Erin's response, Wysocki "Drawn Together"

[Anonymous]

#455

“In composing the selves-to-be-considered that Hall describes, we can only work with available cultural categories for shaping texts if we wish to be understood by others… The available designs of words and pictures, that is, come with attached discourses. How one articulates words and pictures, then, can play with – or against- those discourses.” (26)
Wysocki’s chapter, particularly this quote from early on in the reading, brings me back yet again to J. Elizabeth Clark’s work (which we’ll be reading later) and the need to recognize that the available cultural categories for communication are rapidly changing. The need to show our students how to “play against” the available discourses in their classrooms in order to improve their communication skills in the world outside academe – and to let them know that it’s okay to do so – is a real one. I’m using the book Sondra brought out at the end of class last week, actually – Understanding Rhetoric (Losh, Alexander, Canon, and Canon), the graphic composition textbook. My students’ responses to it have been great as they not only are able to digest the rhetorical terms with which I’d like them to be familiar more easily, but are able to see how using genres in interesting ways – ways that perhaps subvert their original intended purpose/focus/etc. – can get a message across more effectively sometimes as it catches the audiences’ attention.

Wysocki’s quote also reminds me of why I’ve been really focused on talking about modalities this semester. I think mode or media is often the least talked about rhetorical consideration in FYC assignments – if we think of rhetorical considerations as audience, purpose, genre, stance, and media – due to the fact that there is often this pressure to dwell on the genre (often the research paper – a non-genre of its own, but that’s a different story). But given the ways our students are expected to communication digitally, modality is perhaps one of the most important elements. Wysocki’s point about the fact that these categories being socially mandated is absolutely correct. But that makes our jobs as teachers in FYC classrooms more difficult. It puts us in an odd position, in some ways, to open their eyes to the possibilities of multimodal communication and then send them to their next class in which they’re expected to communicate solely in text. (This same discussion comes along when we talk about process writing and other composition pedagogy – what we’re saying in our classroom is not always echoed by other professors/other disciplines.) Again I’m led back to Clark, who calls for a larger systemic change in the university, one that privileges multiple modalities as well as multiple genres.

[Anonymous]

#458

Erin, If it’s OK, I hope it’s OK if I write with you rather post on my own.  You write that  “The need to show our students how to “play against” the available discourses in their classrooms in order to improve their communication skills in the world outside academe – and to let them know that it’s okay to do so – is a real one.” 

Wysocki’s discourse here was hard for me to follow.  Starting with the idea that writing constructs identity,  I think she argues that sometimes gendered lists of contrasting elements/ideas establish a cultural distinctions between maleness in words and femaleness in images.  Not sure I buy that based on this thin evidence.  This, she says connects to her selective Critical history of comic books, arguing, I think, that they have not been a very transgressive or critical form.  Again, not sure I’m on board.  And this connects to her close reading of Fun House, including  some cinematic style notes, but mostly a pretty standard literary reading that does not to me really address much about the creative and compositional potential for this mode which can blend drawings, still images and limited text and has a genre history that includes different kinds of playfulness.  

Like you, I’m really interested in ways students can use new modes to play with and against existing discourses.  I love Fun House too.  I think the unique playfulness of this genre/mode allows Bechtel room to create a serious story about sometimes tragic sad events with a light touch.  We read comics differently than books or movies, right?  We have different modal/genre expectations, although they can all collage together in cool ways  –Sean     

[Anonymous]

#459

My student Judy says I can share her piece to show what I mean about blending comics/movie modes to create a light, disarming tone for serious content.   https://youtu.be/uNPZ-E_fAzk

 

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