Some moderately-coherent thoughts on teaching around the (false) "new media" / "old media" binary in the composition classroom.
Recent Posts
Burke and Derrida
While re-reading Kenneth Burke's Counter-Statement (1931), I couldn’t help noticing a thematic similarity between the end of Burke’s “Thomas Mann and Andre Gide” and a chunk from the middle of Derrida’s famous essay, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” These two passages seem linked in a kind of call-and-response relationship, with … Continue reading Burke and Derrida
A Conversation about John Ashbery
Jumping into an already-completed conversation is hard enough, but when that conversation is about one of my favorite poets -- John Ashbery -- the stakes are even higher. I think a strong case can be made, however, that I make a strong case here.
Thoughts on Value as a (Contingent) Social Construct
Currently reading Barbara Hernstein Smith’s Contingencies of Value (1988, Harvard UP) and thinking a lot about how value (literary, aesthetic, moral, or otherwise) could operate as a contingent yet rigorous system of interrelated evaluative decisions. Echoing Chaim Perelman’s notion that ‘knowledge’ is determined via a network of socially agreed-upon standards and rules (cf. Wittgenstein’s “language … Continue reading Thoughts on Value as a (Contingent) Social Construct
The Utilitarian Language of E.E. Cummings
Student: “But what does this Cummings poem even MEAN?” Teacher: “Uhh…” Though the student’s question is flawed from the outset—to ask what an E.E. Cummings poem “means” is to miss the point entirely—it remains a common concern for readers approaching these poems for the first time. And if we are to, as Richard Kostelanetz argues … Continue reading The Utilitarian Language of E.E. Cummings
The Rhetoric of Dreams: I.A. Richards, Martin Luther King, and the American Civil Rights Movement
For I.A. Richards, language is not simply a “signaling system” or “code” acting as an appendage to experience, but rather a vital “instrument” constitutive of experience that structures the reality in which we live (Nichols 129). Since two individuals can never share the exact same experiences in life, they must use language as a tool for … Continue reading The Rhetoric of Dreams: I.A. Richards, Martin Luther King, and the American Civil Rights Movement
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