I first started reading this book early on in the pandemic. Then I didn’t read any of it for several more months. Reading theoretical writing felt impossible at the time. But now, when I’m sitting down to write this, it’s also been a long time since I finished reading the book (I think I finished last summer? Or fall), so I don’t remember much of it now. Thankfully, the practice of going through to type out quotes I marked has been a very helpful review process.
This book is similar to Imagining Queer Methods, but with a more specific focus on writing studies. Several of the authors wrote other things that I’ve read for my orals, or have since encountered/cited for other projects.
(p.3) Discussion of how entering a space as a researcher always changes that space, but beginning to do research in a space you’re already in (such as your own classroom) changes how you act, and so changes that space too.
(p.5) quote from Harriet Malinowitz- “Which of our theories of writing don’t explode when we consider their ramifications for lesbian and gay writers?”
(p.5) Quote from Kirsch saying we should always choose to write our research in genres that match the methods we chose (or choose methods that match our genres, maybe)
(p.8) “For many LGBTQ people, there is a felt sense, as much as a theoretical one, that one resistant method for maintaining our existence involves not being bludgeoned by languages intended to hurt us but pushing back, even in small ways, in order to maintain our own sense of self and community.” - Foucault’s reverse discourse
(p.9) “The realization that language and identity are interwoven and interanimated means that any discipline focused on the study of language must engage theories and rhetorics grounded in such a realization.”
(p.11) quote from Krista Ratcliffe- rhetoric is “the study of how we use language and how language uses us.”
(p.11) “But rather than assume a primarily ontological nature for language and reality, queer rhetorics begin with the assumption that critique— the calling out of language as language— represents an initial and important destabilization of meaning, not to prevent meaning or to pretend that meaning cannot be made but to ask why this meaning at this time and under these circumstances; these are fundamentally rhetorical questions”
(p.12) Rhetorics of Intentionality (as one type of queer rhetoric— the intention matters more than whether you succeed, like it doesn’t matter if you can pass as a gender, the fact that you are trying to communicate that gender means people ought to recognize that as valid). Questions how rhetorics of intentionality would change how we view rubrics and writing assessment (if intention comes above outcomes)
(p.14) Rhetorics of Failure— “a chance to eschew ‘being taken seriously’ in order to be ‘frivolous, promiscuous, and irrelevant’” and make a ‘detour around the usual markers of accomplishment and satisfaction.”
(p.15) Rhetorics of Forgetting- strategic forgetting, look for lost/forgotten people and stories, ask WHY “certain elements of our disciplinary past have been forgotten.” Why do some things have rhetorical velocity and some things stay still/left behind?
(p.16) Heather Love, reminds us to pay attention to ‘texts or figures that refuse to be redeemed’ and disrupt the progress narrative of queer history. Resist pressure to redeem the past.
(p.16) Quote from Jean Bessete’s chapter later on in the collection- “When we look for queerness in the archive, what exactly are we seeking?”
(p.16) Right after that quote, from the editors: “When we look for X, what are we strategically forgetting in order to keep X in focus? How could we acknowledge that tension in our work? Why might we need to forget X in order to discover Y?” This is like the questions of measuring sexuality and gender nonconformity— any measure you choose brings into focus some things and excludes other things
(p.25) Gary Olsen refers to traditional rhetoric as “the rhetoric of assertion”
(p.28) This chapter is by Hillery Glasby, she suggests “ambivalence as a methodology because it reduces, or altogether negates, the desire for coherence and polished texts” -seems similar to revisionary rhetoric
(p.29) “write yourself so that Others might know the Self. This can be critical self-care work since difference becomes internalized over time.”
(p.30) quote from Alexander & Rhodes- queer rhetorical practices are those “that recognize the necessity sometimes of saying ‘No,’ of saying ‘Fuck, no,” of offering an impassioned, embodied, and visceral reaction to the practices of normalization that limit not just freedom but the imagination of possibility, of potential”
(p.42) Another quote from them- “We understand queer composing as a queer rhetorical practice aimed at disrupting how we understand ourselves to ourselves.”
(p.43) paraphrase of Rhodes, “because of the heteronormative institutional locations in which teaching occurs, there may be no true ‘queer pedagogy’; there is only the possibility of teaching queer.
(Skipping over everything else I marked in Stacy Waite’s chapter since I wrote about this chapter separately in my Stacy Waite post)
(p.55) “If there were a single conceptual umbrella for thinking about queer/trans methodology, it wouldn’t necessarily translate to a focus on LGBTQA topics so much as on a commitment to rigorously (if not deviantly) questioning our deeply held disciplinary narratives.”
(p.99) In Jean Bessette’s chapter. “Cofounder [of the Lesbian Herstory Archives] Joan Nestle (2015) describes her early commitment to the word lesbian as a ‘noun that stood for all possibilities of queerness, for all possibilities of deviations…Not a role-model lesbian history, not an archive of safe stories, always my own undertaking of keeping in the archives the tensions of lesbian difference’ (239-240).” Also that LHA is “open to a diversity of visitors, unconstrained by ‘academic, political, or sexual credentials,’ race or class”
Sources To Look Up
(Rhodes & Alexander) Techne: Queer Meditations on Writing the Self
(Rhodes) “The Failure of Queer Pedagogy”