Coffee Shop Wandering, Irrelevant to Class Duscussions

I’ve been haunted for weeks. I see photographs and strangers, and his image jolts my brain. His image is not quiet. Not sneakily haunting. It presents itself hurriedly and with such urgency. I let my eyes tear up as they must, not because I am ready to be taken in by sadness, but because I feel I can get no relief. It is either cry here or become numb. Cry here or I lose any warm attributes that my heart has left. I cry.

He walked into my store. He didn’t notice me especially. He just walked around pleased. He didn’t hurry like the thousands of other men, doctors and lawyers who rush in hours before their planes leave for Aspen. He walked slowly. No one thing catching his eye more than another, just general pleasantness. The children with him laugh while running in circles around him. Picking things up they yell, ‘I want this!’ ‘Look at this one!’ ‘Papaw can I get it?’ If he responded to them, I didn’t hear. Maybe his silence is something given to him by my haunted mind’s own recollection. It does make him more noble, and mysterious.

He didn’t limp when he walked; his walk was more a drag. Each movement seemed horrifically agonizing, like he spoke to each muscle encouraging them to one last pull. His skin was black and wet and stretched beyond its limits to cover each bone and joint. When I remember what he wore I imagine tan coveralls with short sleeves, unzipped showing a white undershirt the way my father wore them. Next I remember blue work pants, high wasted with a black belt and black orthopedic shoes, the kind my grandfather wears.

Stirring these memories brings more tears. I’d like to release the thought from my mind so that I don’t cry on spontaneous occasions. I’d like to rid myself this haunting so that at least I can complete my transaction, ‘I’ll have an extra large sugar free vanilla latte with 2% milk, please. And I’ll have a toasted whole wheat bagel with garden vegetable cream cheese. Could I get a glass of ice water as well? That’s great, thank you.’

I wanted him to look at me. I wanted him to take particular notice of the way that I smiled at him. The way I approved of him with my eyes. I also wanted him to look at me with his yellow eyes.

He never did look at me; still those yellow eyes burned images into my mind. They were offensive, loudly offensive. He was offensive, loudly offensive. His thin body pointed a finger at my extra pounds. His skull shaped head nodded disapproval at my pay-check’s worth hair cut. The lines of his smile drew a gasp from my own.

In front of everyone I approved of him and yet he accused me. I smiled and nodded and searched for eye contact, but he was content without it. I tried to tell him that it was fine for him to look around if he wanted and that I was happy to answer questions...

I approved of him so I am not guilty. It’s not my generation’s fault. I didn’t callous your hands. I didn’t pick the meat off your bones and leave your skin out to dry. I didn’t yellow your eyes or lower your head. I never disapproved.

News and Notes

Hey guys. Just a side note. I've mentioned Ellen Cushman before, and we've had several discussions on "stepping out of the ivory tower." Yesterday on News and Notes I heard an interview with a Professor from Columbia University. He uses the term ivory tower in a quite literal sense, saying that many schools tell you which streets not to cross and areas of town to avoid so that you stay protected on campus (in the ivory tower). He decides to leave the tower and learn outside its boundaries. So much of what he says sounds like Cushman. His methods are slightly different, but I like his overall thought.
His book is called Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets


***He is teased because on his first attempt to step outside the tower and learn from the men in the restricted areas of town he passed out surveys. He says the first question was 'How does it feel to be poor and black?' The gang members he handed these to immediately thought he was from a rival gang : ) ***

I would argue that from the outset, he limits the respondents language. It comes as no surprise that he was displeased with the results of this "research" experience and eventually learned a new approach. He infiltrated the culture that he studied in broke the barriers between "us" and "them."

When's the White Girl Coming?

If Lilly thought "What does SHE know about the minority experience," she wasn't the only one! I was raised in Walker, LA. Walker Jr. High has an interesting history that includes David Duke's crowning as the Prince of the KKK in our very own school gymnasium. If that makes you uncomfortable, now think of attending a school that had so few minority students that I could count them on two hands and list their names. Moreover, male teachers at Walker were maybe 1 in 10. I was one white girl in a school full of them.

My first year at LSU I had the privilege of learning from Professor Broom, an African American male teacher. I wouldn't participate in any race discussions and actually asked him the politically correct terms for "blacks" and "whites" thinking those incredibly taboo words.

Fast-forward to Summer '07. I spent some time working for a film production company and was given the opportunity to move to Los Angeles to work with an MTV and Warner Bros casting agent.
Her name is Pamela. Her daughter is a recording artist. Her son is a working actor. And they are black.
I lived with them for more than a month. I ate their food, I used their shampoo, and I shared in their Hollywood gossip. I was "the white girl." Visiting their Hollywood gyms, their sporting events, and their work places, people would say 'Oh, this is that white girl you told me about.' I wasn't pretty enough to work with them. I wasn't wealthy enough to play with them, and I wasn't black enough to have the "right curves."
Somedays I got angry. Everyone had something to say, some judgement to make about the white girl. I'd call my friend to vent "do these people know who I am?" They didn't even know how hard I had to work to get to L.A. I wanted "them" to see me the way everyone "else" saw me. And so begins my tale.

I came home to Louisiana. I returned to the majority, my white friends all living similar experiences, getting similar educations, having similar finances; yet, something had changed. I was more aware of the experiences of others. I wanted to shout to every closed-minded individual that saw themselves as the one figurine living inside a snow globe of their ideologies, too cloudy eyed to look outside. I wanted to tell them (my mother included) that they are not safe from the scrutiny of others. Despite what America, our families, our educations may have shown us, each of us is a minority someWhere to someOne. For this reason, hiding behind our "groups" and calling it individuality, and separating ourselves from others based on race, gender, or socio-economic status, only limits our knowledge. It limits our perspectives. It narrows our language and our critiques on life (Lilly mentioned this also in her discussion on Covino who says its okay, its even the rhetorician's job, to upset uniformity. To find new or alternative ways of seeing, hearing, and responding to things).

In one discussion in Professor Catano's class, I told my story because I needed some credibility, perhaps rightfully so. We were making and breaking arguments for "Group Identity." It had been read so positively. The textbook even seemed to offer it as a positive tool for creating one's self in society. I cannot agree with this. When I lived as a minority, reaching to another white woman in another state did not improve my situation. Recalling all the ways that I 'appear' normal (questionable) among my own kind only further separated me from the people I wanted as peers. The best way for me to improve my relationships with the "majority" was for me to shed my group identity and be an individual. As an individual I learned a lot of new things about myself and let a lot of old habits go. Just as ALT describes ways that a speaker can reach an audience by revealing and masking certain aspects of the speaker's personality; I connected with people in a new way. Still, my character, my race, my 'low-budget' life style : ), my face, my curves, these things never changed. Only my appreciation for these things improved. It's amazing the humility you can learn when you're taken from your safety zone, but also how much pride you can muster when you feel alone or different.

ComPOSING As A...Man?

I have so much to say about “Composing as a Woman,” but I am too often afraid that what I have to say comes from my own ignorance of the subject. The problem then is how can I, as a woman, and also as a critical thinker, be so ignorant to my own subjection to male dominance?
I’ll start by saying that my first experience with Composition Studies was not a good one. I didn’t want a pat on the back for everything I laid on the paper. “Very Original!” “Unique Leah!” “You have some great ideas!” In my world, original, unique, and great ideas are not incredibly successful. Yesterday on NPR, a famous author and speech critic commented on the current battle between Obama and Clinton. He said,’ I’ve studied thousands of presidential speeches and I have not yet found one that is truly original.’ Next, I visit both candidates’ official website and find that the two have exactly the same platform with no proof that one is truly different from the other. Then, I turn on the television for a bit of mindless self indulgence, and that is exactly what I get. On one channel there is Big Brother, strangers forced to live in the same house and compete for money, on another channel there is a Shot at Love, strangers forced to live in the same house and compete for love, same channel, a spin-off of Shot at Love, loser contestant hosting new show where strangers are forced to live in a house and compete for love. Then, turn on the news or open a newspaper and it is all the same. Same talk. Same stories.
Taking a different look, I can remember attempting to conduct a feminist read of several texts for another comp studies class. I read, attempted to critique, but found myself saying “Oh, so that’s how older women feel,” or “Oh, so that’s how wealthy, poor, pretty, foreign, girls feel.” Different representations of women only broadened my own construction of what it means to be a woman. I didn’t ask “Why?” the author chose to have them feel or act a certain way; I assumed there was more to being a woman than my own experiences had shown me. It seemed pointless for me to look at the “why” for women when no one was asking me to look at the “why” for men. So, instead I looked at ethnicity, race, and socio-economic differences. It is this type of reading that makes me now think that I have had what Flynn might call a ‘male learning experience’ (Questions to “why a female would have this male experience” I cannot answer). I often do not attempt to attach to a group. My writing and critiquing is usually aimed at differentiating me from any particular group. For instance, when I took a critical look at any female character in order to make a feminist critique, I never fully associated with that character. I’ve never argued on the grounds that “that’s not what it means to be a woman” or that’s “men’s perspective of women.” Furthermore, I quite like the language that I’ve been taught to create and respond to. If it is ‘men’s language’ then I can only conclude that I have always been intensely attracted to men : P (sorry, that’s a joke). Seriously though, Flynn distinguishes between male and female ways of knowing saying that men are mostly associated with “thinking” and women with “emotions;” again, this is another point where I relate mostly to the male way of knowing. I am often skeptical of emotions and always thinking in abstract and impersonal ways.
Is there any relation between the non-critical way I was introduced to Comp studies and my current non-critical eye toward gender politics? Did the excessive pats on the back from my Composition Mothers lead me away from "women's knowledge" and toward a more abstract critique of composition that shed all my associations with the "personal," including what it means for ME to be a woman? Am I a woman reading as a man reading as a man? Do I read as a MAN to AVOID reading as a WOMAN, since I despised what I saw as a motherly composition/reading of texts in my earlier years of composition studies?
Despite this lengthy analysis of my masculine side, for our class project I am attempting to make a type of feminist critique. I will look at women’s gossip as a response to a male owned language. WISH ME LUCK!

P.R.O.J.E.C.T.

I am using this space to think through my project proposal... posts on readings will come later this evening :)
I am interested in gossip as it fits into, opposes, or influences society. I am concerned specifically with women's gossip in the United States (this may broaden depending on available sources). Can groups of women decide what is morally right or wrong by the stories that they tell? If so, has gossip influenced social movements in the past and will it influence cultural tastes today?

A brief look at moral theory. How do we determine right from wrong? One theory is through experience, and if not experience than by stories. Stories are the next most effective way to learn since we cannot experience EVERYTHING. We can make general rules and apply to our specific situation.

A look at past and present
tabboos for women. Most likely citing enthographical research here.

I hope to conclude that indeed, in the United States, women have created their own sense of morality by telling and listening to stories. Gossip has given them a "safeplace" for communicating their own needs and desires, a place to formulate the "limits of normality," and the results have been cultural change.

I hope to also prove that cultural change resulting from women's gossip is an opposing force to a system of morality that has been dominated by men. WHile the gossip forum may be reactionary (created because of the restrictions on speech made by men), it is still a strong force of oppostition.
THis part may get sticky so I'll not concentrate my efforts here, this may be given only as proof for gossip as a necessity to women.


Please offer any feedback you may have. Thanks!!!!
P.S.
I do have sources in mind and will gladly take other suggestions (so this will not be my claim alone).

Guess Who's Back Guess Who's Back....

....Why Rhetoric of course, or at least so says Covino! He claims that the recent practice of criticism that allows or reveals the possibilities for multiple perspectives is literary theory's return to rhetoric and dialectic. He includes the work of other scholars to further prove how contemporary literary theory is no longer confined to "literary theory" at all. Now it's all about "decentering", "playing with the text,and "plural meanings" (313-315). Covino claims that "practitioners of postmodern critical theory, with their acute sense of the relativism and ambiguity of every statement, are our rhetoricians." It is our recent "play" with the relativism and ambiguity of texts that creates dialogue. I think writers engage in their own dialogue with their texts, we as readers engage in dialogue with the text, and in classrooms, blogs, book clubs, and OPRAH,we can all participate in a dialogue about the text. THIS IS DIALECTIC!!! Sure we're not philosophers engaged in dialectic like in ancient Athens, but Covino says we CAN engage in a "philosophy of composition that exploits writing as philosophy" (317). So, I guess we could say that by inquiring into the multiple meanings of texts, and engaging in dialogue with texts, we in fact live the life of philosophers.
Also, here Covino quotes Henry Miller on writing "there is no progress: There is perpetual movement, displacement, which is circular, spiral, endless" (317). Covino refers to Montaigne and I think also of the contemporary writer Joan Didion. She too writes to "locate and relocate hersel(f) in the play" and though she reveals so much about herself, questions are left unanswered and conclusions never formed.

Eagleton's Obituary to Literary Theory

“Political Criticism”- Terry Eagleton or
Eagleton’s Obituary to Literary Theory

Literary Theory Explained (or an attempt to)
p.500
What is the point of literary theory? Are there not bigger world issues at hand?
Politics (political theory and ideological values) has been present in literary theory from the beginning.
Politics- the way we organize our social life together, and the power-relations which this involves
Literary theory- a particular perspective in which to view the history of our times, not an object of intellectual enquiry in its own right.
No pure literary theory because “any body of theory concerned with human meaning, value, language, feeling and experience will inevitably engage with broader, deeper beliefs about the nature of human individuals and societies, problems of power and sexuality, interpretations of past history, versions of the present and hopes for the future”
p. 501
Eagleton offers political criticism. It is not an alternative to past literary theories. It tells us that literary theory as we know it has always been POLITICAL.
Literary theory has helped wittingly or not to sustain, reinforce, and STRENGTHEN rather than challenged assumptions of the POWER-SYSTEM. *Jenkins has much to say about this***
p. 502
Modern literary thought=Flight from real history =Extremism = to social theory’s Possessive individualism.
Subordinates the sociality of human life to SOLITARY INDIVIDUAL ENTERPRISE.
*Growth Model*
What could Jenkins say here against possessive individualism, concerning GOSSIP being part of literary study because of its socio cultural importance?
p.503
How can literary criticism exist?
1) It cannot define its methods. It often uses methods belonging to history, linguistics, sociology, etc.
2) It has no clearly defined object. *Eagleton says that literature is illusory.
p. 504
Problem with literary theory is that it can neither beat nor join the dominant ideologies of late industrial capitalism. It has an essentially contradictory relationship to modern capitalism.
Problems with the Humanities
The “humanities” exist to reproduce the ‘official’ ideology of our society, but our current social order has very little time for it all.
DEPARTMENTS OF LITERATURE IN HIGHER EDUCATION, THEN, ARE PART OF THE IDEOLOGICAL APPARATUS OF THE MODERN CAPITALIST STATE (which is why our capitalist government continues to fund literary departments).
p. 505
But dept. of lit. are not reliable because ***if you allow a lot of young people to do nothing for a few years but read books and talk to each other then it is possible that, given certain wider historical circumstances, they will not only begin to question some of the values transmitted to them but begin to interrogate the authority by which they are transmitted.
***Isn’t the internet now similar? What happens when people spend hours talking, debating, researching, and connecting to millions of others with different racial, ethnic, and cultural values?
***What happened when women spent hours talking, sharing lived experiences through gossip? ***What happened when slaves spent hours writing songs and sharing their stories?
***Social and political changed happened and the traditional power-system was given a shake down, maybe more.
The Policing of discourse done by Literary Professors, theorists, and critics
The problem with departments of literature being the ‘place’ for our dissent and debate is that while no one will tell you WHAT to believe, the dept. of lit. tell us HOW to use language in ‘acceptable’ ways. What we think is constrained by specific rules of discourse.
Custodians of discourse- literary theorists, critics, and teachers.
The embarrassment of literary criticism is that it defines for itself a special object, literature, while existing as a set of discursive techniques which have no reason to stop short at that object at all. Besides, who decides on the ‘literary canon?’ Eagleton says: the arbitrary authority of the literary institution?
***Yay LSU! My film studies professor has her office next to the Dept. of English in Allen Hall.
p. 506
There is no such thing as literature which is ‘really’ great, or ‘really’ anything, independently of the ways in which that writing is treated within specific forms of social and institutional life.
Literary criticism selects, processes, corrects and rewrites texts in accordance with certain institutionalized norms of the ‘literary’-norms which are at any given time arguable, and always historically variable.
Policing power of language and of writing itself- classifying the enduringly great and the ephemerally popular.
Non literary= Ephemeral- lasting for only a short period of time and leaving no permanent trace
Literary= Enduring- persisting or surviving
p. 507
Power structure: Whose ideological needs will be served?
Literary theory is an illusion!
1) it is really no more than a branch of social ideologies without any unity or identity which would adequately distinguish it from philosophy, linguistics, psychology, cultural and sociological thought
2) its one hope of distinguishing itself of clinging to an object named literature is misplaced.
Eagleton’s Proposal
p. 508
Counter literary theory with a different kind of discourse of:
Culture
Signifying practices
…so as to end the use of valuable theories on some obscure subject called “literature” and to place the theories in a wider political context.
Concern for the kinds of effects which discourses produce, and how they produce them.
Rhetoric-examined the way discourses are constructed in order to achieve certain effects. Interested in grasping such discursive practices as forms of power and performance. Saw writing and speaking as forms of activity inseparable from the wider social relations between writers and readers and unintelligible outside the social purposes and conditions in which they were embedded.
Just because literary theory is an illusion, does not mean we cannot revive from it many valuable concepts for a different kind of discursive practice altogether.
p.509-510
Liberal Humanism
Humanists say that dealing with literature is worth while because it makes you a better person
-This is a weal response because it considers literature’s transformative powers in isolation from social contexts and because ‘better person’ is formulated in only the most abstract of terms.
Mostly concerned with interpersonal matters, not applied to society as a whole.
What it means to be a ‘better person’ must be concrete and practical, concerned with people’s political situations as a whole rather than concerned only with the immediate interpersonal.
Liberal Humanism ‘uses’ literature to further certain moral values and in the end imply a particular form of politics.
Its values govern the reading process and its criticisms.
So, even those critics claiming to be concerned with humanism, not politics, are still related to politics.
Political and Ideological Criticism
p.512
Ideology- the link between discourses and power
People tend to give the term ‘Political Criticism’ to criticism whose politics disagrees with their own, but this cannot be so.
Cultural artefacts- any object having value, recognized as a signifier of a culture… I’d like a better definition….any suggestions?
Pleasure, enjoyment, the potentially transformative effects of discourse is quite as proper a topic for higher study as is the setting of puritan tracts in the discursive formations of the seventeenth century. Or other occasions that might prove more useful will not be the criticism or enjoyment of other people’s discourse but the production of one’s own. (studying what other people have done may help)
***Important here to realize how even a student can participate in several ways. We are consumers AND producers here. Not just producers of our own beliefs, like modern literary thought allowed us, but we are producers of our own ‘use’ of language.
One effect of the word ‘literature’ is to prevent us from recognizing how texts can be rewritten, recycled, put to different uses, inserted into different relations and practices.
Future for Higher Education Literature Departments
p. 514
What may replace traditional literature departments may be departments that centrally involve education in the various theories and methods of cultural analysis.
***Catano’s class on Cultural Studies. This class. Is LSU’s literary department guilty of having ‘scandalous and farcical features?’
The lack of existing departments has kept real criticism in the hands of the elite, thus reinforcing power-structures.
p. 515-516
Four moments when culture has suddenly become relevant, charged with a significance beyond itself:
1)Imperialism
2) Women’s Movement
3) Media
4) Working-Class Writing
Doubtful that Shakespeare and Proust will ever become as charged with as much energy, urgency, and enthusiasm as these 4 activities, when these texts are hermetically sealed from history, subjected to a sterile critical formalism, piously swaddled with eternal verities and used to confirm prejudices which any moderately enlightened student can perceive to be objectionable.

No. One. Panic. Newspapers are NOT obsolete.

First, I'd like to define convergence culture as I understand it; which is two fold:
1) When several mediums converge to create a super sized media community. The convergence of radio, internet, t.v., newspaper, etc.
2) Blurring the lines or shifting the roles of producer, consumer, and citizen.

I believe that the U.K. may be further advanced than the U.S. in its convergence culture. Two fairly recent examples come to mind. First is the example made by the Artist Formerly Known as Prince!!!! That's right folks, step back Jenkins, this musician IS offering solutions to the "melodramatic" problems that others have posed. Presently, there is a downward spiral of record sales. Why buy music when Limewire gives this stuff away? Furthermore, why opt for live entertainment when video entertainment is free and instantaneous? (See now the problems with fragmentation. Anything is available, why pay a mass distributor?) But oh, the insightful Prince is aware of all this. He decides, no one will buy an album anyway, and people are far too pleased to sit at home watching pay-per-view and live concert feed on the internet than to buy tickets for a live show... Prince decides to surprise fans by giving away his new album with the Mail on Sunday newspaper.
Let's piece this all together...
Buy a newspaper-get a music album-crave more-feelings of reciprocity-SELLOUT PRINCE's WORLD TOUR!!!

Next, an Indie British band called The Crimea decide that they haven't the label or the money to produce an album. They post all their music online available for free download on their website. There music becomes so widespread, their website receives so much attention, that they build a fanbase worthy of an album tour.
And so it begins (convergence culture that is).

These musicians have done something greater than pull the wool over consumers' eyes. They have responded to changing times. They have said, 'we will play, if you will listen.' The internet, the NEWSPAPER, has opened up additional lanes of distribution and ended the hierarchical top-down system. For The Crimea, the public was first the producer, then the consumer. For Prince, the public acted as citizens (reading up on current events) and was rewarded in a way that made them producer, then gave them the choice of becoming consumers. Isn't this what Americans want?