Consider this argument?
My purpose here is to [use] concepts from postmodern geography to explore how spaces and places are socially produced through discourse and how these constructed spaces can then deny their connections to material reality or mask material conditions. Cultural geography invites us to question the relationships between material conditions and imagined territories, a relationship I identify here as the politics of space, and asks us to attend to the negotiations of power that take place across and within a number of spaces: regional or topographical, domestic or institutional, architectural or electronic, real or imagined. Making a geographic turn enables me to examine the politics of space in composition with three general aims: (1) to interpret some of composition's most enduring spatial metaphors as "imagined geographies" responsible, in part, for composition's disciplinary development and identity; (2) to illustrate the effects of time-space compression on composition's workers; (3) and to argue for a spatial politics of writing instruction that denies transparent space and encourages the study of neglected places where writers work. . . . After demonstrating the endurance of one of composition's most important imagined geographies, the frontier, and the emergence of two more, the city and cyberspace, I argue that these imaginary places for writing and writing instruction have been rendered benign, or anesthetized by the influence of transparent space; that we have neglected the relationship between material spaces and actual practices; and that we need to attend to the effects of time-space compression on composition's workers. (Reynolds 13-14).
posted by jeremiah @ 12:12 PM
3 Comments:
So I guess I'm a little worried by the abstractness of our investment in the "environment" concept. Do we open ourselves up to a criticism that our sense of the "electronic environment" is too basically imaginary?
If so, two possible responses:
1. That our sense of "environment" should always begin in JJE's "datacloud"--actual lived spaces where writing gets done, where clouds of paper actually do overlap with digital records.
2. That, for two of us, at least, a conceptual/pedagogical investment in "environment" becomes a way to teach with considerably scarcer computing resources than we have been used to. (Mike--I seem to remember talking about this with you at some point. Am I right that we're designing our WRT 235 classes "environmentally" as a way to work with limited computing resources?)
Yes, Jeremiah, you're right. I like "environment" for its local possiblities. Asking students to consider their local environments of writing both connects the physical and the virtual and does not depend on resources. For me, architecture is so tech-oriented--I can't imagine info architecture working in a low-tech environment. Also, the networked writing of the Michigan State folks is very tech heavy. My favoring of environment gives our students a conept that works for them in this situation. I don't think they lack access but the access and opportunties available here are very physical--more attention needs to be paid to their local envirnoments of writing, especially as those environments encompass their local limitations and possibilities.
And for me, this is where a contextualized functional literacy is necessary in our conception of environments.
mp
Hoo! Nice tie to a Selber-style functional literacy concept. I like it.
JD
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