I Have Been Assigned (As Have Some of You)

(Note: This post isn't intended to needle Adam.)

Have academic blogs influenced literary theory?  Of course they have.  They're assigned in literary theory classes.  What do the students think of our work? 

One student tackles my friend's exercise in erasure and says something smarter about it than he said in it.  (By which I mean: the student seems to've read and understood the Foucault, whereas my friend—who I most certainly am needling—only read it.)  Another notes that I've only appeared once (where? was I comped? what was the honorarium?), links to my advice for bloggers, and concludes (correctly) that that post slays itself, myself and all of y'all. 

One student insists N. Pepperell's fictional, and I'm inclined to agree.  No actual person could write that much that quickly and remain sane.  Dr. B.'s talk at the MLA is a popular subject (as well it should be), as is Jodi Dean's post about the creation of readers.  Then there are the gracious souls who not only like the likes of us, but appreciate Ray Davis.  Why would she do that?  Look at the bit she quotes:

Analytic philosophers often sound like a blind man describing an elephant by holding the wrong end of a stick several blocks away from the zoo ...

What's not to like about Ray?  (The fact that his RSS feed seems to have stopped working?  Perhaps.)  These students of literary theory have stumbled into the academic blogosphere and found:

• a graduate student in English
• an Australian graduate student in ... sundry fields
• a former professor
• a political scientist
• a Ray Davis

I should say something profound about assignments like this legitimizing something or other ... but I can't muster profundity tonight.  (Or any night really.)  All I can say is that I'm proud that these students didn't stoop to consider the author-functionality implicit in writing one act plays ...

Comments

[va]

I look forward to discussing why my posts didn't make it into the Norton Blogospheric Anthology.

But seriously, blogs are shameful things and they certainly should not be legitimated by the sacred institution of Intro to Theory.

[CR]

I can't decide whether to keep blogging or not.

I can't decide whether this post makes me more or less inclined to keep blogging.

[Ray Davis]

Neat, but for some reason I've felt more straightforwardly delighted by the online editions of "Jubilate Agno", "The Adventures of Master F. J.", "The Witlings", Delany's mini-autobiography, and my genre arguments with Lethem all showing up on curricula over the years. Maybe it's that reaction of "But I'm not dead yet"? Or maybe it's the idea of grades ever being associated with the nonsense I produce? Well, so long as the essay question goes something like "Through what fifteen basic mistakes did Davis completely botch his argument? (Thirty for extra credit)", I guess it would be OK.

[SEK]

CR, I think it makes you want to blog more, because it demonstrates the actual utility of online noodling of the sort you, VA and I are apprenticing, but which Ray's mastered.

[SEK]

How's this for an unfortunate URL:

http://acephalous.typepad.com/acephalous/2007/10/i-have-been-ass.html

I should've known better.

[JPool]

Boy.
Can you retroact the title grammar so that the URL comes out -has-been-ass.html?
That would be just like Thursday.

[Ray Davis]

/i-have-been-ass.html

(As Have Some of Us)

[Andrew Ritchie]

Somehow it always surprises me when I see things like professors assigning blogs in lit theory class. My lit theory prof doesn't even think Zizek is worth reading. And he's not an old curmudgeon forever set in his ways and frightened of the internet, he's a forward thinking dude who is pretentiously traditional.

[SEK]

I'm actually a proponent of class blogs, Andrew. But then again, I would be. That said, I don't think there's anything wrong with being pretentiously traditional per se, but it does students something of a disservice to pretend as if the world isn't changing.

[Andrew Ritchie]

What do you mean by a class blog? Assuming of course you're not talking about assigning a class to read a blog or blogs, which is what I was talking about. I don't think Bill is trying to pretend the world isn't changing, he's just not on the forefront of being a progressive and inventive educator and I'm happy with that. I can tell Bill already struggles to decide what goes on the syllabus and what is merely banished to "recommended" reading. Do you really think it is a good idea to cut a Bourdieu or Derrida or Butler article in favor of having your students check out lit crit blogs and chat about them in class? I wouldn't argue that there is no value to browsing lit theory blogs but that seems like something to do on my own time outside of class. With blogs, it's a living active dialogue that virtually anyone can jump into. And simply given the nature and purpose of the medium blogs are not going to give students a chance to delve into a complex, difficult, argument written with impeccable word choice.

Browsing lit blogs seems like the kind of thing that I'll navigate myself when the mood strikes me and in the mean time I'm glad my lit theory professor cares about nothing other than giving me a solid background that might even help me have something interesting to say once I start my own lit blog.

Re-reading all of this I'm positive my conservative Reed education has brainwashed me. I'm literally sitting here thinking "what's so great about being liberal with your curriculum and embracing new things because they are new?" And I'm not saying that because I think you're wrong, I'm saying that because I'm worried I've lost my mind.