250-350 words (Please indicate in your subject or in some other way which option you are addressing in your task response.)
Details:
Option 1 – Just Gaming
In an undergraduate literary theory course, one of your instructors encountered a complex, recondite text by a literary critic by the name of Jean-Franois Lyotard. That text, which goes by the English title Just Gaming, deals with “the multiplicity of communities of meaning, the innumerable and incommensurable separate systems in which meanings are produced and rules for their circulation are created” (Lyotard par. 9).
Do what you can with that quotation, but let’s focus on the title– Just Gaming. One way of reading the title is to understand that whatever we are doing with language is “just” or “merely” a game; that because we language users can change language, especially over time, the meanings of words, phrases, ideas, and context are always shifting. That idea is pretty well accepted in the academy. To accept that premise, that language is merely a game, is partly to undercut the ability of language to tell the truth or to make meaning absolute. It makes the ground we stand on unstable and questionable.
Another meaning of the the title Just Gaming, however, relates to second meaning of the word “just.” Rather than “merely” playing a game, consider that we are playing a “just” game with language– a game in which justice or correctness or ethics are important. Rather than striving for multiplicity of meaning, we strive for unity of meaning– a touchstone for a stable, agreeable use of language that allows us to get something done.
Ivey & Tepper argue that we have entered a new phase of human interaction. The ability to curate our own cultural experiences, and the capacity to make art and text and images and works and etc. fly across the world to any tiny corner where a person with web access sits in front of a screen— these two abilities together mean that we have the ability to interpret and create meaning in ways our predecessors did not have access to. We are uniquely empowered.
A part of David Carr’s interview with Terry Gross reveals some of the ways that we “cull the herd” of stampeding information, or “port the firehose” of personal, cultural, political, economic, and other kinds of data gushing at us continuously. Not only do we somehow pick through the various streams of data flowing into our lives, we adjust the ways we communicate in those same venues and elsewhere.
Your task is to consider the ways in which your textual interactions are becoming thicker or thinner (recalling part of Ivey & Tepper’s argument about the thinning or thickening of culture), and to evaluate your current strategies for “gaming” the social media and college academic systems. In other words, is facebook “just” a game? Does “tweeting” just mean fluff? Are the “texts” you send via your phone significant at all? What plans do you have for future interactions with peers, instructors, family members, authority figures (of all sorts) by way of the new media game?
Consider, too, that “game” is a complex term in its own right. What are the underlying assumptions when we say we are engaged in a game? What does it mean to “play along,” or to “play the game”? How is “play” a part of the new ways we interact?
Option 2 – Reading Like a Rhetor
In this new unit, Unit 3, we invite you to begin to investigate the ways in which your professors and other scholars read, think, and write about literature, language and, specifically, rhetoric. In fact, in Unit 2, you began paying attention to the ways that researchers in the academy think about language. Would you be surprised to learn that in the study of literature, for example, we dont always agree about what literature should be read or about how should be interpreted? Nor do we often agree on the ways the evidence is produced, nor about how arguments are constructed.
Pause for a moment and recall the work you needed to do in order to understand the scholarly sources you were required to read for Unit 2. Consider the Rhetorical Analysis handout, for Task 14. This assignment, useful for reading scholarly works in most disciplines, required that you pay close attention to how the scholars were using language, noting such elements as (but not limited to): the audience for the scholarly work, its genre and original publication, and the situation or occasion for the work. Additionally, the Rhetorical Analysis handout had you make note of the scholars use of sources, referencing methods, objectivity or bias, ethical appeals, reasoning . . . and more.
As you reflect upon the work you did in Unit 2, you will recognize now, if you havent already, that your sources took different approaches to the subject you were researching. Some of them agreed with each other, while others disagreed in part, and even others, perhaps, agreed not at all. Gerald Graffs essay points out this fact with regard not only to dis/agreements** in literature studies but also across disciplines. For example, note his discussion regarding objectivity and the student in the art history and political science classes. Graff argues that the student ended up writing only to please his instructors. More importantly, according to Graff, students in such a situation can become confused and end up trying only to protect themselves by giving each teacher whatever he or she seems to want (129). This situation inhibits students from interrogating the assumptions that the scholars, and even their teachers, make (Graff 129).
For this task then, read carefully and annotate passages, sentences or words that attract your notice. As somebody who has chosen to be a scholar, there have undoubtedly been times when you wrote to protect yourself and your grade. Draft a response of 200-250 words which addresses some or all of the following concerns: What does this giving the teacher whatever he or she seems to want look like, from your experience? With as much accuracy as possible, try to describe what happens when you have attempted to write for a course where you felt a bit like a foreigner or even confused. What coping mechanisms did you employ to get through the assignment? What was the end result? How are you making your way “in” to the discipline(s) you are working in?
** In the discipline of English, and some other humanities-based disciplines, when a writer separates a word with the forward slash (/), this symbol signifies a multiple way or reading. For example, reading dis/agreement suggests both disagreement and agreement.
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