Multiliteracies in ELA Classrooms

The poster “slworking2” dubbed this photo “Conference call flow in vacation mode at the office”, one of his series entitled “Hard(ly) at work”. I posted this as a play on the idea of “fastcapitalism” from this week’s reading and Marx’s idea of “gegensätzliche Bewegung” (structural contradictions) from his critique of capitalist economics, “Das Kapital”. The new workplace attitude embodied by the photo is what I want to draw attention to, in particular the new corporate subculture of informality, said by the authors of the article to be partly a result of “flattened hierarchies”, which presupposes a shared cultural context, expertise and register. If you notice the details, from the man’s posture to the clothing/footwear to the nerd-hipster wit displayed around the cubicle, it’s not hard to feel somewhat estranged. The authors of the article suggest that the diversity and democracy (and other such buzzwords) that technology is said to enable, masks the counter-intuitive potential that the very informality that arises becomes even more “rigorously exclusive” than the old paradigm. Personally, I don’t know any programming languages or play video games or spend much time on the Internet, except when I’m doing research, so for me the Silicon Valley discourse one finds in movies like “The Social Network” seems much like the discourse of Wall Street or any other corporate discourse, in that it is meant to mark its adherents out from the rest.

As for myself, I shared in class last time the fact I’ve been busy writing screenplays since I graduated in 1995, and teaching literary analysis and essay writing to high school kids to pay my rent and food, only to realize I actually prefer teaching. So once I graduate from the program, I would like to teach obviously… I’m just not sure yet in what context. I don’t think the private system is for me anymore, although I have my reservations about the public system as well.

As far as the course goes, so far I am very happy to report that I know next to nothing about multiliteracies, and if the first reading and syllabus are anything to go by, I am excited by the prospect of what’s to come!