Posthuman Emotions
If feelings and emotions are the body murmuring to the mind, then feelings are "just as cognitve as other precepts," part of thought and indeeed part of what makes us rational creatures. (Hayles 245)
When Robots Write | DMLcentral
A Futile Attempt to Keep up with @digitaldigs
About a week ago, Alex Reid posted a summary of his experience at the Atlanta Cs. At last check, he has posted two more compelling essays on his blog, a fact which makes me feel my own post is pretty far behind his path. Nevertheless, I do feel compelled to respond to his summary because, although a great deal of my own historical research addresses the fragmented roots of the field of composition and rhetoric, I don’t think I had consciously applied this knowledge to the actual process of walking around the conference until his posting brought some of it to light.
Commenting on the fragmentation of CCCC into various subcultures (WPA types, identity-politics types, and digital rhetoric types are explicitly mentioned), he contends that our “inward facing scholarly practices and research agendas are not sustainable.” First, I want to agree that the sheer number and types of panels create in me a similar kind of vertigo, and I too have noticed that the fields have very little to say to one another. While the historian in me would want to argue that this tension goes back to tensions between progressives, humanists, and empiricists who have argued over the nature of composition and communication from the very early days of the Cold War, I am intrigued by his suggestion (generally supported by Byron Hawk, Collin Brooke, and Geoffrey Sirc in the comments) that the tension tends to create in us the desire to only attend those conferences in our field.
But perhaps because my interests in digital rhetoric are newer than my interests in rhetorical theory itself, I’m often troubled to find how scholars in digital rhetoric seem to picture the other camps. Or should I say, “I’m often troubled to discover the picture that the other camps present to scholars in digital rhetoric”? Either way we ask the question, it points us to another, “why isn’t it possible to imagine a discipline where these tensions can be brought into a productive relationship with each other?” Perhaps I simply want to know because I am both a composition historian and a WPA who wants to bring together an interest in sociolinguistics with an interest in digital writing, but it is over this imponderable gap that I am trying to set up the headquarters for posthumanist grammar (which at this point may be more like a rope bridge over a chasm).
© Copyright Scot Tares and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.
Like Alex Reid, I too begin to wonder “what planet I’m on” when I confront firmly entrenched attitudes about both technology and language. In the comments section of his blog, Reid recounts a conversation he once had with a writing teacher, one that feels very familiar to me: “I was part of one conversation where someone was complaining about a publisher's software that detects grammar errors, diagnoses them, and prescribes worksheets: she was complaining that the software was going to make her job as a writing teacher obsolete.” In this case, the teacher’s attitude toward technology reveals an antihumanist (as opposed to posthumanist) stance toward writing. In effect, she has become the machine that treats her students as machines.
As Reid argues, “classroom issues cannot be resolved within the framework of received notions of writing. It just won't work.” I would add that a similar argument needs to be made about grammar. Until teachers are able to see grammar as a technology working within a living context which now contains a increasing multitude of other technologies, we will continue to reify the same false binaries we have always seen between the teaching of rhetoric and the teaching of grammar.
Animal Intelligence: Some Types Of Monkeys Feel Self-Doubt | Global Animal
Monkeys apparently appreciate when they are likely to make an error,” he told BBC News. “They seem to know when they don’t know.
I saw this on Diane Davis' feed. From the article: “Monkeys apparently appreciate when they are likely to make an error... They seem to know when they don’t know.” Here's another discovery showing that animals possess a key component of consciousness we previously believed was possessed by humans alone.
Robot Panhandler
You've Reached the Headquarters for Posthumanist Grammar: A Recording
We’re in the process of moving the headquarters for posthumanist grammar, so for this week’s installment I’m going to punt and post the notes that just fell out of my first copy of Sirc’s English Composition as A Happening.
The reason I like this book: it reminds me that “writing is a process” was once a larger extension of a cultural movement.
John Cage stopped beating his head against the wall of harmony, as Schoenberg predicted he would, and said "this is the sound of my beating my head against the wall of harmony." For whatever reason, some part of the world was ready to listen, even if it meant being outraged.
I want to do something with this line: "Composition's failure of process-nerve" (71)
A possibility: I wasn't around to experience it, but some of my mentors (who were older than I but younger than my parents) talked about how they got together with Peter Elbow's book _Writing Without Teachers_ and they, well, wrote without teachers. I suspect that their teachers, especially college teachers, had found themselves unable to relate to this new breed of students ("the freewriters") and being good rhetoricians started to incorporate some of this movement into their own practices. Of course, they grew tired doing it. But why?
One set of possibilities: It wasn't legitimate scholarship. It wasn't respected. It had no real content. And who gives a shit what 18 year olds have to say anyway?
Another set: We took the process movement's power away. Memorize the stages of the writing process. Take everything you just wrote (that which is valuable to you) and make it acceptable to an academic audience. And what exactly do we mean when we say academic audience?
Or: we failed to acknowledge that students have different writing processes, which I would say these "original sources" understood, at least implicitly, because they were not trying to programmatize, just record.
Only It'a Let You Finish: A Posthumanist Grammar Lesson
Kanye's interuption of Taylor Swift at the 2009 MTV music awards is old news, but the event gives us a good occasion to discuss more possibilities of posthumanist approaches to grammar. In case you don't remember the details, here is a pretty true-to-life version with no advertising but, unfortunately, a few minor editorial comments from the poster of the clip. (My apologies. It's the best clip I can find.).
When Kayne takes the microphone from Taylor and says, "I'm really happy for you, Imma let you finish," one assumes he does not know that he is expanding the current possibilities for introducing an immediate future marker. His doing so, however, helps us look more specifically at what this particular moment brings about, the conscious and unconscious factors that move beyond both text and purpose/audience.
Let's imagine for a moment that "I'ma let you finish" creates space for something else to happen on that stage. (Take the poll on how to punctuate I'm'a at unspeak). Kanye West interupts Taylor Swift, yes, but the interuption expands beyond a subject acting on an object. At the moment Kayne says "Beyonce," something else gets involved. The camera finds Beyonce, absorbs her horrified response, along with the flat, increasingly puzzled look of the gentleman behind her. The audience responds, as much to what they see on the screens around them as to what they see on stage, and it is in that moment that this "something else" takes over. It is difficult to describe, but Kenneth Burke most likely would have said that the scene begins to act. Are those cheers or boos that Taylor Swift now faces? And what do they mean? Are they cheers of support for Taylor as she stands there wondering what to do next, or is all of this noise proof that it was all a mistake? There is no way under the stars that you should have gotten this award. Beyonce has, in fact, made one of the best videos of all time. Of all time. For Taylor, as the scene continues to act, there is nothing to do but silently confront it. "I'm-a let you finish" mirrors the haste, the banality, and the audaciousness of Kanye's gesture, but the joke is finally on him. It is not Kanye, in fact, who lets her finish. Only when Beyonce gives up her own time to Taylor Swift is the spell of the greater scene finally broken. Only then does the ability to act appear to be restored to human subjects.
This Dog Knows More About Posthuman Grammar Than I
Recently, Behavioral Processes published a study about Chaser, a border collie that (or should we say "who"?) has the ability to show that she knows over 1,000 nouns. (The NYT summarizes and links to the journal article, and also provides some video, here.) Such a finding gives us wonderful posthumanist grammar headlines, ones far sexier than "Border collie comprehends object names as verbal referents."
To be even more precise, the study consists of four separate findings. When taken together, these show that "Chaser acquired referential understanding of nouns, an ability normally attributed to children, which included: (a) awareness that words may refer to objects, (b) awareness of verbal cues that map words upon the object referent, and (c) awareness that names may refer to unique objects or categories of objects, independent of the behaviors directed toward those objects" (184).If I had the six hours a day that retired psychology professor John W. Pilley has given to this dog, I would want to know if Chaser could learn adjectives (Chaser, get big lamb) and adverbs (Chaser, get big lamb slowly). If you are reading this, John, could you get on that for me?On the Uselessness of a Posthumanist Approach to Grammar
The other day, a casual acquaintance asked me what I do for a living. I'm never entirely sure how to answer this question, but I responded, "I teach English at Oklahoma State."
"English?" my friend answered. "Why would you need to teach that in college? Haven't most of those kids been speaking English their entire lives?"
My friend's quip makes an important point about language: we use it without necessarily knowing the finer points about the rules of it. Language is a game that we are thrown into (some say even before we are born), and the truth of the matter is that we don't get the rules from books. We generally figure them out as we go along.So it is important, as Martha Kolln points out in her introduction to Rhetorical Grammar, to consider where the rules of grammar come from and where they exist. She asks us to consider this:
that YOU are the repository of the rules. You--not a book. It might help you to understand this sense of grammar if you think of a grammar rule not as a rule of law created by an authority but rather as a description of language structure. Stored within you, then, in your computer-like brain, is a system of rules, a system that enables you to create the sentences of your native language. The fact that you have such an internalized system means that when you study grammar you are studying what you already "know." (1)
In this light, both Kolln and my friend share a similar belief, but where my good-natured friend uses this claim to argue that "you" don't need to study language at all, Kolln uses this claim to make a case that the study of grammar will be neither dull nor difficult but that it will empower "you" to create "sentences appropriate for the rhetorical situations you encounter" (5).
From a practical standpoint, I understand her approach. Students often need to be persuaded to study language, and telling them that "this is something you already know" will certainly open doors for some. Furthermore, the promise that studying the structure of language can help you get something you want is very alluring. The posthumanist in me, though, finds the "you" (and even more so the "YOU") disconcerting. At most, I might be able to consider myself "a repository" of "some" rules of grammar, but if I am able to choose to exist at all, it is not to be a repository. For what is a repository if not a location for safe storage, for preservation? All metaphors fail, of course, but to what degree does Kolln's opening promise keep students from appreciating the full complexity of grammatical systems and the complexity of grammatical possibilities? And as far as usefulness goes, can we ever really deliver on such a promise? If the goal, to use Kolln's example, is to persuade a Dean to provide funding for a film club, would we ever really be able to convince students that they can get there most effectively by studying sentence patterns, or by learning about nominalizations and rhetorical punctuation? I think from the outset, a posthumanist approach to grammar should promise (as Auden once said about poetry) to make nothing happen. It will neither help nor stifle your writing. It will neither help you get nor keep you from getting a job. It will neither help nor hinder your ability to tell your friends what you do for a living. What it will do is show you the reward of approaching something difficult, something complex, and something speculative. [After a week's reflection, I would like to strike the last line from this post. After talking with Jeff Rice and a few others, I no longer believe it.]Second Principle of a Posthumanist Approach to Grammar
Second principle of a posthumanist approach to grammar (revised): "Communication and creativity are a result of the interface between grammar and a variety of silicon- and carbon-based life forms."
In an earlier post, I used Williams' definition of grammar as a starting point for developing a posthumanist approach. "Grammar," Williams says, "is the formal study of the structure of a language and describes how words fit together in meaningful constructions" (2). A posthumanist approach to grammar wants to look at the way that human and nonhuman forms of life create meaningful constructions in specific contexts. Meaning, though, is a complicated term, even when one limits oneself to the realm of the human animal alone (c.f. Kenneth Burke). One possible way of bringing some clarity to this problem, then, would be to look at an example that may be more familiar to teachers of writing. What happens when students engage the complexity of a new discipline? What happens to their language? As John Bean describes it in his Engaging Ideas, the more difficult it is for a student to write about a subject, the more grammatical errors that the writing about that subject will contain. When students struggle to incorporate new ideas, new language, and new discourse features into their own writing, they tend to make more errors on the surface than they would if they were writing about something (or to someone) more familiar. These errors happen because their minds are focused on assimilating (or being assimilated by) a new discourse community. To some degree, this assertion has become a commonplace in the field of composition and rhetoric, though after talking for years with professors from other departments and higher level administrators, I can safely say that it is hardly a well understood point in university culture. And why would it be? It seems perverse, after all, to suggest that grammatical error in student writing could actually be evidence of thinking. Nevertheless, Bean's assertion underscores the principle that grammar as a system is related to both communication and creativity in human animals. A posthumanist approach to grammar wants to look at grammatical construction as a node within that system, one that can be seen as representing both a moment of analysis and of creation, one that looks even at errors in prose as something meaningful in a larger process.
