First of all, I was about to post this on Pam's entry as a comment, but then I realized that it's longer than most abstracts I've read--nevermind blog comments--so I decided to post it on my own blog instead. Also, I must apologize to Anwr for posting this so late in the night; part of my tardiness is due to the fact that I struggled with the Gee article for some time (more on this later), and part of it is due to the fact that I literally live underground (and therefore don't usually notice whether the sun is up or not any more than I notice what time it is). Anyway, the first chunk is in response to Pam's blog:



In response to your question about AA students being better prepared for online discourse, I have to agree. From what I've read from Barbara's reading, AA students (at least those mentioned in the article, which I might expand to native speakers of AAE) seem better prepared to adapting to different Discourses (using Gee's definition), if for no other reason than the variety of different Discourses to which they must adapt to survive and because of the public nature of their primary Discourses.

The UM students, on the other hand, seemed very unable to deal with online discourses as potentially public conversations; I would go so far as to attribute this to WMC expectations of privacy, even within school settings (which could be because of any number of factors). The fact that they made such a concerted effort to maintain privacy--ostensibly to foster personal connections with the students they tutored, which is also noteworthy considering that they maintained this even after hearing about how their introductory emails were subjected to public performances--might reveal some hints about their own discursive, racial, and/or cultural values.

From my experience, I notice that I tend to treat any of my own discourse as a public performance; in both street culture and WMC culture, I learned early that anything I said or did could, and often did, become public very quickly; signifying and performing became survival tools.

The big question, I think, is how we can harness these public/private discursive perspectives within the composition classroom: how do we encourage WMC students to see online discourses as public (or any discourse as public) without shutting them down, and how can we harness native AAE students' (or students from other discursive backgrounds who view discourses as public) perspective on public discourses in the classroom?



Also, Pearce asked, on Malcom's blog, what makes a "dance" (etc.) more authentic than another. I'm going to be a pain in the ass and answer your question, Pearce. In my experience, "recognition work" is (in varying degrees of severity) a relativistic attempt at establishing authenticity in order to survive in that discourse community. What makes one performance more authentic than another is the verbal and non-verbal discursive cues that compose a particular performance, and how well they conform to the discourse of that community.

For example, if I'm having a cigarette outside a place (restaurant, club, park, tunnel, etc.) that carries some possession within a particular community, and a member of that community is also lighting up and decided to make conversation, I have to put on a performance to demonstrate that I belong there.

Let me give a more specific example: I'm outside The Roxy (a diner in Portland, Oregon that serves the Stark Street subculture), and I'm having a smoke next to a white guy wearing a military trenchcoat and jeans, with short greasy hair and a ring through his nose. I'm wearing the same hoodie and jeans you often see me wearing in class. He asks for a light, and then asks me "How's it going?" My performance in the following conversation will be judged for authenticity as to how well I belong to Portland street culture, whether I display markers as a member or ally of queer culture, and how much knowledge I can portray of the local community. In other words, I'm being judged relative to *his* experience of that community, whether it's as an outsider (unlikely), a long-standing member with many memories of other community members and subcultural locations, or as an initiate (as Gee calls it, "being-or-becoming-a" member of that community). He might judge my performance as demonstration that I am: a) a poser--someone who does not belong there, b) a fellow initiate, or c) a veteran member of that community, who he may still view as either a threat or a role model--depending on his own position relative to that discursive/subcultural community.

My example is just another way of describing the "dance" that Gee portrays between a "real Indian" and another "real Indian," and may involve a certain amount of "razzing," signifying, or self-expression (another example is the amount of "dancing" that you and I do in our in-class and online arguments!). But whatever the context, it's always going to be a dance; that is, it will always be relative to the experiences of those engaged in the dance (which will not always, or even often, be between only two people; for example, picture the Roxy example with an attractive young girl present--perhaps one who displays/performs many cues to veteran membership in the community).


It's taken me a long time to write all this because Gee's article was, on many levels, quite troubling for me. While Barbara's chapter was very helpful from a pedagogical perspective--especially in grappling with issues of intercultural and intertechnological communication (the UM tutors had far more access and experience with computers, whereas the Detroit students were constantly surrounded by officials who were monitoring "the first email sent to a Detroit high school"), Gee's article particularly challenged me because of how it dealt with issues of authenticity, especially relating to "real Indians" and differences between Native discursive practices and WMC practices.

While I definitely do not feel or see myself as a "real Indian," coming from a (passing) white working class/lower middle class family, many of the discursive characteristics he describes--especially about the "crisis in identity" experienced by Athabaskan Natives in writing those damned self-portrayal, self-display essays demanded by WMC educational systems from K-PhD--click with my own personal and home discourses; in fact, one of the main struggles I've had with my education is in creating any sort of self-display (I'm still learning to adapt). This is further complicated by my mixedblood identity, which includes a Native identity, having grown up a 1/2 mile from the Rez; in fact, throughout my life my closest friends and the people I find it easiest to bond with have also been mixedblood Natives--this may be due to the recognition that Gee remarks on (24) or it could be due to the fact that I grew up in a community with a higher-than-average percentage of Native and mixedblood people (I'm just not sure). So reading Gee was particularly difficult for me because it lead me to "dance" with my own identities just to write a simple blog.

Anyway, after all that, my question/hypothesis is: Do you think that the ability to do "recognition work," as Gee calls it, or adaptation to a variety of distinct discursive communities (as I call it), is affected by one's need to survive, and therefore is often more pronounced in those who come from communities where the need to survive and succeed is greater? Also, don't forget my question about how to harness these differences in the classroom.

Technological Intent

I've got to disagree with Pearce when he argues that technologies are not neutral; while Pam makes a good point about technologies having limitations, having been created with specific purposes in mind, these positions ignore the fact that technologies are as dynamic and adaptive as those who wield them. There is always an ongoing relationship between the tool and the technician; Audre Lourde's statement that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house" sounds fine in abstract, but every time I build a fire (technology) in my fireplace, I watch it with care to make sure that it does not burn my house down. In this case, my relationship to the fire is as cautious and distrustful as Pearce's attitude toward technology. But on the other hand, I'm far more certain and comfortable with fire when it's used in a different context--for example, when it is combusting gasoline in my car's engine so that I can make it to class on time when I'm running late. Gee is correct in asserting that the context of a technology is the only place where it has any effects; in other words, the technology only exists when it is put to use (Gee 21). What are the effects, good or bad, of the ballista? Virtually none; we don't use that technology anymore.

To elaborate further on the adaptive relationship between people and technology, consider Pam's example that "I can't print out this blog from my microwave": while this might be literally true, microwave technology can be adapted to allow my cell phone to display her blog, and can even be adapted to allow my 'puter to print her blog to my wireless printer. True, the tools themselves have limitations--a microwave oven is a far different tool than a printer or personal computer--but they only represent particular technologies, which are themselves abstract knowledges rather than physical objects that only manifest in tools created for specific contexts (this too is a mistake that Gee makes in explaining how television can have different contexts--he equates technology with tools). A more pertinent distinction is that between language and words; as signs, words may be tools, but it is only through their use (technological context) that they become a language.

So while technologies may originally be created to make tools that have a "bad" purpose, that relationship between tool and technician allows for adaptation by the technician. For example, while the technology of the blog may have originally been created for the purpose of allowing angst-filled teenagers to rant and create some of the world's worst poetry (at least, that's the only original purpose that I can discern), they also allow for the kind of interaction and discussion that Monroe argues is valuable to our pedagogy (Monroe 112). By hijacking these technologies for use in teaching, we adapt the technology to a new context that furthers a different purpose than its original intent. Technology created for a "bad" purpose does not suffer from some kind of technological original sin; it morphs and changes its character and virtues depending on the context in which it is put to use. The only values that it carries are those that we assign to it.

Moving on, I have a few (somewhat) unrelated thoughts about home literacies. While Gee examines the uses of literacies in pre-4th grade children, and Monroe examines some excellent uses of tween literacies, I--as a college instructor working with students well beyond these ages (and possibly already damaged by the 4th grade slump, the racial/socioeconomic gap in test scores, or who have just been chewed up and smacked around by the American K-12 educational system and other factors)--wonder how I can use students' home literacies to help them survive and succeed in the university. While I always remind my students that one of my core pedagogical assumptions is that they bring a plethora of distinct literacies and knowledges to class with them, what I struggle with is how to integrate and share these treasures with their classmates in the course. While I feel as if I've had some success in using some of these abilities in the classroom, I feel as if there's so much more I can--and need--to do to utilize their home literacies, and especially how I can encourage them to use these literacies and discourses in conjunction with academic discourse when they may have already been trained or discouraged from doing so by their previous educational experiences.