear about people posting compromising pictures on Facebook, or writing defamatory screeds on their blogs, or attacking friends, family, and coworkers on a web forum. Closer to home, some got into a little trouble in recent memory by hosting a Facebook group dedicated to all the stupid things their students said or did (while stupidly leaving the group open to the public...). It is as though, when composing, some people definitely desire circulation but only a limited, safe kind, which is basically impossible. I think what digital technology has done is eliminated the idea that publication can be local and small-scale. There is always the chance that your creation will catch fire and be spread across the whole planet. This is great for people who want their work recognized... and terrible for people who weirdly want both recognition and privacy.
In _Nexus_ Mark Buchanan writes: "No amount of information at the level of the individual species or economic agent can hope to reveal the patterns of organization that make the collective function as it does." Buchanan goes on to argue that what we need to be paying attention to is the "delicate design of the entire network." This argument is grounded on the idea that there are ways to understand networks regardless of their specific components -- ie the materials that comprise them or or circulate through them. Often referred to at the "small-worlds" idea, implicit to this argument is that there is a "deep truth" to be reached that illuminates an “innate intelligence” of networks -- a way clarifying what otherwise appears as "mind-numbing complexity."
ReplyDeleteWell, what does this have to do with circulation? I’ll admit that while on one hand I’m tempted to clumsily reflect on the serendipity of circulation, our readings for this week illustrate for me the ways in which circulation is neither serendipitous nor determined. Circulation is, however, a topic that requires a look beyond the composing practices of the individual and instead to the multiple paths of circulation and the actors in this circulation.
When Selfe and Hawisher make their 5th observation and draw on Gidden's structuration theory, they bring to light the ways in which unintended consequences are not synonymous with serendipity. Drawing our attention to the ways that people "both shape, and are shaped by, the social systems within which they live," Giddens enables Selfe and Hawisher to bring together structure and process. While neither is independent of the other, structure and process remain tethered in a way that Stephen points out is mutually constitutive. Here, the process being that of circulation and the structure being the paths of circulation.
The erratic and asymmetrical nature of these paths -- in terms of both speed and actual distance -- is most clear in Selfe and Hawisher's examination of circulation across the global divide. However, Miller and Shepherd approach this same relationship from a somewhat different perspective when they write that the generic conventions of blogs enable them to function as “a site of relative stability." In the context of this post, then, we could see how genre is perhaps a communal exercise in developing organizational structures that stabilize -- structures such as those discussed by Buchanan that are actually not “mind-numbingly complex” and do have an innate intelligence.
ReplyDeleteWe perhaps also see this desire in the contradictions that are experienced by "Big Picture People" in general education. Here, Russell and Yanez write: "We need a way of going beyond specific interpersonal interactions (the unit of analysis of transmission models) to understand ways broader social interactions, mediated through various tools, condition interpersonal interactions." While Stephen and Logan have already mentioned the role of activity theory in this, genre emerges as a way of participating in these seemingly unwieldy activity systems -- bringing some “stability” to them. However, even when we look closer at genres and the activity systems that they participate in, we see the circulation of texts through these systems as at once determined by and determining of these systems. So, according to Bazerman, as genres "form systems that follow and mediate the work pathways within and among activity systems," aren't they also formed by the pathways they mediate?
Finally, this brings me to one potential way of reading Porter’s biographical lead-up to what he sees as the need for a theory that "looks closely at the socialized writing dynamic and the conglomerate rhetorical dynamic of readers, writers, and users.” Perhaps, his experience in this “socialized writing dynamic” is itself an illustration of the ways in which his experiences with the circulation of his own texts participated in both the emergence of new genres, but also reflected a more broad social need to stabilize through conventions of composition what might have otherwise felt like an unstable writing environment, or network of circulation.
Short answer (punning off of Stephen’s post): we would not exist were it not for circulation.
ReplyDeleteI was fascinated by Miller and Shepherd’s article, specifically the discussion of the cultural factors that led to the emergence of blogs. If genres are always “sites of contention between stability and change” (1464, Berkenkotter and Huckin), then some rupture in the stability led to the emergence of the new blog genre. The authors conclude that the blog genre is almost a backlash against a postmodern philosophy which emphasizes “plasticity” and “multiplicity of the self” (1469). They argue that the distinctions between public and private, mediated and unmediated experience, have blurred so much that we found ourselves within a “culture of simulation” (1470). Within this culture, voyeurism and exhibitionism emerged as legitimate subject positions (1457) and nothing is real unless it is viewed by others. The private is only real once it is public and vice versa; thereby, we have a difficult time distinguishing between the real and the simulated.
Within this frazzled and schizophrenic non-reality, blogs emerged as a way of constructing a stable, fixed, and identifiable self. The blog is an attempt to locate the real. This is sort of the modern version of Plato’s cave allegory, one of the founding assumptions of Western philosophy that postmodernism rejects. Blogs, therefore, are an attempt to “establish the self against the forces of fragmentation, through expression and connection, through disclosure” (1469).
In a interesting but troubling way, composition returns to expressionism—this desire to speak the true, the transcendent self into being. Much like pop music, blogs are efforts to define and justify the self as unique and part of a community that recognizes and appreciates individuality. There is an odd tension, as the authors point out, between the individual and the communal in the blog world. Listening to current popular (and irritating) songs on the radio reveals this familiar expressionist value of speaking the self. The artist encourages ‘You’ (speaking to some a member of her community perhaps?) to love yourself, recognize your self worth, etc. More subtly and artfully, blogs fill a similar function. I agree with Miller and Shepherd that blogs contribute to the “art of the self,” to the American fascination with defining who we are. And perhaps this new blog genre was necessary at a time when our identity was less clearly defined than ever.
While the popularity of blogs is indisputable, the totality of cyber-English seems to raise a different concern when it comes to circulation and composition. Selfe and Hawisher call it the “linguistic imperialism of English.” If one must have knowledge of English to have real access to technology, how democratic is technology? On one level, circulation seems to encourage community-building and self-hood, but on the other hand there are ideologies (sometimes pernicious colonial and capitalist agendas) that travel alongside these seemingly democratic technologies.
Elizabeth's point that circulation should be considered alongside audience is well taken, and it echoes my ideas about the ways writing is inherently social and communicative. Circulation is a key corollary or sidecar to audience—if writing is not put out there, it's not read, and if it's not read, it's dead. Even if it's only circulated back to the writer (as when I recently read my own truly horrible and embarrassing adolescent poetry), composition seems to demand or require at least the possibility of an audience.
ReplyDeleteSo much of the academic writing I read seems to be intended for the amorphous and imperious teacher-reader who constantly seeks to find, harangue, and lay waste to errors of usage, grammar, and critical thought. My students' papers, especially their in-class essays and longer academic papers, often seem devoid of any identifiable writer's voice and aimed at some vague and generic audience. However, their journal responses, composed on on computers and submitted online, are often full of quirky comments, ironic observations, questions addressed to me—really me, Ms. Spradlin, not some nebulous Teacher—and to themselves. The titles they give these responses to the literature they've read are sometimes humorous or demonstrative of their feelings at the time they were composed (such as, "THE LAST JOURNAL EVERRRRRR!!!!!"), and the tone of many of these writings is recognizable as the students' own, reminiscent of the voices I hear in class. This discrepancy between the dry-as-dust, monotone essays and papers and the lively, personal journal responses seems to result from my students' perceptions of the circulation of these writings (which is based on the means of composing and submission of the different texts). It seems to me that my students perceive that the essays and papers are circulated only within our closed academic environment—only to The Teacher—and that the journals are more like blogs and (potentially) circulated to the whole of the Interwebz.
Miller and Shepherd's meticulous discussion of the advent of the blog genre illuminates the reasons for my students' distinctly different ways of writing in the two modes, essay and journal. The idea that writing online offers both the intensification of self through public disclosure and the apparent privacy of virtual communication explains precisely how and why people tell so many secrets online. Circulation makes both the connection and community and the personal expression and self-construction of blogs possible. Without the audience and the means to reach it, the (apparently contradictory) functions of blogs could not be fulfilled. Old-school diaries and journals may have been written, as Miller and Shepherd suggest, with an eye to a possible audience other than the writer herself, but that audience could only be a mere glimmer in the diarist's eye; bloggers have a built-in potential audience from their first posts and links.
Selfe and Hawisher's case studies also suggest that circulation and audience are key factors in developing digital literacies. Both Dipo and Pengfei sought out friends who used computers, both used computers to communicate with their families and friends, both used their computers to do school work and to create and access and circulate various texts for various audiences. Porter's forays into composing with computers were socially situated in labs and with groups of colleagues who were exploring similar activities and possibilities.
So ditto Stephen's short answer: Without circulation, composition would not exist.
As those before me have noted, composition and circulation are inextricably linked. What I think is also intriguing is the relationship between composition and kairos and how this relationship affects circulation. Miller and Shepherd describe kairos as “both the sense in which discourse is understood as fitting and timely—the way it observes propriety or decorum—and the way in which it can seize on the unique opportunity of a fleeting movement to create new rhetorical possibility” (1452). That kairotic moment that a composition responds to is affected by the available means of circulation. How that composition is circulated, and by what vehicle, dictates how an audience understands the text. For example, Miller and Shepherd refer to the student who “had only told a few friends about her blog and ‘didn’t intend for it to reach a wider audience’” (1450). In this situation, kairos was in action, provoking the student to respond to a particular situation. For one reason or another, she created a blog and its content; she created discourse which seized an opportunity for rhetoric. The blog provided this student the opportunity to respond, and, as a result, her audience became much more than just herself and a few friends: her blog caught the attention of the FBI. The contents of her blog circulated beyond herself and beyond her intended audience. Her composition, which materialized as a result of the effects of kairos, eventually circulated to the authorities. This example demonstrates how responding to a particular kairoitc moment can be complciated, especially if the composer is creating texts and discourse that could in fact circulate to a larger audience, which then in turn creates a larger context. The interconnected relationship between kairos, composition, and circulation is networked and very complicated, and should therefore be analyzed more critically by composers.
ReplyDeleteKat's point is particularly interesting, especially within the context of circulation. I've also had a similar experience with my student papers vs my student blogs. No matter how much I push them to consider a specific audience, even in our expose' assignment where they have to actually choose a publication their piece would appear in, their papers are often quite vague. Their blogs, or even sometimes their discussion board posts on Blackboard (although much rarer) is often loud, jovial, irreverent, and introspective.
ReplyDeleteI think circulation even goes back to our previous entries on collaborative writing. Bruffee pointed out that writing must have a conversation, it must have this rhetorical context, a reciprocated audience, otherwise it's dead. Even when we write to ourselves, we are engaging ourselves in a conversation, one that could sometimes be fruitful but will often be myopic and shortsighted. The Internet and other technologies open up this door, and help us understand the intertextuality of activity systems in a very dynamic way.
Miller and Shepherd's look at the blog serve to illustrate how this emergent textual circulation can be both empowering and largely misunderstood. Why does someone feel more secure writing explicitly private information on a LiveJournal blog open to the millions of LJ viewers on the Internet, but is terrified at sharing such information in a personal essay in their ENC1101 class? As Miller and Shepherd point out, it is at this intersection of private and public spheres that our identity is most troubled and called into question. Circulation on the Internet can help affirm our identities, but posting our blogs within a sea of other blogs can also work to shroud them within a dizzying cloud of HTML. No matter what type of text it may be, the audience is always perceived, even if said audience doesn't participate.
The Selfe and Hawisher case study showed very interesting correlations between this digital literacy and personal identity. While the point was made that the "digital divide" is a weak term, one that can't be understood without taking into account wealth, geography, location, education, and other factors, it also helps one look at emergent identities without the global Internet culture. Dipo, in an advantageous position where he had a computer in his home at an early age, first took to it as a means of playing games. Pengwei, only getting access to computers later on in college, used it as a communication and learning tool. In modern times, when video games are routinely played online, to the point where they have their own local/global communities, or when communication and learning tools exist within thousands of fragmented forums and networking sites, both individuals may find their sense of identity molding with these communities as much as their own geographic ones. If Dipo found World of Warcraft before he found Microsoft Excel, would his identity have been different? If Pengwei found Facebook before he found engineering software, would his identity have been different? At what point does this circulation turn identity into an analogous concept?
I think that is a question that modern composition classes try to answer. We ask students to understand writing in different genres, do different audiences, using different rhetorical tools so that we can give them the foundation to engage and impact the intertextual circulation running rampant throughout our world. Today that circulation manifests itself on the Internet, the digital literacy center of the planet, and our students need to know the language so they can have the agency to engage in discourse with these literacies.
Well, it seems like Stephen is the man of the hour this week, since I'm far from the first to call on his post in my own response. In my case, I take his point that we should talk about different kinds of circulation. To add to that, I think a fundamental question when we discuss circulation is "circulation of what?"
ReplyDeleteIn terms of composition, the most obvious answer to this question is circulation of texts. And while we're on the subject of texts, I have to take issue with Bazerman and Russell's definition of texts as "alphanumeric marks on surfaces." This definition limits the possibilities of the term considerably. Not only does it exclude images, but it would seem to discount digital, and especially networked, items from being considered texts. I'm typing this blog entry into a text box (oh, hey ...) but it will look different once I finish and post it. And even if my own computer monitor might be considered a surface (although, I find this questionable since I'm not inscribing something onto the glass itself, but rather, as it were, typing something "in" the screen) then these alphanumeric marks are not limited to a single "surface," but rather available to multiple surfaces through the connection offered by network technology.
So, that was a long adventure into the nature of texts. Long story short (too late) I would advocate heavily for a more malleable definition of "text." However, I would also argue that it is not only texts that circulate, and not only textual circulation that we might be concerned with in composition.
Russell and Yanez offer a case study that seems particularly productive to an exploration of what else might circulate in the world of composition. For one thing, people circulate. In this case, most obviously, people circulate through different writing contexts. Beth moved between high school writing, journalistic writing, and academic historical writing. Genres also seem to have circulation. For example, the "book review" takes on new meanings and purposes as it circulates through different contexts and in the hands of different writers (and readers). Indeed, it seems possible that any of the constituents of the activity system might be able to circulate.
Selfe et al. also seem to address the idea of the circulation of people. The geographical, linguistic, and technological circulation (although, also, the circulation of technology into locations and to different people, of course) seems to be an important factor in their discussion of the digital divide.
Miller and Shepperd emphasize that the blog phenomenon seems to be the result of the synergy between a particular cultural moment and a technological one. At a time when the divide between private and public was already breaking down, internet technology offered a way for intensely private thoughts to be circulated in a highly public manner. In this case, it does seem to be the increased mobility of texts, which is to say its circulation, that seems to be the key type of circulation here. Also at play in the blogging situation is that the means of circulation became available much more widely. With the advent of easy blogging software, anyone with an internet connection and the ability to type could theoretically circulate to millions without the mediation of television producers, book or periodical publishers, etc.
Overall, it seems that Activity Theory's focus on contexts and how different constituents of an activity system may move between and among contexts is tied to an idea of complex and multiple circulation.
It seems to me that technology influences circulation and circulation influences genre, all of which play a role in composition. One of the questions for the writer, especially those who wish to reach the masses, is how to reach the widest audience in the least amount of time. New technologies create opportunities to increase circulation (printing press, movies, radio, television, internet). Porter writes, “From the scenic perspective, writing is not only the words on the page, but it also concerns mechanisms for production (for example, the writing process, understood cognitively, socially, and technologically); mechanisms for distribution or delivery (for example, media); invention, exploration, research, methodology, and inquiry procedures; and questions of audience, persuasiveness, and impact. From the scenic/contextual perspective, writing technologies play a huge role—especially in terms of production (process) and distribution (delivery).”
ReplyDeleteOf course, as new technologies arise there is a possibility for new genres become circulated as well, which is the case with the weblog (Miller & Shepherd). When new genres arrive new complications for composition may also arise. Leigh points us toward this issue in Miller and Shepherd when she quotes, “They are addressed to everyone and at the same time to no one" (1451). So the genre of the weblog, which is a result of opportunities for wide and fast circulation, has complicated the field with new ways of considering (or not considering) audience in writing.
This week’s readings also made me think back to the discussion last week about what literacy is doing to us. I think another way of framing this question would be what is technology or what is genre doing to us. Miller and Shepherd also address the genre of reality in television and blogging. With the rise in popularity of the reality genre, society is becoming more voyeuristic according to Shepherd and Miller, so much so that ways of knowing have shifted, “Seeing is knowing, not just believing.” Of course, without the wide circulation of the reality genre in composition (visual and print), this shift may not have occurred on such a wide scale (it seems almost epidemic at times). This of course brings us back to the idea that circulation complicates composition.