Wysocki IWA

"The Sticky Embrace of Beauty"

Because I was in the group that made this apparatus, I've already helped construct this summary and beginning thoughts:

Anne Frances Wysocki’s “The Sticky Embrace of Beauty” is an article written to question how we assess beauty and what is and is not beautiful, according to socially enacted forms. According to Wysocki, there is a great danger in consistently linking the social and strange in our individual perceptions of the world. Specifically, in our notions of form we have begun to accept that “to be human is to be tied to place and time and messiness and complexity, then, by so abstracting us, this desire [for abstract formality] dehumanizes us and our work and how we see each other” (94). As a result, we objectify all images and see beauty as only what we can view as spectators. This distancing between the image and the viewer can be dangerous. Wysocki suggests we reexamine particularities and strangeness as positives ideas all their own, without looking to social norms to pre-enable them. By acknowledging the forms we are taught, we can then begin to show how they constrain our perception of beauty and uniqueness in visual imagery and how we must depart from them at one point. This departure allows us to reconnect as humans and prevent objectification from being pervasive. Once this is done, we will view images of each other and recognize that we are all “built out of numberless and necessary particularities” (96). Most importantly, we as viewers of numerous kinds of media can understand how objectification spreads not just to images of people, but to all visual components within texts. Thus, we must use forms to teach us, but eventually part from them in order to invent our own unique forms that break norms and question artistic values. We must fight against principles essentially. It is these principles of form that prevent the student from understanding that when they create text in new media formats, the texts have real effects and consequences. Their work has influence on an audience. What they create contributes influence between audience and composer, very much like sponsor and sponsorship in the Brandt reading. When anyone creates text, including photoshopped imagery and similar projects, they are participating in reciprocal communications with an audience that influences larger audiences. 

Synthesis: 

This text reminded me a lot of previous thoughts by Scott McCloud and the mask that is presented in text to separate self from art and created works. It also reminds me of Berger and the situation in which women become objects in art with a dual sense of existence in art and life. Wysocki describes the constructed idea of beauty as the reason for both the mask and the dual existence.

QDJ:

3.     Does the Peek ad work for you as a consumer? Does it interest you and make you want to either purchase the book or at least learn more about it? Explain your answer.

     It works for me, in the sense that I want to know if it's only women used in pictures like this, or men as well. I researched the Kinsey Institute as my Before You Read exercise, so I know that it isn't just women. However, It's still objectification and the fact that it's a female picture to introduce it and gain interest is telling to us. I've never thought about the way in which alignment and text guide the reader's eyes to what advertisers want us to be attracted to. It doesn't work for me, in another way, though. Because I know that the woman in the picture is not completely real, that the picture is adjusted beyond reality. So in essence, it's like a book of drawings to me. Not a real reflection of humanity, or beauty for that matter.

AEI:

2.      Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? Do you agree with Kant that “the beautiful is that which pleases universally,” that some things are inherently beautiful? Or do you agree with Wysocki that “beauty is something we construct together” and subjected to social forces?

      I think beauty is both, in the eye of the beholder but also universally constructed.  I think that we are genetically programmed to be pleased with certain physical attributes on bodies, and combinations of several things that our bodies respond to on one specific person is going to warrant many people to find beauty in them. However, I also think that we can learn to appreciate physicalities of people that we didn't originally find attractive, so beauty is also a learned idea. However, socially constructed beauty is where it gets tricky, because I think in this case people learn to discount things they do find attractive and endearing because it's not socially acceptable to. That's why we fight so hard to change ideas of social acceptance, so people can react honestly and be themselves.

MM:

Wysocki states, "There is no question that there is a certain necessity to effective visual composition because a design must fit a viewer's expectation if it is to make sense… but if design is to have any sense of possibility—of freedom—to it, then it must also push against the conventions, the horizon, of those expectations" (97). How does this statement apply to Wysocki's article? Does it apply to any other visual art? If so, how?  

     

      I think it does apply to Wysocki's article because she consistently redirects our attention in the text to bold and highlighted sentences, punctuation breaks, paragraph structure, and basically just pushing limits of what articles like this usually present. I think Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock are perfect examples of pushing limits of art. They produce art that many consider unoriginal, yet, it can not be duplicated completely.

Baron--Dialectical Notebook #2

"From Pencils to Pixels"

For some reason, my prior Dialectical Notebook does not show up in the post, so here is my second attempt to make it work. The previous post also keeps me from editing.

Looking at the advancements it’s already made, I have a hard time believing that people are still against it.	The computer, the latest development in writing technology, promises or threatens, to change literacy practices for better or worse, depending on your point of view (423).
I know a lot of people that would not admit to how much they rely on it, but it’s not been that way forever.	I readily admit my dependence on the technology of writing (423).
Agreed. So, can we then assume that literacy levels need to be measured among both high and low classes since they are in different stages of literacy based on what is available to them?	After their invention, their spread depends on accessibility, function, and authentication (424).
I think our country capitalizes on this now; the rarer the product, the more it costs and the more people will fight over it. Iphone 5, for example.	Each new literacy technology begins with a restricted communication function and is available only to a small number of initiates (424).
It’s wild to think about what will be next.	My contention in this essay is a modest one: the computer is simply the latest step in a long line of writing technologies (424).
I bet that when the pencil was invented, people had issues with the fact that stories were not orally told as much.	The pencil may seem a simple device in contrast to the computer, but although it has fewer parts, it too is an advanced technology (426).
This is the reason my husband and I bicker while I’m here at school sometimes. Texts cannot relay how a person says something. I need to hear a voice.	Writing lacks such tonal cues of the human voice as pitch and stress, not to mention the physical cues that accommodate face to face communication (428).
Hmmmm…still sounds familiar with us for our classes.	Questions of validity came up because writing was indeed being used to perpetrate fraud (429).
Wow. I didn’t know this. He can be compared to Bill Gates.	Despite the silence, Thoreau devoted ten years of his life to improving pencil technology at his family’s pencil factory (430).
This makes me chuckle. How could it have been impractical if you can instantly speak to someone that’s miles away?	The telephone was initially received as an interesting but impractical device for communicating over distance (433).
Every technology advancement we make threatens more and more of our privacy. It’s scary when you think about it, and yet I still Facebook and save passwords in my computer.	Of course the telephone was not only a source of information. It also threatened our privacy (433).
This is funny, too. I can just see older people who were resisting the technology, just like my dad does today, shouting in the phone and cursing when they hang up.	People had to learn how to converse on the telephone: its sound reproduction was poor; callers had to speak loudly and repeat themselves to be understood, a situation hardly conducive to natural conversation (434).
I never really stopped to think about where Hello and Goodbye originated for phone conversations. Many people I talk to on the phone start with “yeah” and don’t say goodbye at all. I still find that rude.	Initially, people were unsure of appropriate ways to begin or end phone conversations and lively debates ensued (434).
Thank god they kept on. I am one that readily admits I rely on it heavily.	Only die-hards and visionaries considered word processing worth pursuing… (435)
I didn’t know that early stages of computer didn’t keep up with typing speed. I bet this was a big milestone!	WYSIWYG=What you see is what you get
That’s what I enjoy about this text, though, and what my students enjoy as well. The ability to question.	A writer’s reputation, or that of a publisher, predisposes readers to accept certain texts as authoritative, and to reject others (436).
Specifically in court trials. I think forensic linguists are very interesting, but regardless, I still handwrite poetry before I type it. The screen of the computer being a box is symbolic to what it does to my creativity. It limits it.	We have learned to trust writing that leaves a paper trail (436).
I just think this should be a slogan on t-shirts for techies. J	Even the pencil itself did not escape the wrath of educators (438).

Baron--Dialectical Notebook

Shitty Narrative

    My earliest memory of learning to read was sitting on my uncle's lap and reciting the story of Cinderella, turning the pages as the words ended, but fooling him into believing that I was actually reading it when I had memorized it. He was in awe of my ability to read at the age of four and I was so proud. I began having my mom read to me the same stories over and over again so I could memorize them, to trick more people, to become the awesome child. As an adult I realize that this was a way to learn how to read because I was memorizing what the words looked like, too.
    However, my next memory of big moments in reading was the series of Anne of Green Gables, in which the main character is highly dramatic and thus began my diva nature and performance tendencies in storytelling. Other influences were my mother always reading romance novels that I was not allowed to see the pages of because once I'd asked what "quivering loins" were, and auto mechanic books because that's all my father read and in order to be close to him  wanted an understanding of his vocabulary to have dialogue with him.
    So when I began writing poems in high school about how sex was like engines, that oils are checked and filters are necessary, revving the engine in park is like foreplay, and going too fast is dangerous, no one else understood that the romance and mechanic books had led to my detentions. I was just making accurate metaphors that no one appreciated. Until now.

Malcolm X IWA

"Learning to Read"

Summary:

     In Malcolm X's "Learning to Read," he writes about being in prison and learning how to read and understand text. He began by writing out the dictionary, section by section, and studying the words. Once he knew enough words to begin reading text, he read everything empowering to his race that he could find. He was like a sponge and could not stop the thirst for knowledge about his people's history and theories about oppression. While Malcolm became powerful in his knowledge and beliefs, he also influenced others to take hold of their own power and education.

Before You Read:

Start a conversation with friends, roommates, family or classmates about whether and how "knowledge is power."

I started a conversation with friends from Southern Ohio about the concept that knowledge is power and we all agreed that it is powerful in three different ways in our personal culture: one, it has supplied me and my friends with the understanding of why our area is poor, two, we know we have the ability to leave the area to survive, and three, we understand the want to stay to empower others.  Knowledge, in our conversation, equals a lot of life-changing power.

QDJ:

Who seems to be Malcolm X's intended audience? How do you know?

His intended audience is two-fold: I believe it to be those who question Malcolm's education and young black people who he wishes to inspire to by telling them of their past and how to change things.
I know this because of his comments about how his education was better than any college (to build credibility) and then the subject matter is enticing to those who do not know what he speaks of.

AEI:

I would tell a person learning to read to use a Kindle. You can choose electronic books that you are interested in based on a subject, a lot of books are now free, and it has a dictionary feature that lets you highlight any word for an instant definition.

MM:

I think my professor would say that the most important part of the text is to acknowledge the different sponsors people have for literacy and that Malcolm X had an open literacy as far as choice of what he read, but a limited based on what influenced him to read what text. He was limited by hatred and influenced by history. I would agree.

hooks IWA

"Writing Autobiography"

Summary:

       In "Writing Autobiography," bell hooks grapples with the trying to write her autobiography in order to "kill" her former self. She wanted to get past the child she was and become a new person, leaving behind the memories of a terrible childhood. However, through her discovery that memories can not always be factual, and are forever tainted by the feelings of the person experiencing it, she comes to an understanding that her memories and account of events are different from her family members'. She also realizes that the memories will always be present and triggered at some of the most inopportune times, opposite of her original thought that she would lose the essence of the memory all together. bell hooks soon come to a level place in negotiation with herself that the childhood she was trying to kill needed to be rescued and by writing the memories it was healing her traumatic feelings and tension between who she used to be and the woman she is now.

Before You Read:

I actually am already writing my autobiography and it starts at the moment when I realized that my childhood was not at all normal and that there really is no "normal" at all. My mother was mentally ill and had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, so a lot of big events in my childhood correspond to mental breakdowns of her own. While PTSD patients live life in a series of memories, flashbacks, and determining what is real and what is not, I tell my stories corresponding with these milestone memories. It is choppy, jumpy, and mimics the disease she suffered. 

As you Read:

I can most definitely understand wanting to kill off one's childhood. However, I am who I am because of that childhood. 

QJD:

1.      

      What does hooks mean when she writes that she wanted to “kill” her self through her writing? 

I think hook's means that she wanted to kill herself through her writing  because often once you write out a memory, you feel that you do not have to return to it. Once it's explored and out, you feel that you can move on and rewrite who you are by coming to terms with the memory and becoming someone new.

AEI:

1.      Have you ever had to change your identity for something that you needed to write? How does this relate to McCloud’s mask? 

I  

      I have changed my identity to write something. In fact, the first writing contest I ever won was under a fictitious name because I feared if anyone knew who I was, they would put me and my brother and sister in foster care because of what was happening. So I wrote the piece in high school, won the prize, and then never claimed it.

Teaching journal 9/24-9/28

             For Monday my class had read Dawkins and Bryson and completed an IWA and a Dialectical Notebook. I have noticed that their Dialectical Notebook entries consist of a lot of unknown words and definitions for them. While I appreciate them looking into the word definitions, I'm wondering how long it takes them to do their homework if they have to look up so many before they can read and understand the argument. Their vocabulary bank is far less than what I expected. However, many of them were excited about the reading because it fits with their constructs and made great sources for their papers. They found Bryson entertaining and one student  compared Bryson to being the "Stephen Colbert" of composition theory. I'd not thought of it that way, but I see my student's point. Bryson does make fun of silly rules and critiques the way in which the rules came into place. 

                 For their in-class example, I had each one of them bring in one page of an essay of their own having removed all punctuation.  We traded with partners, including me, and did punctuation work on the other student's paper. They had a lot of fun with the exercise, realizing the tone changed tremendously with different authors and punctuation. After doing this for 15 minutes, I then applied this to when they peer review. I explained, surface level punctuation on first drafts is not to be mentioned, but we should examine the use in which the author intends for such punctuation before wanting to correct. So on Wednesday, when we peer reviewed the sample essay in class,  could tell that they had applied the ideas well. there was actually a debate in which two students grappled with the use of a question mark and how it changes the whole paper. Interesting stuff, this composition teaching.