Design Indeterminacy (05-20)
Some emergences between Buchanan’s “Rhetoric, Humanism, and Design” and my initial Arcade idea…
Indeterminacy
My Arcade Possibility:
- The division of rhetorical work into disciplines and institutional-organizational schemes. [Might a Compositionist drift to environmental psychology? Art?]
- The function assigned to modes, media, and technologies by various and overlapping cultural logics. [Might a student's/teacher's walk/bail out on May Day be a "first-year" composition - Writing Project #2?] (Sheridan)
Writing Indeterminacy: John Cage(‘s)/Composition, (My) Pedagogy, and (Occupied) Space
In his (4Cs ‘08) presentation, You Want Me To Teach What?, David Sheridan (MSU) called for “an opening up for critical reflection…at least four distinct areas of” multimodal composition/rhetoric. Two of these (maybe all) struck me in encountering (surfing?) in the moment of ‘08 and in the moments of (adjunct) teaching a developmental writing course at a local community college:
In light of Sheridan, I find myself sitting with the recent 4Cs call and the assumptions of possibilities. First, “…San Francisco, a fitting site” in its complexity of occupation and tradition of “dissent[s]…the Beat Rhythms at City Lights…the Black Panther Marches, the songs of Haight-Ashbury’s…Dead, the anti-war protests at Berkeley, the Indian Occupation of Alcatraz, and the recent demand for same-sex marriage…” What emerges: the Beats and the Dead are probably assumed composition(al), although not without some dancing and tug-boating. But the Panthers and Indians and Queers? How seriously does institutional-organizational Composition take “Black Panther Marches” or “Indian Occupation of Alcatraz” or “Same-sex marriage” to function as compositions, writing, texts – public writing?
As Nedra Reynolds (The Geographies of Writing) has explored, Composition as a discipline struggles to navigate within and through metaphor to materiality – to move within and through text to beyond text and into public space, from text to action. In this paper/project I discuss an attempt to theorize indeterminacy as a requisite and viable compositional stand, in the context of the digital, of new media, of new “in-between” metaphorical and material spaces. This attempt jumps off from John Cage’s 1952 composition, 4′33, and moves through the ‘69 Indian Occupation of Alcatraz and into the work of designing and implementing a first-year composition course – “Writing the City.” It is my speculation that opening the work of English Composition to indeterminacy will allow for the reflection called for by Sheridan, and open the composition class room as space in which students move from action to text/text to action.
This spew is an idea I’d been trying to develop for a 4Cs proposal, potentially thesis work…what this project needs is to steer clear of “essayist prose” (for the time being, maybe forever…) and instead dive head-on into “the art of annotation and note-taking” (Sirc), the art of gathering…
Here’s a first bit…
From Buchanan’s “Rhetoric, Humanism and Design”:
Why is the indeterminacy of subject matter in design significant? There are several reasons. First, it immediately serves to distinguish design from all of the natural and social sciences, which are directed toward the understanding of determinate subject matters. … Second, it directs attention to the exceptional diversity of the products created by designers and to the continual change going on among those products. The subject matter of design is not fixed; it is constantly undergoing exploration. Individual designers extend their vision to new areas of application or focus on one area of application and refine a vision. In general, design is continually evolving, and the range of products or areas where design may be applied continues to expand. Third, indeterminacy of subject matter serves to characterize design as a discipline fundamentaly concerned with matters that admit of alternative solutions. Designers deal with matters of choice, with things that may be other than what they are. The implications of this are immense, because it reveals the domain of design to be not accidentally but essentially contested. The essential nature of design calls for both the process and the results of designing to be open to debate and disagreement.
A question: A “liberatory” binary?…if the “essential nature” of something “calls for” being “open to debate and disagreement”?
Alteration/Appropriation of Buchanan:
Why is the indeterminacy of subject matter in [ _____ ] significant? There are several reasons. First, it immediately serves to distinguish [ _____ ] from all of the natural and social sciences, which are directed toward the understanding of determinate subject matters. … Second, it directs attention to the exceptional diversity of the products created by [ ______ ] and to the continual change going on among those products. The subject matter of [ _____ ] is not fixed; it is constantly undergoing exploration. Individual [ _____ ] extend their vision to new areas of application or focus on one area of application and refine a vision. In general, [ ______ ] is continually evolving, and the range of products or areas where [ _______ ] may be applied continues to expand. Third, indeterminacy of subject matter serves to characterize [ _______ ] as a discipline fundamentally concerned with matters that admit of alternative solutions. [ ________ ] deal with matters of choice, with things that may be other than what they are. The implications of this are immense, because it reveals the domain of [ ________ ] to be not accidentally but essentially contested. The essential nature of [ ____ ] calls for both the process and the results of [ _____ ] to be open to debate and disagreement.
Blank/box out “design” “designers” … replace/remix/box with “English studies” or “composition” or “compositionists” or “composers” or “writing” or “writers”
Buchanan argues that the braketed spaces couldn’t be filled in with “the natural and social sciences” (say, biology)…but could we fill them in with “English studies” or “composition”?
What is composition’s relationship to indeterminacy? or determinacy?
How, if at all, do our own pedagogical stances reflect these relationships? (How does Sirc’s?)
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