- “the transition involves a shift from the notion of knowledge as the apprehension of universal truth and its transparent representation in language by rational and unified individuals to the notion of knowledge as the construction in language of partial and temporary truths by multiple and internally contradictory individuals…With knowledge seen as rhetorical, or socially constructed, the collaborative aspects of writing became foregrounded, and any technology that enabled more effective collaborative practices in writing became attractive” (143).
- “The modernist assumption that still structures most of our language about power is that power is as possession, that some people have it and can give it to others or share it with them or help them gain it. In contrast, Foucault argues that power functions not as a possession but as a relation, and that it attempts to stabilize power relationships that are favorable to one party that result in power appearing as a possession” (145). “[P]ower is always an action taken by individual’s actions, and thus the shape of power relations is always a matter of individual agency. ‘Sharing’ power is not a matter of giving up something you have but rather of deciding what you want to do in any given situation and being conscious of and taking responsibility for how what you do affects others” (149).
- “Their behavior does not seem to be simply motivated by institution forms of power and self-interested [the modernist understanding of responsibility], but rather by an impulse to be responsive to and responsible for me and to and for other students…If we assume that responsibility is an obligation to the Other and not a submission to authority,…students become individual against not responding to a teacher-authority but to a teacher-person whom they feel responsible for just because he is a person, a person who, like any other person, deserves an answer” (153). “[By] not tightly policing [students’] behavior in these [electronic] forums, we can allow them to make such choices and perhaps better prepare them to participate responsibly in other uncontrolled situations” (154).
- “The lesson that postmodern ethics suggests for writing teachers faced with what they see as inappropriate behavior in electronic conversations is that rather than acting as wizards who enter the conversation only to lay down the law or to establish democratic decisions-making procedures, they should put more trust in students’ more self-conscience and should engage in electronic conversations in such a way as to enable students to take up the change to consciously consider and take responsibility for the effects their actions have on others” (157).
Cooper asserts, “Like all writing (and language use), electronic writing responds to cultural changes, including the specific ways that communication technology has been developed: writing online sets up a different rhetorical situation and encourages different writing strategies than writing for print does…[E]lectronic writing…reflects the postmodern condition of contemporary culture” (141). In this piece, Cooper argues that “to understand what’s happening in electronic conversations in writing classrooms we need to understand some transitions in assumptions involved in the shift from modernism to postmodernism. As applied to the practices of teaching writing, the postmodern condition involves a transition in assumptions in at least four areas: a transition in assumptions about knowledge, language, and the self, a transition in assumptions about power, a transition in assumptions about responsibility, and a transition in assumptions about the teacher’s role in the classroom” (142-3).
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Porter argues that we need to get away from liberal individualist views about freedom of speech and ethics on the Internet. This is because liberal individualist views gloss over differences, ignore the fact that discourse and human relations exist within power structures, and work to further marginalize minority groups. He highlights the “tension between one individual’s right to freedom of expression and another individual’s right to be protected from harassment and intimation based on personal characteristics of gender, race, religion, and other protected statuses” (238). The communitarian view “posits that rights and responsibilities originate in communities and that ‘what is good for the community’ should ultimately take precedence over individual rights in matters of tough rhetorical decision making…The irony here is that certain intrusions that restrict individual behaviors may be necessary (desirable) for the common good” (241-2). Porter’s (Marx’s) view of communitarianism “attempts to situate theology in the material conditions of people...[they] focus particularly on how ethics intersects with economics, labor, production, and the ownership/distribution of property in a society” (245). This view, then, looks out for the interest of the poor and seeks to bring society to the ideal.
Haynes claims that “we [should] evoke ‘responsive relations’ among teachers, students, and the technologies that serve as thresholds across which we many ‘turn,’ thresholds that bind us together as well as set us apart” (340). She also asserts that we should “practice safe rhetoric, [which] means to look at something from a number of perspectives, to analyze our culture in terms of how discourse shapes culture, shapes material and social conditions, and shapes attitudes” (342). Finally, she writes, “We ought to ponder the implications of [a gift exchange system of writing] for collaborative learning theories in rhetoric and composition, especially how the development of collaborative technologies on the Internet…could be used as models for new ethical electronic pedagogies in the field of computers and writing” (344).
Moulthrop discusses the fact that many of the authors in this section of the collection use personal narrative, particularly as elegy. He articulates, then, some benefits and drawbacks of elegy. “The academic discovery of personal narrative makes sense for many reasons, partly on pedagogical grounds…, partly as sexual/cultural political…This is largely to the good. Personal narrative testifies that minds are inseparable from gendered, class-identified bodies. Bodies experience history, and in a more direct sense, time. Memoir brings us back to ourselves and thus perhaps to our situated selves” (418). On the other hand, “current developments are understood mainly as extensions of past experiences. “‘Then’ seems to have more force than ‘now,’ and this suggests a gap of engagement. Though it is important to sight back along both shores of the dream, we cannot overlook the ground on which we are standing” (422).
He also writes that “‘hypertextual literacy seems to increase considerably the responsibility of those who produce, evaluate, and disseminate texts” (422). In other words, working in hypertext is requires a lot of work because hypertext can be more complicated (“ten 10 more complicated,” Moulthrop says) than print text. Finally, he asserts that there are differences in values concerning citation practices. “What we have here is not a failure to communicate but a fundamental clash of values. The young electronic writers assumed they could freely appropriate any textual production they like…These w]riters…are likely to value intellectual engagement over property claims. Expression justifies transgression…[On the other hand, t]hose of us involved in the business of academic publishing – and make no mistake, it is a business – cannot separate the expressive value of writing from its commodity value” (423). |
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