adamh – Multiliteracies in ELA Classrooms

Another Response to the Kress Article

Kress argues that the education system today is embedded in a time and place that no longer exists- that it was cemented in a time of stability. He now refers to “a different kind of social subject” (138) to which the educational system doesn’t match. He writes that “the social subject educated […] for an era of social and economic instability is deeply different to the social subject of the preceding era: a citizen/worker/professional who was educated toward the stabilities of well-defined citizenship or equally stable subjectivities as a participant in stable economies” (139). He also claims that “the social mores, cultural values, forms of the economy and the social organizations of 1955 had more affinity with those of 1855 than they have with those of 1995” (133). This gave me pause. The Industrial Revolution, two world wars and massive migration to North America seems rather significant to me. What can compare to these events between 1955 and 1995? Vietnam, Korea, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the break-up of Yugoslavia? These are all significant events, but certainly not as influential as the events previously mentioned between 1855 & 1955. My sense is, and given the context of this course, that it is the advent of the computer and the digital world that helps Kress to make this claim. I agree that since 1955 the world has changes significantly. In an academic context we could understand this as the shift from Modernism to Post-Modernism

The concept of Modernism has its roots in the Industrial Revolution and crystallized during the First World War. Post-Modernism cannot be understood without the foundation of Modernism, but is characterized by a rejection of the tenets of Modernism. It is a disambiguation of what we thought we knew, and what we think we can come to know.

Multiple (digital) literacies are characterized as a shift away from traditional literary texts, ways of knowing and achieving meaning, but we can’t understand these new literacies without traditional based language and literary forms. Multiple literacies embrace a new space-time continuum and reflect a post-modern socio-cultural conundrum. Kress notes the market based economy has transcended a state based allegiance (141), though I’m not convinced the two are that separate. Digital literacies are embedded in a place that is always open, and are upheld by (if not initiated by) business interests and much of it seems to be a deviation from what is meaningful. Digital literacies are characterized in a post-modern era as a cacophony of voices and formats which may actually serve a purpose of consumption rather than idea-making. Much is said and suggested of what the English classroom is for in our post-modern times, and how canonical literature serves an ideal of a world gone by. During my university English classes I always appreciated the simple delivery, the loose adherence to time (course schedule, due dates), the often simple class syllabi which didn’t have any charts, shading, text boxes and the like, and a rejection of the use of power-point or Prezi. Everything was scaled down to its core idea, without the need to be delivered with fancy dressing or false advertising. It was a space for confronting complex ideas and theories in as simply a way as possible. In our multi-modal reality, I think this simple approach is more important than ever.

Are there opportunities in the post-modern high school English class to embrace the concept of multi-literacies? Absolutely. Without question there are some very valid avenues for non-traditional learning, expression and communication, but to me the English teacher ought to attempt to slow the pace down a bit, and nurture the old-fashioned and out of style introvert. Multiple literacies reflect a world that is changing at a rapid pace, but change has always occurred. What is unique to our time is the rapidity of the change. In fact change in this time might be more mediated illusion driven by corporate/state interests, rather than a result of personal agency. What is true is that we are living our lives at a pace that is snowballing out of control, leading us to unprecedented states of anxiety, depression and general unhappiness and dissatisfaction. We need to slow down and enjoy the moment. What better way than to relax in your favourite rocking chair with a good book, canonical or otherwise?

-Adam

Electronic Literature is Not Print: A Reflection on N. Katherine Hayles @ http://eliterature.org/pad/elp

The above statement seems rather obvious and straightforward. Hayles argues that electronic literature is characterised by its digital nature which is reliant on code (an entirely different source language), as well as its hypertextuality (I think we all understand this term). Also, though it is ‘[l]ocated within the humanities by tradition and academic practice, electronic literature also has close affinities with the digital arts, computer games, and other forms associated with networked and programmable media. It is also deeply entwined with the powerful commercial interests of software companies, computer manufacturers, and other purveyors of apparatus associated with networked and programmable media” (24). Alright, fine, but who cares? I don’t recall anyone getting all up in arms about classifying electronic literature as print (though I’ve been ill-informed many times before). What becomes important and worthy of debate, however, is the way in which “electronic literature can be seen as a cultural force helping to shape subjectivity in an era when networked and programmable media are catalyzing cultural, political, and economic changes with unprecedented speed” (24), and in a different way than print media does. The larger question then becomes whether or not these changes are having a negative or positive affect on us.

This idea of media and how we use it changing the nature of our culture and subjectivity isn’t new. Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore wrote in their 1967 publication The Medium is the Massage (produced by Jerome Agel) that “All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected” (26). This sounds not only a bit dramatic, but enticingly believable. But is it? If we get back to Hayles’ work and think about electronic literature, in what ways has it changed us, and if it has are we better off because of it? She writes, “Much as the novel both gave voice to and helped to create the liberal humanist subject in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, so contemporary electronic literature is both reflecting and enacting a new kind of subjectivity characterized by distributed cognition, networked agency that includes human and non-human actors, and fluid boundaries dispersed over actual and virtual locations” (24). But is her characterisation of this new subjectivity accurate and/or sufficient? Also, who or what are these non-human actors?

On the positive side of things I think we might say that we are introducing greater and more rapid access to information, but how is this changing our subjectivity? Are we becoming more intelligent more quickly because of it? I think this notion is highly debatable. In an educational context we might say that electronic literature and hypertextuality are meeting the educational needs of students who learn differently than the verbal/linguistic types (according to Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences) who have always been favoured in a print literature setting. Of course we also might argue that e-lit/hypertexts are feeding a highly distractible ADDesque generation of kids who above not being able to focus aren’t engaging with their imaginations as they once did, and as a result require more and more external sources of entertainment, satisfaction and gratification.

In her book A Theory of Adaptation, Linda Hutcheon writes about the telling and showing modes of texts. The telling mode comprises the written word- the print based novel, and the showing mode in the realm of the visual- plays and films (22). She writes:

In the telling mode […] our engagement begins in the realm of imagination, which is simultaneously controlled by the selected, directing words of the text and liberated- that is, unconstrained by the limits of the visual or aural. We can stop reading at any point; we can re-read or skip ahead; we hold the book in our hands and feel, as well as see, how much of the story remains to be read. But with the move to the mode of showing, as in film and stage adaptations, we are caught in an unrelenting, forward-driving story. And we have moved from the realm of the imagination to the realm of direct perception- with its mix of both detail and broad focus (23).

Where does electronic literature fit into this theorization, and perhaps specifically hypertexts? If we are to take Hayles assertion that electronic literature is not print literature then we must place it in the realm of the visual- the showing mode. Do we then agree with Hutcheon’s idea that in this mode we are moving away from our imaginations when we engage with electronic literature and hypertexts? And bringing McLuhan et al. back into the conversation with Hayles and Hutcheon, in what specific ways does electronic literature alter our subjectivity, sociocultural interactions, and ultimately, our lives? Or should we be placing electronic literature, perhaps nebulously, in the divide between the telling and showing modes?

Adam.

Works Cited

Hayles, N. Katherine. “Electronic Literature: What is it?” http://eliterature.org. Jan. 2 2007. Web. 5 Jul 2013. <http://eliterature.org/pad/elp>.

Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Taylor & Francis Group, 2006. Print.

McLuhan, Marshall, and Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage. Ed. Jerome Agel. Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, 2001. Print.