non-discursive summation?
I recently read the first two chapters of Joddy Murray's book Non-Discursive Rhetoric: Image and Affect in Multimodal Composition, and though I found many of his ideas to be quite compelling . . .
p7: [S]ymbolization is dependent on image to do its work of meaning-making. Whether the symbol is a discursive one or a non-discursive one, images not only become stored as approximations in our brains by the experiences he have, but they drive our brains' functioning. Our relationship to image is not just a perceptual relationship; our brains require images in order to operate. Consequently, if we are to integrate this knowledge into our theories of composing and rhetoric, scholars must theorize the relationship of image and the affective domain in a much more complex and integrated way than we have done in the past.
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p12: . . . in our efforts to create and clarify our discursive texts, we often overlook the pivotal role of non-discursive composition. In contrast, the view of meaning-making proposed here necessitates and values all that our symbols—though especially image—can do: affectivity, circularity, ambiguity, incongruity, and even ineffability.
p35: Rather than avoid and bemoan the fallibility of language with its ambivalences and failures, we should learn to embrace it—to acknowledge its complexity as its most generative feature.
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of rotables, toll of the road; bred manyheaded stepsons for one leapyourown taughter; is too funny for a fish and has too much outside for an insect; like heptagon crystal emprisoms trues and fauss for us;
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is infinite swell in unfitting induments; once was he shovelled and once was he arsoned and once was he inundered and she hung him out billbailey; has a quadrant in his tile to tell Toler cad a'clog it is;
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offers chances to Long on but stands up to Legge before; found coal at the end of his harrow and mossroses behind the seams; made a fort out of his postern and wrote F.E.R.T. on his buckler;
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is esapemaster-in-chief from all sorts of houdingplaces; if he outharrods against barkers, to the schoolbred he acts whiteley; was evacuated at the mere appearance of three germhuns and twice besieged by a sweep;
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. . . they ultimately felt sort of old-hat to me. These are ideas I've been comfortable with since at least attending SAIC, and are also ideas which are informing my dissertation as it currently stands (leans? slouches? lurks?). And so the big question for me, while reading, was "For whom is he writing?" And the answer, by God, is that he's writing for people who teach writing (*specifically, rhetoric and composition)! And you know what, until now, I've never taken a writing* class! So what the hell does that make me? And how the hell will I ever teach comp when the time comes? And and and . . .
None of this really matters. Or, well . . . maybe . . .
And so here then is the real question: What have I learned over the last quarter about multimodality in the rhet/comp classroom? (I love exercises like these. Because they are ultimately futile, they provide fantastic opportunities to "fail better"!)
- Ultimately, I have learned that I take the idea of multimodality for granted. As previously stated, these are all ideas with which I am already comfortable. I have been using them in my classrooms since I've had classrooms to use.
- However, I now understand the concept of multimodality much better, and—even more importantly—I understand why it is currently important (without going into too much detail, this has to do with the state of technology, and the state of technology is, whether or not we consciously recognize it, changing the way we think about writing. Ask yourself the following question: Are the above images integral to the message I'm trying to send, or are they gratuitous? If you answered "the latter," please stop reading now, because you probably weren't really paying attention earlier. If you answered "the former," can you explain how? Does the "How" matter?)
The biggest question all this has raised for me is still the very first question I asked in this series of blog posts: Why aren't we also talking about reading and how it is also becoming multimodal? How do we expect to be able to teach multimodal writing if we are not also (and at the same time) teaching multimodal reading? I suppose these questions ultimately circle back around to the culture war questions of the 80s and 90s, questions like: What is a text? What is a canon? Who gets to answer these questions?
In the end in the end in the end: of all the services DU's degree in English/Creative Writing has provided me, this is (at the moment) the most important one: It has prepared me (more perhaps than it has prepared those seeking degrees in Literary Studies or Rhet/Comp) to look forward rather than back (or was is SAIC that did that? damn.)
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