Quotes I Marked
(p.3) [Jung had given her students a multi-genre assemblage of her own writing] “Their confusion made it quite clear that juxtaposing genres within a single text disrupts readings and delays meaning making, and that such disruptions can result in reader responses that force writers to revise more deeply.”
(p.4) “Researchers theorized revisions as a process through which writers see their texts again and thereby create rather than correct their written products….Donald Murray was a major contributor to this changing view of revision…In his landmark essay, ‘Internal Revision: A Process of Discovery,’ published in 1978, Murray defines writing as rewriting and distinguishes the polishing work of external revision— ‘what writers do to communicate what they have found written to another audience’ (91) — from the knowledge-making process of internal revision— ‘everything writers do to discover and develop what they have to say, beginning with the reading of a completed first draft (91). Whereas external revision involves making changes based on the needs and expectations of one’s intended reader, Murray explains that during internal revision, the audience is the writer herself rereading her evolving text to discover meanings not yet made clear; positioned as her own best reader, the revising writer creates a space for her text to respond.”
(p.8-9) Chart explaining 4 theories of revision: stage model (revision is editing), problem solving model (solve communication problems that result from your failure to communicate with the audience), social-interactive model (revision is about negotiating the situation and expectations between writer and reader), rhetorical-cultural model (delay consensus, identify and explore sites of conflict, don’t delete controversial parts but add to and analyze them)
(p.12) “In short, I ask that rhetors seek to make themselves heard by demonstrating their commitment to listening to others; I ask that you join me in finding ways to write writing that listens.” (Also argues that multigenre texts are good for creating meaningful reader response discussions)
(p.26) Passage on Mairs feeling like her whiteness prevented her from accurately reading Alice Walker so she let ‘Alice Walker teach me how to read Alice Walker.’ “With this move, Mairs illustrates how revisionary rhetors can learn to respond to texts they fear they cannot understand: They relinquish claims to mastery; by doing so they fall into despair; by falling into despair they become ready to listen.” What she did is she identified different strategies Walker was using and then used those same strategies in her own essay, to embody/feel those strategies herself.
(p.29) - talks about two authors, which she will analyze in this chapter, combining genres that are considered within and without Rhet/Comp, and how that weirdness makes readers uncomfortable, which allows them to think about things in new ways.
(p.33) Multigenre texts vs. “blurred genres” (Geertz)- multigenre texts have stark breaks (white space) when genres shift
(p.43) Discussion of how academic authority is built by tearing other people down, and how that’s mean and unnecessary, and Welch uses multigenre writing to talk about it
(p.45) “We have theorized how the personal has made its way into the academy, but we have yet to examine carefully how the academy has made its way into the personal.”
(p.49) “Because Miller opens with a moving scene about his father’s attempted suicide, I expected him to come out in favor of personal narratives in academic contexts; I continued to read his essay as if he were opposed to disembodied academic arguments. However, when Miller breaks form and reflects on his decision to do so, he demonstrates how genre— in this case, the genre of the personal narrative— creates readerly expectations about how writers position themselves in relation to disciplinary arguments. By stepping back and telling me that he knows I’m doing this, Miller illustrates how my reductive reading has forced him into a corner that he refuses to occupy. His metadiscursive commentary thus demands that I examine how genre expectations shape the way I hear a writer’s argument.”
(p.53) “rather than engage in the disciplines ‘conventions of attack/counter-strike’ (182), however, Lu chooses instead to revise her initial response to Miller’s essay by critically affirming the ways in which she, too, has deployed the same rhetorical moves that disturb her….Lu’s essay is a dramatic example of one reader’s efforts to own responsibly her reactions to a text that disturbs her. My purpose in discussing it here, however, is to suggest the degree to which Miller’s multigenre form encourages such a response.
(p.77) Describes an assignment in which she asks students to write the introductions to two different essays: a literary analysis and a rhetorical analysis of the same short story. The students enjoy this, but she realizes they suck at close reading nonfiction. “I believe rhetoric teachers bear the particular burden of teaching students how to closely read nonfiction.”
(p.82) Shows some different introductions to an early draft of a response to an essay that pissed her off. The first is very “warlike,” which goes against her beliefs against how people should engage in discourse. So she explains her ongoing thought process and shares more attempts at introductioning. One version says she “has trouble hearing” his arguments, which is very different from her initial approach. But her “final” version, which she frames as a “revision” of his essay, goes through step by step in the framing and explores her own emotional and intellectual reactions and agreements/disagreements with his essay. Then, after the framing, she writes about further research she did: she asked several male colleagues to read the essay she is criticizing, then interviews them about how they responded to it and why. My one struggle with this chapter is figuring out where her “revisionary essay” begins/ends as opposed to the rest of the chapter that DISCUSSES her revisionary essay. The sections blend together.
(p.152) Quote from Foucault about progress, in which he explains that he’s not saying humanity doesn’t progress, but that it’s wrong to ASSUME humanity has progressed. The question is not “How have we progressed?” but “How do things happen? And how do things happening now relate to things that happened in the past?"“
Sources I Marked
“The Writing/Reading Relationship: Becoming One’s Own Best Reader” by Richard Beach and JoAnne Liebman Kleine
“Fighting Words: Unlearning to Write Critical Essays” by Jane Tompkins
“The Nervous System” by Richard E. Miller