Rhetoric and Gaming: A Crash Course in Windows Moviemaker

Posted on October 5, 2015 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today we are going to jump into video editing. Many of you will already have experience with video editing, and today will feel like a review. Please feel free to make suggestions or help!

We’ll be working from an earlier tutorial I created, some of which needs to be updated.

My list of objectives for today:

  • Other video editing programs (iMovie, VSDC
  • The basics of the Moviemaker space
  • The difference between saving your project and saving your movie; or how to work in Moviemaker (and with other video editing softwares)
  • Using photoshop to “hack” some textual effects
  • Working with YouTube videos (downloading with clipconverter, or working with Vibby)
  • Although rare, some videos have a create .gif option
  • One more time: saving a project vs. exporting a video (and file size options)
  • Incorporating [open source] audio into your videos

Continue reading →

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Historical Rhetorics Week 7: Sophistry and/as Making the Other Argument the Self

Posted on October 5, 2015 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s plan:

  • Touching on last week: What’s Your Problem?
  • Secondary Source Presentations
  • Sophists Rock: Greatest Hits
  • A Few Things I Want to Say
  • A Quick Walkthrough the Dissoi Logoi
  • Eristic Exercise

Continue reading →

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Rhetoric and Gaming 6.2: Bogost, Procedurality, Rhetoric, Butler, Performativity, and The Walking Dead

Posted on October 1, 2015 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s plan:

Bogost, Procedurality, Rhetoric, Butler, Performativity, and The Walking Dead

So far this semester, I have asked you to play four games: Bad Paper, Darfur is Dying, The McDonald’s Game and The Walking Dead. And, of course, we just played First-Person Tutor. Taken together, I think these games offer models for thinking through the kinds of procedural games Bogost introduces. For instance, Darfur is Dying is a prototypical representation of a Serious Game, a game that seeks to instigate change based on the seriousness of its content. However, in terms of procedurality, the game is rather shallow, since the mechanics it presents us, the choices it asks us to make, the way it represents real-world procedure isn’t sophisticated. Sure, it offers us something more profound than Tax Evaders, since it does create a semblance of fear while hiding behind the bushes, or of frustration when trying to keep the town intact.

Up one step on the scale would be the First-Person Tutor game, though I must admit I share this cynically: THIS IS NOT HOW GRADING SHOULD WORK! However, the game does make a procedural comment about the staggering nature of contemporary student debt, particularly the debt accrued by graduate students. That commentary is structured into the operation of the game (since successfully grading a paper only awards about $400, one would have to grade 500 papers to win–an almost certainly unbeatable task). It also makes some representations of faculty to graduate student relations. I leave you to judge those yourself.

Bad Paper is a more sophisticated procedural piece. It incorporates real-world processes in order to shed attention on the frustrations and problems associated with debt. And, of course, the McDonald’s game would be even more sophisticated, since it involves so many choices and processes (although I am sure the executives at McDonald’s would reject as stringently to it as I would to the notion that First-Person Tutor reflects actual grading practices!).

Which brings us to The Walking Dead. In his introduction, Bogost notes that “the types of procedures that interest me are those that present or comment on processes inherent to human experience”(5). Obviously, zombie apocalypses aren’t common to our everyday lives. So, what can we say about the procedurality of The Walking Dead?

Before I answer that question, I want to take a few steps back. Here’s how Bogost describes procedural rhetoric:

Procedurality refers to a way of creating, explaining, or understanding processes. And processes define the way things work: the methods, techniques, and logics that drive the operation of systems, from mechanical systems like engines to organizational systems like high schools to conceptual systems like religious faith. Rhetoric refers to effective and persuasive expression. Procedural rhetoric, then, is a practice of using processes persuasively. (3)

I would challenge Bogost’s definition of rhetoric as too narrow, but that is for another time in another class. For today, I want to focus on his concept of procedurality. Later, in his chapter on politics, Bogost will flush out direct connections between his conception of procedures and critical notions of ideology. He foreshadows this in what you read last night:

We often talk about procedures only when they go wrong […] But in fact, procedures in this sense of the word structure behavior; we tend to see a process only when we challenge it. Likewise, procedure and the law are often closely tied. Courts and law enforcement agencies abide by procedures that dictate how actions can and cannot be carried out. Thanks to these common senses of the term, we tend to think of procedures as fixed and unquestionable. They are tied to authority, crafted from the top down, and put in place to structure behavior and identify infringement. Procedures are sometimes related to ideology; they can cloud our ability to see other ways of thinking; consider the police officer or army private who carries out a clearly unethical action but later offers the defense, “I was following procedure.” (3)

I tend to think about Bogost’s take on procedures and law here along the lines of Judith Butler’s theory of performativity and gender. Both require that we fracture human beings in such a way that we can see conscious choice (what in the humanities we call agency) and somekind of unconscious determinism, meaning that often we act in ways that we don’t necessarily consciously “choose.” This is a difficult concept, so let me unpack it a bit. Well, let me start by having Butler unpack this a bit.

Butler’s claim in that video is a large one–that there is a complete separation between sex and gender, that (and I am simplifying here for time, as she is in the video) the way we act is divorced from the biological parts we are given. Way before Butler, Sigmund Freud proposes that we were all born bisexual, and that it was psychological development that later initiated monosexuality. More radical theorists have picked up Freud’s work and suggested that sexuality and desire is best understood as a spectrum, that we are all born in the middle, and that it is culture that pushes us toward heteronormativity. Again, all of this is theoretical and contested. What isn’t contested at this point is the idea that cultural forces play a role in shaping our desire and behavior–and that this behavior happens most often at a level underneath consciousness.

Let me play a game. Let me return to Bogost’s passage on procedurality and the law above, but let me reimagine Butler is writing it:

We often talk about genders only when they go “wrong” […] But in fact, performativity in this sense of the word structures behavior; we tend to see a normative process only when we challenge it. Likewise, gender and the cultural expectations are often closely tied. Schools and cultural institutions structure performances that dictate how gender should be performed. Thanks to these everyday expectations, we tend to think of gender performances as fixed and unquestionable. They are tied to nature, handed down from biology or God, and put in place to structure behavior and identify infringement. Procedures are sometimes related to ideology; they can cloud our ability to see other ways of thinking; consider the teacher or parent who won’t buy their son a My Little Pony and says “But that toy is for girls.”

There are implications to Butler’s work that I don’t necessarily have the time to unpack here, but I will try none the less. I will try via Freud vs postmodern psychoanalysis, and the fetish as perversion vs. perversion as a [Rational, Normalizing] fetish.

This helps me flush out what is at stake when we argue that videogames are procedural, and gives some insight into why such study is important. If Butler is right, and cultural processes structure the way we experience the world and see ourselves, then we need to leverage tools that although us to better see culture at work. We need to value tools that allow us to act, and to feel the consequences of those actions. In describing the game Tenure, Bogost writes:

Tenure makes claims about how high school education operates. Most notably, it argues that educational practice is deeply intertwined with personal and professional politics.

But the skeptic might ask: well, why not just write an essay on such intertwining? What does the game afford us that the traditional text or narrative doesn’t? I’m not sure Bogost answers this question directly; I would answer it by pointing to the intensity of affect, of feeling. It taps into our anxiety by forcing us to make those decisions without foreknowledge of the consequences–the tremor (and potential terror) of the unknown. Even if it is the barest simulacrum of the actual experience of racism, discrimination, terror, helplessness, insecurity, we can recognize its potential ability to persuade someone to reconsider existing social conditions–and perhaps–move to change them.

Games present us with models for how we might behave in the world. They aren’t (as in the case of Walking Dead) necessarily literal. If you play Grand Theft Auto for 3 hours, you probably aren’t going to go outside and mug someone, steal a car, or shoot a police officer. But your attitude toward crime, poverty, and law enforcement might be shaped at an unconscious level.

As I have said, my personal interest is in ethics. One of the first ethical brain teasers you are likely to come across is the Trolley Problem. These kinds of philosophical problems don’t necessarily have a “right” answer, rather, their goal is to help us explore our reasoning and to measure the consistency of our moral choices. They ask us to think about our thinking. Games, from Bogost’s perspective, can ask us to think about our thinking and our acting by acting. Walking Dead, for me, is interesting because in many ways it is a recreation of the trolley experiment, asking us to make painful decisions about who lives or dies, when it is appropriate to tell the truth or lie, how to make terrible choices in a world that often gives us no choice.

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Historical Week 6: Isocrates

Posted on September 28, 2015 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s Plan:

  • Some preliminary reactions to the first round of papers
  • Secondary Source presentations
  • Discussion of Isocrates: major concepts, grid issues, etc
  • Break
  • Papillion, Welch, Haskins, Vitanza

Paper Day Reactions

Here’s some jumbled cut and paste from my feedback.

The Art of Knowing (Diverse) Souls

Ok, this one I addressed a bit in class. I have a serious ethical problem with the Phaedrus. Kennedy’s problem is more pragmatic–simply that Plato’s method of analyzing the soul of your audience breaks down once we have more than one type of soul. Like I said, my problem is ethical, which, here, I will loosely define as the “method(s) by which we conduct ourselves with others in the world.” I work from a body of theorists, including the phenomenologist Emmanuel Levinas, poststructuralist Jacques Derrida, and feminists such as Julia Kristeva and Adriana Cavarero, that challenge the idea that we can ever know another person. In fact, they argue that the very idea that we could know another is responsible for much of the violence in the world. Their articulation of ethics is rooted in the idea that we cannot ever know an/other. And I think rhetoric, with its ability to pay attention to audience’s and the problematics of communication, can play a role in understanding why and how we cannot know an/other.

But that gets ahead a little bit. For now I would reaffirm my opposition to the claim that we can know someone’s soul. Also, pragmatically speaking, I would suggest entering into a rhetorical situation with the mindset that 1) you know what the other person should think and 2) you know them better than they know themselves is probably counterproductive!

Is this fair to Plato? Could we offer a more charitable reading? When he writes of knowing souls, could he be arguingI, from a practical perspective, a philosopher must learn how to interact with the social/political “structures” (here I am folding together a chain of significations: ethos, ideology, habitus, habitat, nomos, place, gathering place of socially constructed identity) of his (sic) day. So, ideally speaking (har, har), we wouldn’t need to learn rhetoric. But because we live in a democracy, and because we have courts, it is important for a philosopher to know how to address different kinds of souls.

And, if we read the term souls outside of our modern connotations, but read it with Isocrates in mind, then perhaps Plato is saying that we need to know how to address different groups of people (understood broadly, what sells in Athens won’t sell in Sparta, what sells in Boston probably won’t work in Dallas).

Unrealistic, or Should I Say Idealist, Representation of the Wrangle of the Barnyard, the Whirl of Language

I’m smirking a bit when thinking of this Idealized scene of Idealized dialectic put next to Burke’s depiction of the human barnyard and our contemporary political practice. Jim Corder, a Burke disciple, responds to Carl Rogers’ theory of argument this way:

Such insights added to those of Carl Rogers, I’ll say again, have been highly valuable. They lead to patterns of argument that may even work, part of the time, in some settings. But they won’t do. They do not, I believe, face the flushed, feverish, quaky, shaky, angry, scared, hurt, shocked, disappointed, alarmed, outraged, even terrified condition that a person comes to when his or her narrative is opposed by a genuinely contending narrative.Then it is one life or another, perhaps this life or none. (“Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love” 21).

This passage pretty much explains my own reaction to Platonic rhetoric, and even much of Aristotle’s logocentric approach (and here I would complicate my own characterization of Aristotle by pointing out the more Heideggerian treatment of pathos we discussed in class). And I think it sets up Vitanza’s reaction to Isocrates that we will discuss.

Rhetoric and Poetics

I’m not familiar with Gagarin, but this claim intrigues me a bit. I’m curious what constitutes persuasion here. Also, if I am following: is Gagarin claiming that the sophists were more like performers than politicians? So that sophistic style might compare to say, a hip hop artist? Again, if I am following, that is an intriguing idea (though here I would echo McComiskey’s caution against using the term Sophist as a collective).

This makes me think of Jeffrey Walker’s work on the connections between rhetoric and poetics. In essence, Walker argues that while we often try to dissociate the two, or treat rhetoric as a public, practical transformation of the prior poetic tradition, we can’t easily do those things. Rather, if anything, poetry was an intense specialization of a more common and dominant epideictic tradition (in the style of Gorgias).

The Essential Sophists

I’m thinking here of Derrida, and his idea that any Idea must necessarily contain its opposite, that it cannot exist without it. But the question I have is “what is a sophist?” What is it about the sophist that is essential. Here I am also reminded of McComiskey’s caution against homogenizing the sophists as Sophist.

Your idea that sophistry is connected to the social (and, I’m going to go out on a limb here and suppose that Protagoras is the sophist behind your Sophist).

But I am also thinking this essential sophistry another way–in terms of methodology. To what extent is a dialectical analysis a transformation of the chief sophistic maneuver: making the weaker argument the stronger? Which i would argue is already a mischaracterization, since the sophistic movement might better be articulated as the ability to occupy (as in place, as in ethos) two different sides of an argument. To stand in two different shoes. Ethics. The ability to think in pieces (dialectic, Aristotelian ontology/taxomony).

Can Virtue Be Taught?

Yeah, one question driving Greek debate over rhetoric and pedagogy is whether virtue can be taught. Boy, they spill a lot of ink on this. Isocrates, in particular, seems vexed by this one. Socrates gets to essentially skip this one, since he repeatedly claims that he doesn’t teach anyone anything. To which, I would want to respond, “bullshit.”

Secondary Source Presentations

Presto! These will happen now.

Discussion of Isocrates

Key topics:

  • Definition of philosophy
  • Definition of sophistry
  • Papillion’s interpretation of techne
  • Papillion on epideictic (157-159); read with Halloran on ethos
  • Purpose of rhetoric
  • Characterization of dialectical training, swipes at Socrates
  • Concept of paideia; how we can redefine logos
  • Concept of advantage, implications for rhetoric

Here’s my 2011 reading notes on:

And here’s my reading of the Papillion article:

Papillion extracts from Isocrates an interpretation of techne that resists the more literate (Ong), logocentric, or ontological sense supplied by Plato and Aristotle. Rather than providing fixed rules, Isocrates attempted to develop more of a kairotic, situational awareness through a mix of practice, performance, and analysis (151, 156). This pedagogical difference is rooted in a theoretical one, for Papillion suggests that “Isocrates’ refusal to use the term rhêtorikê shows his desire to avoid the abstraction that Plato sought” (151). Similarly: “Plato and Aristotle fought to separate rhetoric and philosophy; Isocrates sought to keep the interest in communication, in logos, together. […] Isocrates saw himself in a synthetic role, not an analytic one: rhetoric and philosophy were not separable in his view” (153). Papillion’s distinction between synthesis and analysis predicts Latour’s distinction between construction and critique; Isocrates occuplies a pragmatic middle ground between a chaotic refusal of systemization (which Papillion connects to Derrida and poststructuralism) and insistence upon fixed systems (which he associates with Plato and Aristotle).

Papillion concludes re-appraising epideictic from an Isocratic perspective. Part of Aristotle’s ontological project involved breaking rhetoric into species, and Papillion suggests that he created the species of epideictic as praise and blame. But Isocrates would have rejected such a distinction, arguing that praise and blame were a part of any rhetorical situation. Papillion:

I would propose here that what Isocrates did, what Isocrates taught, was not epideictic rhetoric, not judicial rhetoric, not even deliberative rhetoric; Isocrates practiced what I shall call hypodeictic rhetoric. This is rhetoric that uses praise and blame– mostly praise– and a strong sense of comparison to set out situations as examples for those around to learn and from which those around could create policy for the future. […] I offer “hypodeictic” here as a new term to show the importance for the community of such discourse. (158 emphasis original)

I believe this sense of hypodeictic can be read across Isocrates’ concept of paideia, and in line with the sense of ethos developed by Halloran, the sense of nomos developed by Jarratt, and the more robust articulation of epideictic offered by Sullivan. For Isocrates, our sense of community is what drives any persuasive situation; like Burke’s concept of identification, Isocrates’ notion of paideia insists that we must first occupy a position as a we before any logical (or even emotional) appeal will have affect.

Before we move forward, I would stress that I think Isocrates provides us with a much more comprehensive sense of ethos than we get from Plato or Aristotle. Plato and Aristotle are chiefly interested in logos. Aristotle’s (Heideggerian) treatment of pathos, for instance, can be understood as minimizing the extent to which emotional predisposition interferes with rational argumentation. In her paper, Amy pointed out that Aristotle’s Rhetoric seek to transform an audience (think Ong: one large homogenous group) into listeners (think Ong: readers, complete with the modern notion of critical distance).

Isocrates isn’t interested in that project. He’s thinking of discourse in terms of what it can do, and how it can best be leveraged to affect change. In particular, he is thinking of discourse as what unites us together. Anticipating Althusser and Zizek by a few millennia, Isocrates is essentially suggesting that “all discourse is ideology ethos/epideictic.” Or, for those more familiar with Burke (“Terministic Screens”) and Corder (“Argument as Emergence”), that it is impossible to experience the world outside of our strategic vocabularies (Burke) or our narratives (Corder). Papillion concludes “arguing for a more profound sense of epideictic,” and I think we can turn to 20th century theory, which, of course, is a strong rejection of the logocentrism that extends from Ancient Athens to Modern Europe, particularly England and Germany. This connection, from Athens to Germany, is what haunts Vitanza.

Understanding How We Understand Isocrates

First a quick overview of Welch.

Second, some Haskins.

Third, let’s go back to Papillion.

And Vitanza.

How are we to interpret Vitanza’s skepticism? Tonight I want to tease out an answer through a chain of passages from Negation, Subjectivity, and the History of Rhetoric:

  • 140, Panhellenism
  • 132, Logos and Panhellenism
  • 4, Burke. 5, Deleuze
  • 142, Unity
  • 147, Hegemon and Paideia
  • 149, at home
  • 157, what home?
  • 164, back to Burke and Germany
  • 125, Negative Essentializing
  • 12, ” We would kNOw.”
  • 49, 258 Ontological / dialectical thinking versus…
  • 236,…any attempt to count to infinity

It should go without saying by now that Vitanza names this attempt to count to infinity, an attempt to be/come in the image of the Talmudic tradition, “sophistry.”

A final thought. Problems. Thinkers. Ideas.

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Rhetoric and Gaming 5.1: Project Two Proposals

Posted on September 22, 2015 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s plan:

  • Some Quick Reaction to the Papers
  • Working in Groups on Project 2

This means I will once again stall our discussion of race until Thursday (although, our discussion on Thursday and talking to groups about project possibilities indicates that the reading on race resonated with some people).

A Few Responses to the Papers

Here’s some ideas I have developed while responding to papers.

Responding to Ebert

Personally, I would start here [his definition of art] were I responding to Ebert. I would respond in two ways: first, can we find games that alter our nature? I *think* we can.

Second, how can we expand this definition, give it more substance? I think Aristotle and Dali are especially useful. The former teaches us that art helps us become functioning, feeling humans, the second that art pushes against our boundaries, asking us to see things otherwise, changing us.

I also think a major problem with Ebert’s position is that he reduces all video games to Pac Man, or even to something like Monopoly. He doesn’t consider (or isn’t aware of) games driven by compelling narratives.

In his defense, that definition of games [rules, goals, feedback/points, voluntary participation] is pretty universal. The problem here, as you suggest in your previous paragraph, is that Ebert doesn’t distinguish video games from board games. Sure, early video games were often just digitalized board games, or were a kind of repetitive test of hand/eye coordination (say, Space Invaders or Pac Man).

But games evolved pretty significantly over the 1990’s. Story went from something you read in the manual, to something that happens in between levels, to something far more deep and integrated into the gaming experience (thank you Playstation, with your Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Final Fantasy VII, etc).

Building from the above (games are interactive)

You are on to something here. There was a lot of debate in the 1990’s about whether games were more or less interactive and immersive than books.

Proponents of books argued that readers had to interact with the words in order to construct a world. Proponents of games argued that there was an affective, emotional intensity to making an avatar move, to (at least seemingly) making things happen.

Defining Art

One person brought in a quote from Thomas Merton: “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”

To which I replied:

This actually reminds me of a compromise between Aristotle (memesis) and Dali (surrealism).

In some art, we find confirmation of our/selves, or we are provided material through which to (re)fashion ourselves. Art as building blocks. Art as a way to find ourselves (in a life that is often chaotic and disorienting).

In some other art, we lose our/selves. Our sense of self, propriety, morality is challenged and we are left reeling. Art as a chaotic force (in a life that often feels too determined, too rigid, too static, too fixed).

I hadn’t read that Merton quote before, but I like it.

On the connection between Aristotelian tragedy and games

I do think video games often resemble Aristotelian tragedy, in both we see the consequences of an action. Andboth attempt to help us overcome the desire that leads to the tragic mistake. They teach us who not to be, what not to do.

Qualifying an Argument

A paragraph ends:

Overall, art is a complex concept in humanity that is open for interpretation, where each person has their own opinion and perspective as to what is artistic to them.

[Rhetoric as invention, arrangement, style, memory, delivery]. I wouldn’t end the paragraph with this, since it undermines the work you’ve just done. Sure, we all recognize that art isn’t something we can definitively define–but I think you want to open this section with the qualification (especially because Ebert relies too heavily on this qualification), and then step forward to offer a definition (aware of its inherent limitations).

You Are a Short Leap from Radiohead to U2

This is an interesting argumentative move you make here [that art, like games, are subject to rules, points, objectives, and outcomes]. For the most part, it works.

Though I would point out (and I think Ebert would retort), that you are confusing something *intrinsic* to the work (in the case of games) with things that are *extrinsic* to the work (in terms of art). In Aristotle’s language, you are mixing essence with accident.

In other words, a game itself requires rules, points, etc. A work of art doesn’t–though you have shown that works of art are themselves like objects in a larger “game” of life.

The flaw to this logic would be that most “great” works of art, the one’s that we truly revere, were not financially successful during their own era. It is only years later, when we look back, that we recognize the extent to which these works contained something new, original, unprecedented. A prime example of this would be Moby Dick or Walden Pond, two “classic” American novels that went virtually unread in their own era (and most of the financially successful books from their era would today be dismissed as rubbish).

In short, rarely does aesthetic and economic capital overlap. Things that are aesthetically superior are rarely easy to consume and hence do not sell well. Things that sell well are often easy to consume and hence lack aesthetic depth.

Project 2 Proposals

I will ask each group to share a Google Doc with me by 11:59pm on Thursday. Groups should have 3-4 members. The proposal should be in block paragraph, memo format (here I am hoping each group has one PWRT student).

  • Group Names
  • Project Description: a 2-3 sentence summation of your aims. What is your research question (and, if you can’t frame your goals in terms of an open-ended question, then we might have a problem).
  • Methodology for selecting games to be included in your study. You should point to the methodologies of another study if possible–think of the academic articles we read for today. Also, you should look for other academic studies as you prepare the proposal (I can help with this on Tuesday, that’s today!)
  • A tentative list of games that this methodology has produced. You can certainly change this list as the project develops.
  • Methodology for analyzing games. Give me a description of what you will look at/for, whether you will play the games, how you will collate your data. Your methodological discussion should point to other articles/studies. At this time, you should include a list of things you have read or will read to help validate your findings. In the final project, I will ask for you to justify why you looked for what you looked for–are your results valid?
  • A hypothesis: what are you expecting to find?
  • A project time chart, outlining goals, due dates, etc. I will ask each group member to keep a log that charts the hours they have invested on the project in this document starting today until you turn it in. The log should be the last section of the document. I have attached a sample proposal and log that you can copy/paste.
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Expository Writing 5.1

Posted on September 22, 2015 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today should be a relatively short session. I will give you time in class to get some writing done. Today’s plan:

  • Weekly Writing (and some reaction)
  • Reading Jenkins
  • Volunteers for workshopping

First, I want to spend some time going over a few minor points and talking about writing. Killing babies, listening for logical development. quick fix. First sentence.

Second, we need to begin reading the Jenkins material. To get us started, I want you to read Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers pages 1-16. As you read this material, I want you to find the following:

  • How does Jenkins characterize fan communities? What attributes does he give them?
  • Why should we pay attention to fans?
  • What are the key debates between scholars regarding fan communities and fan studies?
  • What special terminology, methodologies, or theoretical perspectives does the text introduce (names, terms, ideas, etc. that were previously unfamiliar to you

I am asking these questions because I want to put together a heuristic (a set of questions to aid invention) that you can use for your final papers. Note that even if you are not writing a final paper about a specific community, I will still ask you to do the reading and participate in the discussion, and you will still be taking the quizzes.

Third, I need two volunteers to workshop writing on Thursday. Note that I am open to workshopping academic writing, too!

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Expository Writing 4.2: Working with Sources

Posted on September 17, 2015 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today’s plan:

  • Looking at Writing
  • Handling Sources
  • Workshopping Tim’s piece

As I was working through your writing this week, I found a couple of things that everyone should keep in mind. Let’s start with those.

I want to look at an older post I wrote on working with sources and direct quotation. As I’ve said, the trick with writing is learning to respond to other people’s ideas, and I want to give you a formula for doing that today.

Finally, we’re going to workshop Tim’s piece today. I asked everyone to identify a strength of the writing–a great phrase or sentence, a nice transition, a strategic verb. And I asked you to address a way we could make the writing more effective.

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Rhetoric and Gaming 4.2: Project 2 Proposals

Posted on September 17, 2015 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

I am going to stall our discussion of race and the readings I assigned Tuesday until next week, because I want to spend today’s class forming groups and identifying methodologies.

To do this, I want to watch two short videos that deal with race, both produced by the series Extra Credit. We are watching these to compare different methodologies for analyzing race in games:

And a second video:

I am interested in the first video, because it suggests that we can look at games that address race and racial issues even if they have white protagonists.

But I also, thinking of the reading, want to suggest that there are ways of developing studies that focus solely on character creation, and looking at the options games provide players. Here’s some questions to get you thinking:

  • In your project, would you rather look at the character creation process for 10 games? Or would you rather spend time playing a game an analyzing (counting, archiving, etc) the different races of the characters you meet?
  • Is your study more quantitative (again, counting) or qualitative (arguing, interpreting)
  • Are you more interested in looking at race? Or gender? Or, assuming you plan to play through a smaller number of games, both?
  • What genre of games will you play? RPG? MMO? MOBA? FPS? RTS? Sports*?
  • Instead of designing a project around genre, can you think of another way of identifying your research material? Perhaps the top 10 games on metacritic? Perhaps the top games in 2014 according to Steam? Perhaps comparing the top 10 indie games (based on awards?) to the top 10 AAA games?

I have set up a discussion thread on Canvas to get the conversation started. If you already have an idea, then go there and write something. If you don’t really have an idea, then wait 5 minutes and then comment on someone’s post. In 20 minutes, I’ll ask groups to form up.

I want to get this conversation started now because by next Thursday I want every group to have developed a project proposal, which will be shared with me via Google Docs. Here’s my expectations for the proposal:

  • Group Names
  • Project Description: a 2-3 sentence summation of your aims. What is your research question (and, if you can’t frame your goals in terms of an open-ended question, then we might have a problem).
  • Methodology for selecting games to be included in your study. You should point to the methodologies of another study if possible–think of the academic articles we read for today. Also, you should look for other academic studies as you prepare the proposal (I can help with this on Tuesday)
  • A tentative list of games that this methodology has produced.
  • Methodology for analyzing games. Give me a description of what you will look at/for, whether you will play the games, how you will collate your data. Your methodological discussion should point to other articles/studies. At this time, you should include a list of things you have read or will read to help validate your findings. In the final project, I will ask for you to justify why you looked for what you looked for–are your results valid?
  • A hypothesis: what are you expecting to find?
  • A project time chart, outlining goals, due dates, etc. I will ask each group member to keep a log that charts the hours they have invested on the project in this document starting today until you turn it in. The log should be the last section of the document. I have attached a sample proposal and log that you can copy/paste.
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Rhet&Gaming 4.1: Project Two

Posted on September 15, 2015 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Today:

  • Preamble
  • Sarkeesian
  • Project Two
  • Homework

Prepping for Project Two

Last class I showed one of my favorite video’s, Jay Smooth’s “How to Tell Someone They Sound Racist.” Key to Smooth’s rhetorical strategy is to maintain a distinction between judging/indicting the *person* and the thing they said. I want to keep that distinction in mind this week as we begin to discuss the difficult topics of racial, gender, and sexual representation(s) in games.

These can be difficult conversations. I want you to feel comfortable to ask questions–I am not attempting to police thought. I often think what makes people hesitant to join these conversations is the ire with which “Social Justice Warriors,” such as myself, can rain fire down upon people who might, out of innocent ignorance, say something that mortally offends their liberal sensibilities. So, up front, I am warning everyone to take a deep breath and extend charity and tolerance to everyone else’s perspective.

I also want you to take a look at this picture:

The picture might cause you to chuckle. That’s ok. Humor is an impulse reaction. But as educated citizens, thinking about this picture should give pause. There is a space between impulse and thought. Let me unpack this a bit.

Often comedy operates by transgressing imposed social norms, giving us a moment of respite from the hard work of being civilized human beings. The philosopher Slavoj Zizek argues that you can judge the depths of a friendship by how deeply you are willing to transgress social expectations. Archer is one of my favorite shows. But, in terms of rhetoric, you have to be acutely aware of context, situation, and (multiple) audience(s).

If upon reflection you don’t realize that you shouldn’t bring a sign mocking genocide to a public event, then we have problem. And if you think I’m making a big deal out of a little problem, then you need to keep that opinion to yourself. Seriously. I don’t want to hear it.

It might seem as if I am not willing to extend charity to your perspective, that I am policing you. In part, yes. Part of my job, especially as someone teaching in the Professional Writing, Rhetoric, and Technology program, is to teach you the social boundaries that discourse should not cross. Transforming genocide into a joke is one of them. We can debate whether my job entails teaching you what to think or who to be in your private moments. However, it is beyond debate that my job entails highlighting how such discourse generates severe repercussions in public forums.

I’d wager that if a bunch of black students from a northern university made a sign that said “Let’s March ‘Em Like Sherman All the Way Back to the Sea,” some people might take offense. And I’d say that if a bunch of muslim students made a sign that said “Let’s Blow ‘Em Up Like the Twin Towers,” then Fox News would go absolutely batshit crazy. You don’t get to make a joke about another culture’s tragedies. Period. Being a sophisticated Professional Writer or Rhetorician requires a measure of cross-cultural awareness. As we highlighted in our discussion of art, empathy is the ability to stand in another’s shoes and approximate their reaction. It is also the ability to listen to someone else’s critique without becoming overly defensive. We’ll be practicing both in the upcoming project.

Jokes are fun. But you don’t get to purchase your identity, or just have some fun, at the expense of others–especially at the expense of groups that have been historically victimized, enslaved, suppressed, lynched, or disenfranchised. And, in the era of the Internet, those historically victimized groups have more of a voice and presence than they have had before. And that’s a pretty good transition into project two.

Project 2: Representations of Race and Gender in Games

I want to begin by exploring Anita Sarkeesian’s series on “Tropes vs Women in Games” (here “tropes” means metaphorical representation). In short, Sarkeesian’s project, funded via Kickstarter, identifies the different, shallow, and reductive ways women are represented in games. Her video on “Women as Rewards” provides a good example. We’ll watch the first 7 minutes (and then minutes 10-13):

And one more video, her take on the classic game Beyond Good and Evil:

Ok, with these as examples, let’s turn to the Project 2 description on the syllabus:

Level Two: Representations of Race and Gender in Video Games

In our fist unit we looked at video games as aesthetic objects; in our second unit we will examine them as socio-cultural artifacts. While scholars are increasingly noting the pedagogic potential of video games (particularly, James Gee’s oft-cited What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Literacy and Learning), they also note, with growing concern, the rather myopic presentation of women, minorities, and other cultures in games. If games are going to advance, then they will need to be sensitive to these issues. They can do better, and they will if we keep telling them to. Think: Bechdel test (and why we can still do better).

Our second project will turn a critical eye to games to see how they measure up to 21st century standards for identity politics. We will be building off the work of Anita Sarkeesian and here Tropes Vs. Women in Games series. Sarkeesian’s work has drawn sharp criticism from what has become known and the Gamergate movement. I’ll deal with this later.

While Sarkeesian’s project focuses on gender, I will be interested in expanding the premise to also look at representations of race. My premise here is simple: if we are to elevate games into cultural objects worthy of a place in our schools and universities, then games will need to become increasingly sophisticated in their representations. We need to be critical of some games, and praise others.

Of course, here we should also be wary of over-generalizing: after all, we wouldn’t say that all books belong in high school classrooms, so I am not saying that all games do, either. But it does warrant looking at the most popular games in a variety of genres to see what kinds of identifications and procedures (thinking ahead to Bogost) these games ask us to internalize.

Over the next few weeks you will work in groups of 3-4 to produce a video that investigates representations of race and gender within a particular genre of games. Your video should contextualize itself in terms of Sarkeesian’s project and the articles we read in class. The videos can both point to games that reproduce the tropes she identifies (which we’ll cover more on Thursday), or offer other games, like Beyond Good and Evil, that transcend cliched, stereotyped, or misogynist representations.

Homework

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Historical Rhetorics Week 4: Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Or If Not His, Somebody Else’s

Posted on September 14, 2015 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

What a mess of a day! We have so much to do!

  • A quick note on Byron Hawk’s historiography essay
  • A new grid (thanks to Stephanie), so let’s cover the basic terminology: branches, pisteis, topics, etc.
  • Reviewing secondary sources
    • How to make an addition to the wiki
  • Secondary source presentations (presentation day list)
  • Aristotle’s response to Plato: what does this text have two introductions?
  • Aristotle and emotion / psychology (Ryan, Heidegger)
  • Aristotle and ethos / prepare the judge (perhaps a better response to Plato?)
  • Aristotle’s Book 3 (Delivery)
  • Aristotle’s other works: Ethics and Poetics: mimesis and catharsis; another response to Plato (link to undergrad material, and here too)
  • Homework: Paper day!

My old notes on Book One and Two.

Find: “Rhetorical and Scientific Aspects of the Nicomachean Ethics“

Aristotle’s Ethics (Or, What the Rhetoric Doesn’t Say)

I have a handout!

From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Aristotle’s distinction between episteme and techne:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/episteme-techne/#3

Let us return to the definition of craft in the Nicomachean Ethics. Having distinguished craft from scientific knowledge, Aristotle also distinguishes it from virtue (aretê). To do so he begins by distinguishing between making something (poiêton) and action (praktikon), since the disposition (hexis) with respect to making is different from the disposition with respect to acting. Technê is a disposition (hexis) that produces something by way of true reasoning; it is concerned with the bringing into existence (peri genesin) of things that could either exist or not. The principle (archê) of these things is in the one who makes them, whereas the principle of those things that exist by necessity or by nature is in the things themselves (1140a1-20). Presumably Aristotle means to distinguish between activity, whose end is in itself, and making, whose end is a product separate from the activity of making. When someone plays the flute, e.g., typically there is no further product of playing; playing the flute is an end in itself. This distinction is clearer in the opening paragraphs of the Nicomachean Ethics. There Aristotle says that each technê, investigation, action (praxis), and undertaking seems to aim at some good. The ends vary, however; some ends are the activities themselves and some ends are products (erga) beyond the activities. As examples of ends, he cites health as the end of medicine, a ship as the end of shipbuilding, and victory as the end of generalship; these ends are products separate from the respective activities (1094a5-10).

This distinction between making and acting is important for the distinction between craft (technê) and virtue (aretê) because virtue is a disposition for acting. The value of the works (ginomena) of technai is in the works themselves — because they are of a certain sort. By contrast, the value of a virtuous action depends on the agent, who must act with knowledge and deliberately choose the action for itself; finally, the action must come from a fixed disposition of character. The latter two features do not belong to technê (1105a25-1105b5). Presumably, then, the craftsman does not choose his activity for itself but for the end; thus the value of the activity is in what is made. In the case of virtue, by contrast, the value is not in a separate product but in the activity itself. Indeed, Aristotle has another important reason for distinguishing technê from virtue. As a rational potency (dunamis meta logou) technê is capable of contrary effects. Medicine, e.g., can produce both disease and health. The reason is that knowledge (epistêmê) is a rational formula (logos) which explains a thing and its privation. Presumably, then, medicine includes a rational formula or definition of health and its privation, disease; hence, it is a capacity to produce either of these opposite states. Aristotle goes on to say that, while the knowledge is relevant to both states, in a sense it is most relevant to the positive state (Metaphysics, 1046b5-25). Of course, virtue is not a potency for contrary effects in any way at all.

In short–Aristotle’s concept of techne is a rigorous defense of “bringing into existence” as a virtue–equivalent to that of dialectic’s ability to “bring before the eyes.” The earlier section of the Ethics points to political science as the highest human pursuit. And, while Aristotle doesn’t make it explicit, we could frame rhetoric as the art that transforms individual prudence into public action.

If you accept this framing, then you might also accept my idea that the Rhetoric is an early a text, written before Aristotle’s other works–perhaps even written while still a student of Plato’s (I’m thinking particularly of the condemnation of delivery in book 3). But perhaps the older Aristotle, were he to return to this text, might offer us something less Platonic. Let us think of dialectic (episteme) and rhetoric (as techne) in terms of medicine. Dialectic might identify what constitutes good health. Prudence might encourage us to develop habits of good health ourselves–the discipline it requires to transform our knowledge of good health into daily practice. But let rhetoric be seen as the techne able to change someone, to bring that level of health into existence in others.

Random Thoughts

Recalling Burke’s rhetoric / the scramble of the barnyard. It is in the Ethics that Aristotle clearly obligates us to intervention. In the Ethics that we see a robust response to Berlin’s condemnation–there are still hints at elitism (A notes that too many humans are just too bad to be “good,” specifically, too interested in base happiness to enjoy the higher happiness of a life well lived (according to justice).

Logos artistic [have to be invented by the speaker] non-artistic [given, quoting others: laws, oaths, contracts, reports, torture,] *note that postmodernism has probably deconstructed this binary to the point of meaninglessness, once there is no objective, transcendent, and/or pre-existing Truth/authority, then every discursive act is created in the moment. All testimony and evidence require artistic contextualization.

I.ii: The necessity of rhetoric, and enthymematic logic, lies in the inability of audience members to follow or understand dialectical reasoning (1357a). Clearly speaking to Plato.

Ethos: comparing 1356a, 1378a.

Pathos: how do we reconcile Aristotle’s skepticism (1356a) in Book 1 against his ontology of emotions in book 2? / Preparing the judge requires we begin by identifying the emotional dispositions that might cloud or complicate the audience’s enthymematic or dialectical reasoning.

To follow up on Aristotle and emotion:
Jamie Dow’s Passions and Persuasions in Aristotle’s Rhetoric

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