_We first showcased the narratives we collected as an edited film at
the 2011 Conference on College Composition and Communication. Jumping from one narrative to another, we edited the film with interaction in mind, looking for moments of connection
and
disconnection. Though as researchers we'd spent considerable time with the individual narratives we collected, we experienced something even more powerful and affective as our project grew, the individual voices coalescing into a chorus of honest, anxious, inquisitive experience. Our goal with this film was to reproduce this effect for our audience.
Below the film, we've included our reflections on showcasing this film to our C's audience. In large part, the claims we make in this web-text about literacy in the raw came out of the experience of sharing this project with that audience. As the reflections demonstrate, literacy began to move in that conference room as faculty offered reflections of their own experiences in school and with current writing projects, as students in the room echoed the voices they'd heard on film. We all became involved with the feelings associated with others experiences with literacy in our shared context.
Because we welcomed written narratives along with video and audio recorded stories, we have used our own voices in this film to represent written texts. To accommodate as many audiences as possible--and because audio quality varies throughout the film--we created closed captions (which are available by clicking the "up" arrow on the video menu and selecting "CC").
Below the film, we've included our reflections on showcasing this film to our C's audience. In large part, the claims we make in this web-text about literacy in the raw came out of the experience of sharing this project with that audience. As the reflections demonstrate, literacy began to move in that conference room as faculty offered reflections of their own experiences in school and with current writing projects, as students in the room echoed the voices they'd heard on film. We all became involved with the feelings associated with others experiences with literacy in our shared context.
Because we welcomed written narratives along with video and audio recorded stories, we have used our own voices in this film to represent written texts. To accommodate as many audiences as possible--and because audio quality varies throughout the film--we created closed captions (which are available by clicking the "up" arrow on the video menu and selecting "CC").
_To
read our reflections on the CCCC's screening and presentation, and
the audience's reactions to our film, click and enlarge the narratives below:
_ This experience of circulating these stories exemplifies the power of affect in literacy learning. Interaction requires a meeting—a “coming together” that also requires a
“coming against”—of beings, whether physical or virtual, visual or
sensational. Diane Davis’s Inessential Solidarity: Rhetoric and Foreigner Relations (2010)
is devoted to the emergence of the individual via the recognition of the Other—an
interaction that lies at the core of being.
Drawing on Levinas, Davis argues
that in the recognition of the Other we cease to exist as essentialized or essentializable subjects. In every meeting of two faces (or, we would
include, bodies, voices, texts, and our imagined senses of people on the other
end of the computer screen), there lies an important failure to essentialize—a “failure of identification, an interruption in narcissistic
appropriation” (34). It is in this
failure that social feeling becomes possible—not because we identify with one
another, but because we always fail to—exposing us to our shared exposedness
and making us capable of empathy—of “demonstrating concern for another
finite existent” (35).
Davis’ ethical argument is that our rhetorics are always already essentializing; we can never fully “understand” the experiences of others and therefore, we disserve them by interpolating or essentializing them. She argues that there are no essential selves—that our subjectivities are always nonreciprocal, nonbridgeable: “The ‘responsibilities of rhetoric,’ involve both a determination to analyze and use the available means of persuasion and a willingness to attend—relentlessly, imprudently—to the inessential solidarity that makes rhetorical practice both necessary and possible” (143). Because we are deconstructed by our very relationships with others, at the core of our being lies a “response-ability” to respond to others. Affect precedes language, rhetoric, identity, and community and yet, senses of community are always already at work in our earliest interactions, where the simple act of meeting inspires response—a response-ability.
We believe that to foster response-ability, there must first be a meeting and an intention toward sharing, similar to what brought all the participants to that conference room. We approach graduate literacy through an emphasis on conversation, or the “talk” that so frequently generates affective response because we want to foster and support response-ability within academic communities. Our last section offers suggestions for doing just that.
Davis’ ethical argument is that our rhetorics are always already essentializing; we can never fully “understand” the experiences of others and therefore, we disserve them by interpolating or essentializing them. She argues that there are no essential selves—that our subjectivities are always nonreciprocal, nonbridgeable: “The ‘responsibilities of rhetoric,’ involve both a determination to analyze and use the available means of persuasion and a willingness to attend—relentlessly, imprudently—to the inessential solidarity that makes rhetorical practice both necessary and possible” (143). Because we are deconstructed by our very relationships with others, at the core of our being lies a “response-ability” to respond to others. Affect precedes language, rhetoric, identity, and community and yet, senses of community are always already at work in our earliest interactions, where the simple act of meeting inspires response—a response-ability.
We believe that to foster response-ability, there must first be a meeting and an intention toward sharing, similar to what brought all the participants to that conference room. We approach graduate literacy through an emphasis on conversation, or the “talk” that so frequently generates affective response because we want to foster and support response-ability within academic communities. Our last section offers suggestions for doing just that.
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