A Post-Grad’s Journey Towards Domestication

Heather: “It’s just like Hamlet said: To thine own self be true.”

Cher: “Uhh, Hamlet didn’t say that.”

Heather: “I think I remember Hamlet accurately.”

Cher: “Ha, well I remember Mel Gibson accurately, and he didn’t say that. That Polonius guy did.”

-Clueless

So where did Heather get the idea that Hamlet spoke the words “To thine own self be true”? Why was she so adament about it? Was it because she didn’t think her memory could fail her? Or was it because she felt that Cher wasn’t intelligent enough to know anything about Hamlet?

A similar question is addressed in The Wealth of Reality: An Ecology of Composition (a book that my graduate class Writing for Electronic Communities has been reading for the past two weeks), written by Margaret A. Syverson.

 In chapter 4, “Desert Storm on the Network,” Syverson posts numerous online messages from an xlchc (what we know as a forum or message board) written during the time of Desert Storm in the early 90s which just so happened to be during the emergence of the xlchc.

Before even looking into the messages and how they evolve like natural oral conversation, she writes, “In the last two chapters, we saw how ecologies of writers, readers, and texts evolve through interdependent activities as agents work to coordinate their internal structures with external structures in their environment and with each other. “

If you want to explore the xlchc on Desert Storm that Syverson does in the book, by all means buy the book. If you want to explore Heather’s struggle in remembering Hamlet, adapted through Syverson’s approach, read on.

The reader: Heather

The writer: Shakespeare

The text: Hamlet

What moves this into an even deeper complex system of interaction and evolution: The viewer: Cher

Cher Horowitz might not read, but she is unconventionally smart, proven by her ability to associate Mel Gibson, the actor, with Polonius, the character. She probably never read Hamlet, which is what makes Heather think she is dumb, but not having exposure to something does not make a person dumb!

Heather is a reader. She read Hamlet, maybe even studied it in depth in college, but was unable to remember which character said what. According to Syverson, this would pose a potential problem as Josh absorbed what sounded like fact–perhaps Josh (the listener throughout this conversation) would have absorbed Heather’s comment and assumed she was right that Hamlet said “To thine own self be true.”

But, with Cher’s interjection, the conversation steered closer to fact, that Polonius said “To thine own self be true.” And while Heather

What Cher did for that scene is, by Syverson’s calculations, immeasurable, because Cher prevented both Josh and Heather from passing along incorrect information about a historical text.

And instead of Heather going back to her dorm satisfied, she went back annoyed and may have checked Cher, only to realize she was correct, and then never make the mistake again herself.

Clueless seriously has the answer to everything.

e·col·o·gy      /ɪˈkɒlədʒi/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[i-kol-uh-jee] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation

-dictionary.com

Throughout our Rowan University graduate course Writing for Electronic Communities, students consistently question the writing of books on topics that seem otherwise ‘obvious.’ Maybe we know too much. Maybe we think we know more than we do. Maybe we only know that which our environments provide us with and everything beyond is out of our grasps.

For tonight’s class, Dr. Bill Wolff assigned chapters 1-3:

1. Introduction: What is an Ecology of Composition
2. Thinking with the Things As They Exist: Ecology of a Poem
3. “Next Time We’re Not Giving Steve Our Essay to Read”: Ecology of Writers

The introduction was very meaty, elaborating on the environment surrounding a writer, otherwise referred to in this book and on this blog as the ecology. Chapter 2 was my favorite of the three, as it used one example throughout, a poet named Charles Reznikoff, who considered himself a loner yet did not esape community or ecology of poetry. This understanding yields that large or small, the ecology exists as long as any single person presents others with what s/he is thinking. Chapter 3 was equally enlightening and called to mind the Learning Record, an ongoing assignment we have for this class. In this chapter, readers are students, ushered through the collaborative aspect of the interaction of ecology, and then react to this interaction.

 I look forward to reading the next three chapters. I have a feeling this will be a keeper on my list of three books for my Review Essay.

…only that you don’t believe.” -The Unknown

The Unknown is a hyptertext novel that Dr. Bill Wolff has assigned to his Writing for Electronic Communities class, which by this time I am sure you are aware that I am enrolled in this course. 

The hypertext novel is fascinating. Generally, I struggle accepting left-of-center writing styles, like Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. I wonder why? Maybe I’m linear.

Could I be a linear thinker? A left-brained, non-creative, generic, ordinary, passive, linear reader??

The vote is in after reading The Unknown and it looks like I’m not as linear as I had feared. I think the problem was that certain mediums lend themselves more easily to certain styles. For example, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid is a trade book, printed with black ink on white paper; the medium is linear but the style is associative. Hence the struggle.

Another example: George P. Landow’s Hypertext 3.0 is another linear medium, but the style is also linear, hence no struggle. The reading can flow.

My final example: The Unknown is published in an associative medium (hypertext) and the style is also associative. What this means is that when the writer wrote The Unknown, he (they?) wrote small pieces that could stand alone but that better associate with their sister pieces.

One problem that Landow sees with hyperlinking is if the link brings a reader to an unanticipated result. Above, I linked “Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy the Kid” and although you didn’t know where the link was going to bring you–a review, a sales site, an academic paper–you expected it would bring you to something relating to the novel. And it did. But had I linked you to something else, you would have gotten confused and distracted.

 Why? Because my blog is a linear medium (one-to-one linking) written in a linear style, and if I had thrown an associative link at you, it wouldn’t have served a purpose unless my purpose is to confuse you. Sometimes that works, but it is not my goal.

Moral of the story: Hypertext is brilliant.

Each week in my graduate course Writing for Electronic Communities at Rowan University, our professor, Dr. Bill Wolff, assigns a very meaty (to say the least) book based on community and/or electronic theory. This week’s book, Hypertext 3.0 by George P. Landow, explores the role that hypertext plays and whether or not it is a new thought.

Landow struck a chord with me that left me thoroughly excited to talk about this text: hypertext is not new! Of course, its use in electronic mediums is and the actual word “hypertext” is not very old, but the concept itself is. This concept is based on basic human congition to read something, feel something, and react to the feeling.

It wasn’t until Landow mentioned Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (a novel rewritten from the Caribbean woman’s perspective of Jayne Eyre) that I really got it. There are thousands of books that have been rewritten to try to understand the time period or cultural setting that the author lives in. Another great example of this is the rewriting of Shakespeare’s The Tempest in Aime Cesaire’s A Tempest, where focus shifts from love/marriage in Shakespeare’s version to slavery in Cesaire’s version.

This idea of shifting voice is undoubtedly accepted, and in the electronic world of hypertext, Landow references a shift in focus, or voice, by hyperlinking to other pages on the web. For example, there are several links already placed in this blog where I have given authority to those schools, profs, books, authors instead of accepting myself as the dispenser of their knowledge. The pressure’s off in knowing everything and space is saved. You, my reader, can now inform yourself about my references on your own. It’s fabulous.

Every week in my class at Rowan University, Writing for Electronic Communities, one or two students present the week’s reading and post five discussion questions.

Well, I think my questions got a little out of hand. I hate people like me! Seriously, I don’t know what happened. One thought led to another and before I knew it, I was trying to wrap my head around these philisophical ideas that once seemed so simple in science class when my teacher taught us, “You cannot prove something is true. You can only prove what is not true and when all of those are proven false, then the last remaining idea is true.” Or something like that.

1. On page 27, to help promote thought style in a progressive direction, Fleck address what we do wrong: “(1) A contradiction to the system appears unthinkable. (2) What does not fit into the system remains unseen; (3) alternatively, if it is noticed, either it is kept secret, or (4) laborious efforts are made to explain an exception in terms that do not contradict the system. (5) Despite the legitimate claims of contradictory views, one tends to see, describe, or even illustrate those circumstances which corroborate current views and thereby give them substance.”  

It seems that the solution to our thought process is to always assume that a formed belief is wrong. Can a member of the thought collective who contributed to developing the formed belief also be a member of the thought collective who assumes a formed belief is wrong in order to challenge it from a different angle? 

So why then, on page 85, does Fleck contradict this progressive idea when he writes, “[All really valuable experiments are] uncertain, incomplete, and unique. And when experiments become certain, precise, and reproducible at any time, they no longer are necessary for research purposes proper but function only for demonstration or ad hoc determinations,” and if no more experimenting is required, then how do we know that we have found a fact? Because it no longer needs to be researched? But it seems that Fleck said to never trust a fact as fact because it might only be fact today until we learn more about it tomorrow. 

2.   On page 39, Fleck philosophizes, “The statement ‘Schaudinn discerned Spirochaeta pallida as the causative agent of syphilis,’ is equivocal as it stands, because ‘syphilis as such’ does not exist…Torn from this context, ‘syphilis’ has no specific meaning, and ‘discerned’ by itself is no more explicit than ‘larger’ and ‘left’ in the examples above.”   

What is at all true if we are coming to every understanding anthropocentrically? Poor little syphilis doesn’t exist unless we are affected!  

3. For the writing student, active and passive are used to distinguish two different voices. The active voice uses a present subject to propel an action while the passive voice omits the subject as the doer of the action. But what is it that Fleck wants his readers to internalize about the active and passive? I ask you because every time he describes it, the concepts get lost in scientific terminology and I’m back at square one without a concrete idea of what he means. It seems like a very important concept to grasp from this text.  

Is passive to be understood (clever grammar, I know) as the unforeseen thought that develops as a result of the active? Is active (I can’t stop myself) the thought that develops from the unforeseen passive? What is going onnnnnn? 

4. Throughout this text, Fleck alludes to the idea of the marginal man who is part of the mutual development of the “thought collective.” I found this idea fascinating, as we touched on it with Wenger’s Communities of Practice last week, but nothing seems solidified.  Thaddeus J. Trenn remarks on this idea in his preface when he illustrates a tension between esoteric experts and the exoteric wide society with the marginal man, you guessed it, in the margins, ready to “create something new from the conflict” (xiii). Then Fleck finally tackles it, calling this system “teamwork,” that is “comparable to a soccer match, a conversation, or the playing of an orchestra” (99). In a soccer match, there are many players on the field not directly engaged with the ball; in a conversation, only one person can speak at a time; in an orchestra, not all instruments play at the same time. What seems to cover the span of these examples is that none can be accomplished on their own, and others must sit out and observe (wait their turn, perhaps) before making their own impression.  

So, what is it that the marginal man contributes? If he is uninformed, can he still contribute to the thought collective that we assume he is part of? Can he be silent yet still be a participant in his thought collective or learning community?  

5. Is it worth translating a text if the translation becomes interpretative? What gets lost going from German to English? Integrity? Usability? Understanding? At the very least, accessibility to a deeper, intended level of comprehension? And then, if the text is in fact interpretative, as it loses meaning from German to English with the series of ‘thought’ and “collective” words (Denkstil, Denkkollektiv, kollektiven Denkstil, kollektive Erfahrung, kollektive Gedanken, kollektive Vorstellungen, kollektiven Denklinien, kollektive Gebilde), then what is the merit of the translated text in English? Does this do a disservice to readers?

N.B.: The book was originally published auf Deutsch (in German) in 1935 and more than 40 years later, translated into and published in English.

If you are unfamiliar with this text, I’m not surprised. In fact, neither would Thomas S. Kuhn be, for in his foreword he writes, “My purpose in calling for a translation was not simply to make Fleck’s work accessible to an English-speaking audience but rather to provide it with an audience at all. In twenty-six years I have encountered only two people who had read the book independent of my intervention.” Not a good foot to start on, Mr. Kuhn.

At first, my biggest complaint with Ludwick Fleck’s Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact  for Writing for Electronic Communities (WEC) was that it was written for an informed audience, which we are not. Then I asked myself, “Would Dr. Bill Wolff seriously have us read something as far off base as a 1935 German book on syphilis if there wasn’t something deeper going on?”  

The conclusion I arrived at, or am still arriving at as I give it more thought, is that there is something abstract going on here that is greater than any one thought or one person can provide. And this is what links us to Fleck’s god awful reading for 2008. What is important to understand here is that the topic of syphilis is simply a guiding agent leading us towards understanding how knowledge is acquired and how fact is accepted as fact. Because we probably know little about biochemistry (is that even what this is?) and syphilis, we are expected to come to the text as writing students, students of a community, and do little more than skim over the technical stuff to reach an understanding of the thought collective. 

This also brings up Etienne Wenger’s Communities of Practice and the role that a community plays in developing mainstream ideas. Fleck’s “thought collective” (as I understand it in English—perhaps I’ve completely lost the true meaning of Denkkollektive and shouldn’t even be saying “thought collective” but I wouldn’t know because I’m not fluent in German) seems to have been one of, I assume, many precursors to Wenger’s “learning community,” where both assimilate ideas over a period of time.  

To grasp these ideas, think of knowledge as evolution. We were once apes, walking on all fours, hairy, naked, and ‘uncivilized.’ But one mutant gene compounded with another and another led us to become humans who communicate and are no longer able to digest raw meat. Had our evolutionary track taken a detour (perhaps it did already), we may not be here today, or maybe we’d be barking instead of speaking, who knows. The same is true for how thoughts develop and how we come across facts as fact.  

It seems to me that the purpose of reading Fleck for WEC is to become critical surveyors of information attained in cyber world.  

My head hurts just thinking about it.

The first half of this title, “Learning Communities,” is more than just a good idea and the second half of this title, “Etienne Wenger,” is more than just a silly name. Learning communities are valid modes of education and Etienne Wenger is the author of Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity.

 The reason I know that learning communities are valid modes of education is not because Wenger’s book brainwashed me into thinking so. I know because I experienced it first hand, for four years, in my undergraduate education at Wagner College, Staten Island. Let me take you through some points that Wenger makes and then take you through the elements of my own experience.

Communities of Practice is very much a guide line in how to develop a learning community and because of this guide mentality, it hits on general, yet imperative, points.

• The past, the present, and the future all play a role in the progression of a learning community. This is because the community is diverse and its members bring something unique to the table (from their pasts) to discuss in the moment (present) and acquire further knowledge (in the present) to use down the road (in the future).
• The learning community is not a regurgitation of knowledge but an acquiring and creating of new knowledge. In order to obtain this heightened level of understanding, the group must interact and with interaction comes edification.
• …and on the personal level, which is placed before the two points above (in my opinion, out of order):
  • “mutuality of engagement–the ability to engage with other members and respond in kind to their actions, and thus the ablility to establish relationships in which this mututaliy is the basis for an identity of participation.”-p.137
  • “accountability to the enterprise–the ability to understand the enterprise of a community of practice deeply enough to take some responsibility for it and contribute to its pursuit and to its ongoing negotiation by the community.” -p.137
  • “negotiability of the repertoire–the ability to make use of the repertoire of the practice to engage in it. This requires enough participation (personal or vicarious) in the history of a practice to recognize it in the lements of its repertoire. Then it requires the ability–both the capability and the legitimacy–to make this history newly meaningful.” -p.137

Ok ok, so you’re probably thinking “No way, this sounds way too socialistic for me.” It might be. But it might not be. And if it is, maybe that’s okay. Maybe socialism in terms of learning is okay. We do that when we go to college–to even out the playing field. We become members of one specific society and reap the benefits of an institution whether we pay tuition in full, in part with the aid of scholarship, or are gifted a ‘full ride.’

So we accept that the learning community is socialistic. Let’s see why that works, and if you don’t mind, I will cite examples from Wagner College:

Fall semester freshman year, everyone is enrolled in a learning community of about 25 students. My learning community was titled “Spaceship Earth” in which we interlaced environmental biology and literature to study the effects of pollution, global warming, etc. For approximately 15 weeks we were taught in the classroom, gained hands-on experience in the lab, and took one field trip every friday. Here is truncated list of places we visited:

1. Waste treatment facility in Elizabeth, NJ
2. Washington D.C. (meetings/interviews with Senators and environmental special interest groups)
3. Superfund Site in Toms River, NJ 
4. NJDEP (New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection)

Through these various activities, we bonded with our classmates in our ‘community.’ Some of this bonding came from studying together (traditional), some from the hours-long bus rides on which we ventured (non-traditional). This plays right into an important aspect of Wenger’s promotion of the learning community: becoming a community is not all about completing regurgitated assignments, but becoming a fused, super-tight group where every member plays his or her role, where some must be great and others less in order to function most efficiently.

(N.B.: the Wagner College curriculum builds in three separate learning communities, encompassing three of eight semesters, including the freshman learning community above, an intermediate learning community taken any time between freshman and senior year learning communities, and the senior learning community taken senior year and focused on the student’s major.)