Questioning Collection

7/29/2019 Questioning Collection

1/16

Interrogating the Ethics of Composition as Collection

in the First-Year Writing Classroom

Questioning

Collection

Will Kurlinkus

The Ohio State University


2/16

The collection of pack ratswithout seriality, without

relation to one another or to the context of acquisition

Susan Stewart


3/16

Rapid growth in knowledge not only

makes products obsolete, but also

means that human capital depreciates

quickly. Constantly subject to

depreciation, workers must expect to

continually retool their skills or riskhaving nothing of value to market to

employers.When living post-

industrial lives people constantly

move along a continuum between

skilled and unskilled. The position is

never stable.Tony Scott, Writing Work,

Technology, and Pedagogy in the

Era of Late Capitalism

Late Capitalist Collection Exigencies


4/16

2010 Conference on College Composition

and Communication Call for Proposals

Whetherits taking the old and making it fresh and new or

taking the current and giving it a different spin, to remix a thing

is to try and make it better. In our 61st year, after decades of

innovative teaching and cutting-edge scholarship, the CCCC

remix provides us with a way to revisit, rethink, revise, and

renew our vision for the future of our field. The remix is not

only about knowing what works but also being forward thinking

enough to imagine new combinations and collaborations.

Keeping the elements of the remix in mind, I encourage you to

look closely at our field and figure out the spaces where we

can make new connections, the spaces where we can flip

something new. (CCCC)


5/16

Benjamin

s Flaneur

Levi-

Strausss

Bricoleur

Romantic

Collection

Romantic

Authorship

Creative

Commons

Cultural

Appropriation

Models of Composition as Collection

Collection

Gathering of

Souvenirs


6/16

Invention as Wonder

A collection of interesting, powerfulstatements.Sound-bite apercus

that sound good by themselves but

can also become workable bits in a

larger structure.A compelling

genre with which to re-arrange

textual materialsboth original andappropriatedin order to have

those materials speak the students

own voice and concerns Comp

Theorist Geoffrey Sirc

Materials are unoriginal, then,chosen on the basis of exoticism

and strong interest (Sirc).

Taking an art stance on the

everyday (Sirc).

Duchamps The Bride Stripped Bare by her

Bachelors, Even


7/16

Questioning Wonder

WalterBenjamins Flaneur: the privileged

wanderer of the 19th Century Paris

arcades. This elite observer has the time

to roam the city, reveling in commodity

culture and the innocent lives of the crowdwhile always retaining a critical distance

from it:

He becomes deeply involved with them,

only to relegate them to oblivion with a

single glance of contempt. There issomething compelling about the

ambivalence where he cautiously admits

to it (Benjamin).


8/16

One dilettante, a prince of his profession

Thinks Black Belt is a mine of finest ore,

Pure gold and bronze and copper to explore,

Desires, enamored of his own observation,To write it up, a nice romantic story,

Of leopards loitering along the stereo,

And jungle maidens, sensuous and sweet,

Crowning the Black belt in their sable glory.From Claude McKays Black Belt Slummers

Collection as Slumming?


9/16

TheGatheringofSouvenirs

The whole dissolves into the parts.

Metonymic

Diachronic

The souvenir involves displacement of

attention to the past. The souvenir isnot simply an object appearing out of

context, an object from the past

incongruously surviving in the present;;

rather, its function is to envelop the

present within the past.

Two types of souvenir:1. Souvenirs of external sights

2. Souvenirs of individual experience

From Susan Stewarts On Longing


10/16

TheCollection

The collection seeks a form of

self-enclosure which is possible

because of its ahistoricism.

Asynchronous

Metaphorical

The collection replaces historywith classification.

Once the object is completely

severed from its origin, it is

possible to generate a new

series, to start again within a

context that is framed by the

selectivity of the collector.

The ultimate term in the series

that marks the collection is the

self, the articulation of the

collectors own identity.

From Susan Stewarts On Longing


11/16

We must teach the maintenance of

the original contextcurrationrather than appropriation.

We must teach our students to

interrogate what drove them to

collect what they didwhat drives

their wonderand how that wonderreframes the objects they collect.

If identity politics is an attempt to

thematize the other in terms of its

similarities to the self, I am

interested here in constructing anethical alterity politics that considers

identity as beholden and responsive

first and foremost to the other

Jeffrey Nealon

LiteraciesofWonder

Screenshot from the Currators Code

a site that is a good first

step towards practices and attitudes of digitalattribution.


12/16

QuestioningWonder

Thinking about composition as collection

should also always involve thinking about thelists of interests and identifications that propel

our students to collect certain

objects/data/experiences and not others.

Collectors like the Grimms, who ostensibly

collected folk culture as a rebellion againsthigh art and the Enlightenment, didnt consider

every piece of culture or person interesting;

the collection had to contain only the certain

type of pure representation the collectors

sought. Thus, The people are not the mob of

the streets, who never sing or compose but

shriek and mutilate. The people, the folk,

were not then, the non-exotic lower classes of

the city because they didnt match the

collectors ideal search exigence.


13/16

The Freedom of the Commons

Lawrence LessigsFree Cultures:Cultures that leave a great deal open

for others to build upon.

If it is truly impossible to escape the

influence of the mass media, we should

be able to respond to it in anyproductive (and responsible) way we

see fit, shifting our relationship from a

passive reception model to one where

we produce.

The bricoleurdoesnt collect his

repertoire in order to merely solve one

task (like the completion of a final

paper); he learns to use each element

of the repertoire adaptively for multiple

tasks. This type of adaptable repertoire

is invaluable, I think, to teach our

students.


14/16

Questioning the Commons

What pieces of culture are up forgrabs in a model of composition that

touts the cultural commons? And

whom are we trying to help by

grabbing them?

Remix Culture sometimes creates a

false share or be greedy dichotomy

and a command to share.

We like to take new examples but not

new theory and new ways of

readingdiscovering interesting

content in the name of our fieldsaway from the literacies that were

traditionally used to engage that

content.

We need new models of citation and

attribution because in our current

system representing collective

authorshi is ver ver ver hard.


15/16

Questioning the Commons

Not everyone has equalaccess to the commons:

Individual creators are

privileged even as they build

on knowledge, act from the

past, and worked frombiased (not neutral)

technologies. Should we

perpetuate the logic that

race, gender, and class

arent part of the digital

commons?

Kimberly Christen


16/16

Conclusions

Collection is a social and politicalact; there are no mere disembodiedfacts, but choices.JohndanJohnson-Eilola.

Which engines drive our wonder?

What is the difference betweencollecting,curating, andappropriating?

What role should both pluralisticandsingularmodels of authorship playin our classrooms?

What role does our writing play in aknowledge but also commodityeconomy and how are we helping orharming our subjects?

Questioning Collection

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