I found today's conversation about the blog very productive. Mihaela's comments on the Sartrean gift really cemented a connection that I thought was useful for me and might be useful to you all as well.
Currently I'm enrolled in a class here called the Politics of Development. Specifically, the class surrounds--political-- issues, yet, because writing seems to be an especially liminal tool (?), a great deal of what I read about these topics (for me) screams writing and rhetoric. Anyways, the point I wish to make is that a number of the readings have come to demonstrate the darker side DA (development assistance) which can include giving money (corruption), medicine (eugenical campaigns that de facto benefit one class, race, or segment of a country receiving aid), arms (inscrutable uses of power), and food (unfair choices as to who goes hungry and who eats--very similar to the problems with medicine). But most commonly DA surrounds technical advice, which seems to be similar to what it is that we do in the WC. If anyone is curious Oxfam provides a good introduction to foreign assistance.
So--what I want to do is reflectively engage our verbiage of (giving, aiding, helping) as Mihaela asks. What is it that we do? It is necessary that we even have an accurate verb? I, personally, am less sure that we do need a verb; what I do suspect, however, is that we do need an ontology for being within the WC in our positions as citizens. This is less, then, a doing and more of a how it is done. What that entails, though, is less concrete, more abstract--it becomes dynamic, contingent, and circumstantial. I lose the ability to really explain how or what I think about how we best can work with and for ourselves/others (sometimes different missions and responsibilities) when a tutee/visitor/citizen enters the space.
Thinking of how we think of those who we do come into contact with, though, in this space is as I mentioned at good starting point in creating less vertically oriented spaces.
Tim, thank you for developing, connecting, and articulating the shards of my thought so eloquently. I do hear you when you ask whether we need a verb...perhaps this "becoming" a Writing Center member, a "trickster" (I intentionally put the "a" here, because I am all about singularities) with a beginner's mind, is activity that is paradoxically verbless, or maybe it is our audience (which is also our partner in this perpetual activity)that demands a verb, or maybe we project this demand onto it...Regardless, in order to inhabit by forging new ways of thinking about the Writing Center activity, we are compelled to put into spatial terms that which exceeds them and negotiate between space and excess continuously.
ReplyDeleteI am also interested in what you have written about development assistance. I wonder if the questions that might be productive to ask are not along the lines of: What do we want from the students who come to us? Of what kind is our relationship with the Writing Center, and what are the repercussions of identifying with this position (if it is a "position," again spatial dimensions, at all)? How do we inhabit the power relations at play ethically? (Jeremiah, thank you for the reading recommendation; I hope to be able to read it with care soon.)