Comments on: What’s in a Flame?

By: The Happy Tutor

The Happy Tutor — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

Writing to the moment, in the heat of discussion, we all yeild to emotion. I have not gone back over the thread to locate your comments, but I think we all ended exhaused and enlightened, and still friends. What more can we ask of one another? When you write like this about rhetoric, power, terministic screens, ethos, you carry conviction. Gosh, I hope you can write like this in your dissertation. I don’t know what the “ground rules” are in your department, but you have an ear for language, for what is done as well as said. The rhetorical set up. The theory stuff you are using is so dry. When you write about it is almost numbing. Your dissertation proposal had me asking, “If this is a thesis, what is the thesis? What is the point he trying to make?” When you write as in this post, though, you combine theory, rhetoric, and practical criticism. Yes, it is all about disciplinary habits of attention — Liz, is actually very literate, with a degree in library science, and a real feel for literature. But, she is also a techie. She goes both ways. Likewise, you have two or three voices. The one in this post, like the voice of Sergeant Ed, gets my full attention.

Thanks for the kind words on masks. Here is the secret of that — impersonating not a person but a disciplinary voice, a social world of assumptions unconscious to the speaker but underlying everthing he or she says. All speech is dramtic monologue, and we all satirize ourselves. I know you see that, because you dwell on it.

Is there any way you can use that ear for language, for social class in language, for power relations in the most seemingly mundane speech, in analyzing some proof texts in your dissertation? Even if those texts are themselves theory? I mean, for Chrissakes, Sergeant Ed, what do you hear in the voices implicit in those books? The working class? Or the chattering classes?

Any way, don’t fall on your sword. Blogging about tacit power relations is not for sissies. (Talk about power all you want, the mantra might be, but never give it up, or lose control of your class, college, corporation, or conversation. The tacit control strategies, the nearly hidden and automatic gestures — remarking on those is what set off the firestorm. Why don’t you set off another in your dissertation? Burn down the whole damn grid square - or mabye save it for your first book, once you get the degree.)

By: cindy

cindy — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

Hi Mike,
I’m with the Tutor here, though I didn’t realize it until I read this. There’s a passion in so much of your writing–in your many non-dissertating voices (yes, I know that word irks you a bit)–that would breathe life into some of the theory. When you move away from the dissertation, you are so intense in your calls for social justice, for the rights of students, for that much aligned thing called “truth,” and yet that doesn’t always come through in the academic writing. Couldn’t it?

As for the brouhaha (sp?), I’d agree we are creatures (victims?) of our own academic training and that is some of what went on between you and Liz. I also got the sense that she really accepted your apology. For some of us, blogging is obviously new territory, and we’re going to make some mistakes. Don’t beat yourself up over it. Anyone who reads you regularly and who has communicated with you knows that that one moment at Wealth Bondage doesn’t tell the whole story.

By: Dorothea Salo

Dorothea Salo — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

I guess I’m the only one who hears the passion in the academic writing too.

As for the flamage — IMO it isn’t what you did at Wealth Bondage, but what you did in this post and what you will do next time temptation presents itself, that counts.

By: Gerry

Gerry — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

Am I the only one in that discussion who doesn’t think it ended well, or even ended at all for that matter? The way I see it is the academics who were commenting circled the wagons and never really discussed the context issues that you point to. Liz grudgingly accepts your apology later in the thread but never acknowledges your other points. She also lumps me with Frank (fine company IMHO) because I made an off the cuff remark about “those of us who build these tools”, and starts up a pissing match about tech credentials. As Frank said “I have so many frisky observations to share and anonymity …”, but I have refrained because I don’t get that the targets are interested in open and frank discussion.

The discussion has moved on and all I have is a bad taste in my mouth. The turn of the discussion to students evaluating professors shows even less awareness of the context, as it fails to see that the students are not being empowered so much as the administration has another tool to play with in the power game. An opportunity for learning was missed; the scene of instruction denied and passed over.

I was very moved when you wrote about losing your mother, and I feel very lucky to still have mine. At 74 she is slowing down but still vital, and even the thought of losing her is painful, I can’t imagine what you experienced. Be patient with your grief, it is painful but it heals also. Peace and light to you and yours.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

Mike, I want to comment and say something comforting. But I didn’t participate in this discussion or read all the relevant posts (even though the HT so graciously hit the highlights for me). I’m sorry now that I didn’t have time to read it all.

By: Francois Lachance

Francois Lachance — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

Mike,

I was struck by the twist in the thread on the Happy Tutor’s blog. It follows what I perceive to be an Americano-style of argumentation. A comment about a class of persons gets interpreted as an ad hominem remark (or an ad hominen turn is introduced into the discourse), defenses fly, apologies and then the discourse wraps up with some acknowledgement of the complexities of the status quo. To me this series of moves is inflected by an ideology of individualism. I wonder, following the lead of the Happy Tutor and the call to indulge in the excess of carnivalesque discourse, what would happen if the opening premise (all members of class X share the predicate Y) were entertained as true and invitations to consider the consequences were issued (if the premise is true then if follows that). The rhetorical reaction to an ad hominem remark or even to a generalization can be non-defensive and non-personalizing, i.e. inviting some one to think through the consequences. The appeal is not one to authority of either party. The appeal is to dialogue and exploration notwithstanding the tenor of the tone.

In any regards, thanks for having posted. It sparked some sparkling to and fro. As well, it has made me consider the social scripting involved in rhetorical moves and posit the existence of an Americano-style of exchange.

For some reason, I’ve not been able to post these remarks on the Happy Tutor’s blog.

By: Shelley

Shelley — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

I wasn’t aware of this particular uproar until you linked to me Mike, so I’m appreciative because it’s rather refreshing to see that brouhahas can occur in something other than technology.

I’m not sure why people were upset by what Liz wrote, it seemed reasonable to me. However, I’m not in academia. What this has shown is that people can get upset and passionate about specific topics and fields because of trigger words and past history, leaving outsiders to go “Wow, what a (pick one) emotional, abusive, ugly, heroic, passionate, angry person.”

I think this is a good lesson in keeping an open mind when viewing a discussion outside of one’s own passion.

So thank you for your writing. And I really believe you’ve paid more than enough for your original intemperate statement. I for one plan on reading you more often — you will be the second weblogger PhD candidate in rhetoric I read — I’m hoping some of it will rub off.

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

Gerry, I think perhaps the discussion at Wealth Bondage didn’t so much conclude as it stopped or kinda trickled away. In such a way, yes, I think you’re absolutely right that there are unresolved issues — I tried to get a different perspective by seeing them as possibly disciplinary in nature; Francois, your attempt to recontextualize them within the discourse of Americanized individualism strikes me as extremely productive and insightful — and helps me think in different ways about American class systems.

It’s interesting, Shelley, because I look back at the sixty-something comments there now, and there are still several discourses, one of which shares your perspective: why were people “upset by what Liz wrote”? Which is what I was trying to get at in the last paragraph of this post: it was the way that the words played within the situation and the context that bothered me so much, not the words themselves. And I’m still wondering how much attention to logos versus attention to ethos owes to disciplinary differences.

By: Francois Lachance

Francois Lachance — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 17:00:00 +0000

What I find remarkable is that for the cybernaut navigating through the appropriate places at the appropriate time the exchange hosted by the Happy Tutor is bookended by entries that are shaped in part as confessional moments. Anger, here. Depression, there:

http://mamamusings.net/archives/2003/08/26/control_freak.php

And the question of loss and preservation of individual control might warrant an examination of the pressures induce by the historical moment to express the pain of the self.

In any case the some of the aftermath got to be pointed at from a posting to an email list (see http://lists.village.virginia.edu/lists_archive/Humanist/v17/0238.html )
Quote:
I have a theory. Speed induced by what the French call “la rentree” gets inflected through national concerns (and some nations have very theocratic
discourses and ideologies that celebrate individualism). Back to school time for some is back to highly personalized political debate.
See for example comments that hypothesize a recourse to ad hominem turns as a failure to imagine scenarios:
http://www.vitia.org/weblog/archives/000114.html
And this on the perils of projecting experience:
http://www.plannedobsolescence.net/po/archive/000136.php

Could the same affect be generated mid-winter?