Wysocki, Anne Frances. "Introduction: Into Between--On Composition in Mediation."
Composing(Media)=Composing(Embodiment).
Eds. Kristin L. Arola and Anne Frances Wysocki. Utah State UP. 2012. 1-22.
Banks, Adam. "Oakland, The Word, and The Divide: How We All Missed the
Moment." from Race, Rhetoric, and Technology:
Searching for Higher Ground. NCTE Press.
2006. 11-46.
I feel like the heart of Wysocki’s argument is that writing
should be thought of “as a technology that enables us to experience our bodies
as our bodies,” even as it “mediates
those bodies in line with existing institutions” (22). So, in my understanding
of her argument, writing makes us aware of our own experiences as a
consciousness inside of a body—we understand our own physicality as we
write—but our bodies are simultaneously negotiated and remediated by other
ideologies. I definitely understand why we read Wysocki’s article with Banks
negotiation of African American rhetoric. I see Banks’ argument fitting very
much with the second part of Wysocki’s argument regarding the ideologies thrust
upon/remediating bodies. Banks writes, “African Ameican rhetoric has always
been multimedia, has always been about body and voice and image, even when they
only set the stage for language” (25).
Banks writes about the dumbing down of course material for African
Americans, about the assumptions regarding ebonics, and how the internet
provides an interesting and unique space for a “dropping out of marked race”
(30).
I agree with Wysocki that writing encourages an awareness of
our bodies. When I sit down to write a paper, I have a very specific process,
space, and method. If I skip a step, I’m distracted and my writing seems off.
To be sure, this could simply be a reflection of my own neuroses, but my
process makes me think about every decision I make before, during, and after I
write, down to the gum that I must chew to deal with my own nervous energy. I
wonder how Wysocki’s argument might be translated in terms of multimodal
projects—I’d think that these multimodal projects would make us even more aware
of our bodies and our processes of making.
I really like your explanation of body as being multimodal, and also remediated through different modalities when writing. I took have rituals that make up the way my body responds to the readiness of writing. Spatially, everything around me has to be completely in order, before I can enter the chaos of my mind to write. It might be neurosis, but it works :)
ReplyDeleteHi Jenna,
ReplyDeleteYou know that gum chewing and writing is a dangerous combination, right? :-P
What I find interesting about Wysocki's argument (as well as some of the other arguments/texts we're reading for Thursday's class) is that the concept of embodiment ties in so closely with Bolter and Grunsin's ideas regarding transparency. When a technology (like writing) works, we don't notice it. It's only when our attention is brought to the technology or it breaks down that we consider our physical relationship to it.
Hey Jenna!
ReplyDeleteOnce again, great insights! I really like that you were able to make the connection between these two articles (as I wasn't so competent). At any rate, your consideration of the body and multimodality are spot on. To add to what you're suggesting, I would most certainly think that, as you put it " multimodal projects would make us even more aware of our bodies and our processes of making." In doing the multimodal timeline, I was very much aware of my body and processes that were occurring that did not occur while making the digital timeline (or when sitting down to write a paper for that matter). The different methods employed down to the laying out of materials was significantly different. I also found it interesting that I became much more aware of my hands: what they were doing in order to manipulate the materials and produce what I intended.