Kinney, Kelly. “Online Communities, Self-Silencing, and Lost Rhetorical Spaces.”

Kinney, Kelly. “Online Communities, Self-Silencing, and Lost Rhetorical Spaces.” Kairos 6.1 (2001) <http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/6.1/binder.html?coverweb/kinney/index.html>.

Summary: Kinney’s research on a student electronic list suggests that computer-mediated discourse has the potential to both celebrate and silence women-centered discourse. Through a critique of traditional conceptions of collaboration, she complicates conceptions of community and discourse practice in the use of computer-mediated discussion groups. In order to help facilitate more inclusive language practices during on-line discussions, Kinney argues that instructors must redefine for their students what it means to be a part of a learning community, and encourage both men and women to be more tolerant of alternative discourse practices.

Area Cluster: 106-Information Technologies

Methodology: rhetorical analysis

Most Valuable Citations: K. Bruffee, E. Ashton-Jones, S. Herring, J. Wolfe

Money Quotes:

“While collaborative pedagogy strives to achieve democratic ends-that is, it strives to create an environment where the students, not the teacher, are the center of discussions-it still requires student to come to consensus, which Bruffee defines as “general agreement or accord” (221). Given that collaborative pedagogy necessitates that individuals unite in aim and action, it supports a hierarchical conception of problem solving, and reinforces a singular, linear way of communicating in the world. While it would be an exaggeration to suggest that collaborative pedagogy “forces” a single world-view on students, feminist compositionists like Evelyn Ashton-Jones suggest that because women tend to be less domineering in discussions than men, women’s ideas remain underrepresented in collaborative classrooms.”

“Feminist theorists note that cooperative notions of community are in keeping with women’s styles of communication, which rely on personal experience and relationship building as vehicles for expression. Not unlike collaborative pedagogy, feminist pedagogy stresses the importance of authorizing student experiences, and challenges educators to replace isolating and hierarchical authority structures with systems of shared leadership and cooperation in the classroom. Also like Bruffee, feminist educators stress the poly-centralization of authority, the use of process models of learning, and the value of students negotiating meaning through their own experience. But if we recognize that feminist pedagogy “seeks to replace hierarchical forms of authority” in a classroom community that celebrates difference (Schniedewind 18), we see that these two pedagogies are somewhat at odds.”

” I think that we can better prepare students to participate in computer-mediated discussions by introducing them to gendered conceptions of language, and the value of cooperative rhetoric. By doing so, I imagine that students may not only become more self-reflective about their language practices, but may even work toward instituting more cooperative styles in both traditional and computer-mediated discussions.”

Clark, Carlton. “Surely Teaching Hypertext in the Composition Classroom Qualifies as a Feminist Pedagogy?”

Clark, Carlton. “Surely Teaching Hypertext in the Composition Classroom Qualifies as a Feminist Pedagogy?” Kairos 6.2 (2001) <http://english.ttu.edu/Kairos/6.2/binder2.html?coverweb/gender/clark/index.htm>.

Summary: In this essay, Clark explores the connections between hypertext and human interaction. Specifically, Clark investigates the intersections of hypertext theory, feminist epistemology, and feminist pedagogy. Clark concludes by arguing that teaching hypertext does have the ability to further the goals of feminist pedagogy.

Area Cluster: 103-Theory, 106-Information Technologies

Methodology: theory

Most Valuable Citations: L. Code, L. Sullivan, L. Irigaray, G. Landow

Money Quotes:

“A familiarity with the tenets of feminist epistemology leads one to suspect that conventional texts have traditionally been treated very much like other medium-sized objects (e.g., apples, chairs, household appliances) that can be known in an objective way – known, that is, in the same way by different knowers. But knowing a hypertext is more like knowing another person, or at least another changing, living being of some sort. Like a person, every hypertext shifts and resists final predication; the text cannot be ‘nailed down.’”

“ in hypertext, rather than reading and writing from nowhere or seeking a neutral perspective outside the text, the wreader is located within a shifting network of texts. Wreading hypertext is very personal. Because choices, such as which tangent to follow, must be made to instantiate the text, the self is deeply implicated in the hypertext wreading process.”

“hypertext may change feminist pedagogy even as it is ostensibly “used” in the service of a feminist pedagogy. Engaging with a technology is never a one-way street. Technologies change the way we do things and the way we think. If we are always already cyborgs, we cannot remain apart from our tools, as an objectivist might wish; our tools get inside us and change us as we use them. To acknowledge this fact is not to fall into technological determinism, however, because technologies do not act purposefully. A technology such as hypertext does produce effects, but not through any intention of its own. The effects, then, are unpredictable.”

LeCourt, Donna and Luann Barnes. “Writing Multiplicity: Hypertext and Feminist Textual Politics.”

LeCourt, Donna and Luann Barnes. “Writing Multiplicity: Hypertext and Feminist Textual Politics.” Computers and Composition 16.1 (1999): 55-71.

Summary: “By exploring the theoretical connection between hypertext and feminist theory, this article suggests that writing multivocal hypertexts can help make students more aware of the multiplicity of their subject positions and the ways in which academic contexts try to silence those positions. The process of creating such a text enacts many goals of a feminist classroom: finding a place for marginalized voices and interrogating the gendered power relations of academic discourse.”

Area Cluster: 101–Practices of Teaching Writing, 106–Information Technologies

Methodology: rhetorical analysis

Most Valuable Citations: Tedesco, Haraway, Irigaray,

Money Quotes:

“It is precisely because hypertext does not allow for the expression of an authentic feminine experience that hypertext might have significant potential for the feminist writing teacher” (56).

“A text that speaks multiple positions, in these arguments, also seeks to expose to the reader how “genre boundaries themselves are as questionable as gender boundaries and that all writing is a means of creating a self, not expressing a self that already exists” (Zawacki, 1992, p. 37). Thus, the writer seeks not only to create a space for her difference but also to highlight the textual silencing of difference for her reader such that a reader cannot reinvoke normalized assumptions about text to dismiss her attempt to speak alternatives” (57).

“When we write as if we were a stable being who can stand outside discourse, we undercut our own recognition of our multiple positions and the power of that multiplicity. That is, the act of writing reflects our selves back to us in similar ways; we learn to see ourselves as unitary subjects and to silence feminine perspectives because they might contradict such unity. We risk, in short, accepting a definition of self that has been formed by the patriarchy” (58).

“even when writing for hypertext, univocality and linearity are impossible to escape. The thinking involved may be engaged in making multiplicity apparent, but the production of language forces the text to be written one word
at a time with a single context in mind” (67-68).