More than the constraints of genre

Previous posts have attempted to rhetorically tackle the axiological question of what is “literary?”  In the gap since writing those posts, I have become aware of the question in more specific ways via my own writing.

When not writing academic papers on the subjects of Rhetoric and Composition Theory, I’m writing fiction.  As I write fiction, I find my process continuously intruded upon by precepts ingrained in me during my graduate studies.  “Show, don’t tell.”  “Incorporate all five senses.”  “Description, not dialogue.”  And most of all, “never, ever use an adverb.”  While these axioms may all be well and good, I sometimes think that they occupy the forefront of my mind while I’m writing, even more so perhaps than plot or character.  Which leads me to ask, am I really writing what I want to write?

In order to steer us away from a literary discussion, let’s take a look at this in terms of genre and authorial invention.  Bawarshi says that the writer invents the genre.  Yet at the same time, the writer is invented by the genre.  The precepts of the genre, those constraints that include, say, MLA format for papers, that confines or at the very least guides the author towards an end text that is acceptable to the particular discourse community.  Playing into this is what Foucault calls “the author-function.”  This, according to Foucault, does not refer to the actual author, the writer, but to the author’s name, “the literary name,” that artistic and philosophical “endowment” or “canonization” that grants a text a certain value or cultural status.  The author, in Foucault’s view, “is a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits, excludes, and chooses; in short, by which one impedes the free circulation, the free manipulation, the free composition, the decomposition, and recomposition of fiction.”  ASIDE: “Decomposition” and “recomposition” really hearken back to cut-ups, in my opinion.

Upon hearing the description of the author-function, it is not hard to see how most writers want their work to end up in the good graces described above, to be considered more “literary” by that machination that posits, “Faulkner good, L. Ron Hubbard bad.”  Whether that statement is true or not, the apparatus is apparent.  This function delimits and relegates which works are “important,” “worthy of study.”

From said study by the academy, certain similar attributes of texts, “hallmarks” if you will, are identified as benchmarks for “literary” quality writing.  Since many writers strive for this form of literature or at least wish to be respected as such, they aim for these hallmarks in effort to make their work “worthwhile.”  Indeed a worthy aspiration but I cannot help but wonder just to what extent these constructed genre constraints, constructed either by classroom instruction, critique, or “the inner editor” limit the style of form of texts?

"Literary" writing, continued

Continuing my examination of the axiological nature of the phrase, “literary writing,” I will pick up with where I last left off: the notion of location.

If we may view “location” as being a mindset, a situation within which the writer is composing, then the subject of “intentions” is unavoidable.  Is it the writer’s intentions that make a text literary or not?  By default, if a writer sets out to create “art” and not “entertainment” is the result therefore “literary?” 

This may be argued in terms of what James Berlin asserts, that all text contains ideology.  There is a value being expressed, even in the most indulgent, hedonistic, or even prurient texts.  The literary work is a container, a textual composition carrying an ideologically-charged particle or more sizeable mass than that depending upon intention, perhaps.  All literature is therefore rhetoric. 

As Berlin says (Villanueva p. 717), “a rhetoric can never be innocent.”  It contains a value that is being communicated to an audience, in this case a reader.  The writer in this case, is asking, “What exists? What is good?  What is possible?”  Through this process, the writer’s desires become structured and normalized, especially when placed vis-à-vis the expectations of the literary discourse community, those very same writers/readers/Authority regulators mentioned in the previous post.  Recall what Collins and Gentner claimed as they defined “good writing” as “writing that conforms to a set of rules set by some authority.”  This evaluative apparatus is pervasive.  It is present not only in the reading of a novel or short story, but in the casual perusal or a newspaper or especially in the grading of a student essay, research paper, or other such assignment. 

This process of evaluation is constant, but the criterion for axological approval is ever changing.  What was considered a “literary” work in the 19^th Century is a far cry from what the postmodern sensibility would consider as such.  If this contemplation seems twisty and convoluted, that’s because it is.  While I am admittedly free-associating in true blogger style, I believe that any effort to definitively congeal a meaning and standard for “literary” results only in what amounts to a rhetorical strawman.  Therefore, I would humbly argue that what constitutes “literary fiction” should not hold as much importance as it has enjoyed.  Sufficient for the day is the task of evaluating any text.

But is it "literary?"

“Literary.”  This very word has connotations that are at once sublime and controversial.

In many rhetorical situations, calling written work “literary” gifts the text with a blessing, if not altogether a canonization, granting it access into an “upper echelon” of literature.  By way of comparison, calling a given piece of writing “genre fiction” tends to create a diametrically opposite response.  “Genre” evokes connotations of flash, gaudiness, emptiness, and perhaps worst of all, entertainment.  A perhaps more succinct way of summarizing this comparison might be that “literary” means “art" whereas “genre” means “commerce.”
The tropes, the trappings, the “furniture” of various genres are easily identified.  If a reader is told that a book is a “Western,”certain expectations are formed in connection with that term.  There are thoughts of mesas, men riding the range, and so forth.  “Science fiction” conjures thoughts of space travel, advanced technology, or perhaps just life in the future.  Yet what are the basic attributes of “literary” fiction?
Those are murky and ambiguous at best.  Where the above examples of genre tropes are perhaps oversimplifications, the same type of over-generalizations might be made after a cursory cull of literary fiction.  “Literary” means dysfunctional families, substance abuse, men brought to ruin by philandering, and harsh political points of view.  But where is the demarcation point between “genre” and “literary?”  “Horror” is a genre, but many would consider Edgar Allan Poe, one of the luminaries of that genre as well as others, to be a
true “literary” writer.  What accounts for this?
In terms of composition, this is really a question of axiology.  What is “good” writing?  As I habitually do in essays of this nature, I will invoke Aristotle and his concept of the “three goods:” that which is useful, that which is pleasurable, and that which is of the highest moral quality.  Let us belay the “useful” for the purposes of this discussion and focus on the remaining two “goods.”  “Genre” writing, with its connotations of entertainment and escapism, could certainly be viewed as “pleasurable,” but cannot reading “literary” be equally enjoyable?  “Literary” fiction might derive its identity by imparting a morally good message or by being upheld as a standard of high craftsmanship, the “morally” strongest paragon of the art form.  Could “genre” writing such as The Spy Who Came In From the Cold provide the same thing?  Or is this all more along the lines of how Collins and Gentner define "good writing": "writing that conforms to a set of rules based by some authority."  A definition that Bizzell questions by asserting, "This approach leaves no way to justify the authority's decisions as other than arbitrary, and hence there 'rules' are situation-bound."
That may be the key.  What about the writer’s situation and intentions, born out of "the politics of location?"


More to come...

Writing as an academic and intellectual discipline

Dr. Richard Wentz once said the following about famed Naturalist, Loren Eisley: "For Loren Eiseley, writing itself becomes a form of contemplation. Contemplation is a kind of human activity in which the mind, spirit and body are directed in solitude toward some other. Scholars and critics have not yet taken the full measure of contemplation as an art that is related to the purpose of all scholarly activity – to see things as they really are... Using narrative, parable and exposition, Eiseley has the uncanny ability to make us feel that we are accompanying him on a journey into the very heart of the universe."

This, I would argue, lends to the concept that writing is not merely a tool or an activity, but scholarship in action.  It is a discipline in and of itself.  True, writing is an essential component of many academic fields, ranging from political science to history, from business to psychology.  Given that writing stretches across the curriculum, it is tempting to classify it as just another tool to be used in academic discourse.  Like others in the field of English, Rhetoric, and Composition Studies, I believe that writing is much more than that.  

Consider for a moment what writing entails.  A writer, meaning anyone who writes as spurred on by their own particular exigency, is engaged in the act of taking the thoughts in their head and transferring them to visible representation while tempering them into a form that can be easily understood by one or more readers.  Through this, the writer has much to consider.  Who is my audience?  What form will be most accepted by that discourse community?  What are the rules to adhere to when writing for this community?  Most of all, how do I connect my separate and distinct ideas so that they best communicate what I am thinking?  Whether consciously or subconsciously, all of these matters percolate within a writer's head during the composition process.  

Something unique is happening at this point.  Something that stands apart from any one particular field of academics.  This is a cognitive process unlike any other.  It is, indeed, the very act of contemplation.

In Rhetoric and Composition as Intellectual Work (ed. Olson, 2002), Charles Bazerman recommends "three syntheses" in the study and teaching of composition and rhetoric: historical, theoretical, and practical (pp. 36-38).  The historical synthesis is an understanding of where composition has been and a view of the world "in relation to the emergent infrastructure of written communication." (36)  The theoretical, as I understand it, encompasses a great deal in terms of a developing understand of the how and the why of writing.  Aspects of the theoretical synthesis include but are not limited to genre theory, process theory, activity theory, rhetorical theory, and the theory of literacy.  The practical is just that: how does the individual...whether writer or student of writing...take these syntheses and apply them to their composition task at hand, whatever that might be?  In other words, that age old question from students young and old alike: "what's in it for me?"

I am very much a supporter of Brazerman's "three syntheses" model and I fully advocate for the stand alone study of Rhetoric and Composition Theory.  I am not the first to suggest this nor will I be the last, but I wish to strategically place myself within that discipline.  The questions of why we write and how we should teach it are ever present in my mind.

Be careful with villains

This post is probably a bit more towards the literary or creative side of writing than the academic, but I felt compelled to write it anyway.  Exigency!

What happens when a novelist or a scriptwriter writes an antagonist?  More often than not, the purpose of an antagonist in a work of fiction is to create conflict, strife, and to overall be reviled or at the very least rooted against by the reader.  But what happens when a discourse community views itself as being portrayed as villainous, even if the intent is not as such?  What considerations must a writer now sift through before selecting upon the characterization of an antagonist?  What would have befallen me if I had written To Kill A Mockingbird but made Bob Ewell a Haisidic Jew?  A stretch, I know, but I'm trying to make a point.

Consider the characterizations that have come along and how they are viewed through the lens of contemporary discourse.  Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice is a finely written character, but axiology aside, Shylock is viewed by several critics as an example of Antisemitism.  Joel Cairo and Guy Haines are eerie, menacing villains in The Maltese Falcon and Strangers on a Train respectively.  Their portrayals, via actors Peter Lorre and Farley Granger, and writers Dashiell Hammett and Patricia Highsmith, have the antagonists coming off as effeminate and of vague sexual orientation.  A contemporary homosexual could conceivably perceive such portrayals as a slight against their own discourse community, perpetuating a stereotype that says, "if you want to make your villain creepy, make him gay."

The list continues.  Psychopaths such as Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter and Robert Bloch's Norman Bates are legendary in fiction, yet mental health professionals have previously spoken out against the perceived demonizing of the mentally ill.  It is historic fact that individuals of Arab descent have committed acts of terrorism, yet when said individuals are cast in the role of the antagonist, such as in the film True Lies, members of that culture have been offended.  Religion is yet another consideration.  Members of the Catholic sect of Opus Dei were disturbed by Dan Brown's choice of an Opus Dei member as a psychotic villain in The Da Vinci Code. In fact, the only "safe" choice left for an antagonist may very well be Nazis.  The likelihood of their discourse community voicing any opposition or objection is likely nil.

The objections to an antagonist need not be entirely on the grounds of offensive portrayal.  At times, the choice made by the writer can come off as passe and therefore ineffectual.  As the Iron Curtain fell and missiles moved into Cuba, a Communist antagonist worked quite well for American readers in books such as Condon's The Manchurian Candidate.  Today, in a post Soviet bloc world, a Communist villain would seem a naive choice, perhaps even trite and hokey.  

What must then a writer consider when selecting the characterization for their antagonist?  What choices must be made?  To what degree do the mores, exigencies, and political views of a discourse community affect the creation of genres?  How do they compose and impose regulatory stipulations upon the writer as to what will or will not be deemed as acceptable?

The cut-up technique

More and more I become intrigued by this method of composition.  I plan to research it more thoroughly and to perhaps write an academic paper on the subject once I have a unique thesis to put forth.

For those who might not be aware, the cut-up technique is a literary method borrowed from, at least in part, from the Dadaist movement of the 1920s.  Cut-up is an aleatory technique, meaning in not so many words, "it's all a crap shoot."

To engage this method, a writer takes a complete, linear narrative and then physically cuts the sentences or even individual words apart and rearranging them all into a new text.  Author William Burroughs was the first writer to truly popularize this method, although he himself cited T.S. Eliot's poem, The Waste Land as an influence.  Modern musicians such as Thom Yorke of Radiohead and David Bowie have also used the cut-up method in composing songs.

Would it be accurate to call this "non-deterministic composition?"  How does it relate to Donna Haraway's concept of "cyborg writing?"  I know that at first-blush, the phrase "cyborg writing" may sound better suited to my other blog, but what it really means is writing that replaces the idea of an authoritative or dominant story with an acknowledgment of the wide range of narratives to be told in science, technology, and other areas.  I would say that the textual end result of cut-ups could qualify as legitimate writing as part of a far wider spectrum than that of standard linear narrative. 

While I doubt that Burroughs had this in mind when he adopted the technique, what are the pedagogical applications for cut-ups?  Certainly it would be useful in poetry, but how might it be implemented in other composition classes?  What are the motives, the exigencies that propel a writer to employ a cut-up technique?

Policing the word

Recently, there has been squall blowing through the media, one that had its point of origin in academics but rapidly radiated into the consciousness of the public at-large.  An edition of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was released in which a vulgar word for African-Americans was replaced by the word "slave."  The redacted word is deemed despicable by most of society and with good reason.  In fact the very uttering of the word is typically a kiss of death for the speaker, both in professional and social respects.  So much so, that I even hesitate writing it here, even though it is most germane to the post.  Conversely, I don't relish the notion of dealing with the subject in a kindergarten-esque manner, saying "the n-word" or some such.  Therefore, in the interest of striking a balance between the realistic and the sensitive, I will write the word only once and refer to it as "that word" thereafter.

The word is "nigger."

Twain used it in numerous facets in Huckleberry Finn, but mostly in reference to the character of Jim, a runaway slave.  Rather than debate whether the erasure of such a word is right or wrong, I wish to examine it from a perspective of Composition Theory.  

When you change "that word" to another, how does the text then change as a whole?  Is the edit subversive to Twain's original authorial intent?  Or does the composition still survive relatively intact?  Is this an example of a "contact zone?"  While it is true that "that word" is unacceptable in most precincts of society, there remain cultural sectors where it is not viewed as an insult, most copiously noticeable in "gangsta" rap.  Is this an example of one culture policing a text to prevent insult in a cultural demographic where insult might not necessarily be taken?  Divergent compositional views, it would seem. A question of axiology.

What does this do to the teaching of writing?  Is there any place at all for "that word" in the curriculum of English?  Or any other discipline for that matter?  Does this remove an opportunity to teach critical thinking?  To teach "close reading" and study an author's motives and intent?  What affect does sanitizing history have?  Should we remove all "inconvenient truths?"  This would seem to open up several other rhetorical Pandora's Boxes.  What of the study of military history or one of my pet areas, the literature of war?  At times, it would seem unavoidable to research those fields without at times engaging the derogatory words that soldiers used for their enemies.  Indeed, many of those words are racial slurs by nature, not altogether different in breech of common ethics than "that word."

Arguments could be made in many different directions, both axiological and pedagogical.  This will require further reflection.

Fan Fiction as a Reclamation of Authority in Writing and Myth-Making

This is the abstract and the introduction to a paper I recently wrote on theory and fan fiction.

Abstract

    This paper examines the phenomenon of fan fiction, the writing of fiction based upon an already existing work of film, television, books, or other media, in terms of how writers and discourse communities appropriate myth, contribute to it, alter it, and circumvent recently emerged political authorities in doing so.  Ultimately, I argue that the reclamation of authority in the writing of fan fiction is an inevitable re-emergence of shared writing, storytelling, and myth generation, unable to be hindered by any outside political forces.
 

Introduction

[1]    It is not unheard of for a teacher or other adult to address a gathering of children by saying, “I am going to read you the story of Jack and the Beanstalk.”  However, were the same adult to offer, “I am going to read you my story of when Batman ran for president,” the storyteller might be met with a fair amount of skepticism.  Did this story really happen in the movies, cartoons, or the comic books (i.e. is it part of the “canon”)?  By what authority does this person tell the story?  Is she a writer for any of the Batman media?  What does she know about Batman that entitled her to write this story?
[2]     Such questions would more than likely not be asked of a denizen of ancient Sumeria who wished to tell others of the tale of Gilgamesh and Enkidu.  Myths and tales of civilizations such as those of ancient Sumeria, Egypt, Greece, or even those as recent as bards’ tales in medieval Europe, were considered communal and without ownership.  As stories became published in books, read over radio, shown in cinemas, and broadcast over television, the concept of ownership, tied in primarily with the rights to economic profit, became one of critical consideration for writers.  Those writers who write stories based on such owned canons without expressed permission are engaged in the act of writing fan fiction.  What follows in this paper is my contention that the writing of fan fiction is reclamation of a writer’s right and authority to contribute to a discourse community acting in the continuous generation of myth.
[3]    First, let us examine just what defines “fan fiction” or “fanfic” as it is sometimes abbreviated.  Fan fiction, as outlined by Sheenagh Pugh in The Democratic Genre, can be defined as “writing based on a canon invented by another writer or writers and shared by the intended audience.”1   While the term “fan fiction” may be relatively new, the act of writing it is not.  Homer selected and discarded Greek myth to suit his needs in writing both The Iliad and The Odyssey.  John Milton took the written stories of The Bible to create Paradise Lost.  William Shakespeare borrowed generously from folktales, Greek myth, and from the archives of history itself (e.g. Julius Caesar, Macbeth).  Chaucer did much the same with The Canterbury Tales.  These are but a few of many authors who incorporated this practice into their work.  This is to be expected as no text exists in a vacuum and the writer is always already confronting previous authorship, the “ever-expanding archives” that Derrida speaks of.  A writer generates a fresh text only after coming into contact with previous texts in the epistemology.  Harold Bloom takes this assertion of Derrida and phrases it this way: “What Derrida calls the scene of writing is really the trespass of teaching.”2 Furthering this thought, Bloom expresses the writer’s act of reinvention and re-articulation in regard to poetry:
“Poems, I am saying, are neither about ‘subjects’ nor about ‘themselves.’  They are necessarily about other poems; a poem is a response to a poet, or a person to his parent.  Trying to write a poem takes the poet back to the origins what a poem first was for him, and so takes the poet back beyond the pleasure principle to the decisive initial encounter and response that began with him.”3
 
As Norman Fairclough would say, perhaps more succinctly, “the new is made out of a novel articulation of the old.”4   Nothing could be truer of fan fiction.
[4]    Dean Kiley, professor of new media production at Swinburne University, has narrowed the origin of fan fiction proper to the mid-20th Century.  Kiley argues that it was the proliferation of the mimeograph machine that allowed for writers to write and then mass distribute their texts: “The ‘zine, the do-it-yourself, deliberately crude, thrown-together, these-are-my-obsessions-what-are-yours personalized magazine revealed a lively consumer eager to dismember mass culture and might be viewed as fanfic’s most direct ancestor.”5
[5]    In the contemporary setting, writers of fan fiction often post their writing to the web sites of large online fan fiction discourse communities.  Members of the discourse community are then free to read the stories and post their own thoughts and criticisms on the piece.  In doing so, the readers of the stories are expected to be every bit as well versed in the canon of fan fiction’s subject matter as the writer is.  As Pugh illustrates: “In an age of fragmented rather than shared cultures, the fan fiction audience is unusual in having as thorough a knowledge of its given shared canon as a Bible-reading or classically educated audience once did.”6   What is more, the readers have a wide range of intentions to consider when reading a writer’s text, intentions that are unique to fan fiction.  In addition to simply telling a new story within the canon or extending a new tale to the given mythos, a writer may have the intent of establishing a romantic relationship hitherto unseen between characters in the canon.  This is known as “slash fiction,” such as “Potter/Snape” in the Harry Potter discourse community.  The viewer of a television series may become displeased with the outcome or the delivery of a particular episode.  This viewer may then take to writing how she would rather have seen the episode play out.  This form of fan fiction is known as an “episode fix.”   Also, the writer may wish to alter the canon altogether, writing about things that never happened in the set mythos save for in the author’s own imagination.  For example, a story about the Fantastic Four where the main characters receive super powers entirely different from those stated in canon as a result of their journey into space. 
[6]    While intention is a consideration for the fan fiction reader, it is the motivation to write that we are concerned with here.  As stated previously, fan fiction mostly involves writing about characters and settings that are the property of someone else.  Unlike Shakespeare or James Joyce’s appropriations of Greek myth and other such texts for their own work, the writer of the aforementioned Fantastic Four story is generating text based upon characters and themes owned by Marvel Comics and thereby The Disney Corporation.  These political and economic entities would be swift in preventing the author from reaping any form of monetary or any other tangible benefit from these stories.  Yet there are thousands of fan fiction authors currently engaged in the act of writing these stories and posting them online.  If there is no money to be made and no mass fame to be gained, two primary motivating factors in American society, then why is the writing taking place?  In the next section I will examine these motivating factors and how they relate to the continuing generation of myth.

A new theory

Piggy-backing on my previous post about heated rhetoric, I wanted to bring this man's theory to light:

I came upon Bruce Lindner via a mutual friend on Facebook.  Bruce had written a note, expounding upon the very intriguing premise that none other than Karl Rove himself wrote the text for Sarah Palin's statement from today.  How does he know this?  By analyzing the text, Bruce has found what may be textual, telltale signs and rhetorical choices (especially that "blood libel" business.)  If nothing else, I think it is a skillful application of critical thinking upon a piece of rhetoric.  Here it is and all credit does go to Bruce Lindner:

"Sarah Palin used the almost unbelievably stupid phrase last night; "blood libel," in characterizing how she's feeling victimized over the Tucson massacre. I have a theory about this, that there's more to it than meets the eye. But first, if you don't already know the historical significance of the blood libel, you should go look it up on Wikipedia, or the like. I don't want to go into it here, only to say that for Jews, this is probably the most incendiary remark that she, or anybody else could have made -- particularly since three of the people who were shot were Jewish.

My theory is that not only did she not write that message, but I suspect that it was a set up by a very crafty man... but one who may have tipped his hand.

Sarah Palin is considered to be a likely GOP candidate for president in 2012. That's a huge problem for the Old Guard GOP, because they know she can win the nomination, but she can't possibly win the presidency. So it is in the interest of the party movers and shakers that she be crushed before too much momentum builds, and she becomes the only choice of the Tea Party... as the rest of the GOP candidates are considered "too liberal" by them (!!).

After listening to just the first few sentences of her comments early this morning, it was obvious to me that somebody wrote it for her, and I think I know who. The author had to know that including that blood libel comment would create a furor, and it certainly has! Nobody's even talking about anything else she said, just that one comment. And it's guaranteed to become another stone around her neck, come 2012. So, in my opinion, the author of Palin's video message deliberately intended to put Sarah Palin on the spot. There's not a doubt in my mind that Palin hadn't the first clue what the blood libel was before last night, so she had no reason to suspect anything. But I suspect that the author put that in there to contribute to the destruction of the "Palin mystique," so that he could clear her from the field of truly electable candidates.

Last February, I watched a live a debate here in Portland between Dr. Howard Dean, and Karl Rove. During that debate, Rove referred to the "pundants" out there who've been predicting this or that. I thought it was odd that a man like Rove would say pundants, rather than the correct use of the word; "pundits," which is derived from the Hindu word for educator. If you listen carefully to Palin's address, she too says "pundants." And I thought to myself; Rove set her up! I believe that he wrote that speech, and told her to say those exact words; blood libel, knowing it would further destroy her political ambitions. His interest of course, is that once she's out of the way, the Tea Partiers will have no choice but to choose between Obama, or his candidate, whomever that may be. And when she said the word "pundant," that (in my humble opinion) was one of Rove's fingerprints... not knowing the proper use of the word himself, I suspect that he wrote it into her speech INCORRECTLY, and in doing so, implicated himself.

The beauty of his scheme, is that Palin now owns those words. If I'm correct about this, she can't exactly say "Hey, don't blame me, I didn't know what it meant, and Karl Rove wrote it for me." Because if she did that, whatever shred of credibility she once had, would be gone. Nope, her only course now is to swallow hard, and to put it alongside all of her other asinine comments. But I believe we just witnessed a very rare event; a Karl Rove dirty trick that led directly back to Karl Rove. A mistake he never makes."

Words matter

DISCLAIMER: The subject matter of this post is unavoidably political.  Nevertheless, I wish to keep the discussion within the confines of the principles of rhetoric and composition theory, and not an argument over which political party is the "correct" one.

Doubtless you have heard about it by now.  I'm sure my dogs have even heard about it.  Not sure about the neighbor's cat, but my dogs have heard.  Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot last Saturday in Tucson, Arizona.  She is recovering from a massive head wound, but several other people were killed in the shooting, including a 9 year-old girl and a Federal court judge.

What concerns us here is the notion that this insidious event may have been the result of heated rhetoric and texts in political and cultural discourse. Among the given examples of such speech both spoken and written:

-In 2008, Sarah Palin placed a gun sight on Giffords' district, along with the districts of several other representatives.  That web page has since been changed, removing Gibbons' name and the crosshairs.

-Last March, Palin had this to say on Twitter: "Commonsense Conservatives & lovers of America: Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!" 

-Sharron Angle, former Tea Party candidate in Nevada, once tangentially suggested "Second Amendment remedies" to deal not just with the supposedly ever-growing "tyrannical" U.S. government, but to replace her election opponent: Majority Leader Harry Reid

-President Obama once boasted of "bringing a knife to a gunfight" in terms of political sparring with Republicans.  A clear paraphrase of a line from the film The Untouchables.

-Over on her site, blogger Michelle Malkin has a fairly thorough listing of violent rhetoric employed by those on the left end of the political spectrum.

Now one thing needs to be made perfectly clear: neither Ms. Palin nor any of the other above mentioned ever directly called for the deaths of Giffords or anyone else for that matter.  Never.   Again, we are concerned with the use of discourse regardless of the political affiliation.

Violent metaphors seem unavoidable.  The United States is a nation born out of gun violence, after all.  It is not uncommon for political confrontations to be termed as "showdowns, or "opening up with both barrels."  But what happens when these sorts of rhetorical devices are employed over and over again?  I can speak to you and profess to mean you no harm, but if my textual message to you is routinely peppered with phrases such as (only as examples) "gunning for you" or "shooting you down," your opinion of my intentions would likely be less than cordial.  When political discourse is collocated in the same space as a word like "reload" or the symbol of a target, it's difficult to infer a benign interpretation.  If someone placed a gun sight over where I live, I'm not going to take it as a compliment.  In all of this, I believe that we must ask what the motivation is in the composition of such speech.  When using gun or violence metaphors, what end result is the speaker/writer attempting?  Who is the intended audience for their rhetoric?  Are there multiple audiences?  Perhaps one they wish to inspire and another they wish to intimidate?

The questions of composition here seems to be ones of agency and  primacy.  Or the loss of primacy.  Once a writer composes a text, however long or short, and then releases it to an audience, that writer has lost all control over how that text will be interpreted.  To see an example of this in action, try writing something and then handing it over for workshop discussion.  I guarantee you will be surprised by a few of the interpretations that you will hear.  Just imagine what this means to a writer whose work is taken and mangled in interpretation, such as J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye was by Mark Chapman and Paul Schrader's Taxi Driver was by John Hinckley.  Barack Obama and Sarah Palin may very well have no intention to inspire violence, yet that cannot stop someone from taking their words as such.  In the end, there is nothing that a writer can comprehensively enact to prevent such drastic misinterpretations.

Yet there are ways to reduce the risk, it would seem.  The best analysis I have heard of the sad situation from Saturday was on MSNBC.  The affect of rhetoric is not altogether different from that of an influenza outbreak.  When such viral epidemics occur, those who are already sick with something else are the most at risk.  The same goes for heated rhetoric.  When words and phrases such as "Second Amendment remedies" and "reload" float about in the ether and are then added to with vitriol from all sides, it is the already mentally unstable who are at risk of taking in the text, interpreting it through their own filter, and then choosing to act.  The accused gunman from Saturday may have been just that: an already mentally ill individual with no real allegiance to any political party but influenced in whole or in part by texts within our marketplace of free ideas.  

Words and symbols create our reality.  The Greeks knew that long ago as both Plato and Aristotle wrote at length about speaking to persuade an audience.  If the use of words associated with violence or metaphors of violence are written, spoken, and broadcast on a continual basis within the arena of political discussion, the reality that will result could very well be one of combat, perhaps only verbally...or perhaps physically.

Statement of Purpose

Those of you who follow my other blog will no doubt notice a dramatic difference in tone here.  The purpose of this blog is...in part...to demonstrate my serious commitment to the study of Rhetoric and Composition Theory.  Here, I will be discussing the act and the art of writing as an academic discipline in and of itself.  

-I will explore the various exigencies that compel someone to write, whether it is a novel or a grocery list.

-I will discuss the nigh infinite processes by which someone takes the thoughts in their head and translates them into written form on a page or a computer screen.  This is nothing short of a form of critical thinking and it is the backbone of nearly every field of study.

-I will examine epistemology, how we learn the things that we learn, how written texts collide with one another to absorb each other's knowledge and then create new textual entities entirely.  As Norman Fairclough would say, perhaps more succinctly, “the new is made out of a novel articulation of the old.”

-I will wax philosophical with questions of axiology.  What makes "good" writing "good?"  What is "good" in terms of rhetoric and composition?  What forces and procedures are or should be at work in the composing of "good" writing?  What separates "literary" writing from "genre" writing?  Is it arbitrary?

-I will get political by taking an honest look at the various agencies that "gatekeep" or regulate who has access to a discourse community and by what criterion their writing is evaluated in order to gain admittance to the marketplace of free ideas.

-I will delve into the history of writing in an attempt to demonstrate a la Gary Olson how rhetoric and composition is intellectual work.  Not only has it been around since the Greeks, but it was in existence when humans first slapped crude paint onto cave walls.  

All of this and much much more!  Stay tuned!