Devitt Response

Okay, I'm blogging from Biloxi, so my situation might affect the text, as the genre "constructs the situation and the situation constructs the genre."

Devitt makes some kind of point early on in "Generalizing about Genre" that lots of dichotomies too often define us (who we are and what we do). She goes holistic: "relating toor concerned with wholes or with complete systems rather than with the analysis of, treatment of, or dissection into parts —ho·lis·ti·cal·ly /-ti-k(&-)lE/ adverb"
(Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary, © 2002 Merriam-Webster, Inc). And I get a bit confused about what her motivations are in moving towards this "unified view of writing" (573) and why she wants to move toward this "integrated, unified theory of writing" (584). I understand that she wants to convince me that the reconception of genre is important and can help Composition scholars eventually "capture the essence of writing" (584). But I am bogged down in her discussion by the abstract concepts which to her are second nature, something I can imagine being like the basic and semi-automatic she brings in from Flower and Hayes. So, to get beyond my own ignorant resistance and to speak on the points brought up in the Devitt text, let me investigate/speculate why she has a problem with dichotomies in the first place.

What are the advantages to studying an animal holistically? Can I know all about it? How about a raccoon, for example? Let's say I study raccoons and teach Raccoon 101/102/333? I need to know all about raccoons, right? I need to know all about the different parts that make up Raccoon Studies. I need to know raccoon biology, raccoon physiology, raccoon sociology, raccoon habitat, raccoon migratory patterns, raccoons versus skunks, the effects of cat food on raccoons, etc., in order to come to some unified theory about raccoons. What would be the advantage for me as a raccoon theorist to separate all the different kinds of raccoon studies? They all affect each other and overlap. But some raccoon experts might specialize in certain areas. These specialists might have stumbled into their specialities out of a need to fill in the blanks in the research field. If the field was already saturated with studies about raccoon social behavior, I might have to carve out my own niche in the speciality of raccoons versus opposums for resources and habitat. Not that I am not interested in the raccoon as a whole, but to help draw a better picture and form a more complete understanding of the raccoon as an animal, I have had to research raccoons and opossums for the last three years.

Now I think of Dr. Walcher's focus on Error. And I can see how he may have chosen a particular facet of Composition studies that may have been both open to new research and of particular interest to him. And I can understand how investigating a smaller part may improve the understanding of the larger whole. Then I realize that Composition studies is evolving much faster than the raccoon, and that complicates my attempt at understanding through metaphor, but complicated is not ruined.

I am trying to follow Devitt's idea that encouraging dichotomies is destructive. For example, she says that "Treating genre as form requires dividing form from content" (574), when she wants to believe that "Form and content in discourse are one." I am probably oversimplifying and generalizing, but is Devitt saying that Homogeneity is Desired for the purposes of achieving a Unified Theory of Writing? Isn't such a unified theory ultimately impossible due to the dynamic and evolutionary qualities of human discourse? Is Devitt truly after some unified theory of writing that may inform how we teach composition to freshman students in order to provide them with the power of reading and writing critically so that they may benefit in their lives/careers from our instruction? In other words, is Devitt after a Practical Resonance to her approach to Genre, as in "When we create assignments and as we evaluate responses to them, we must consider both their situational and generic demands" (583)? Or is she writing about writing, and about thinking and talking about writing, in a way that further discourages an implementational understanding of writing? Does Devitt really want to "capture the essence of writing" (584)? Or does it profit her better to keep it a mystery, an abstract and ever-changing dynamic animal, much more complicated than any raccoon?

I am probably conflating dichotomies with specialized fields. I don't want to come across as unsympathetic in my reading, but I do want to engage Devitt critically, and the dichotomy thing seemed an easy place to start.

My favorite sentence of Devitt's is "Writers work creatively within the frame of past texts and given genres just as they work within the frame of a given language" (579). She's working with analogy here! I would have liked her to use more colorful stuff like that. If I were her pal and was trying to help her get this published in Atlantic Monthly or something, I would have urged her to color up the text with more metaphors and some better imagery or examples, to supplement/complement the dry approach to abstracts. Genre, situation, audience, clarity, entertain?

Feedback would be nice. If any of my Valued Readers can find mistakes in my thinking, or thinks I have missed something in my reading or left something important out of my response, please Respond to
This Humble Blogger,
Jordanimo Rex