The Industrial Town: Representations of a Changing Way of Life in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss and Charles Dickens’s Hard Times by Anna Rogers, San Diego State University

July 1, 2009 by Leave a Comment

The mid-nineteenth century in England was a period of considerable social upheaval produced by widespread economic, political, and technological shifts. The decades following the Napoleonic wars brought repeated class conflicts and economic depressions as well as continual expansion of British imperial interests and increasing industrialization.  The 1850s, in particular, were a period of intense social redefinition in England.  The widespread introduction of steam power into manufacturing brought about what many have identified as the Second Industrial Revolution.

This was the development that completed a final transformation of Britain’s home economy from a rural agrarian model to an urban industrial one. In addition, the empire was being actively enlarged and solidified which supplied a massive influx of wealth and goods. In 1858 the British Raj was established in India when the government assumed direct rule after the failure of the British East India Company to effective put down the Sepoy Rebellion, and the Australian Gold Rush began in the early 1850s, which added to the mineral wealth already being extracted from Southern Africa.   The wealth and raw materials obtained through these expansions of Britain’s international interests provided additional fuel for the industrial transformation at home.  Attendant on these radical social changes were artistic and literary developments, the rise of the novel as a popular literary form being one of the most significant.

In some capacity, the novels of the mid-nineteenth century respond to the pressures shaping Victorian society, particularly those produced by increased industrialization.  In some, this response takes a direct and easily recognizable shape, while in others, the effect of contemporary societal pressures is less overtly detectable.  Charles Dickens’s Hard Times (1854) and George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860) each take shape as a response to shifts occurring during the period when they were written.  Numerous aspects of these two novels reflect the concerns of mid-century British life but for the purpose of this essay, only the emergence of these concerns in relation to the specific authorial choices of setting will be examined.

Each of these novelists crafts a vivid picture of the town where the events of the narrative takes place.  For these two authors, the setting of their stories plays an important role, not only as a force in the lives of characters, but as a lens through which to understand the social, economic and political structures that affect their lives.  Both George Eliot and Charles Dickens place a specific town at the center of their novels.  Each town is impacted in some way by increases in industrialization, but they differ dramatically beyond this.  Perhaps most obviously, the authors diverge in their choice of the period that they portray in their novels, a divergence which, in turn, profoundly affects the depiction of the settings in which their respective characters operate.

Eliot’s novel takes place earlier in the century, though it was published in 1860. This places St. Ogg’s, her fictional town, at a point sometime around the 1830s, when it began its transition into an industrial center. Eliot’s depiction of St. Ogg’s reflects her upbringing in the Midlands during this period when “local time was replaced by standard time…, and local dialects were gradually supplanted by standard English.  In the villages, farms and towns of [her] upbringing, new time and old time, new social formations and old, local and global concerns, all coexist.”[i] Rather than addressing the world as it was at the time of composition, Eliot takes a somewhat nostalgic look back at a time prior to total industrialization.  The portrait she paints of this period through her description of St. Ogg’s and its citizens is a strange mixture that celebrates the great age of the town, its connection to the fields and the natural world around it, along with its growing industry and prosperity, even while it exposes the great vulnerability of all these. In like manner, its people are both venerated for their deep ties to their homes, lands and families and exposed for their narrow-minded backwardness and hypocrisy.

Dickens’s Coketown, on the other hand, is a fictionalized representation of a contemporary industrialized town. Dickens’s novel was published in 1854 and very purposefully presents the reader with a contemporary view of an industrial environment:  “Hard Times takes place in and near a contemporary city and deals with a problem (the attitude responsible for such a city, as well as numerous other ills) that was very much a part of the world in which Dickens lived.  His decision to add the subtitle “For These Times” to the first edition of Hard Times in volume form… only intensified the connection between this novel and its contemporary milieu.”[ii]

The portrait Dickens constructs of Coketown is devoid of the ambiguities of St. Ogg’s. Dickens presents the reader with a dark vision of a fully industrialized town that consumes its human inhabitants as fuel.  He makes no pretenses of identifying a thriving, if flawed, current of humanity running through it, as Eliot does.  Instead, his depiction of the town is a lament for what is being wasted there under the oppression of life in such an environment. In this regard, his treatment of Coketown in relation to the contemporary social and economic conditions in Britain is more straightforward than Eliot’s, but by no means less effective in conveying the social critique he undertakes. So emphatic is he on the importance of the town in relation to this, that he titles chapter 5 The Key-note and, before launching into a lengthy and detailed description of the town, suggests, “Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, before pursuing our tune” ( Hard Times 27).  In doing this, he is indicating to his reader that all else will ultimately follow, which is to say that Coketown and what it represents is at the heart of this tale.

Though Dickens tackles the effects of industrialization on human beings directly and performs the majority of this work through his construction of the town, it is also a clear concern for Eliot, though the relationship to progress that emerges in her novel is more ambivalent:

It is by no means insignificant that the impact on the life of the Tullivers—and particularly Maggie—of external social and economic forces is invariably negative: although St. Ogg’s shares in the early nineteenth-century economic and technological progress, its results on the novel’s central protagonists are ultimately destructive… it is ultimately the modernity of the new, industrial England that quite literally kills [Maggie] when the boat she and Tom are using to escape from the mill during the flood is hit by fragments of ‘some wooden machinery [which have] just given way on one of the wharves.’ This conservative Wordsworthian vision of a traditional order of rural life being destroyed by the arrival of the progressive but ruthless forces of modernity is of course in line with the novel’s presentation of the world of the Tulliver’s Dodson relatives, personifying the very attitudes and values that made the development of the modern, nineteenth-century England possible.[iii]

The problem of industrialism clearly plays a major component in the construction of each of these settings.  In addition, both towns share further similarities that result from the social changes of the mid-nineteenth century.  Civilization’s relationship to nature, the dehumanization of history, and the often troubled dichotomy between the individual and the mass, are common to both towns, although their expressions of these themes are achieved through very different means.

Before proceeding, let us examine some of the aforementioned similarities, since they are quite striking, between the authorial descriptions of the two towns.  Eliot begins her book by laying out the setting and describes St. Ogg’s as such:

The town of St. Ogg’s, which shows its aged, fluted red roofs and the broad gables of its wharves between the low wooded hill and the river brink, tinging the water with a soft purple hue under the transient glance of this February sun.  Far away on each hand stretch the rich pastures and the patches of dark earth, made ready for the seed of broad-leaved green crops, or touched already with the tint of the tender-bladed autumn-sown corn. (The Mill on the Floss 1)

While Dickens’s Coketown picks up a similar red building material and is situated along a river, the treatment is very different:

It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if smoke and ashes had allowed it; but, as matters stood it was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled.  It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. (Hard Times 27)

What is beautiful in one becomes distorted in the other.  The red brick has been dimmed by pollution and the river described as taking on a purple hue in each book does so from very different sources.

Of particular interest in these passages are the references to nature. Dickens, in describing the development of his town, points out the absolute absence of any form of nature in its benevolent growth:

Nature was as strongly bricked out as killing airs and gases were bricked in; at the heart of the labyrinth of narrow courts upon courts, and close streets upon streets, which had come into existence piecemeal, every piece in a violent hurry for some one man’s purpose, and the whole an unnatural family, shouldering, and trampling, and pressing one another to death. (Hard Times 67)

The denizens of Dickens’s city are alienated from all contact with the natural world, but this does not mean that nature is totally absent; instead, it has gone horribly wrong.  Rather than escaping it completely, as one could imagine might be the ultimate achievement of the Industrial Revolution, the commercial progress of humanity has transformed nature into a distorted and malevolent force, as suggested by the smoke serpents and the mad elephants to which he refers throughout the book.  Tamara Ketabgian links these images with the Victorian idea of the “animal machine” which possessed a very specific resonance for the Victorians:

The animal machine conveyed soullessness and degeneration at their worst, epitomized by the figure of an instinctive body absent of all dignifying human emotion.  Such visions of mechanical instinct resonated with popular concerns surrounding the Condition of England, and in particular, England’s new industrial culture.  Saturated by anxieties about working class unrest, these bestial images multiplied around the factory, the factory town, and a population that, at least according to observers, worked more closely with machines that ever before.  A symptomatic figure for modernity, the animal machine defined both everything that the human body was and everything that the Victorian industrial masses threatened to become.[iv]

At St. Ogg’s, however, nature is very much present and, though it is both benevolent and destructive (the latter by gently foreshadowing their doom), for the majority of The Mill on the Floss it is used to heighten the sense of a possibility for peace or fulfillment for the main characters.  Eliot creates the sense of a shared local history and connection to the past through the natural world, even though that history also ominously includes the floods of St. Ogg’s. Here Eliot describes the town itself as being intimately linked to nature.

It is one of those old, old towns, which impress one as a continuation and outgrowth of nature as much as the bower birds or the winding galleries of the white ants: a town which carries the traces of its long growth and history, like a millennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in the same spot between the river and the low hill from the time when the Roman legion turned their backs on it from the camp on the hillside. (The Mill 123)

Interestingly, Eliot also uses nature to identify the flaws of the townsfolk who will cause Maggie much suffering:

You could not live among such people; you are stifled for want of an outlet towards something beautiful, great, or noble: you are irritated with these dull men and women, as a kind of population out of keeping with the earth on which they live – with this rich plain where the great river flows forever onward and links the small pulse of the old English town with the beatings of the world’s mighty heart. (284)

Eliot’s use of natural imagery is multifaceted, and she employs it to very different ends than Dickens, identifying to some extent the complexities of her main character’s situation through the novel’s relationship to the natural world.  Nature in relation to these two towns (one locating the dehumanization of its inhabitants in their separation from a benevolent natural world and the other identifying a degree of dehumanization in the inhabitants’ inability to appreciate the glorious natural world around them) suggests, in some degree, a conflicted dichotomy between the human and the inhuman.

This separation of human beings from their humanity, which is dehumanization, is thematically central in each of these books and is carried further by each in a variety of ways.  Its manifestation is relatively straightforward in Dickens’s novel.  Dickens clearly locates the source of the dehumanization of Coketown’s inhabitants in the grinding factories that consume their lives, day after day. Moreover, he names his town after ‘coke,’ the end product of a treatment process for coal that makes it more efficient as fuel.  Coketown is named for what it consumes; the fuel that keeps it alive.  That fuel is not just the coal burning in the furnaces; the real coke is the thousands of human lives burnt up in the factories of the town, the “people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next” (Hard Times 28).  The name that Dickens gives his town, when combined with the descriptions he provides of its inhabitants as they go through the machinations of their daily lives, indicates the total dehumanization that Dickens himself sees happening in the fully industrialized city. Indeed, for Dickens, dehumanization seems to naturally accompany industrialization.

In The Mill on the Floss, the threat to Maggie’s humanity is embedded in the deeper idea of individual self-agency that was emerging in the mid-nineteenth century.  Annette Federico has argued that at the heart of Maggie’s struggle is the rising notion of self-determination and the conscious choosing of an appropriate mode of living:

The story that Maggie, other young people in the novel, Marian Evans, and the reader find themselves a part of is the story of nineteenth-century liberal individualism, and in particular the liberal-existentialist predicament of choosing how one wishes to live.  It is a problem that occupies the ethical center in many Victorian novels, for “making a choice,” as John Stuart Mill maintained in 1859, is both the prerogative and burden of the modern liberal subject.[v]

St. Ogg’s is named for the boatman who ferried the disguised Virgin Mary across the Floss simply because it was “enough that [her] heart need[ed] it,” without questioning her or attempting to dissuade her, as the other townspeople did (The Mill 124).  In other words, St. Ogg’s is named after an individual who understood an individual human desire. This identifies the heart of the struggle taking place within St. Ogg’s as constituted by the tension between that individual desire and what is perceived within the context of this town to be the rational and correct way of thinking and acting. Thus, the way the people of St. Ogg’s ostracize Maggie because she has chosen the only course of action acceptable to her heart is paralleled in the townspeople’s treatment of the Virgin before St. Ogg agrees to ferry her across in the storm.  Their response to her when she asks them for help is to execute the conventional course of action they always already dictate: “Wherefore dost thou desire to cross the river?  Tarry till the morning, and take shelter here for the night: so shalt thou be wise, and not foolish” (124).  The people of St. Ogg’s see the equally simple solution to Maggie’s problem of marrying Stephen Guest, and when she will not take it, she is punished by them because they cannot conceive of a morally correct situation which would justify her course of action.

Clearly, the relation between the individual and the mass, and how it should be understood, is one of the most important ideas expressed through the towns in both Hard Times and The Mill on the Floss. A great anomaly persists within each town regarding this. In Coketown, it is the grotesque of the faceless masses that Dickens achieves by focusing on the absolute annihilation of the individual. Yet, due to Coketown’s total industrialization, this annihilation has already been achieved; Dickens’s goal is to make the reader understand the consequent implications. Her asserts,

So many hundred Hands in this Mill; so many hundred horse Steam Power. It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good and evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse, at any single moment in the soul of one of these its quiet servants, with the composed faces and the regulated actions. (Hard Times 71)

Although there is struggle on the part of the two characters singled out of this mass, there is no triumph.  Stephen dies as a victim of a system that uses him and suspects him at the same time, while Rachel, who remains alive, returns to her long-suffering life to live out the rest of her days laboring in the factories of Coketown with no promise of relief.

In contrast, Maggie is the anomaly in St. Ogg’s. The town here is undone by the individual in the face of the mass and, in this way, it resists the view of humanity that Dickens presents.  The force of Maggie’s life and the force of the flood can be seen as bound together since the flood comes in the moment when she has found a final resolve to her course of action and is only left to lament the great length of the life that remains to her.  The flood comes to release her from suffocation under the condemnation of the society of St. Ogg’s. It comes to deliver her and mete out punishment on the townspeople since, in the words of Dr. Kenn, “[t]he persons who are the most incapable of a conscious struggle such as yours, are precisely those who will be likely to shrink from you on the ground of an unjust judgment; because they will not believe in your struggle” (516). Significantly, in this case such persons also did not believe a terrible flood would ever come again.

St. Ogg’s represents a type of passive consumption that produces a terrible effect which culminates in a single catastrophe.  Although the catastrophe comes in the form of a flood, more truly catastrophic is the conflagration of a single life under the insidious resistance of a weak-minded society to a morally higher creature. In Coketown, the consumption is aggressive and relentless.  The thing consumed is not the one that resists the general current of societal feeling, but the many who are, in effect, the living fuel of the town. For the synecdochic “Hands” of Coketown, however, there will be no great final conflagration. Coketown has been burning all the while.

REFERENCES

Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. London: Penguin Group, 2003.

Dolin, Tim. George Eliot. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Eliot, George. The Mill on the Floss. London: Penguin Group, 2003.

Federico, Annette R. “Being Torn: The Mill on the Floss.” Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory 12 (2001): 359-79.

Jedrzejewski, Jan.  George Eliot. New York: Routledge, 2007

Ketabgian, Tamara. “‘Melancholy Mad Elephants’: Affect and the Animal Machine in Hard Times.” Victorian Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Social, Political, and Cultural Studies 45 (2003): 649-76.

Thomas, Deborah A. “Hard Times”: A Fable of Fragmentation and Wholeness. New York: Twayne, 1997.

ENDNOTES


[i] Dolin, Tim. George Eliot. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 46

[ii] Thomas, Deborah A. “Hard Times”: A Fable of Fragmentation and Wholeness. (New York: Twayne, 1997), p. 5

[iii] Jedrzejewski, Jan. George Eliot. (New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 49

[iv] Ketabgian, Tamara. “‘Melancholy Mad Elephants’: Affect and the Animal Machine in Hard Times.” Victorian Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Social, Political, and Cultural Studies. 45 (2003): 649-76. p. 653

[v] Federico, Annette R. “Being Torn: The Mill on the Floss.” Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory 12 (2001): 359-79. p. 362

[1] Dolin, Tim. George Eliot. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 46

[1] Thomas, Deborah A. “Hard Times”: A Fable of Fragmentation and Wholeness. (New York: Twayne, 1997), p. 5

[1] Jedrzejewski, Jan. George Eliot. (New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 49

[1] Ketabgian, Tamara. “‘Melancholy Mad Elephants’: Affect and the Animal Machine in Hard Times.” Victorian Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Social, Political, and Cultural Studies. 45 (2003): 649-76. p. 653

[1] Federico, Annette R. “Being Torn: The Mill on the Floss.” Lit: Literature Interpretation Theory 12 (2001): 359-79. p. 362

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Outflanking the Bureaucratic Production of Urgency: Ivan Illich and Stanley Hauerwas on Crisis and the Cultivation of Patience by Ben Kautzer, University of Nottingham

April 28, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Introduction: The Politics of Panic

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened by the consequences of greed and irresponsibility by some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shudder. Our healthcare is too costly, our schools fail too many and each day brings new evidence that the way we use energy strengthens our adversaries and threatens our planet. These are the indicators of crisis [. . .]

– Barack Obama, Inaugural Address

Ours is a world fundamentally determined by the politics of panic. It seems that time itself has fallen prey to the capitalistic logic of scarcity, a scarcity carefully managed by politicians and bureaucratic experts for the cultivation of both wealth and power. Recent market woes have only served to fuel this pathological urgency, rendering the creative cessation of consumptive patterns economically perilous; the willful pause for reflexive contemplation socially subversive; and the life-giving power of “free time” implicitly bound to the therapeutic satisfaction of “needs” shaped by marketers and polling data. In these trying times, we have no time to wait; we have no time to think; we have no time to “waste.” Or so we are told. As Slavoj Žižek wryly puts it, “It is as if authentic community is possible only in conditions of permanent threat, in a continuous state of emergency.”[1]

In short, ours is a world in constant crisis.

As the philosopher and social critic Ivan Illich points out, crisis now all but univocally denotes acceleration. It “evokes an ominous but tractable threat against which money, manpower, and management can be rallied.”[2] Writing over 30 years ago, Illich prophetically denounced what he considered the culturally perverse and socially debilitating effects of our “Epoch of Speed.” This rapid-fire commodification, professionalization, and eventual elimination of human flourishing results from a malformed perception of value, relationality, and freedom proffered by a host of modernized institutions – the school, the hospital, the prison, the corporation, the nation-state – all of which seem to require the formative power of crisis to legitimize their own place of prominence. For Illich, there is something monstrous, alienating about this frenetic cooption of time.

However, he maintains that crisis need not be fatalistically bound to this understanding. In the deeper sense of the word, crisis implies an instant of choice, a moment of decision when new possibilities and social formations are suddenly revealed.[3] In a similar vein, theologian Stanley Hauerwas argues for a conception of time outside the narrowing logic of use and waste, strategic efficiency and managed results. Time, in his view, is a gratuitous excess that must be endured, even suffered. Faithfully abiding in time is both a practice and a skill.[4]

In this paper, I will trace Illich’s critique of contemporary manifestations of crisis and then, following Stanley Hauerwas, suggest that an alternative perception of time capable of resisting the politics of panic is best rooted in the practice of patience.

Speed and Consumption in a Market-Intensive Society

Ivan Illich – not to be confused with the dying man of Tolstoy’s literary masterpiece – remains among the boldest social critics of the last century. Born in Vienna in 1926, Illich was a Catholic priest and an early champion of the ecological movement. He is most known for his research conducted at the controversial Centro Intercultural de Documentación (CIDOC) at Cuernavaca in Mexico, which he co-founded in 1966. The heart of his social and political critique is most clearly laid out in three widely influential books from the 1970s: Deschooling Society, Tools for Conviviality, and Medical Nemesis. In each of these works, Illich attempts to identify and analyze the processes through which our market-intensive industrial society has radically eroded the conditions necessary for social wellbeing and convivial living. In particular, Illich identifies several key features comprising our contemporary political and economic landscape.

Modern society is constituted by endless cycles of production and consumption. Diverse modes of life have been increasingly “enmeshed into a new web of dependence on commodities that flow out of the same kind of machines, factories, clinics, television studios, think tanks.”[5] To more efficiently facilitate this process, modernity has ushered in an unprecedented age of institutions, bureaucracies, and organizational experts whose economic policies and political ideologies have thoroughly succeeded in bifurcating the world into nice, neat categories: public/private, secular/religious, managerial/therapeutic.[6]

Illich notes that “To satisfy this dependence, more of the same must be produced: standardized, engineered goods, designed for the future consumer who will be trained by the engineer’s agent to need what he or she is offered. These products, be they tangible goods or intangible services, constitute the industrial staple. Their imputed monetary value as a commodity is determined by state and market in varying proportions.”[7] Undergirding this modern economic apparatus is a peculiar salvific mythology preaching affluence and progress through scientific technology and perpetual industrial growth. However, despite the optimistic appeal of this meta-narrative, Illich argues that such processes ultimately expose an insidious tendency not only to undermine their own intended purposes, but also engender in their “clients” a sense of helplessness, addiction, alienation, impotence, and paralysis.

First of all, a critical shift has occurred in that the interrelationship between “needs” and the means of their satisfaction are no longer freely determined by persons and communities. Instead, they have fallen under the monopolizing control of professional management. In other words, we “consumers” and “clients” have been artificially molded into these roles as more and more “needs” are imputed to us through advertising, brand loyalty, political campaigning, and a lifetime of education in school systems designed to form “productive citizens.” In a fascinating essay entitled “Toward a History of Needs,” Illich pushes the issue further. He demonstrates that because the genuine needs of individuals are not adequately met by organizations, these same institutions therefore substitute fabricated needs that they alone can fulfill.[8] As a result, they create an insatiable “demand” that not only guarantees their own perpetual existence, but along with it a modernized form of poverty defining those not yet dependent upon their goods and services.

This process has had two devastating consequences. On one hand, the drive for constant growth re-centers society entirely upon exchange-value, thus relegating more convivial modes of production to the margins.[9] On the other hand, this process leads to what Illich calls the “pathological” absurdity of modern society; namely, that contemporary social purposes tend to produce antithetical results. He writes, “Our major institutions have acquired the uncanny power to subvert the very purposes for which they were originally engineered and financed. Under the rule of our most prestigious professions, our institutional tools have as their principle product paradoxical counterproductivity.”[10]  Illich explains that

Only up to a point can commodities replace what people make or do on their own. Only within limits can exchange-values satisfactorily replace use-values. Beyond this point, further production serves the interests of the professional producer—who has imputed the need to the consumer—and leaves the consumer befuddled and giddy, albeit richer. Needs satisfied rather than merely fed must be determined to a significant degree by the pleasure that is derived from the remembrance of personal autonomous action. There are boundaries beyond which commodities cannot be multiplied without disabling their consumer for this self-affirmation in action.[11]

Beyond a certain threshold, hospitals endanger health, schools impede learning, prisons aggravate crime, etc. Or, for a clearer case-in-point, just think of the DMV.

At its heart, such a system is deeply dehumanizing.[12] For while needs and corresponding consumption have multiplied many times over, autonomous and creative human action has atrophied. Human “life-span has become a chain of needs that have been met for the sake of ulterior striving for satisfaction.”[13] Consequently, we have neither the time nor the means to handle tools, build or create, or even make home-cooked meals.

What then is the guiding force affording momentum and legitimacy to this debilitating social orientation? For Illich, the answer is undoubtedly speed.

The “age of disabling professions” is also an age of urgency, velocity, and instantaneousness. Faster is now better. Time is now money —measured, packaged, and sold to the highest bidder. Gone is duration—the lived experience of temporality. In its place the time of the clock. As a matter of history, in Illich’s view, the concept of speed as “space over time” was an invention of the late-Middle Ages. Prior to Galileo the very notion of miles per hour would have been unintelligible.[14] The modern era was … well, rushed, with persons racing “from home to factory, through schools and jobs, from work to vacation, forever suffering time-scarcity on a tight schedule run by the clock.”[15] Our present, postmodern world, marks a new historical epoch: that of the megahertz and unemployment. “Transformations in production, switching from employees to computers, from classroom to the internet, from clerks to credit cards, have not prepared us for this new culture [. . .] based on the speed of light.”[16]

This speed acts as the undercurrent that sustains our modern social structures. “It comes out of a bodyless lust that lies deeper than the major assumptions on which the modern world is built – the need for an appropriate institutional treatment for crime, education, the pursuit of health, or insurance. Today’s Pantheon is inhabited by these gods, who govern the modern world. But one finds speed in the dark zone beneath them, where the Greeks placed the Titans, the mighty ones who gave birth to divinities.”[17] The incessant creation of needs, constant technological production, and rapid expansion of global capital whiz along at a blinding pace, pushing the system to the brink of crisis. The blur makes it all seem inevitable, irreversible, and unstoppable.

Toward a Critique of Crisis

Though a bit exaggerated, Illich’s thought nonetheless anticipates much of where society has moved. For our world certainly groans with the pangs of crisis. On a national level, the events of 9/11 induced the Patriot Act, terror alerts, airport searches, and a war on a concept throwing our country into a constant state of emergency.  In addition, we have only just started to come to grips with the depth of the ecological crisis created by systems of economic expansion and unbridled consumption. And now, with the collapse of our financial institutions, we face yet another global catastrophe. Crisis fills the air. It sets the agenda. It demands immediate action all the time, for time itself is now a resource none of us can afford to waste.

On a slightly less serious note, it’s worth pointing out that while most people do not spend their every waking hour thinking about such things, nonetheless this atmosphere of crisis has taken other more subtle forms. Consider the dramatic narratives we tell about ourselves and our world: ER, House, Prison Break, and of course the heart-pounding 24: don’t miss it! Or consider our schizophrenic era of decorative taste where the Pottery Barn or Crate & Barrel suggest that no home is complete without the most current (seasonal) trend. Perhaps the easiest example of this artificial production of urgency is the weekly sale adverts that litter the Sunday paper. For the human-made-consumer patterns of living, of desire, of enduring time blip from page to page filled with frantic imperatives to buy … now! As William Cavanaugh suggests, “This is why shopping itself has taken on the honored status of an addiction in Western society. It is not the desire for any thing in particular, but the pleasure of stoking desire itself that makes malls into the new cathedrals of Western culture. The dynamic is not an inordinate attachment to material things, but an irony and detachment from all things. [. . .] Scarcity is implied in the daily erotics of desire that keeps the individual in pursuit of novelty.”[18] Even the calendar is now punctuated with strategic annual spending cycles (a.k.a. holidays); with each season blooms another newly created “need.”

In the face of varying modes of crisis, speed sets the tone.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this paper, Illich has an uncanny ability to trace the consequences of these societal trends. Consider the following excerpt prophesying our present condition.

I can only conjecture on how the breakdown of industrial society will ultimately become a critical issue. [. . .] I believe that growth will grind to a halt. The total collapse of the industrial monopoly on production will be the result of synergy in the failure of the multiple systems that fed its expansion. This expansion is maintained by the illusion that careful systems engineering can stabilize and harmonize present growth, while in fact it pushes all institutions simultaneously toward their second watershed. Almost overnight people will lose confidence not only in the major institutions but also in the miracle prescriptions of the would-be crisis managers. The ability of present institutions to define values such as education, health, welfare, transportation, or news will suddenly be extinguished because it will be recognized as an illusion.

The crisis may be triggered by an unforeseen event, as the Great Depression was touched off by the Wall Street Crash. Some fortuitous coincidence will render publicly obvious the structural contradictions between stated purposes and effective results in our major institutions. People will suddenly find obvious what is now evident to only a few: that the organization of the entire economy toward the ‘better’ life has become the major enemy of the good life. Like other widely shared insights, this one will have the potential of turning public imagination inside out. Larger institutions can quite suddenly lose their respectability, their legitimacy, and their reputation for serving the public good. It happened to the Roman Church in the Reformation, to the royalty in the Revolution. The unthinkable became obvious overnight: that people could and would behead their rulers.[19]

This could just as easily be an editorial in last month’s Washington Times or the New Yorker. Illich published this in 1973, 36 years ago.

For Illich, the logic of crisis can take one of two forms. On one hand, crisis can mean acceleration. In the face of threat or emergency—real or imagined—it can mark that moment where politicians, bureaucrats, bankers, economists, and assorted social engineers take over and liberties are suspended. Wiretaps, torture, governmental monopoly, illicit contracting, and billion-dollar bailouts have all been justified in the name of crisis. Enter the mangers and society steps on the gas. Illich writes, “Crisis understood as a call for acceleration not only puts more power under the control of the driver, while squeezing the passengers more tightly into their safety belts; it also justifies the depredation of space, time, and resources for the sake of motorized wheels, and it does so to the detriment of people who want to use their feet.”[20]

When the imminent and necessary solution to crisis has become: “Consume, before it’s too late!” should we not realize the state we’re in? When fiscal irresponsibility is responded to with a salvific mantra that says buy what you don’t need, with money you don’t have, to impress people you don’t know, to support industries that feed upon your oversaturated and addicted desires, with the explicit intention of extracting wealth from your indebtedness; should we not be a little disturbed?[21]

Or as Žižek argued a few months ago, “Faced with a disaster over which we have no real influence, people will often say, stupidly, ‘Don’t just talk, do something!’ Perhaps, lately, we have been doing too much. Maybe it is time to step back, think and say the right thing. True, we often talk about doing something instead of actually doing it – but sometimes we do things in order to avoid talking and thinking about them. Like quickly throwing $700 billion at a problem instead of reflecting on how it came about.”[22]

Herein, Illich’s critique becomes particularly interesting. Instead of tacitly accepting such an solution, Illich advocates a different perspective. “Instead [crisis] can mean the instant of choice, that marvelous moment when people suddenly become aware of their self-imposed cages and of the possibility of a different life.”[23] In this view, crisis marks a rupture in our predominant social imaginaries.[24] It jars and disrupts our preconceived understanding of the nature of things. It’s a bit like a fracture webbing through a tinted window, illuminating cracks in ideologies and their grand tales of illusion. Crisis exposes fatalism, clearing imaginative space for the possibility that it might look otherwise than this. It signifies the chaotic splaying of narratives all vying for the monopoly of popular opinion. Yet “[i]t is the power of surprise that weakens control, that shakes up the established controllers, and brings to the top those people who have not lost their bearings.”[25]

More concretely, Illich maintains that the moment of decision facing Western society depends upon a “Copernican revolution in our perception of values.”[26] Institutions and individuals alike have long ignored reflecting upon the limits necessary to encourage health, sustenance, relationality, and ultimately human flourishing. “At present, we see consumer goods and professional services at the center of our economic system, and specialists relate our needs exclusively to this center. In contrast, the social inversion contemplated here would assign use-values created and personally fostered by people themselves to the center.”[27] Current events have spun Western culture into a bit of an identity crisis. Consumer spending habits are being radically redefined. Individuals are seriously re-evaluating their needs. In fact, The Economist reports that so-called “consumer psychology” is moving toward thrift, restraint, skepticism, and conservation.[28] All of this suggests that a new discursive space is being created which could facilitate a sustained dialogue on the nature of social values, priorities, and responsibilities.

Unfortunately, such a reflexive pause takes time that urgency cannot allow for. Thus I suggest that inching toward such alternative social imaginaries requires a willful resistance to the politics of panic.

Patient Resistance: Learning to Endure Time Convivially

Obviously, such a revolutionary plea for concrete and structural alternatives to our present situation is well beyond the scope of this short essay, not to mention the limits of my own knowledge and expertise. Instead, I want to argue that a simple yet necessary step forward begins with a shift in our perception of time from one clogged by an endless chasing of needs to one of rooted in the lived experience of conviviality. I will bring this essay to a close with a few brief remarks on Stanley Hauerwas and the cultivation of patience.

In an essay called, “Taking the Time for Peace: The Ethical Significance of the Trivial,” Hauerwas offers several comments on what living in the face of crisis could possibly look like.

First, it means learning to think the world differently. Crisis often acts as a hegemonic force that has a bad habit of dominating personal and communal worldviews. It does so by demanding our constant and complete attention.[29] Allowing crisis to wield the formative power of determining our lives, our decisions, our daily comings and goings only results in a type of moral formation which renders us ultimately incapable of acting and speaking truthfully in/to a world reeling in vertigo. This paralyzing subjugation of the everyday to the relentless demands of such a totalizing vision of the “now” exposes a fundamentally totalitarian logic. The task then is stepping outside the pace of crisis, thereby enabling the in-breaking of newfound possibilities. Hauerwas maintains that sidestepping the noise and the distraction clears the space for thinking and talking, listening and remembering. But that takes time. It takes patience. It takes a willingness to fall out of step with the rhythm.

Second, as crisis punches holes in our collective imagination, this patient perdurance will help sustain the reflexivity necessary for persons and communities to reassess their needs, their desires, and their habits. For it can take such a rupture to arouse our saturated apathy and to afford that raw exposure, finally (and painfully) laying bare the depth of our complicity with systems of violence, voracity, and consumption. Patiently enduring such realization can fracture our buffered indifference and invoke both confession and lament. It is no coincidence that etymologically speaking “patience” connotes “long-suffering.” Hauerwas is quick to remind that we are not without resources at our disposal to endure such an investigation. Circumventing the distraction means for Hauerwas pressing ever deeper into those narratives and practices that make the world intelligible. In his words, “These resources, these practices of patience, are not simply ‘there’ but arise within the narrative of God’s patient care of the world [. . .] Put simply, our ability to take the time to enjoy God’s world, when we are well as when we are sick, depends on our recognition that it is indeed God’s world.”[30]

Finally, generating convivial alternatives to consumption requires recovering the value of the trivial. According to Hauerwas, the urgency of crisis excludes most of lived experience, or at least most of what makes lived experience worth enduring.[31] Unplugging from cycles of market dependence is not easy, nor is it very fun. Often it comes at the cost of much work, discomfort, even suffering. For Hauerwas, the willingness to take the time to care for the everyday trains us to be patient enough to resist false choices. Such practices as reading books, feeding the hungry, raising children, visiting the sick, learning instruments or languages, prayer, all of these are types habitual formation in the skill of suffering time.[32] This formation “bind[s] our past with our future by providing us with continuity of self.” This just might clear space for new conversations capable of enabling us to think afresh about the conditions that constitute the good life.[33]

 

NOTES

 

[1] Žižek, Slavoj. Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (London: Profile Books, 2009), p. 23.

[2] Illich, Ivan. Toward a History of Needs (New York: Bantam, 1978), p. 2.

[3] Ibid., p. 3.

[4] Hauerwas, Stanley. “Taking Time for Peace: The Ethical Significance of the Trivial,” in Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World, and Living in Between (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 1988).

[5] Illich, Ivan. Toward a History of Needs. p. 4.

[6] See Bellah, et al. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 45.

[7] Illich, Ivan. Toward a History of Needs. pp. 4-5.

[8] Ibid., p. 24. “The Age of Professions will be remembered as the time when politics withered, when voters guided by professors entrusted to technocrats the power to legislate needs, the authority to decide who needed what, and a monopoly over the means by which those needs should be met.”

[9] Ibid., p. 9. The constant drive towards development has resulted in the systematic displacement of use-values. “After these years, plastic had replaced pottery, carbonated beverages replaced water, Valium replaced chamomile tea, and records replaced guitars.”

[10] Ibid., p. 40.

[11] Ibid., p. 42.

[12] Illich, Ivan. Deschooling Society (New York: Penguin, 1971), p. 114. “It forces the few largest consumers to compete for power to deplete the earth, to fill their own swelling bellies, to discipline smaller consumers, and to deactivate those who still find satisfaction in making do with what they have. The ethos of non-satiety is thus at the root of physical depredation, social polarization, and psychological passivity.”

[13] Illich, Ivan. Toward a History of Needs. p. 46.

[14] Cayley, David. The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2005), pp. 181-182.

[15] Illich, Ivan. “Prisoners of Speed,” in  Speed? What Speed? (8 Nov. 1996), p. 10.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid., p. 13. Emphasis added.

[18] Cavanaugh, William T. “Consumption, the Market, and the Eucharist,” The Other Journal (4 April, 2005).

[19] Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), p. 111.

[20] Illich, Ivan. Toward a History of Needs. pp. 2-3.

[21] This appeal acts to both distract our attention and also mask the degree to which such an agenda will only serve to entrench market dependence and consumption. Illich notes in Tools for Conviviality, “It would be a mere exercise in geomancy to predict which series of events will play the role of the Wall Street Crash as catalyst of the first crisis of, not just in, industrial society. But it would be folly not to expect in the very near future an event whose effects will jam the growth of tools. When this happens, the noise that accompanies the crash will distract attention from seeing it in proper perspective” (p. 113).

[22] Žižek, Slavoj. “Don’t Just Do Something, Talk,” London Review of Books (10 Oct., 2008), p. 2. Emphasis original.

[23] Illich, Ivan. Toward a History of Needs. p. 3.

[24] Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp.171-172.

[25] Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. p. 113.

[26] Illich, Ivan. Toward a History of Needs. p. 16.

[27] Ibid., pp. 16-17.

[28] “Consumer Psychology: From buy, buy to bye-bye,” The Economist (2 April, 2009), http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13415207&source=hptextfeature

[29] Hauerwas, Stanley. “Taking Time for Peace: The Ethical Significance of the Trivial,” in Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World, and Living in Between (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 1988). In this essay, Hauerwas addresses a crisis of a slightly different nature: living in a world defined by the nuclear bomb. “Those who argue that every aspect of our lives must be determined by the bomb seem to be making this kind of suggestion – namely, that we live in a totalitarian situation where the bomb determines every decision we make” (p. 255). Importantly, he goes on to argue that the alternative is not blind indifference or tacit consent to the status quo. “I am not suggesting that the bomb should make no difference for how we live our lives; rather, I have tried to suggest that when we allow it to make all the difference, we lose the power to stand against the forces that built the bomb in the first place. For our lives become determined by the kind of urgency that robs us of the freedom to enjoy the time God has given us to make peace possible” (p. 258).

[30] Hauerwas, Stanley & Pinches, Charles. Christians Among the Virtues: Theological Conversations with Ancient and Modern Ethics (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1997), p. 177.

[31] Hauerwas, Stanley. Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World, and Living in Between (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 1988), p. 258.

[32] Ibid., p. 265. In particular, Hauerwas maintains that the practice of raising children, even in the face of crisis, is one of the boldest moves of resistance to the totalitarian hegemony of power. “Nothing is more hopeful or peaceful than the willingness to open our lives to children. Having children is activity in its most paradigmatic form, as the having of a child is its own meaning. Moreover, having children is our most basic time-full project, not only in the sense that children are time-consuming, but because through children our world quite literally is made timeful. Children bind existence temporally, as through them we are given beginnings, middles, and ends. They require us to take time and, as a result, we learn that time is possible only as a form of peace. [. . .] For it may be that finally the most radical stance possible for any human is the willingness to have a child in the face of injustice, oppression, and tyranny. Having children is the ultimate defeat of all totalitarians” (p.262).

[33] It is important to note that for Hauerwas there is a deep, inseparable connection between these practices and the virtuous community that sustains them, namely the Church. For in that community Christians embody daily the deeper narratives that give the world intelligibility. Ultimately those narratives are rooted in the Triune God beyond the narrowing confines of crisis. Christians can have an alternative perspective of time, suffering, and urgency precisely in that Christian imagination is shaped eschatologically. Trust enables hope and the hope that perseveres through trial produces patience (Rom. 5.3-5). So how should we react to crisis? “The only response can be theological – namely, that Christians believe that only as we learn to follow him who is God’s peace can we make the peace that surrounds us more fully ours. Such a theological appeal, however, is not extranatural but rather the means through which we come to see the naturalness of peace. Without such convictions our peaceful activities – such as having children – can justify as well as become terrifyingly violent” (264). As Hauerwas writes in his commentary on Matthew, “Great injustice is perpetrated in the name of justice. Great evil is done because it is said that time is short and there needs to be a response to this or that crisis. Christians live after the only crisis that matters, which means that Jesus has given us all the time in the world to visit him in the prisons of this world” (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2006, p. 212).

NOTES

[1] Žižek, Slavoj. Violence: Six Sideways Reflections (London: Profile Books, 2009), p. 23.

[1] Illich, Ivan. Toward a History of Needs (New York: Bantam, 1978), p. 2.

[1] Ibid., p. 3.

[1] Hauerwas, Stanley. “Taking Time for Peace: The Ethical Significance of the Trivial,” in Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World, and Living in Between (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 1988).

[1] Illich, Ivan. Toward a History of Needs. p. 4.

[1] See Bellah, et al. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 45.

[1] Illich, Ivan. Toward a History of Needs. pp. 4-5.

[1] Ibid., p. 24. “The Age of Professions will be remembered as the time when politics withered, when voters guided by professors entrusted to technocrats the power to legislate needs, the authority to decide who needed what, and a monopoly over the means by which those needs should be met.”

[1] Ibid., p. 9. The constant drive towards development has resulted in the systematic displacement of use-values. “After these years, plastic had replaced pottery, carbonated beverages replaced water, Valium replaced chamomile tea, and records replaced guitars.”

[1] Ibid., p. 40.

[1] Ibid., p. 42.

[1] Illich, Ivan. Deschooling Society (New York: Penguin, 1971), p. 114. “It forces the few largest consumers to compete for power to deplete the earth, to fill their own swelling bellies, to discipline smaller consumers, and to deactivate those who still find satisfaction in making do with what they have. The ethos of non-satiety is thus at the root of physical depredation, social polarization, and psychological passivity.”

[1] Illich, Ivan. Toward a History of Needs. p. 46.

[1] Cayley, David. The Rivers North of the Future: The Testament of Ivan Illich (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2005), pp. 181-182.

[1] Illich, Ivan. “Prisoners of Speed,” in  Speed? What Speed? (8 Nov. 1996), p. 10.

[1] Ibid.

[1] Ibid., p. 13. Emphasis added.

[1] Cavanaugh, William T. “Consumption, the Market, and the Eucharist,” The Other Journal (4 April, 2005).

[1] Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), p. 111.

[1] Illich, Ivan. Toward a History of Needs. pp. 2-3.

[1] This appeal acts to both distract our attention and also mask the degree to which such an agenda will only serve to entrench market dependence and consumption. Illich notes in Tools for Conviviality, “It would be a mere exercise in geomancy to predict which series of events will play the role of the Wall Street Crash as catalyst of the first crisis of, not just in, industrial society. But it would be folly not to expect in the very near future an event whose effects will jam the growth of tools. When this happens, the noise that accompanies the crash will distract attention from seeing it in proper perspective” (p. 113).

[1] Žižek, Slavoj. “Don’t Just Do Something, Talk,” London Review of Books (10 Oct., 2008), p. 2. Emphasis original.

[1] Illich, Ivan. Toward a History of Needs. p. 3.

[1] Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp.171-172.

[1] Illich, Ivan. Tools for Conviviality. p. 113.

[1] Illich, Ivan. Toward a History of Needs. p. 16.

[1] Ibid., pp. 16-17.

[1] “Consumer Psychology: From buy, buy to bye-bye,” The Economist (2 April, 2009), http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13415207&source=hptextfeature

[1] Hauerwas, Stanley. “Taking Time for Peace: The Ethical Significance of the Trivial,” in Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World, and Living in Between (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 1988). In this essay, Hauerwas addresses a crisis of a slightly different nature: living in a world defined by the nuclear bomb. “Those who argue that every aspect of our lives must be determined by the bomb seem to be making this kind of suggestion – namely, that we live in a totalitarian situation where the bomb determines every decision we make” (p. 255). Importantly, he goes on to argue that the alternative is not blind indifference or tacit consent to the status quo. “I am not suggesting that the bomb should make no difference for how we live our lives; rather, I have tried to suggest that when we allow it to make all the difference, we lose the power to stand against the forces that built the bomb in the first place. For our lives become determined by the kind of urgency that robs us of the freedom to enjoy the time God has given us to make peace possible” (p. 258).

[1] Hauerwas, Stanley & Pinches, Charles. Christians Among the Virtues: Theological Conversations with Ancient and Modern Ethics (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1997), p. 177.

[1] Hauerwas, Stanley. Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World, and Living in Between (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 1988), p. 258.

[1] Ibid., p. 265. In particular, Hauerwas maintains that the practice of raising children, even in the face of crisis, is one of the boldest moves of resistance to the totalitarian hegemony of power. “Nothing is more hopeful or peaceful than the willingness to open our lives to children. Having children is activity in its most paradigmatic form, as the having of a child is its own meaning. Moreover, having children is our most basic time-full project, not only in the sense that children are time-consuming, but because through children our world quite literally is made timeful. Children bind existence temporally, as through them we are given beginnings, middles, and ends. They require us to take time and, as a result, we learn that time is possible only as a form of peace. [. . .] For it may be that finally the most radical stance possible for any human is the willingness to have a child in the face of injustice, oppression, and tyranny. Having children is the ultimate defeat of all totalitarians” (p.262).

[1] It is important to note that for Hauerwas there is a deep, inseparable connection between these practices and the virtuous community that sustains them, namely the Church. For in that community Christians embody daily the deeper narratives that give the world intelligibility. Ultimately those narratives are rooted in the Triune God beyond the narrowing confines of crisis. Christians can have an alternative perspective of time, suffering, and urgency precisely in that Christian imagination is shaped eschatologically. Trust enables hope and the hope that perseveres through trial produces patience (Rom. 5.3-5). So how should we react to crisis? “The only response can be theological – namely, that Christians believe that only as we learn to follow him who is God’s peace can we make the peace that surrounds us more fully ours. Such a theological appeal, however, is not extranatural but rather the means through which we come to see the naturalness of peace. Without such convictions our peaceful activities – such as having children – can justify as well as become terrifyingly violent” (264). As Hauerwas writes in his commentary on Matthew, “Great injustice is perpetrated in the name of justice. Great evil is done because it is said that time is short and there needs to be a response to this or that crisis. Christians live after the only crisis that matters, which means that Jesus has given us all the time in the world to visit him in the prisons of this world” (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2006, p. 212).

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Cyborg Agency in the Digital Age: On William Gibson’s Neuromancer by Shigeru Suzuki

August 16, 2003 by Leave a Comment

I. Introduction

William Gibson’s first novel, Neuromancer (1984), is one of the contemporary clas- sics that deal with our postmodern conditions and phenomena in the highly- advanced nations such as late-capitalism, globalization, cyborg and flesh bodies, posthuman, electronic media, and information technologies. In the history of cyber- culture, the name of William Gibson is inscribed as the person who coined the word, “cyberspace,” which many scholars and critics point out often as the begin- ning of the extensive discussion on cyberspace.1 However, interestingly enough, when Gibson wrote Neuromancer with its innovative descriptions of cyberspace in the early 1980s, he was writing with a manual typewriter (not a computer), and it was far before the pervasion of the Internet and even before the invention of World Wide Web (WWW) by which we became promptly familiar with the idea of cyber- space. Cyberspace, in our reality, is a virtual space (without actual physical space), a new dimension, where a number of different activities and factors are occurring and generating such as investments, interests, desires, powers, surveillances, crea- tive activities, and illegal activities. In cyberspace, our social, economical, and cul-

1 Cyberspace is hard to define partly because the speed of technological inventions and de- velopments causes the rapid transformation of cyberspace itself. In my discussion, I in- tend to signify the imaginary and virtual space where we associate when we use e-mail, BBS, and other activities on the Internet. On the definitions of cyberspace, see tural practices intersect, negotiate, and conflict with each other so that cyberspace re-creates itself, self-generates and in much regard is a “work in progress.” It is true that Gibson’s description of “cyberspace” and our cyberspace have many differ- ences, but there is a possibility of the emergence of a more Gibsonian “cyberspace,” in which human personality (or human consciousness) “jacks-in” into the Matrix and rides through the graphic representation of information.

However, Gibson’s interest is never in the prediction for the future of our society. In an interview2, Gibson comments on the role of science fiction: “I don’t think sci- ence fiction has a lot of predictive capacity, but it’s an interesting tool for looking at the world you live in” (Olsen, 11).3 Thus, it is not so important that we have differ- ent kinds of cyberspace from the Gibsonian one; rather, we should see how his novel contextualizes and articulates the current human situation in a highly- technological society. His fiction provides many intriguing insights into how we regard humanity and human conditions; and, how we situate our own “self” in the age of information technology.

First, let us see how Gibson recalls how he conceived the idea of cyberspace:

“I was walking down Granville Street, Vancouver’s version of “The Strip,” and I looked into one of the video arcades. I could see in the physi- cal intensity of their postures how rapt the kids inside were. It was like one of those closed systems out of a Pynchon novel: a feed back loop with photons coming off the screens into the kids’ eyes, neurons moving through their bodies, and electrons moving through the video game. These kids clearly believed in the space games projected.” (272, “An Interview with William Gibson” in Storming the Reality Studio)

The “feed-back loop” in the quotation is a concept that comes from cybernetics es- tablished by Norbert Weiner. As the title of his book, Cybernetics; or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948) shows, cybernetics is a dis- cipline of studying the communication between the organic and the inorganic. Wie- ners’ cybernetics also includes the study of any system that contains an information feedback loop. Although his study was innovative in the 1940s, our everyday life is now filled with many kinds of feedback loops. For example, watches, elevators, credit card readers, bank databases, cars, traffic lights, flight controls, fax machines, TVs, VCRs, and computers. In the current digital age, we are living in and with electronic and computer technologies, which are becoming crucial to our own exis- tence.4

II. Cyberpunk Fiction: Technology is Inside Us.

The transformation of social infrastructure and centralization on information tech- nology also changes our human identity and subjectivity. Cyberpunk fiction in the 1980s succeeded in grasping this kind of social structural change. The term cyber- punk was popularized by Bruce Sterling, a science fiction writer, and cyberpunk fiction became fashionable and popular in practice and even to general readers in the 80s. In 1986, Bruce Sterling published the anthology of cyberpunk fiction enti- tled Mirrorshades (1986). In this book, Sterling collects several short stories by cy- berpunk writers such as William Gibson, Rudy Rucker, Lewis Shiner, John Shirley, and Sterling himself. In the introduction of Mirrorshades, Sterling explains some characteristics of cyberpunk novels. Bruce Sterling summarizes: “For the cyber- punks, [. . .] technology is visceral; [. . .] it is pervasive, utterly intimate. Not outside us, but next to us. Under our skin; often, inside our minds.” (xiii) As for the themes of cyberpunk fiction, Sterling enumerates the following ones:

“The theme of body invasion: prosthetic limbs, implanted circuitry, cos- metic surgery, genetic alteration. The even more powerful theme of mind invasion: brain-computer interfaces, artificial intelligence, neurochemistry — techniques radically redefining the nature of humanity, the nature of the self” (xiii).

Cyberpunk novels are the first series of novels that respond and contextualize this kind of shifts in technology, which signifies that cyberpunk fiction examines im- plicitly and/or explicitly examination on the contemporary human conditions with the rises of new technologies even though their setting are oftentimes in the future. Among others, as a ‘guru’ of cyberpunk writers, Gibson’s works provide us a new perspective to think about our humanity, identity, and self in the age of information technology. Along with the pervasion of information technology in the 1990s, sev- eral academics and scholars started responding to cyberpunk novels with enthusi- asm. To name a few for example, Larry McCaffery’s Storming the Reality Studio (1991), Scot Bukatman’s Terminal Identity (1993), Katherine Hayles’s How We

4 In this regards, Y2K problem, which we were so concerned about just before the begin- ning of year 2000, exemplifies our society’s exceeding dependence on the electronic and computer technology. Like these scholarly works, the successive academic interests from early 1990s have made William Gibson one of the ‘serious’ writers who are interested in the contem- porary society and human conditions in it.

III. Cyborgs in Reality and in Neuromancer
As Sterling mentions in the introduction of Mirrorshades, Gibson’s Neuromancer directly deals with the current human conditions in the age of information. The first sentence of Neuromancer signifies the milieu of our postmodern everyday life, which is encompassed by high-tech and electronic media and images (or simulacra) generated by those technologies: “The sky above the port was the color of televi- sion, tuned to a dead channel.” (Neuromancer, 1) In another place, the postmodern city is described with a VCR metaphor: “Night City was like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept on thumb perma- nently on the fast-forward button (Neuromancer, 7). These writing styles with high- tech metaphors are appropriate in describing our postmodern technological city- scape where technology is ubiquitous, familiarized, and in many cases, naturalized. In 1991, Frederic Jameson commented on postmodern culture and society in his influential book, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991), “‘culture’ has become a veritable ‘second nature’” (Jameson ix). Nevertheless, our city life is exponentially filled with high-tech and electronic media and digital and information technologies (both in visible and invisible ways). It is perhaps more appropriate to rephrase Jameson’s phrase like this: “technology has become a veri- table ‘second Nature.’”

As Bruce Starling points out, the technology already invades our body’s physical demarcation. According to Katherine N. Hayles, the human-machine subjects, that is, cyborgs already exist in literal and metaphorical ways. In her essay, “The Life Cycle of Cyborgs: Writing the Posthuman,” she mentions, “about 10% of the cur- rent U.S. population are estimated to be cyborgs in the technical sense, including people with electronic pacemakers, artificial joints, drug implant systems, implanted corneal lenses, and artificial skins.” (322) Katherine Hayles also adds up the number of cyborgs in metaphoric sense such as people who use computers, neurosurgeons guided by fiber optic microscopy during an operation and teenage videogame play- ers in arcades (322).5 Thus, our biological and daily existences are supported by high-techs and we are coexisting with or in many high-tech products that reconfig- ure us cyborgs in both literal and metaphorical ways.

In Gibson’s Neuromancer, almost all of the characters have modified their bodies. The protagonist, Case, is a hacker (called a “console cowboy” in the novel) whose brain is impaired chemically not to “jack-in” cyberspace. Molly, whose sunglasses (mirrorshades) are implanted into her cheeks, which enables her to see in the dark, and her fingernails are also modified to be retractable steel, razor-like weapons. 3Jane and 8Jean are clones constructed by DNA splices. In short, these characters are living in man-machine symbiosis; that is, cyborgs.

Gibson’s world does have an affinity with high technology, but Gibson’s view on technology is always ambivalent. When Gibson wrote the body-enhanced cyborg characters, he suggests the frightening possibility of the use of high-technology to control people. For example, the protagonist, Case, has been controlled by having mycotoxins (poison) injected to his nervous system so that he has to behave accord- ing to other’s direction. In the world of Neuromancer, hegemonic power is repre- sented by multinational corporations. At some point, businessman (“sarariman” in the novel) are described: “M-G [Mitsubishi-Genentech] employees above a certain level were implanted with advanced microprocessors that monitored mutagen levels in the bloodstream” (10). In these examples, the technologies in bodies are used to control or oppress characters. Indeed, as Molly comments on herself, the cyborg characters in the novel are “wired” and, thus, become “meat puppets” by somebody else (however, in the case of Neuromancer, the ultimate control comes not from humans but from AI). Control and dehumanization by technology are not a new theme in the history of science fiction, but in Gibson’s Neuromancer, repressive control comes (almost unexpectedly) from inside, their cyborg bodies.

While Gibson depicts human characters who become cyborgs with enhanced bod- ies, he also introduced machine “characters” who act like humans. Dixie Flatliner is one of the typical examples. Dixie is physically dead, but his memory is contained in a ROM (read-only memory) construct. In it, his consciousness is still alive and can be accessed to and communicated with. Dixie is not only an accumulation of information but also he (or it) does have a personality. However, Dixie confesses his unbearable limbo status of ROM (106), and eventually asks Case to erase him. In a word, Dixie, a Rom construct, desires for his own deletion, his own real ‘death.’ Along with his humorous repeated comments, Dixie’s indefatigable, passionate desire for death problematizes humanity; specifically, in contrast of other human characters who are emotionless, passive, and moving like machines.6

Another inorganic creature, Wintermute also has a human nature. Wintermute is an artificial intelligence (AI) living in cyberspace. AI is a program with autonomy, but in this novel, it does have a “character.” Later in the novel, every major character realizes they have been just pawns of Wintermute, which wants to merge with an- other AI called Neuromancer.

These characters (cyborgs, AIs, and ROM personality) problematize and reconfig- ure our traditional idea of identity, subjectivity and even humanity. As Hayles sug- gests, cyborg exist in our reality both in the technical sense and in metaphorical sense. With the highly-digitalized milieu in our society, our subjectivity exponen- tially transforms into a new subject, man-machine hybrid subject; that is, cyborg. To Gibson, this perspective has ambivalent effects. The cyborgian fusion between hu- man and machine provides both empowerment and disempowerment. On the one hand, Gibson shows that a cyborg subject is able to acquire capability beyond ordi- nary human power (like Molly’s mirrorshades and finger-nail weapons), but on the other hand, Gibson warns of the possibility of being controlled with the very act of enhancing bodies.

IV. Cyborg Agency

In philosophical context, cyborg subject materializes the de-centered subject dis- cussed in the field of critical and cultural theories such as structuralism and post- structuralism for the last two decades. In critical and cultural theories, human sub- ject has been discussed as a socio-cultural and historical construction —for exam- ple, subject is constructed by ideology (Louis Althusser), by language (Jacques La- can) or by discourse (Michel Foucault) — so that (the modern idea of) human sub- ject is de-centered and de-powered in several senses. These theories deconstruct 18th-century modern subject, which is a rational, autonomous, creative subjectivity, and revealed that human subject is a social, historical, and ideological construction. Their views critically facilitate re-examination of modern human deeds and human- centered views. Although they are useful to articulate the problems of modern his- torical subject, it also divests an independent autonomy and initiative potentials. Thus, after the decentralization of human subject by critical theories, the idea of agency appears in the reaction to the decentralization of human subject as an inac- tive, passive construction by social forces. By the term, agency, scholars and theo- rists imply an ability to perform an action, in many cases, with political intentions. The agency is never a restatement of the same, former modern subject. The term, agency, suggests the historical development of critical theories and willpower (usu- ally political willpower) to act out against any repressive, invisible power structure.

Donna Haraway’s influential essay called “Cyborg Manifesto” (1985) proposes the similar politics and creates a new politics for cyborgs. In her essay, she provides a positive perspectives on cyborgs with political agendas. Haraway defines a cyborg: “A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social rela- tions, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction” (150). The significant concept of her cyborg theory is that she creates the transgressive, interdisciplinary (or meta-disciplinary) domains which deconstruct the traditional boundaries and binaries such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, real/fiction with a wide range of critical aims. The even more important perspective of her theory is that Haraway discusses cyborg in social reality and in fiction as well. Thus, Hara- way’s conceptualization of cyborg opened up the theoretical and philosophical di- mension which we can discusses cyborgs in both our social reality and in our imagination (that is, literary fiction).

Haraway’s cyborg theory serves for consideration on Gibson’s punk politics of cyberpunk novels. Similar to Haraway’s cyborg theory, the punk elements of Gibson’s cyberpunk novels undoubtedly have political implications. In Gibson’s fiction, technology is not only for the ruling classes; on the contrary, the socially marginalized people use it in subversive ways. In a short essay in Cyberspace: First Steps edited by Michael Benedikt, Gibson writes:

“The Street finds its own use for things — uses the manufacturers never imagined. The micro-tape recorder, originally intended for on-the jump executive dictation, becomes the revolutionary medium of magnetisdat, allowing the covert spread of banned political speeches in Poland and China. The beeper and the cellular phone become economic tools in an increasingly competitive market in illicit drugs. Other technological arti- facts unexpectedly become means of communication. . . . The aerosol can give birth to the urban graffiti-matrix. Soviet rockers press home- made flexidisks out of used chest x-rays” (Gibson, 1992, 29).

The phrase in the first line, “the street finds its own use for thing,” is a mantra in Gibson’s street politics.7 These examples of technological appropriations in the “street-way,” which decontexualizes the intentions of original makers or producers, can be summed up as a punk sensibility in Gibson’s fiction. As Dick Hebdige dem- onstrates, punk is a sign and subversive gesture against any kind of repressive, con- trol systems.8 In our society, high-tech gadgets have oftentimes military-industrial origins such as (parts of) TVs, computers, rockets, and the Internet. That is, they come from huge systems which we cannot usually resist. But “punkish” appropria- tion of technology decontexualizes and re-directs the technology to critique against such oppressive system. With “street” and “punk” sensibility, cyborg agency can refurbish and reconfigure the intension of producer or manufacturer into our own use (or deprive the utilitarian use of technology). Gibson’s street-tech subversive appropriation is a strategic decontexualization of technology. This is what cyborg agency — that is, “we,” cyborgs– should act out in the age of digital information technology.

Work Cited

Benedickt, Michael. Cyberspace: First Steps. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992.

Gibson, William. Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books, 1984.
—– . “Burning Chrome” Burning Chrome. New York: Ace Books, 1986.
—–. “Academy Leader” Cyberspace: First Steps. Edited by Michael Benedickt. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992.

Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991.

Hayles, Katherine N. “The Life Cycle of Cyborg: Writing the Posthuman” The Cyborg Handbook. Edited by Chris Hables Gray, Heidi J. Figueroa-Sarriera and Steven Mentor. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. New York: Methuen, 1979. Jameson, Frederic. Postmodernism or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. London: Verso, 1991.

McCaffery, Larry. Ed. Storming the Reality Studio: A Casebook of Cyberpunk and

Postmodern Fiction. London and Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991. Moravec, Hans. Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988.

Olsen, Lance. William Gibson. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1992.

Sterling, Bruce. Ed. Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology. New York: Ace Books, 1986.

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Looking Back On Literacy: A Turning Point by Beth Bogage

April 10, 2002 by Leave a Comment

So there I sat, a high school senior in level IV Spanish class, preparing myself to read a poem by Pablo Neruda in Spanish. By my side, and within reach (always within reach), lay my trusted English-Spanish dictionary, upon which I relied continuously, as though that dictionary were the key to unlocking the mysteries of the language I had been trying to learn throughout my high school career. My Spanish teacher had raved about the poet Neruda on several occasions and I was anxious to connect with the piece of text that lay before me. I surveyed the first line of the poem, and quickly began to look up every unfamiliar word for its English equivalent; I was committed to eliminating all lexical uncertainty before moving on to the next line. And then the inevitable occurred; as I looked back on the first row of text that I had tried so diligently to translate, I realized that the meaning I had extracted made little sense collectively. That is, the meaning was not and could not be the sum of those individually deciphered words. As I continued through the passage, my frustration intensified. For after trying to “decode” each subsequent line of poetry, the end result seemed the same; I had translated more and more Spanish words, yet the overall meaning of those words as a passage was out of reach.

I underwent a similar experience in my Spanish class that year with regard to my attempts at writing. This was writing beyond the sentential level—beyond grammar and vocabulary assignments. As students of Spanish IV, we were to write for the purpose of expression. I had established a good foundation for Spanish grammar (I could certainly conjugate well!) and had spent countless hours memorizing vocabulary, and I felt initially that I could easily bring these elements together to produce a good piece of writing. When I received my cor- rected paper the following day, I was stunned to find my carefully printed words drowning in a sea of red ink. Evidently, what I had intended to convey, the thoughts that I tried to express, did not travel well from my mind–in English, to that piece of paper–in Spanish. And from that point on, I saw the very long road that lay ahead of me.

These two experiences served as a literary turning point for me. As a high school senior then, I felt far removed from any sense of struggle I must have felt when I first learned how to read and write my native language as a child. It was difficult for me to have a true appre- ciation for the complexity involved in the process of reading and writing because literacy felt like an implicit ability. Everything changed when I began to study Spanish. Although I couldn’t articulate it then, I began to comprehend the depths of literacy, and of language itself. My struggle with reading Spanish texts (which would continue on through college) made me realize that ‘true reading’ is more than simply understanding words; infinite les- sons in grammar and vocabulary and innumerable consultations with my dictionary were not enough to make me literate in Spanish. Similarly, simply applying Spanish lexicon to Eng- lish syntax would not be sufficient to make me a ‘true writer’ of the language. I would need to develop many different levels of literacy in order to comprehend or write text in Spanish beyond meaning that was purely referential. Though this was a frustrating time for me, it made me immensely respectful of the many individuals I would meet in my life who have accomplished the incredible task of second language literacy. And I think the awareness that I have acquired with regard to the second language literary task has made me a better teacher to the ESL students I long to assist.

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Review of Research on Conferencing by Jennifer Feyen

March 10, 2002 by Leave a Comment

Articles Reviewed:
  •  Cumming, Alister and So, Sufumi. (1996). Tutoring second language text revision: does the approach to instruction or the language of communication make a differ- ence. Journal of Second Language Writing. 5(3). 197-226.
  •  Ferris, Dana R. (1995). Student reactions to teacher response in multiple-draft composition classrooms. TESOL Quarterly. 29(1). 33-52.
  •  Goldstein, Lynn M. and Conrad, Susan M.. (1990). “Student input and negotiation of meaning in ESL writing conferences.” TESOL Quarterly. 24(3). 443-460.
  •  Harris, Muriel and Silva, Tony. (1993). Tutoring ESL students: issues and options. College Composition and Communication. 44(4). 525-536.
  •  Powers, Judith K. and Nelson, Jane V. (1995). L2 writers and the writing center: a national survey of writing center conferencing at graduate institutions. Journal of Second Language Writing. 4(2). 113-138.
  •  Richardson, Paul. (1994). “New perspectives on writing conferences.” The Austra- lian Journal of Language and Literacy. 17(1). 73-80.

    Conferencing about student writing is very relevant to my current position teaching Eng-

    lish. I am a tutor for a Rhetoric and Writing Studies (RWS) 95 class, and meet on a one-to- one basis with students frequently. Each student is required to conference with me at least once during the semester; however, most students have met with me on a more consistent basis. I feel that the individualized attention given in conferences is an important aspect to improving writing skills. After reading the articles regarding conferencing, it became ap- parent that the teacher or tutor engaging in this dialogue has the potential to make the time valuable to the student, improving his writing skills. Additionally, the teacher or tutor has the potential to make the session less productive through means such as dominating the talk and agenda. Knowing what is most useful to help students, and understanding how the teacher or tutor can affect the conferencing session both negatively and positively were goals that I wanted to accomplish through this paper. When I teach my own class in the near future, I would like to utilize this information when engaging in teacher-student con- ferences to better assist my students. Additionally, I intend to share the findings with my class tutor in hopes that the generalizations from the research will help him/her when con- ferencing students.

Article Summaries & Evaluations

The first article, by Powers and Nelson (1995), discusses a research study regarding writing centers throughout the nation. Data for the article was gathered via a questionnaire sent to writing centers throughout the nation. The survey was mailed to 110 graduate institutions across the nation, and 75 (67%) of them responded. The purpose of this study was to dis- cuss “the kinds of L2 writers writing centers serve, the training of writing center staff for L2 conferencing, the types of assistance L2 writers most frequently request, the differences writing centers perceive in working with L1 and L2 graduate writers, and the difficulties they encounter in meeting the needs of L2 clientele” (Powers & Nelson, 1995: 113). One conclusion drawn from analysis of the data is that there is a growing demand for ESL con- ferencing. The study focused on graduate writing students, and indicated that the most fre- quent request for L2 writing assistance dealt with students’ master thesis. Native English speaking students tended to request help with organization of their papers, whereas L2 Eng- lish speakers focused more on correctness and style. Powers and Nelson also discuss the importance of understanding the different needs of L2 English writers. “First, the majority of writing centers nationwide operate under staffing conditions that make effective training for L2 conferencing especially difficult: a regular turnover of conferencing staff, accompa- nied, almost inevitably, by relative inexperience” (Powers & Nelson, 1995: 128). In other words, the demand for ESL conferencing tutors exceeds the need. In addition, the tutors were not trained or did not have the experience necessary to address the needs of the ESL writers. The needs of L1 and L2 writers differ, and to be a successful tutor one must acquire an understanding of the unique needs of L2 writers. “L2 conferencing proficiency, like L2 writing proficiency, comes slowly, over time and with experience” (Powers & Nelson, 129). This quote suggests that even if short training sessions were implemented, the high turnover rate and relative lack of experience that the tutors in writing centers have may be negatively affecting the feedback that the L2 writers are receiving from the abundance of inexperienced tutors.

I felt that this article was very good. The research brings up important arguments in regards to the insufficient training of ESL tutors. Those who implement policy or make decisions regarding tutor training would benefit from reading this article. It is apparent that those who tutor ESL students need to have training specific to that field. The needs of the students will be better met with better trained tutors. In addition to increased training, tutors should be given more incentives to remain in their current positions. The longer one tutors, the more proficient one becomes at the job. I personally feel that my tutoring skills have improved drastically since I began this past summer. The more experience I have, and the more ques- tions and situations that I am involved in with students have improved my abilities greatly. In addition, I feel more confident that I can answer student questions, and that my sugges- tions for paper improvement are valid. With this high turn over rate, the students do not receive the expertise of a more knowledgeable, competent tutor. This may result in a less effective, less meaningful conferencing session.

In the second article, Harris and Silva (1993) discuss the interaction between students who are English language learners and tutors at writing centers, and give suggestions to tutors. The article uses findings and examples from several different studies to support the argu- ments and suggestions made. The first section of the article focuses on error types, and what tutors should correct. Harris and Silva suggest beginning the conferencing session by expressing a positive aspect of the student’s paper. From there, the article recommends categorizing errors between global and local, giving priority to the first. The article also discusses the cultural differences in writing styles that may be prevalent in papers’ of stu- dents from certain cultures, particularly Asian. Additionally, cultural differences in regards to body language and contact, as well as cultural assumptions such as appropriate times to arrive are discussed. One important point in the article is in regards to the differences in composing styles between native and non-native speakers. The tentative findings are that ESL writers “plan less, write with more difficulty (primarily due to lack of lexical re- sources), reread what they have written less, and exhibit less facility in revising by ear” (Harris & Silva, 529). Suggestions are made for tutors to encourage students to lengthen the time they spend planning, composing and editing their work. Additionally, it is recom- mended that tutors focus on rhetorical matters before linguistic ones, as this sequence is perceived to be beneficial to the ESL writer. Helping the student to develop strategies to strengthen his writing skills on his own is also advantageous to the student.

This article is extremely beneficial to tutors. It gives specific examples regarding problems that tutors may have as well as solutions. Harris and Silva make suggestions about what to focus on and give priority to, and give reasons as to why something is important. Anybody who is planning on tutoring or teaching would benefit from reading this article. I felt that the generalizations were helpful; additionally, Harris and Silva make a point that tutors and teachers should be careful to not over-generalize as each student is unique.

The article by Cumming and So (1996) addresses “the dynamics of problem solving through spoken discourse in one-to-one tutoring of second language writing, aiming to determine if these processes might vary according to the instructional approach or the language of com- munication utilized” (197). The study focused on text revision and consisted of 20 students, each receiving four individual tutoring sessions. Two sessions were in English, and two in the L1 of the student. Additionally, one session in each language utilized the procedural facilitation method and the other error correction. Procedural facilitation focuses on prompting students to help them discover corrections to errors themselves. Error correction deals with explaining the error to the student without encouraging the student to rectify the error on his own. The study shows that discourse patterns are similar for both approaches and in both the L1 and L2 of the student. Additionally, the article discusses discourse analysis of conferencing sessions between the tutor and student. These figures ranged from students identifying 52% to 32% of the problems in the writing in comparison with tutors identifying 68% to 75% of such problems, students leading negotia- tions in 35% to 45% of these transactions in comparison with tutors leading 55% to 65% of these negotiations (often in fact preventing the potential for students to negotiate), and stu- dents resolving 30% to 45% of the problems compared with tutors resolving 55% to 70% of these problems. (Cumming & So, 1996: 210)

Additionally, the study shows that students and tutors tend to concentrate most on grammar rules, spelling, and word choice. Regarding language preference, Cumming and So suggest that tutoring in the mother tongue gives students a greater opportunity to link the two lan- guages, analyzing features. They also felt that the tutoring discourse sequence appeared to be similar to classroom discourse of the IRE sequence (initiation, response, evaluation).

This was another very helpful article. It highlighted the dominance of the tutor in the con- ferencing sessions. Teachers and tutors would benefit from reading this article as they may not be aware of the extent to which they dictate the agenda of the conferencing session. Additionally, the study indicated that using the students’ L1 in writing conference did not result negatively on the student, but rather the authors concluded that this may be a positive occurrence. The primary focus on grammar, spelling, and word choice was an important aspect of the article. These language features need to be addressed; however, it is generally recommended that focusing on content and format first is beneficial to the student.

The fourth article that I reviewed was written by Ferris (1995) focused on written comments of teachers, but is significant to conferencing in that there are noteworthy misunderstandings in written comments, which might encourage conferencing sessions to alleviate the confu- sion. The study focused on teachers’ written comments in a multiple-draft essay context, whereas previous research had mainly dealt with a single-draft context. According to this study, students pay more attention to teacher comments on first drafts of multiple-draft compositions. In addition, students who are required to revise their essays pay more atten- tion to comments, even on final drafts where revision was not expected. The study indicates that students take the feedback from their teachers seriously, respecting their opinions and appreciating their effort. However, many students reported that they went to outside sources to assist them in understanding or responding to the teacher’s comments. “Students re- ported receiving and paying the most attention to feedback on grammar, content, and or- ganization, in that order” (Ferris, 1995: 48). Additionally, the study indicates the impor- tance of providing positive feedback to students.

Though this study was helpful from a written comment point of view, it did not focus to the extent that I expected on student misunderstandings of teacher comments. The article was still very good, and would be beneficial to any teacher or tutor who writes comments on student essays. One of the most enlightening parts of the article discussed the impact that teacher comments had on students. Positive comments often times made quite an impact on students, as they remembered specific examples of praise given by the teacher. In addition, some negative comments had an impact on students. “Several wrote rather bitterly that their teachers’ comments were all negative and that this fact depressed them and decreased their motivation and self-esteem” (Ferris, 1995:46). This statement really had an affect on me, and made me very aware of the power of feedback. Often times I do not think that tutors and teachers realize the impact that they can have on students.

The study done by Goldstein and Conrad (1990) examined characteristics of individual con- ferences between the teacher of an advanced ESL composition class and three of her stu- dents from different cultural backgrounds. In addition, it looked at how the students dealt with revisions of the drafts discussed in the conferences. Data was collected by taping the conferences (with student permission), transcribing the results orthographically, and analyz- ing both the discourse of the transcription as well as each draft of each students’ paper to determine revision. The article indicates that there is a great difference in the degree to which each student provides input in regards to both agenda setting and interactional dis- course. Additionally, students varied in the amount of meaning clarification. The results of the study show a positive relationship between negotiation and successful revision. “In con- trast, when the students did not negotiate (i.e., when the teacher made revision suggestions and the student backchanneled), the subsequent revisions were often either unsuccessful or not attempted at all” (Goldstein & Conrad, 1990: 454). This study shows the importance of negotiation of meeting in teacher-student conference.

I felt that this was another useful article. It indicated the individual differences that students bring to a conference that could affect the discourse. In addition, it showed that students who negotiate meaning are more likely to have successful revisions. Once again, those who are teaching or tutoring would benefit from this type of article. When I conference with students, often times I can tell that they do not understand the point that I am making but are simply backchanneling. One of the reasons this occurs, I believe, is cultural differences. Certain cultures feel that it is negative to question a teacher. Though I am not their teacher in the typical sense, I am teaching them during the conferencing sessions. When I explain why there is an error, even if the student does not understand, he often will backchannel indicating an affirmative. This study indicates that students are significantly more likely to be successful with their revisions if they negotiate meaning, which is more likely to occur if they feel comfortable expressing that they still do not understand, even after one explana- tion. These individual differences are important, and teachers should be aware of the indi- vidual circumstances that each student brings and try to adjust their style accordingly. Con- ferencing the same way for each student is not adequate to address the needs of the indi- viduals.

Richardson’s article (1994) discusses several previous studies about writing conferences. The purpose of the study was to discuss the interaction of conferencing and how it varies from that of the classroom. The first study cited indicates that conferences are dominated by the teacher, as is often the case in the classroom. “To their surprise, the researchers found that the longer, seemingly more substantial conferences were sustained by the degree to which the student’s text already matched the teacher’s schema and the nature of the inter- personal relationship between the student and the teacher” (Richardson, 1994: 74). An additional study indicates that despite a teacher’s feeling that she treats all students the same, conferences differ depending upon the students. Another study shows that teachers are not aware of the extent to which they dominate conferences. Writing conferences were also shown to focus mainly on correction of errors indicated by the teacher. Another study indi- cates that the dynamics of conferencing changes over time. During the first half of a six- week writing course, conferences were dominated by the IRE sequence. However, during the second half of the course, students controlled and participated more in the discourse than previously. The article then indicates the need to look more closely at how we evaluate writing conferences, and mentions another study that suggests that who is agenda setting and steering may be a better analysis of conferencing then ratio of teacher to student talk.

This article was the least useful out of the six. It gave a rather brief summary of several articles about conferencing; however, I did not feel that an adequate amount of information was given for each study. As a quick overview, it was sufficient, but I found myself want- ing more information about the validity and circumstances of each study. I felt that the arti- cles he mentions may have over-generalized findings, as they seem to be about individual cases rather than larger research studies. However, there are several significant points that are made. For example, the awareness of how much a teacher perceives and actually speaks in one-on-one student conferences and how that could affect the conferencing in a negative way. I think that people who are interested in the topic of conferencing would benefit from this article, as it gives a springboard of other articles to look into more closely. Addition- ally, a teacher or tutor who does not make time to read several studies may benefit from the short results report of this article.

Discussion

The articles reviewed are in order from general tutoring to more specific teacher-student interaction in a conferencing environment. The Powers and Nelson article deals with an overview of conferencing centers throughout the nation. This is followed by Harris and Silva’s discussion of general issues that tutors in writing centers may encounter. From there, Ferris’ article deals more specifically with teacher-student dynamics, focusing on written comments, rather than interaction. Goldstein and Conrad discuss the interaction between teacher and student in a conferencing situation. Then the review is concluded with the Richardson article, which gives several specific results of studies between teachers and students in a conferencing setting.

A few of the articles discuss the inexperience of tutors who engage in writing conferences. The Powers and Nelson article dealt more with problems that graduate students may en- counter with writing centers. The biggest problem seemed to be with the lack of training and experience that tutors at writing centers have. The importance of experience was em- phasized. Additionally, the Harris and Silva article seemed to reiterate this idea. Its target reading population seemed to be that of the tutors the writing centers from the Powers and Nelson article employ. This article dealt with specific examples and helpful instruction that the novice tutor would benefit from knowing.

Goldstein and Conrad discuss previous studies that indicated ESL students have difficulty understanding teachers’ written comments. This was one of the reasons they performed the study, as students were unclear as to the teachers’ meaning. When the meaning was clear, or when the student negotiated meaning during the conference, successful revisions were more likely. Though the Ferris article did not discuss the misunderstanding of teacher comment to the extent I would have liked, the parallel between these two articles is impor- tant. Student reaction to teacher comments is a factor in conferencing. The students who perceived that they had no positive comments on their essays may feel better during confer- encing if the suggestion that was made in the Harris and Silva article about starting off con- ferences on a positive note was utilized. I think that a student’s perception of his writing is a significant factor in whether his writing improves. When he feels he is doing well, and that the writing process is positive, his motivation for writing will increase. However, if his esteem is lowered, and he feels he is only getting negative feedback, this may decrease his motivation, thus hindering his writing improvement.

Additionally, the teacher dominance of conferences is an important issue. As indicated in the Richardson article, teachers may not realize the degree to which they overpower confer- encing sessions. On a similar note, the Goldstein and Conrad article discussed the impor- tance of student participation in the conference and its affect on improved revisions. If teachers dominate the agenda and the amount of discourse, the students may be less likely to have an opportunity to negotiate meaning, which increases their chances of producing a successful revision. Additionally, the Cumming and So article indicated the percentages to which tutors and students prevailed in particular discourse structures. Overwhelmingly, the tutor dominated each aspect that was studies (identifying, leading negotiations, and resolv- ing). This study indicated that tutors leading the negotiations may have prevented the stu- dents from negotiating meaning, which the Goldstein and Conrad article showed as being significantly important.

The type of interaction in writing conferences was shown as similar to classroom discourse in several articles. The Richardson article discussed a study that indicated the IRE sequence is prevalent, at least in the first sessions, of conferencing. This is contradicting to what one may have predicted as the conferencing session is often thought of as a one-on-one discus- sion where the student can more openly discuss concerns, ask questions, and participate in meaningful discourse with the instructor. However, the dynamics of the classroom appear to parallel that of the conferencing session in many cases. In addition to the discussion in the Richardson article, the Cumming and So article also mentions the IRE sequence preva- lent in conferences. Additionally, Goldstein and Conrad suggest that there are variations with individual students in regards to how they interact with the teacher during a conferenc- ing session. They suggest that while students may add additional input to a conference, set the agenda, or negotiate meaning, they also may chose not to. It could be a students’ indi- vidual differences, teachers’ different treatment of students, or, more likely, a combination of both of these factors. Goldstein and Conrad discuss several cultural characteristics of students that may affect the discourse structure of conferences.

In addition, the content of discussion in writing conferences focused primarily on sentence level errors. The Ferris article indicates “it is program policy that teachers focus on content and organization in their feedback on first drafts, saving grammatical and mechanical con- cerns for final drafts” (1995: 37). However, Ferris also indicates that the students felt that they received the most comments on grammar. This could be because the content and or- ganization comments can be stated in a relatively short manner, whereas the grammar errors may be more frequent. Additionally, Cumming and So discuss that tutors’ and students’ main focus is regarding grammar rules, spelling and word choice. The Harris and Silva article also suggests that the tutor focus on rhetorical matters prior to linguistic ones. They even recommend that tutors be firm about this sequenced approach. However, despite the recommendations and policies in place, studies indicate that these sentence level errors ac- count for an abundance of conferencing time. Powers and Nelson also discuss the over- whelming amount of grammar correction in relation to substance or organization. They suggest that the content of the masters thesis are specialized to the point that the tutors do not understand the content, thus they default to focusing on grammar. However, even if tutors understood the content, indicted by other studies and student requests, it is likely that the focus would remain on sentence level corrections.

There were several overlapping themes throughout the articles reviewed: lack of tutor ex- perience and training, unclear meaning in teacher comments, teacher dominance of confer- encing sessions, and the focus on sentence level errors despite the recommendations to pri- marily concentrate on organization and content. Awareness of such inconsistencies as well as further study in these areas would be beneficial to both teachers and students.

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Two Strikes and You’re Out: The Impact of Executive Order #665 on Developmental Writing and Mathematics by Glen McClish

October 10, 2001 by Leave a Comment

The California State University’s Executive Order 665, mandating all first-year students to complete their remedial or developmental course work in math and writing by the end of their first year or risk “disenrollment,” took effect in Fall 1998, a year before I arrived at San Diego State University as the new chair of Rhetoric and Writing Studies and General Math Studies.  In my new capacity, I inherited oversight of all developmental courses taught by the University, which means that I keep the gate that thousands of students will pass—or, in many cases, not pass—through to the second year of college and beyond.

Since I wasn’t on the job from the beginning of the Order, I was frequently witnessed to by more senior members of the Department and the University. The tale assumed biblical proportions.  For proponents of the Order, this is a story of accountability, of salvation from a remedial Babylon in which students squandered their educations and their souls by not facing up to their academic shortcomings.  665 brought them to the promised land of writing and mathematical competency in two short semesters, or—if they were not members of the elect—cast them out to wherever they will go—with considerable gnashing of teeth.

For opponents of the Order, the narrative harkens back to a lost Eden, a prelapsarian paradise in which students were allowed the time needed to get up to speed in these basic areas of education.  No panic, no arbitrary cutoffs and deadlines—just plenty of time to get the job done.  The one-size-fits-all mandate of 665 shook all the apples from the tree of knowledge, and a lot of rotten fruit hit us on the heads.  Cast from the garden to inhabit the world of 665—add one and you get the picture—they yearn for a lost innocence.

These stories are complicated by the fact that different institutions throughout the CSU treat those unable to complete remediation within the one-year limit differently.  Whereas at some campuses, a majority of these students are allowed to continue, at a school such as SDSU, only a very small number are permitted to proceed.  And what constitutes the first year also varies.  At some campuses, the summer after the first spring is an option.  At SDSU, however, the spring semester is the end of the line.  Some of our students, in fact, face an even earlier deadline.  Our administration mandates that certain local admits—who are eligible to attend the California State University but who have not met the higher SDSU criteria—must begin their remedial work in the summer and complete it by the fall.  To further complicate matters, students who come in as transfers operate under much more relaxed rules.  Although there are registration penalties for not completing remedial course work promptly, there is no threat of disenrollement.

Both versions of the 665 story have validity.  As those who decry the Order assert, students come to the University differently prepared.  In particular, students who hale from ESL backgrounds and/or from challenged high schools need more time to develop their basic competencies, a reality that EO 665 ignores.  It is no surprise that the ethnic diversity of our developmental courses is particularly rich.  665 pushes such students into a speed-learning routine inappropriate for true mastery.  Students who require three semesters to get up to speed in math are especially vulnerable, because the timetable allows for only two.

The scheduling associated with 665 is challenging because every student must be placed, yet sections must not dip below the breakeven point.  Thus, unless you schedule exactly the right number of sections at just the right times, you’ll have unplaced students—who complicate the one-year probationary period and infuriate administrators—or unfilled classes—which are expensive and infuriate administrators.  The only way to achieve the golden mean is to complete your hiring of part-time lecturers at the very last minute.  Well into the first week of classes, in fact, I’m still compressing classes here and adding them there.  Such manipulations are stressful and time consuming for staff and unaccommodating for part-time lecturers, who do not deserve living with such uncertainty.  Despite my best efforts to communicate to my faculty the inevitability of such scheduling, I know many of them are convinced I’m feckless.  I don’t blame them, but I hate to see their morale diminish, and my credibility in the process.

On the other hand, the old way, which allowed for easy scheduling of classes and which gave students virtually unlimited time to pass basic math and writing courses, encouraged procrastination and half-hearted efforts.  Why be saved today?  There’s always tomorrow.  Many students who put passing their remedial courses off until the last minute conduct their educations backwards, putting the basic competencies last.  Clearly, this makes no sense to anyone but them.  Scaring the hell out of people has its rewards.

Aside from learning to tell stories, I have gleaned a few lessons from my experience with the Beast.  First, I value the close ties with my counterparts in developmental math.  The historical accident that caused SDSU’s basic math courses to reside in the same administrative unit as its writing courses has allowed us to share information, strategize together, console one another, commiserate, and to build mutual respect.  If you find yourself in a similar institutional situation, I recommend establishing ties with your allies across the disciplines.

Similarly, I’ve learned the benefit of linking developmental writing administration with university-level writing courses.  Because all our writing programs call our department home, our staffing flexibility increases, and we’re able to share knowledge and resources.  For example, we’ve created a special hybrid course that allows students who narrowly miss placement into a university-level writing course to fulfil their debt to remediation and complete the first semester of university writing simultaneously.  My experience at SDSU has persuaded me that most efforts to divide writing programs are misguided.

I must also tout the recent growth in university-high school partnerships designed to enhance pre-collegiate curriculum.  Our instructors have been increasingly involved in the local high and middle schools.  The official goal of such collaboration is improved test scores, but I’m far more excited about broader, less tangible results.

Whether the current order is viewed as heaven sent or devilish, it is the Gospel of self-reliance that resonates most clearly—the simple fact is that this University and others like it help those who help themselves.  My gifted, highly dedicated math and writing instructors every day impress me with their commitment to developmental students and their special needs, but the system in which we function requires students to take control of their educations.  Surely academic preparation predicts success, but the single most important variable is student willingness to assume responsibility.  Every semester, bewildered, angry students—sometimes led by their parents—storm into my office and ask me what I’m going to do to fix their lives.  Ultimately, I turn the question back to them:  “How will you solve your problem?  The university has bet you a college degree that you can’t develop basic competencies in one year.  Here are your options—are you willing to act?  Take the reins, or they will take you.”

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