(Dis)ability

Yergeau et al.

Initial impressions: Oh, great! Another multi-modal essay. How cute. Yes, the authors acknowledge that there’s limitations to their webtext, and yes, I get the purpose of creating a multi-modal text to support the push to wanting students to create multi-modal stuff on their own, but it’s just too cute for me. I don’t like it. I don’t like that there’s no linier way to read this, but rather links I gotta click in order to get anywhere in this webtext. Yes, I get what they’re trying to do, and no, I still don’t like it. It takes away rather than adds to their argument, even though they probably thought it would; Like they say: “The modality of this webtext invites yet more of us to experience this game-changing series of presentations”. Like I said, it’s too cute.

“Over There”

I’m already pissed at this “article.” I wonder who Self et al. are talking to when they mention the writing classroom. Are they really aiming this towards English instructors at all levels, or is it slanted more towards the English 101 teacher?

“Space/Presence” by Price

Funny how she’s arguing for an accessible space through modalities such as texting as a way for folks to have more access (she brings up deafness and multi-modality as a way to make the classroom more accessible for folks), but completely overlooks (quite intentionally, I’m sure) the issue of access for impoverished students, non trad students, and Luddites. Nice way to exclude all sorts of people.

When it comes to “Community” and “Reason” parts of this webtext, are they really necessary? What’s wrong with mental illness? What’s wrong with accommodations? Again, I get what they’re doing. Really I do. And it does have some import to think about the ways in which we use language as it does matter; it shapes us, gives voice to the places we’ve been, and offers tells on where we’re from. But what are these authors really contributing? They’re only substituting words for other words that may/may not be more accessible.

The Slatin piece is in such contrast to the Yergeau et al. webtext. Slatin has scrub all of the fanciness from his webtext and works in a bare-bones approach. His reason is that what’s visually pleasing for non-(dis)abled folks isn’t necessarily good for (dis)abled folks. I liked this piece much better than the last one. I feel like Slatin is calling attention to the same issues that the other folks did, but in a more practical, less ablest-in-their-own-kinda-way. It’s interesting how he numbers all of his points, rather than as one fully articulated essay. For me, it did make points more digestible, and easier to go back and re-read some point I wanted to revisit.

Now there’s the Dolmage piece Writing Against Normal: Navigating A Corporeal Turn where we’ve made the turn back into academia land. I’ll say that for this week’s readings is that they have run the gamut (for better or for worse). I’m in a bad mood, and maybe that’s effecting my reading of these texts too much. I was automatically put off by Dolmage’s assertion of “The dominate discourse surrounding the teaching of writing…” (115). Now the reason this ticks me off so much is that when bloody academics are envisioning “the writing classroom” what they mean is English 101. And who’s teaching English 101? Contingent faulty, that’s who. And I’m bloody tired of these folks thinking that they can come in, talk about what’s going on there, and offer their own scholarship about how to run a “writing classroom” when they don’t even TEACH these bloody classes themselves.

I do like this business of revision as Dolmage sets out: that it’s a way for each of us-teacher and student alike- to come to know our own writing better, yet the other side of the coin is that it can also be a way to “perform a drama of normativity” (117). The former speaks loudly to one of my loves (the writing center) and how giving and receiving feedback or talking about writing with other writers helps us to get a deeper sense of our rhetorical situation as well as attending to audience needs. Yet, feedback does have a way of making writing normative; to continue the standard academic ways of writing and thinking, at the cost of creating spaces for different voices to emerge.

I also like how Dolmage re-imagines embodiment not just as peoples with (dis)abilities, but also how the text itself can be (dis)embodied. By using wikis as an example, Dolmage is demonstrating how a “differently-embodied writing process” functions (120). I find this to be a super-rad notion, and something that can be done in English 101 rather seamlessly, rather than some of the theories scholars are putting out there.