digital digs

why we can't make moral judgments

Cortland has a Faculty Development Committee that sponsors meetings called Teaching and Learning Cirlces. My friend and colleague, David Franke, organizes some of them. Though I value the efforts he makes, I have recently been reminded why I object to such institutions. They remind me of centers for "excellence" in teaching and learning. Like Bill Readings, I am troubled by the notion of excellence as an academic currency. Here though, my objection is to a particular upcoming event.

I received an e-mail yesterday, along with the rest of the faculty, inviting me to join in a book discussion through the Teaching and Learning Circle. The book is Why can't we make moral judgements? by Mary Midgley. The book, quite unknowingly, evokes Antoin Artaud's "To be done with the judgment of god," at least for me. Not to go into too much depth, but Midgley's book is essentially philosophy-lite and an argument for the necessity of a moral code as the foundation for social judgment.

It is a curious book to read at this historical juncture, since it is clearly "moral judgment" that has us invading Iraq, denying gays the right to marriage, and threatening to criminalize abortion--to say nothing of the morality of the Patriot Act. Everyone seems to agree that Bush was re-elected because of his "moral values."

But let me attempt to answer, briefly, Midgley's eponymous question. One answer is to say that of course we can make moral judgments. Indeed people make them all the time. We have a cultural discourse of morality, and people use it. Midley's text, however, makes a bogeyman out of postmodernism's Nietzschean critique of morality and employs the common complaints made about contemporary theory: it is absurd; it is simply a matter of fashion and not serious; it is intellectual elitism, etc. Like so many before her, she simply fails to understand contemporary philosophy. That's understandable; this stuff is difficult.

A second answer is as much Marxist as it is Nietzschean. Essentially it is to say that we cannot make moral judgments because morality is overdetermined by ideology. That is to say that moral judgments are always already ideological. As Midgley herself discusses, the purpose of a moral code is to maintain social order. And yet by definition, the purpose of morality is to determine good/evil, right/wrong. This would necessarily assume that the maintenence of social order was a universal good. It's really not a good understanding of morality anyway, as people obviously make moral arguments that overturn the social order, as in the emancipation movement. However, it does make sense to say that moral arguments and judgments are ideological, that they are based upon class interests, historico-material conditions, and one's notion of one's identity in relation to society.

In that regard, one can "make" a moral judgment and discuss morality, but to do so is intellectually obfuscating as it occludes the ideological-material processes through which moral values are produced and reified.

A third answer is more psychoanalytic. It would suggest that when we say we are making a moral judgment, we are in fact narrating/explaining, after the fact, a decision that is produced by a different set of processes. Looking at it from this perspective, we might suggest that we make decisions based upon unconscious desires and processes. We may justify them morally afterward, or even in the process of making them, but the codes themselves do not enter into the process of decision-making. We may choose not to act criminally because we are afraid of social judgment, but that is not a choice made for moral reasons. We may curtail our behavior because we fear divine justice, but that also is not a moral choice.

Finally, we can combine two and three by seeing that our unconscious is managed ideologically. This is the insight we gain from contemporary philosophy that Midgley and others like her are light years from understanding. What we can see here is that morality is a cybernetic mircopolitical mechanism for controlling subjective production. It is not mind control, but is rather like a black hole, a singularity, drawing subjectivity and consciousness toward it.

It is not that humans do not make decisions based upon abstract values articulate in symbolic terms. This is a part of communal interaction if not integral to human behavior itself. The point is that the discourse of morality is outmoded and insufficient for understanding this process. We have developed a more thorough understanding of these processes. What is materially dangerous about this is that the discourse of morality has become (if it has not always been) an ideological tool for silencing dissent and dismissing any question of social critique: any question about the legitimacy of invading Iraq is dismissed because we have a moral duty to freedom.

This is why deconstruction remains useful. It allows us to see that the problem of immoral behavior serves to occlude the aporia that the boundary between good and evil is blurry, that the two become indistinguishable within language. The fact that we are able to distinguish, to judge, good and evil reflects the ideological-material power of institutions to manage subjectivity.

What really frustrates me about all this is that this book, and a discussion about it, is presented as "intellectual" discourse on my campus. This book is so simple-minded, I wouldn't even use it as a course text, let alone present it as a foundation for a conversation among faculty. If my students can read Nietzsche and Barthes as we're doing this semester, then surely my colleagues can...right?

After all, if they want to complain about "postmodernism" then let's read Derrida and have a discussion about their concerns.

keep on teaching in the e-world!

The New York Times reports on computer programs for writing relatively successful fiction. However despite this success some roadblocks remain.

That no computer has yet written the Great American Novel may be because computers are subject to some of the same handicaps that afflict human writers. First, writing is hard! Although computers can work unhindered by free will, bourbon or divorce, such advantages are outweighed by a lack of life experience or emotions. Second, and all too familiar to living writers of fiction, there is no money in it. Unable to teach creative writing or marry rich, computers have to depend on research grants. And why would anyone pay for a computer to do something that humans can still do better for peanuts?

This got me thinking. Of course it would be possible, I imagine, to program computers to flip burgers at ever fast food joint across the nation. Perhaps such "innovation" is on its way. But I'm guessing its easier and cheaper to just hire teenagers to do it (not to say that it would probably be bad PR to put all those kids out of work).

Though teachers cost (marginally) more than burger flippers, their jobs are disproportionately more complex, particularly in terms of interacting with other humans. Despite the fact that one often hears in popular magazines and elsewhere that the teaching profession will be supplanted by computers, I believe the computational difficulty/cost compared with the cost of human instruction will not make such replacements economically viable.

True, one could argue that as computers get faster and cheaper that viability may shift. And undoubtedly, as I often write about, information technology will continue to alter teaching practices. But I do not believe it will alter the need for teachers.

Certainly, as the futurists predict, if computers acheive or perhaps even approach consciousness and intelligence equal to or greater than our own (to which I tend to say, "speak for yourself, genius"), they will be able to replace teachers. However by that time I don't think we will be alone. We will be joined on the unemployment line by knowledge workers from doctors and lawyers to engineers and architects.

Until then we'll be happily flipping through student papers, b/c who would want to pay a computer to do a job that can be done more cheaply by humans?

This is your brain on plagiarism

A recent post on Kairosnews picks up the ongoing discussion On Plagiarism and Gladwell's "Something Borrowed" piece in the recent New Yorker. I passed this link on to some of my colleagues here, as we are talking about plagiarism a great deal these days (as many academics seem to be doing). I suggested the New Yorker article could initiate interesting and productive classroom conversation about the complexities of this issue. In response, a colleague articulated a concern that the piece might be read as a defense of plagiarism. There seems to be a consensus in my department, and elsewhere, that the task here is to explain the evils of plagiarism and convince students not to do it.

Just say no to plagiarism.

I see a strong analogy to the war on drugs. In health classes and on PSAs, "they" make it seem so easy. "Drugs" are bad; they hurt you; they hurt the ones you love. You could go to jail and ruin your life. And so on.

But as we know, the war on drugs isn't that simple. The moral questions surrounding drugs are not so cut and dry. The boundary between legal and illegal drugs is blurry and the means we use to distinguish between them are more political than scientific.

Anyway, I'm not here to argue about drugs. My point is that the war on plagiarism uses the same kind of hygenic rhetoric. But "we" know that plagiarism is not so obvious, that it is less an objectively determinable condition than an ideological, culturally contextualized phenomenon. Inextricably linked with a specific (and outdated) understanding of authorship and composition, it is a lynchpin in intellectual property. If we cannot determine the student's "original work" and "individual understanding," how do we grade them? How do we establish our own position of authority in relation to them?

The war on drugs was and is more about managing economic productivity and implementing a system of surveillance and control than it is about improving the lived experience of citizens. Similarly the war on plagiarism is more about insisting on a particular relation between students and authority (whether in the form of texts, professors, or institutions) than it is about improving their learning experience.

mecology-meconium-mycology

Though he does't mention it in his post, Collin's recent discussion of Mecology has me thinking about Greg Ulmer. "Mecology" (elsewhere mycology) is a shortening and personalization/localization of the notion of media ecology (a la Kittler I suppose), as Collin writes "the various ways that I manage and organize my space, time, resources, memory, information, etc." The problem he and others are discussing is the effect of blogging and other social software on the ways we spend our time and energy and the sites from which we receive our knowledge. Blogging, as most bloggers know, can be a huge time suck, at least as seen from one perspective.

But how does this relate to Ulmer?

Well, mycology is actually already a word, it is the study of fungi. Ulmer discusses mushrooms, technically saprophytes, in his late 80s essay, "The Object of Post-Criticism" (in a collection titled The Anti-Aesthetic). Ulmer dicusses John Cage (who had his own book on mushroom-hunting), but primarily focuses on Derrida.

As recall, the crux of the argument is something like the following: the act of quotation (and nowadays linking of course) creates a wound/rupture in the apparent unity of text. From that cite/site, meaning/interpretation proliferates. The saprophyte serves an important ecological function, decomposing dead trees (i.e. texts), in the wild. The quotational saprophyte is hence a de/compositional process.

The mycological processes on information networks do not work solely on texts, however, they also de/compose subjects. When we ask the personal question "what is happening to me through my interaction with new media?" or, more engineer-like, we ask "how do we design information networks to interact with humans?" we produce problems that "shield us" (see Derrida on this in Aporias) from the aporetic (de)formulation breaking down the boundaries between "tool" and "subject."

The process of becoming in the saprophytic intersection of new media and modern subject thus becomes conductively linked to the mycological becoming of consuming particular mushrooms. As Deleuze and Guattari write in ATP:

One of the things of profound interest in Castaneda's books, under the influence of drugs, or other things, and of a change of atmosphere, is precisely that they show how the Indian manages to combat the mechanisms of interpretation and instill in the discipline a presignifying semiotic, or even an asignifying diagram: Stop! You're making me tired! Experiment, don't signify and interpret! Find your own places, territorialities, deterritorializations, regmine, lines of flight! Semiotize yourself instead of rooting around in your prefab childhood and Western semiology.

The underlying principle of HCI is one of domestication: "nice," domestic, essentially flavorless mushrooms grown in large piles of shit under careful management: MS-blogging/McBlogging.

Curiously the closest "real" word to mecology (at least in my dictionary and memory) is meconium, which most parents will remember is the nasty, dark green crap that comes out of your newborn soon after birth. It is the feces that has accumulated prior to birth. However meconium also refers to a reduction of opium used as a sedative and analgesic.

So perhaps mycology births us into a new subjective space where the mushrooms that grow from the meconium excesses of our passage serve as both opiate and perhaps psychedelic: a new world and new post-subject.

SUNY Cortland English Department: where you at?

UPDATE 2/07: Even though this post is now several years old, I noticed it still comes up second on a google search for my department. Thus I'm writing an update.

OK, so we are a little behind the times in having this disciplinary conflict. Ostensibly it is a conflict between literature and writing, or at least it has devolved into that. I believe this is a misunderstanding that has been perpetrated by the discipline as a whole. I see it instead as a conflict between those who maintain a bourgeois, hegemonic system of language and cultural values and those who take a critical and at least progressive or reformist, if not revolutionary or experimental view, of language and culture.

Those in the former, though typically literary studies specialists, may continue to proclaim the importance of writing; it is simply that by "writing" they mean grammatical correctness and the performance of certain stylistic conventions. They uphold traditional, canonical views of literature, including a strict limitation of interpretation within the bounds of new criticism. They tend to be luddites and to reject "postmodern" theory as absurd. Generally they teach in a lecture driven mode.

Those who are in graduate school, at least the less cynical of you, may find it surprising that such faculty continue to exist in large numbers across the nation. And no, they are not simply older faculty nearing retirement.

The latter group represent a cross-section of English Studies, though in my experience particularly in rhetoric. One of the most misleading elements of the literature/writing binary is the role of "theory." Conventionally rhet/comp people have stuck by their pragmatism in rejecting theory; theory has been claimed by literary scholars at elite institutions, while many of their colleagues at other schools have not embraced it. I think the result has been that many rhet/comp people have come to see theory as something that elitist literary scholars do, something that is quite impractical from a rhet/comp view, and of little worth.

However, I think there are a growing number of rhetoricians who do not see things this way. In part we have cultural studies to thank for this. We also have to recognize the important role cultural studies of technology and new media studies has played and might play in the future in bringing a powerful understanding of the roles theory might play in teaching and researching writing.

In any case, the latter group is not just "writing" faculty. It is teachers of experimental and noncanonical literatures, media studies, cultural studies, and so on. In other words, it is the folks pushing in many directions on the aging boundaries of traditional English Studies.

This is the conflict that my department now faces: one where we must decide how we are going to move into the future.

advance to/of/in/from/about the rear

Our department has been discussing a retreat, and though it will be difficult, I think it will be "for the best." We face the basic disciplinary conflicts you might expect in a department with traditional literary stuies, rhetoric, and teacher education faculty. Traditional literary studies have been in decline here with an increasing number of preservice teachers and the inception of our professional writing major. It all came to a head this semester when two of our literary studies faculty retired and we elected to replace them with faculty in teacher education with a writing focus.

The switch was necessitated by an increasing demand for courses in writing and grammar. However, it is not quite that simple. The necessity was/is a product of a particular interpretation of NCATE requirements for teacher education. Now, I agree that it is important for preservice teachers to receive education in writing, and the requirement for this is fairly straightforward. But the type and number of writing/language courses that we require is another matter. In addition, we have technology courses for these students, but we could eliminate those course if technology was infused into the curriculum.

Ultimately, it is a lame excuse for a department to pawn off its responsibility for curriculum development on external requirements, especially when those requirements largely become a source of complaint for the faculty.

So our department needs to figure out where it is going and how it understands its relationship to the discipline at large (an understanding that needs to be inclusive of all our curriculum and faculty). Here's my (relatively) succinct definition of English Studies: the investigation of writing (as both practice and artifact) with an emphasis on aesthetic (literary), rhetorical, peagogical, and cultural (political, ethical, etc.) concerns. English Studies employs a range of interdisciplinary methods including Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis, and cultural studies. It's fundamental, paradigmatic question might be phrased as how/why does writing shape (and get shaped by) subjectivity and communal relations?

In literary studies this question might take the form of asking how a particular poem affected students in a class or examining what Shakespeare can tell us about the conception of gender in the early Modern period. In rhetoric it might be commenting on a student essay during workshop or an analysis of economic class in contemporary political discourse. In education it might mean learning to respond to student writing or critiquing the values behind different pedagogical approaches.

Anyway, I think some definition similar to this will be necessary for us to stop seeing one another as enemies and seeing one another as friends or at least friendly rivals.

If you have to ask...

Yes, it is, in a sense, the oldest question, the formative question, of rhetoric and composition, and yet posed once again by a colleague:

Do you really need a PhD to teach writing?

It is a surprisingly ambiguous question. Afterall my 5-year old daughter is being taught writing by someone without a PhD. Students K-12 regularly receive instruction in writing (and reading and literature) from teachers without doctorates. Even in higher education, a solid fraction of courses in writing (though again also in literature) are taught by graduate students, adjuncts, and lecturers without terminal degrees.

So the answer is quite obviously, "No, one does not need a PhD to teach writing anymore than one needs a PhD to teach literature," as anyone who is an academic should know. In fact, the answer is so obvious that it is likely this is not the crux of the question. Perhaps the crux is whether or not it is necessary to have a PhD to teach writing well.

This is a more complicated question. First of all, we would have to specify the type of PhD: any English degree, rhetoric/composition, technical or professional writing, journalism, creative writing, would an MFA count?

Second, we would have to ask what is meant by writing: for example, are we talking specifically about undergraduate academic writing of the type typically taught in FYC and assigned in literature courses? Derrida writes, given the linearity of writing and its connection to our concept of temporality, "the meditation upon writing and the deconstruction of the history of philosophy become inseparable." This grammatological approach to writing would suggest a need for a decidedly erudite education.

Third, one would have to define "well," which is clearly a problem invested with all types of ideological and epistemological pitfalls.

But, actually I don't think that's the question either. What this question "really" is, in my reading, is whether or not the teaching (and study) of writing is an intellectual activity on par with the teaching (and study) of literature. I include study parenthetically for although it was not included in the question, one does not generally hire a PhD solely to teach; there is an expectation that one will conduct research as well.

There are several answers to this as well.

Clearly one essentially needs a PhD to be hired as professor. It would be difficult to get books or even many articles published without a degree.

However, the real thrust of the question is to challenge the questioned to legitimate the study of writing. If one can legitimate the study of writing, one implictly legitimates its teaching. That is, if the content of the discipline is valuable then it is worth teaching. True, writing courses place a special emphasis on practice, but I would argue this demonstrates not only the "real world" value of writing education but also our discipline's insight that learning is a practice: students acquire the content of rhetoric by producing knowledge of rhetoric through practice.

So how does one argue for the value of studying writing and writing practices as an intellectual enterprise? Well, I suppose one might begin by examining the 26 centuries of philosophical/rhetorical study of writing. This would obviously include the past four decades of research in rhetoric and composition. Second one could examine the extensive role writing practices play in our culture across a range of cultural sites.

Then one would have to ask oneself: could there be something to gain from studying writing and writing practices?

I'm not going to argue that here, but assuming that one says yes, then one would have to say that the need for a PhD to teach writing is the same as the need for a PhD to teach any subject: professors with doctorates are experts and active scholars; they are thus able to deliver an education that reflects a thorough understanding of the subject and its latest developments. This, of course, is the potential problem with non-PhDs teaching writing: a lack of knowledge in the field makes it difficult to teach the subject.

I suppose you could say that just about anyone could sit and talk about writing as it relates to their own experience. Likewise, just about anyone could sit and talk about a novel or a poem. Of course, they wouldn't be providing a disciplinary understanding of the text. Similarly the former person wouldn't be providing a disciplinary understanding of writing.

So the bottom line is that one needs a PhD to teach writing because it is a complex disciplinary field that requires that level of education in order for one to engage in research and be able to teach the disciplinary knowledge of writing the field generates. Like all fields, more basic or introductory courses can be taught by less experienced faculty.

Technology in the classroom

I agree that it appears reasonable to hold to the position that no faculty member should be required to use specific computer technology in the classroom. It is a matter of academic freedom, as well as a kind of “job creep” where we are continually asked to be responsible for more knowledge, skills, content, etc.

However, to see, even for solely oneself, that computer technology has no value in the classroom is problematic. I am not a proselytizer or even really a technophile. I conduct critical, philosophical investigations into technology, so I know a lot about it. But concluding I therefore “love” technology is analogous with saying that an economist loves capitalism b/c s/he studies the American economy.

Say computers have no value is much like saying books have no value. Obviously some books are not poorly written, outdated, or not valuable for a particular reader for any number of reasons. That’s partly why there are a lot of books out there. Computer technology is equally varied. Saying computer technology has no value for you in teaching is roughly equivalent with saying “I don’t cotton much to that there book learnin.’”

Logically speaking, if we say it is reasonable for faculty to refuse to use computer technology, wouldn’t it be reasonable for them to refuse to use other technology, e.g. books, chalkboards, writing utensils, lighting, desks? As academics our courses and teaching are reviewed periodically. Is it acceptable for me to say, “I don’t use books b/c I believe books have no value in teaching.” Or I don’t use writing or lights? While in some disciplines, saying this about writing might be acceptable, mostly these attitudes will not be accepted, academic freedom or not.

Academic freedom is clearly limited. Obviously one must be hired, and stay hired, as an academic in order to enjoy it. This will mean meeting certain responsibilities and adhering to a particular communal ethos.

So I think the point is the reasonableness of saying faculty should not be required to use technology depends on most folks nodding their heads when you say that at a department meeting….which may not be for that long.

I think the more reasonable analogy is to say that just like we have wide latitude in ordering books and creating our courses, we should have wide latitude in the means by which we integrate technology. However, just as we expect college courses to have reading materials, assignments, and a syllabus, we should expect some incorporation of technology.

As one of my colleagues put it, quite honestly, she requires some external motivation to incorporate technology (the carrot is nicer than the whip but both will work). If we have colleagues who might be here for another 5, 10 or more years, we simply need to begin pushing them toward technology…not to say you must do x, y or z but educating them in the possibilities, encouraging and supporting their experimentation, and rewarding their successes.
Again, I’m not a proselytizer for computers, but I’m not a bibliophile either. However, I think my colleagues are mistaken if they believe English Studies can survive as a kind of amusement park of past technology, as the Amish country of higher education.

As I have said before (and will say, I guess, again and again), folks in English Studies need to realize that their critical competencies, their ethos, their knowledge, and their methods are not inextricably tied to a particular technology. If they are then English Studies will fade away and die from irrelevancy. Our disciplinary task is to learn, critique, and engage emerging forms of information/knowledge production and communication and to develop new modes of literacy in response that carry forward our ethical, political, and intellectual concerns and values.

"the more it snows

piddely pum, the more it goes, piddely pum, on snowing." Perhaps you recall that old A.A. Milne rhyme.

More than 900 years ago, the First Crusade resulted in the establishment of the Crusader States in the Holy Land. Brief history lesson: the ostensible purpose of the Crusades were religious--to protect Christendom from the infidel Muslim and to recapture the Holy Land prior to Judgment Day (which is always around the corner). However, the Crusades were also important political-economic wars, opening trade routes and securing key commodities such as spices. Of course this sounds familiar and I'm far from the first to make the connection. Indeed I seem to recall Bush himself refering, with his usual diplomatic aplumb, to our current adventure as a "crusade." Indeed one could say our current situation is part of an ongoing, off and on, conflict.

But I'm not interested in developing a grand historical theory here. What I want to point out is this. I don't think our notion of the Islamic world has changed all that much in several centuries. That is, we can see in the Middle East a struggle between religious fundamentalism and modernity that overlaps ideologically with attitudes regarding the West connected to colonialism. Modernity is associated with the West (with Judeo-Christianity), and perhaps what Islam needs (like SE Asia and China) is its own non-Western modernity.

However, the problem is complicated by the fact that the West itself continues to struggle with religious fundamentalism and modernity. Our recent electoral debacle is clear evidence of this. I know Democratic pundits are trying to say "Americans share our values but we failed to connect to them," but I don't believe that's true. Bush was elected because voters came out against Islam, abortion, and homosexuality. That is they came out (excuse the pun) against that which is different from themselves and their "values." For example, see the recent fight over the word "evolution" in the Georgia public school system.

Here is the "problem" in the Islamic world, which I think is painfully obvious to anyone who is educated and able to think critically (which is unfortunately a very small percentage of the population). Across the Islamic world, there are repressive regimes that exist to benefit a small segment of the population who profit from oil sales. They oppose true democracy and education for their people.

Those are the US allies.

The opposition to this repression (and its obvioius coziness with the West) takes the form of religious fundamentalism (a la (excuse the pun, again) Iran in the 70s to anti-commie Taliban in the 80s to contemporary terrorism).

In short, what we have today is much like what we had 900 years ago. Much like the Europe of the Dark Ages, we have a significant portion of the population (in the US) who are deeply religious and poorly educated (if you're offended by this characterization, in the words of our president, "bring 'em on"). We have a war that is obviously (though tacitly) being fought on religious grounds but for equally obvious and tacit economic ends.

Here is our one and only hope Obi Wan. History. The Crusades opened exchange between Christendom and Islam. The result was education, for the West. Islam gave us Greek culture, which we had destroyed. Islam paved the way for the Renaissance, humanism, and thus modernity in the West. Clearly modernity is an unfinished project in the West. Obviously we now look at postmodernity as we say modernity leads to the error of fascism, which I would characterize as the inability to leave behind the absolutism of monotheistic culture.

The error, I think now quite obvious, of the latter 20th-century was to imagine the US as postmodern, when we were, and still are, pre-modern. Only now are we entering our modernist-fascistic stage. Europe's error was to be so horrified by the Holocaust to imagine that it was still moving forward. Afterall, Europe acheived modernity by expelling its stubbornly pre-modern population to the US. Yes, we have "religious freedom" but only to permit the worst forms of religious extremism and fundamentalism, not to protect us from these things. If we were/are a nation of "freedom and tolerance" why would we be built on slavery, colonization, and genocide?

I am calling on the world community to support the large, though minority, community in America that opposes the horrors of our nation. The US's greatest supporter, the UK, does so for the most cynical of reasons, to gain political leverage against France and Germany in the EU. The people of the UK do not support us.

Perhaps someday, more than 900 years after the Crusades began, America can learn to stop hating. This is why I personally will echo the Nietzschean proclamation: Good news! God is dead. For certainly religion is the most destructive force on our planet, and only in the death of god(s) does humanity (to say nothing of every other living entity on this planet) stand a chance for survival.

EUROPE! Listen to Me! For centuries, we have taken on the dross of your society: religious extremists, criminals, "huddled masses," etc. We have been an escape valve for your struggle to modernize. You don't need to imagine what kind of country results from such a process. You can see it for yourselves on your television.

We have enslaved and murdered millions of people. Hitler is small potatoes compared to American history. We have employed weapons of mass destruction, and we are building more.

"the more it snows ...

This one goes to 11

So crank it up, blast my ears Townsend style, and enjoy the "Vitanza silence" (to quote Jeff Rice ). Actually, it's Jeff's post that get's me rambling insensibly here. He's writing about quantitative vs. qualitative research in rhet/comp, spurred by a recent post in the WPA listserv. I want to add to the (un)consciencious objectors to quantitative research. Now I can appreciate the "rhetorical" argument that says those with deep pockets want to see numbers. Ok.

5.

Great, there's a number. Now where's my cheque? .... What's that? You want the number to mean something? Oh... well, I'm sorry, but that's going to require me altering the structure of the universe. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I'm going to need a slighter larger budget.

Am I being hyperbolic/argumentative here? No doubt. There are a some numbers I can agree can be associated with a text: number of words and/or letters, maybe number of pages if we are talking about an already printed text, the number of minutes a particular person took reading it during a specific event, and so on. Perhaps we could do some quantitative experiment. For example, write a text that causes a reader to move 100m. Then we could test various texts and measure the distance they cause people to move.

OK, so at least those of us in the "biz" are familiar with "norming" (my step-father's name is "Norm" so Freudians can take that fact and run with it). Even in the case of well-performed norming session, there has to be some consensus about what the goal/point is. I remember my first, pre-graduate experience, a week-long workshop to prepare me (22 at the time) to teach FYC. The first question was "what is good writing?" This is the question of the norming session.

However, I would say the point(less) (to echo the "Vitanza silence") must deconstruct/deterritorialize the concept of "good writing." Replacing good with another adjective (e.g. effective, college-level, etc.) does not resolve the problem. Quite obviously (from Derrida, if not Plato, on) writing remains undefinable. How do you quantify that which cannot be defined? Yes, of course, we can define writing as "markings on a page" of some sort. But that can hardly translate into what we "mean" by writing.

Besides, can anyone tell me what we are trying to do by evaluating/measuring writing? Are we trying to evaluate the mind/knowledge/ability of the writer? Is that what this is about? Putting people into slots?

Deep pockets or not, it's blood money.

And don't tell me it is about trying to "help" people (read Nietzsche if you think so).

Here's the bottom line: quantitiative analysis of texts relies upon some transparent understanding (between both writers and audience/graders) of the "purpose" of writing. Setting aside the problem of this transparency, the more fundamental concern for me is the notion that good writing is about ensuring a purpose recognizable by all readers.

How would Derrida or Deleuze or Vitanza or Ulmer fare on such evaluations? Or Joyce or Faulkner?