Response to Banks

Adam J. Banks’ Race, Rhetoric and Technology: Searching for Higher Ground begins with Banks discussing how African-Americans have always sought a third way to fight binaries, which actually made me think a lot of queer culture. He writes “African Americans have always sought ‘third way’ answers to systematically racist exclusions, demanding full access to and partcicipation in American society and its technologies on their own terms, and working to transform both the society and its technologies, to ensure that not only Black people but all Americans can participate as full partners” (2). He explains that their pursuit of transformative access can contribute a lot to rhet/tech theory. Banks believes that African American rhetorical history shows very powerful unities of identity. In his book, he focuses on a variety of contributions that African Americans have made which have affected the transformation of America and its technologies. In the introduction chapter he outlines each of the other chapters. One of Banks main points that comes out in the first chapter is that the digital divide is just as much about access and a “technological” problem as it is a rhetorical one because of how it continues to exclude African Americans from how we define and conceptualize it.

In the second chapter, Banks informs the readers that in the late 1990s the digital divide was introduced as a concept that acknowledged the differences in technology access for African Americans and other racial minorities; however, within academia we have failed to recognize this part of the “digital divide” concept and continue to ignore racial issues. Thus, the digital divide is a rhetorical problem. Banks discusses how we talk about race so seldom when it comes to technology within composition and rhetoric, especially at conferences. Much of the chapter examines silence. He does seem particularly pleased with the work of Cynthia Selfe. The Richardson article he mentions was interesting because it is about how “women of olor, because of the positions they often occupy as untenured or contingent faculty, do not have the luxury of adopting critical positions on technological issues” (21). Banks explains that eBlack consists of 5 parts: professional connection and discourse, curriculum development through distance education, community service, continuing struggle—the African American Radical Congress, and Research Website on Malcolm X. “African American rhetoric has always been multimedia, has always been about body and voice and image, even when they only set the stage for language” (25). He further explains that it is actually quite easy to see African Americans’ commitment to literacy as a technological one. He also thinks that we should pay attention to rhetoric that is not necessarily oratory, though what is oratory is very important. Banks continues to show how the digital divide is quite connected to race. He gives statistics on access to computers. He writes that “The history of African American rhetoric is, in many ways, one of individuals and collectives of writers, speakers, visual artists, and designers mastering , manipulating, and working around available technologies, even when access to them had been denied the masses of Black people. Even though Banks does not fully focus on the oratory and makes strong connections between the railroad as a sort of technology, I think he could have made more connections during slavery. For example, many African-American communities on plantations would create songs together as a means of communicating what was happening in the moment. I would regard that as a technology. Banks discusses access and how the Clinton administration believed that by getting all schools connected and with technology that it would be an equalizer in education. But Banks explains that there is different kinds of access:

Material Access: begins with equality in the material conditions that drive technology use or nonuse.

Functional Access: the skills and knowledge necessary to use the tools effectively

Experimental Access: an access that makes the tools relevant to peoples’ lives

Critical Access: must know whether technologies work for budgets, curricula, and plans.

The biggest work is making access meaningful for African Americans and other groups.

I saw more connections to queer rhetoric when Banks began his chapter on Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. When he writes that both saw the rhetorical achievements that could be had by utilizing television, I thought of ACT up and how they used counter media, really, their own media, infusing the visual and the verbal in order to reach a wider audience and in a powerful way. This chapter focuses on X and King’s manipulation of technologies for rhetorical gains. Using visual rhetoric, King could show people across the nation footage that would help convince them of the wrongdoings of our government. Malcolm X would turn conversations while being interviewed on TV. Malcolm X’s rhetorical genius often lay in his ability to force his opponents onto the defensive, to justify their ideological assumptions before they could attack his position” (53). Banks explains that X was always aware of how he could manipulate technology, whereas King questioned the roles of technologies in human lives (61). Banks explains that it is failure if we do not use print, visual, and electronic effectively together.

In chapter 4, Banks focuses on use and how African Americans engage African American discourse and language in the online space. These online spaces Banks discusses mean three things: a repudiation of cyberspaces theory that race is irrelevant online, that the importance of oral traditions for the written is confirmed, and that black people take ownership of digital spaces and that they should be considered in user studies. We need to pay attention to black use online. Black Planet is discussed a lot in this chapter and actually, Liz and I went on there when we were reading together and I wasn’t super impressed. It was described as a one-click system in Banks’ book. While I could see a lot of what was going on, I could understand much of it. I was tempted to create an account to understand it, but then I wondered if the site was exclusively for blacks, and whether I would be “touring.” So we didn’t enter all of the way. From what Banks described, it sounded cool when you actually enter the site. I like that other users can compliment your design, font, text, posts, etc. Banks really does drive the point home that we focus so much on ebonics and whether it should be allowed in composition that we really miss the point on other discursive and fascinating practices.

In “Rewriting Racist Code: The Black Jeremiad as Countertechnology in Critical Race Theory” I didn’t connect much to. The chapter examines how racism is encoded into our legal system and much of our bureaucratic systems. It’s funny that I didn’t connect to the chapter, per se…I guess it was a bit dry to me. But Victor and I talked about it. I did, however like what banks said about countertechnology: “Bell’s chose to use the jeremiad in this way, to challenge legal discourse as both insider and outsider positions the jeremiad as a countertechnology” (88). Banks widens our understanding of technologies, how technologies are processes as well as artifacts.

Chapter 6 focuses on design and how African American rhetorical study needs to address it. He drives the point that design traditions have been hard to see, that design is a part of the African American struggle now, and that the rhetoric of design is bi-directional. Throughout much of the chapter, Banks discusses William Mitchell’s work. Banks points out many of the problems with his utopic vision. I liked “Baraka reminds us why all of this is so important to African American rhetoric, as well as to rhetoric, composition, technical communication, and Black studies: critique alone will not interrupt these practices. Those of us who care about ending systematic oppressions must design new spaces, even as we point out problems in our current ones” (118). It made me think about designing new queer spaces, not necessarily online, but those in and outside of our classrooms in higher education. For example, today in PDC we discussed CLASP and ensuring that part of that is fostering the notion that “marginalized groups were represented.” And while I think it is doing good work and that it being designed effectively to support first-gen and racial minorities, I raised my hand and asked that if the purpose is to support marginality, then shouldn’t they consider outreach to queer groups on campus. I hope that in some way, and I will continue to make contact, I made an impact on the design of this new commons. I know what it is like to go through higher ed…three degrees…and not feel like I have a space to speak from my positioning.

Chapter 7, I think can be summed up from a quote in the middle” Soul is…teaching students to master Standardized English and rhetorical forms like no one else can and keeping the languages, the Ebonics, the Spanglish, the indigenous languages of home alive. Soul is the ability to recognize complexity and still pursue unity. Soul is understanding that that one goal is something far far more than Diversity or Multiculturalism, but racial justice…” (134).

I think that Banks made a lot of good points.  Primarily, I like the idea of not just critiqueing the system but changing the design of it.

Response to Yergeau et al.

In “Multimodality in Motion: Disability and Kairotic Spaces” the authors explain that their work will address the “abeleist understanding of the human composer” that is implied in “multimodality.” I can honestly relate to this. While I consider the majority of my pedagogy to be multimodal, (though I admit I sometimes privilege the verbal, visual, and aural over tactile and other modes), I’m often concerned that I can’t do justice to a multimodal approach to composition and ignore a great deal of what should be addressed. The authors write if this ignoring:  “For educators, it is ethically questionable to practice pedagogies and construct spaces that categorically exclude entire classes of people.  We need to pay attention to the teaching of composition through the lens of disability studies to remind ourselves of just how much our profession has to learn, and just how much we have been content to ignore.” It’s extremely easy to ignore and to be content with it, but I think this stems from fear in not just being able to address issues, but in being able to address them to perfection. For instance, in class last week after we had created lessons with queer texts, when I asked whether the class would actually indeed consider them in their teaching all of the fear came out and it seemed the general consensus was that they would be very hesitant. The fear of not being able to address issues of ability, race, gender, sex, and sexuality, in fact make us content with ignoring them. Further, I think we aren’t willing to accept just how straight and ableist our pedagogies are. Aren’t we marginalizing when we do not address these issues? Our positioning and our positioning of others? Aren’t we enacting a straight and ableist pedagogy when we continue to use white, straight texts? We don’t realize just how comfortable we are with these invisible qualities. “When we design the intellectual spaces of composing programs, classes, assignments “with only normate bodies in mind,” ignoring the fact that disabilities exist, as Margaret Price observes in the "Space" section of this webtext, then “non-normate bodies (bodies that are gendered, classed, raced, disabled in particular ways)…disappear.” We make others invisible when we count them as invisible.

Price writes, “there are hard truths we must acknowledge about ourselves, and the spaces we’ve already built. Access must not be seen as a problem created by or solely applicable to ‘those people over there’—and, as scholars in computers and writing have shown, the marking of ‘those people’ may pertain not only to disability, but also to class, race, gender, and sexuality.” We need to complicate and conceptualize what kind of access we are giving to our students. I find it to be very heterocentric and white and middle-class. Like Jay Dolmage discusses in “Writing Against Normal: Navigating a Corporeal Turn,” we need to encourage messier writing and messier understanding of what constitutes our bodies and what constitutes normal.

One interesting part of this article was when they are discussing face-to-face interviews versus asking a candidate if they want to do an instant messaging interview or a phone interview.  I went to a CCCC panel last year and this was actually addressed. Power and perception were what was explored. They were specifically discussing how in conference call interviews the issue is that the interviewee cannot see the interviewers and a lot of communication can be occurring that they aren’t aware of because of that kind of medium.  This is totally a tangent, but I thought it was relevant.

When Stephanie Kershbaum wrote “For many deaf people, like me, it is difficult to follow an oral presentation without another channel for accessing the information that is embedded in the sound of the presenter’s voice reading their paper, and consequently, opportunities for engaging in the circulation of ideas within the presentation (or afterwards) are lost” I realized that I need to rethink a lot of my teaching and presenting. I typically have some sort of handout that supplements my presentation at conferences…perhaps a lesson I give to students…but, I don’t necessarily write out a version of my presentation that would mirror what I was saying. The handouts I use along with my visual presentation “complement one another, but they are not commensurable: They do not repeat or reinforce the same information via multiple channels” (Kershbaum). I don’t read papers when I present. I use PowerPoint or Prezi and talk and talk and talk. That needs work. I also think that I need to do more outreach with my students at the onset of the semester. I feel like I just read or reference the ADA statement and don’t offer any more than that.

I also like what the authors wrote of using online discussions alongside regular in class discussion to get students to participate in ways that they are comfortable. I think its easy to grow selfish in teaching. I often think of the things that would make me uncomfortable when it comes to class design and I strip those things out. A lot of my colleagues have used Twitter, and while I tweet every once in a while myself and have even been on panels where my colleagues have discussed its usage in the classroom, I’ve never tried it. I think I will this coming semester.

I’ve truncated Kershbaum below here, but I like her principles:

1   I'd like us to recognize disability as a natural part of the human experience.

2   I'd like us to recognize that disability is not an undergraduate-centric phenomenon. We do not magically lose our disabilities when we hit 21.

3   I'm asking that we recognize accessibility as an ongoing conversation, one that informs our pedagogical and scholarly thinking.

4 Finally, I'd like to revisit the issue of shame. We need more disabled role models, and one way of becoming an activist–scholar is to ask for accommodations, even if they're imperfect, even if they're a retrofit, even if we feel ashamed that we need to ask for them.

Some issues that I thought of while reading this article were when Sushil K. Oswal asked the question, “Would academic leaders ever imagine their students not having access to print and electronic books with a visual interface just because the audio books are cheaper to produce?” Lucy and I began to discuss this issue in the gradlounge via I-Message across the room: why doesn’t our 101 program have a multimodal (or) e-text version? For an institution that prides itself on its use of technology in the classroom, asking students to compose multimodally, and in understanding our students digital literacies, we are surprised.

I was also surprised that the Yergeau et al didn’t include an aural feature. In other words, it would have been more accessible if a voice or video read or performed everything on each page.

Response to Haraway

Article Response to Donna Harway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto

One of the most important things that Donna Haraway relates in “A Cyborg Manifesto” is that we cannot totalize “woman” as so many radical feminists do, equating sex with gender. Haraway writes that “Cyborgs might consider more seriously the partial, fluid, sometimes aspect of sex and sexual embodiment. Gender might not be global identity after all, even if it has profound historical breadth and depth” (315). Similarly, Hayles in How We Became Posthuman asks us to consider that functionalities might be universally present but that they rest as “potentials rather than actualities” (242). I’m curious as to what people think about universalizing such constructs of woman…I’m assuming that my using “constructs” might cause people to retort. It’s hard to move past universalizing and equating sex with gender as Radfems do. Cat and I, when we were designing our discussion for Wednesday, began to discuss how perhaps one can totalize what woman may be if we look at it solely socially.

I could also see a connection between Hayles and Haraway in how the machine and human inform one another. Hayles writes that “In the AL paradigm, the machine becomes the model for understanding the human. Thus the human is transfigured into the posthuman” (239). Haraway writes that “It is not clear who makes and who is made in the relation between human and machine. It is not clear what is mind and what body in machines that resolve into coding practices. In so far as we know ourselves in both formal discourse…and in daily practice…, we find ourselves to be cyborgs, hybrids, mosaics, chimeras” (313). Both women certainly buy into the fact that the machine and human inform each other’s understanding, though Hayles is sure that the human is transfigured into the posthuman through the machine.

One thing that I thought was interesting that Haraway discussed was how real-life cyborgs “are actively rewriting the texts of their bodies and societies” (313). This echoed what I remember of anorectics in the first chapter of Hayles where the question of what the body meant to the mind or whether it even mattered was posited to the reader. Perhaps another view might be that the posthuman, in “real-life” as Haraway calls it, uses their body as a tool. Hayles discusses the women laboring in Asia, putting their body at risk. Haraway discusses the anorectics using her body as a tool to gain back control or, in my opinion, to make visible the mind.

When Harway writes about how cyborg politics rests in a struggle against perfect communication it makes me think about Hayles and her discussion of how information, depending on how it is embodied, can mean something entirely different. Context matters. I’m glad we read both of these pieces against one another because the connections were plentiful. Hayles was a beast, but the Haraway actually helped me to process her book.

Hayles Response

Summary for H. Katherine Hayles’ How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics.

In Chapter 1, Hayles gives us the question of whether the mind can be separated from the body, a notion that we work with throughout the book. With all the materials Hayles read she realized that there were three stories: how information lost its body, how the cyborg was created as a technological icon and how a historically specific construction called the human is giving way to a different construction that we will call the posthuman (2). Hayles describes what posthuman is. She writes, “First, the posthuman view privileges informational pattern over material instantiation, so that embodiment in a biological substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an inevitability of life. Second, the posthuman view considers consciousness garded as the seat of the human identity… Third, the posthuman view thinks of the body as the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate” (2-3). Hayles discusses issues that different theorists have with the posthuman. The anorexic example is particularly interesting when considering the body as separate from the mind. The core of her work is this: “Hence my focus on how information lost its body…. If my nightmare is a culture inhabited by posthumans who regard their bodies as fashion accessories rather than the ground of being, my dream is a version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of unlimited power and disembodied immortality, that recognizes and celebrates finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands human life is embedded in a material world of great complexity, one on which we depend for our continued survival.” (5). Hayles discusses how the posthuman and human coexist with each other, how when cybernetics was first forming it gave us a new way of looking at human beings, how cybernetics was born, when reflexivity entered, as well as the second and third waves of cybernetics. Its important to understand in this chapter that materiality and information are separate entities. Virtual Reality is discussed in one section as well as feedback loop perception. Skeuomorph, homeostasis, and reflexivity are terms discussed as well. Information is discussed as a pattern. Hayles says that we can look at her book in two ways: chronologically and narratively. She also says that we can construct virutality “as a metanarrative about the transformation of the human into a disembodied posthuman” but that we should be skeptical (22).

In “Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers” Hayles explains that information is a pattern rather than a presence and that when we can identify information as both a pattern and randomness it can help us realize that noise can help a system reorganize at a higher level of complexity (25). The chapter is primarily concerned with that the “shift toward pattern/randomness and away from presence/absence, affects human and textual bodies on two levels at once, as a change in the body…and as a change in the message” (29). Hayles explains that we can’t think of the signifier as a single marker, that the signifier can become the signifier, and that the longer the chain of codes the more wild transformations that can occur. She focuses on mutation and how it is decisive and crucial. One issue I had with the text and that I’ve been thinking about a lot is when she says “A cyberspace body, like a cyberspace landscape, is immune to blight and corruption” (36). I wonder if it really is immune though because she later troubles the cyberspace body. It seems that it can shift and virus. She discusses Gibson’s novels and the creation of cyberspace. She also discusses in “Functionalities of Narrative” how informatics pushes the transformation of narrator form speaker to absent and the narrator as one who manipulates codes. I liked it when she wrote “The computer molds the human even as the human builds the computer” (47) and also, that “Information, like humanity, cannot exist apart from the embodiment that brings it into being as a material entity in the world; and embodiment is always instantiated, local, and specific. Embodiment can be destroyed, but it cannot be replicated. Once the specific form constituting it is gone, no amount of massaging data will bring it back” (49).

I found the third chapter to be INCREDIBLY boring even though its focus was on what made information more important than its materiality and the Macy Conferences. And, I’m not going to lie…I’m going to make my summaries of a few of these chapters pretty brief. When she discusses how when we separate information from meaning it helps us not have to deal with its changing values. She also relates that not everyone was ok with this. Some wanted meaning to change with context. Shannon, Stroud, MacKay, Kubie and McCulloch were major players in this chapter. The inclusion of the observer became a major issue in cybernetics and one that Hayles later focuses on.

In the fourth chapter, Hayles discusses cyborgs and how it disrupts a great deal: “Fusing cybernetic device and biological organism, the cyborg violates the human/machine distinction; replacing cognition with neural feedback, it challenges the human-animal difference; …it erases the animate/inanimate distinction…” (84).  Wiener is a major player in this chapter. She discusses his earlier work and then his work after WWII when he questioned whether there are essential qualities that exist in themselves apart from relations (91). He felt analogy and boundary work well together. In his later work he asserted that “boundary formation and anlogical linking collaborate to create a discursive field in which animals, humans, and machines can be treated as equivalent cybernetic systems” (93). Wiener also felt that entropy was the opposite of information. The discussion of borders was interesting in this chapter. I wasn’t quite sure as to what the savage was in this chapter.

Bernard Wolfe’s Limbo is discussed in the fifth chapter of Hayles. How cybernetics problematized boundaries in bodies, as well as cyborgs as living beings and narrative constructions is discussed. Hayles writes that “the cyborg signifies something more than a retrofitted human. It points toward an improved hybrid species that has the capacity to be humanitiy’s evolutionary successor” (117). The confrontation of cyborgs and literary bodies leaves neither unchanged.

In the sixth chapter, we are reminded about the work done with frog vision. For some reason I remember reading about these studies when I took psychology coursework during my BA. That the visual system of the frog constructs reality is key to their findings. Reflexivity is a major part of this chapter. The discussion of knowing whether others exist by experiencing them in one’s imagination was interesting. Hayles believes that von Foerster was greatly influenced by Maturana’s theory when he reconceptualized reflexivity. Autopoesis is discussed in this chapter (self-making). The observer is another issue discussed in this chapter and Maturana believes that the observer is directly linked to what she is observing, or rather, “structurally coupled” (142). He says that an observer of the same species is seeing pretty much the same thing as those involved in whatever is being observed. Allopoietic is also discussed as a term. Evolution in light of autopoiesis is discussed toward the end of the chapter.

In Chapter 7, Philip Dick’s novels are dissected. Hayles sums up the chapter toward the beginning when she states that Dick’s novels link cybernetics to concerns such as capitalism, gender, entropy and schizophrenic delusion, and fakery. The schizoid android is a major player in this chapter. That what is artificial can be living is key to Dick’s work. I don’t really like it when Hayles draws connections between Dick’s life and his work, but I dealt with it. Hayles says that the android represents “loss of free play, creativity, and most of all, vitality” (177). Hayles says that Dick emphasizes reflexivity in his work.

Chapter 8, “ The Materiality of Informatics” was a chapter I actually enjoyed.  I enjoyed pretty much 8-END. Hayles intends to focus on a more flexible framework to think of embodiment in an age of virtuality (193). She wants to integrate embodiment and abstraction, as well as demonstrate how this integration framework is useful in reading texts. Her discussion of philosophy and how philosophers are so caught up in consciousness that the body isn’t taken seriously. Embodiment is explained as “contextual, enmeshed within the specifics of place, time physiology, and culture, which together compose enactment…Whereas the body is an idealized form…embodiment is the specific instantiation generated from the noise of difference” (196). Embodiment is destabilizing and performative. “The body produces culture at the same time that culture produces the body” is one of my favorite citations on page 200. Incorporating and inscribing practices are made distinct by Hayles. I didn’t find the audiotape section to be particularly interesting.

Chapter 9 focuses on artificial life. Artificial life is dividied into three research fronts: wetware, hardware, and software. The discussion of Ray was really eerie and fascinating at the same time. I kind of didn’t want to read it. That the organism is the code and the code is the organism later in the chapter was also weird. How the observer is approached as “cut from the same cloth” was also interesting. AL as a successor to AI is discussed: “The machine becomes the model for understanding the human. Thus the human is transfigured into the posthuman” (239). One section that I found particularly interesting was when they were discussing on page 242 how really, we don’t have to reproduce to reproduce anymore. Later, when she writes that “human mind without the human body is not human mind” I wonder if some would argue that isn’t so.

In the final chapter we cover several novels that articulate posthuman. The first text, Blood Music, made me wonder about whether the posthuman needs to or should be or is aware of the human. In Terminal Games we must consider what happens when the posthuman is a threat and what that means for humans and acceptance. In Galatea 2.2 highlights gaps between human and computer consciousness. In Snowcrash  we are asked to consider whether we have always been posthuman. I liked all of Hayles questions at the bottom of p281 and I think they would be fruitful for class.

In the conclusion I was led to question what intelligence is when Hayles discusses the articulation of humans with intelligent machines (287). We are so caught up in what intelligence really is. I don’t think we even know what constitutes an intelligent human, let alone an intelligent machine.

Instead of a Meme or photo, I would like to add a link to the trailer for Her. I think its a great film and it was one I thought about for the duration of reading Hayles' work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzV6mXIOVl4