Drowning in metaphors

This comic has been bumping around in my head during our discussions, and it's wonderfully convenient that Bizzell mentions Scott Lyons's piece on Rhetorical Sovereignty--otherwise, it might seem hard to connect it to our readings. I find it useful because not only can it compare traditional academic discourse to the mixing, remixing, patchwriting, and/or codemeshing that alternative discourses encompass, but it also demonstrates the difficulty in using hybrid discourses while still communicating with fellow scholars. For example, in referencing the Williamson essay, Bizzell notes that "Williamson's reviewers react to this structure by finding it hard to connect the themes he broaches," and that "there is ample evidence that the form disturbs them" (Bizzell 6). I'm sure that if another panel was to be drawn for this comic, the pro-national-language figure would have a similar reaction, whether or not he concedes the point.

A few things disturb me about Bizzell's argument though. First, she argues that "the best evidence" she can find for using hybrid discourses come from "powerful white male scholars" who employ these discourses in their scholarly work. From this admission, it would seem as if the only way hybrid discourses could be legitimized is by their anointment from the same privileged white men who legitimize traditional academic discourse. This is problematic because it places power in the hands of those whose resistance to hybrid discourses and promotion of a "correct" grapholect created the need for other discourses in the first place. We--as proponents of hybrid discourses--don't need a Jake Sully to rescue us from linguistic imperialism (of course, I see the irony, as a white male, in saying this).

Also, Bizzell is only able to draw on one example to illustrate her point. While this may be sufficient for a short publication, where it might be better to explore one example in depth rather than shallowly reference several or many other examples, I'd like to see other examples outside of English studies. Finally, the focus of her argument and examples seems to be centered on the humanities--which is great, except it would also be even better if she could provide examples or make proposals for hybrid discourses in the sciences. Perhaps one humorous example might look like this:

This is why I like Royster's assumption that academic discourse is plural--if we're to be trapped within dichotomies of traditional/alternative discourses, then we simply fall into the same white/everyone else pattern that allows linguistic imperialism to flourish--same dichotomy, different format (Royster 25). While, for the most part, Royster's nautical metaphors make me feel more than a bit seasick, I do agree in moving away from invasive and imperialistic patterns (Royster 26).

As a final note on pedagogy, I completely agree with Royster in the need to recognize classrooms as public, not private, spaces (Royster 27-28). And while this does make the writing classroom a high-risk place, it also provides commensurate rewards; by making students' writing visible and public, through blogs, multimedia presentations, or even put on display on the document camera, they may enjoy the same delight that all writers feel when their work is--in some form--published and accepted or applauded by their peers.

Hybrid Discourse, Patchwriting, Codemeshing, Remixin'

Patricia Bizzell's treatises on the new developments in academic discourse expand upon the idea of "traditional academic discourse" to include other rhetorics in the process of academic research. In both "Basic Writing and the Issue of Correctness, or, What to do with 'Mixed Forms of Academic Discourse" and "Hybrid Academic Discourses: What, Why, How," Bizzell directly challenges the notion of "correctness," or that there can be a static form of acceptable academic discourse. While in "Hybrid Academic Discourses" Bizzell acknowledges "that a sort of traditional academic discourse can be defined," she also recognizes that "traditional academic discourse must share the field with new forms of discourse that are clearly doing serious intellectual work." Although Bizzell targets the study of Basic Writing for her original challenge, her assertion that other discourses have validity within the ivory tower of academia extends beyond those students who she targets as "hybrid" students--those outside the privileged race, class, and gender of yesterday's university.

Bizzell is likely correct in challenging her own term, "hybrid," to describe these new discourses; in problematizing "hybrid" as "too abstract and too concrete," Bizzell recognizes that the term itself is too often describing the person and not the discourse. While I'm quite fond of "hybrid" as a term to explain and discuss identity--being of mixed race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, and recently class (higher education has done a terrific job of allowing me to pass for middle-class), among other identities, it is exceptionally suited to allow me to defy binaries--I must agree with Bizzell that something else is needed to discuss shifting discourses in academia and other realms of power.

Some of the other terms I've read in academic literature for this change in lexicon and formality are "patchwriting" and "codemeshing" (the latter of which I have far more tolerance for, since linguistically it seems to get closer to the definition of new discourses). While they may avoid some of the pitfalls of the taxonomically-prone "hybrid," they still seem to lack both a relatable definition and a popular or current appeal. In other words, they're still too damned academic!

Instead, I like to think of this phenomenon of diversifying discourses as "remixing." For example, I find that much of the discussion of new discourses is similar to, the current social controversy of remixing media. While remixing is generally a term used to describe the alteration of original works of art (usually multimedia art, including songs, television, movies, internet videos, etc.) it is also perfectly appropriate to describe the growing hybridity of academese (interestingly, the discussion of hybridity in academic discourse is far more welcoming than the discourse of remixing as it applies to commercial material). Just as intrepid artists are taking commercial media and remixing it to create a new media, perhaps by adding what Stephen Colbert refers to as a "pumping k-hole groove," academics are taking traditional academic discourse and remixing it to create a new dialect that is a hybrid grapholect--one which can be read more easily as an oral or conversational discourse than as a medium that is meant to be read from a written artifact.

In my pedagogy, I intend to introduce this comparison between these two discourses of hybridity through a revealing interview from the Colbert Report in order to spark a conversation about voice, hybridity, and academic discourse (as well as acknowledging indebtedness):

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/215454/january-08-2009/lawrence-lessig

Just as the interview invites viewers to consider new forms of hybrid art and media, my intention is to invite students to invent new forms of academic discourse. Academics are already changing the way intellectual work is presented, researched, and discussed--this blog is proof of that!--and so it seems quite appropriate to discuss new and/or current terms for discussion.

I chose this photo because I think it exemplifies my understanding of cultural contact and hybridity. The individual in the photo is composed of multiple identities, most or all of which live in a digital contact zone community of other hybrid individuals, all under the blessing--and watchful eye--of capitalism. The photo itself is taken from a conference paper on marketing to individuals/communities with hybrid identities.

Mary Louise Pratt's "Arts of the Contact Zone" has significant similarities to our .ppt presentation from last week. Guaman Poma's "New Chronicle" demonstrates and elaborates on the idea of hybridity we discussed as part of contrastive rhetoric; Poma plays both the Spanish and the Quechua "cards" in his hefty treatise, but also uses visual rhetoric to incorporate different cultural rhetorics (Pratt 2-3). However, Pratt also notes that power and authority play just as significant a role as hybridity in defining the contact zone. The contrast between Poma's treatise and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega's canon, Royal Commentaries of the Incas is not so much one of style or rhetoric--well, not quite--but one of authority. De la Vega, unlike Poma, writes in the prestige language of the empire, and does so without the narrowest hint of hybridity. To reference this to the "Dogs Playing Poker" painting from the presentation, de la Vega was only playing the King and Queen cards; hence his work's inclusion in the canon of Spanish studies.

Authority and its use in pedagogy comes into greater recognition in Kaplan's "Foreword: What in the World is Contrastive Rhetoric?" Like de la Vega's use of only the authoritative dialect/genre in his work, writing teachers often only recognize that which is written in SASE and authority genres. His example of a cooking recipe sonnet provides an excellent example of the problem: while it would be a wonderful example of creativity, hybridity, and possibly even parody of authority, if a student were to turn one in for a sonnet-writing assignment most poetry or literature teachers would probably be offended.

As teachers of writing, we have a choice (for now) between teaching in a monoculture (real or imagined) or doing away with some of the authority and simplicity that a monoculture offers. If we choose monoculture, we risk becoming as alienating and damaging as Ruby Payne; if we choose hybridity, then condemn ourselves to a deluge of painful questions. Perhaps 'condemn' is not the right word for those of us who delight in these new paradigms, but they're certainly not easy to answer or explain, and even Kaplan calls them "terrible questions." Of course, the reality is that monocultural, monolingual, monodialectical teaching simply won't be an option for very much longer, which makes the choice between monoculture and hybridity not really a choice at all.