As many of you likely know, The Bi-Annual Thomas R. Watson Conference on Rhetoric and Writing was held in Louisville, Kentucky this past weekend (October 16-18). Having been lucky enough to attend and present at the conference, I thought I would post a few highlights to the blog. This will be the first of a few postings that provide a glimpse of some key conference moments.
Anne Wysocki: Beginning her talk with a video clip of animated Chicken McNuggets feeding from a tub of dipping sauce, and fish sticks swimming in a fish bowl, Wysocki asks her audience to consider a new relationship with “stuff.” She argues that we have a reduced relationship with the stuff of our lives, which partly results in wasteful, disengaged consumption of stuff. For example, we have cars, so we can go to work. We go to work, so we can earn money to buy gas. We need gas so we can go to work. In other words, or relationships with stuff is trapped in a kind of closed circuit that isolates us and our stuff from a larger meaningful context.
Wysocki moves from this discussion to the crafting of stuff, making an analogy between this craft and the craft of writing. Citing Philosophers from Socrates up through the ages, she explains that the craft of producing stuff should be valued beyond the goods that are produced. When we craft, we make decisions about how the stuff we work with will be shaped in order to work well in the world. In making these decisions as we craft, we are situating our selves, our craft, and the object within the context of the world. As such, when we craft we act on and influence the world, and we also learn something about ourselves and our roles in the world.
She concludes her talk by offering this understanding of craft as a way of thinking about and appreciating writing. Arguing that pages of writing are designed to encourage readers to lose sight of them as they focus on the abstract ideas, Wysocki argues that considering the craft of writing keeps the ideas from becoming disembodied. By thinking about the craft of writing, and the crafters behind writing, we sustain the link between the ideas and the body that produced those ideas. When we put bodies back into writing, the page resonates with the body. For example, in graphic design we know that angles invoke a sense of movement from viewers because it resonates with their bodies’ sense of falling. A page of writing can function in similar ways, and, according to Wysocki, which could potentially to think about and discover unique ways of using the page to connect the author and the audience.
and the 7Cs looks forward to seeing many of you at C&W 2009, hosted by UC-Davis, onsite next June.