Without a Vaccum in Sight

That, I believe, is the purpose of Anne Wysocki and her colleagues (who are curiously omitted from the introduction): to reveal the situatedness of text, technology, and media, and through opening context-relations and bringing them to the forefront of consciousness and analysis, to empower writers and readers with agency to affect those situations.

She writes, “…agency and structure are interdependent.  We have agency, that is, insofar as we recognize how we are positioned by and hence can work with and within our particular historically-situated and contingent material structures…” (p. 10)  Wysocki draws a direct line between knowledge/understanding/awareness and the ability to act/change/affect.  We already know how to perform these types of analysis, she says, we just need to apply them purposefully and thoughtfully to “new media.”

In a word, awareness seems the mission.  “…our compositions only ever work within and as

Things that seem "neutral:" left to right,
horizontal  text. This would not be quite as funny,
 if you read/wrote using ancient Chinese characters
which often oriented vertically on the page.

part of other, already existing, structures and practices” Wysocki writes, adding that in order to find openings for change (and thus agency), we must be “attentive to what is old and hanging on (and hanging on, especially, quietly, in places that do not call attention to themselves.)” (p. 8)  Noticeably, Wysocki does not prescribe what those changes might be.  Yet the silence between her words, in which no obvious personal political/social agenda lies, has an agentive force of its own.  The reader or student recognizes that once they achieve this attentiveness, practicing the craft of analyzing texts for how they betray their relevant situation, the choice of what and how to change becomes their own.

I hear Wysocki encouraging professors to teach their students not what to think, but how to think. She hints at the implications of this empowerment, by discussing the notion of responsibility in writing. “Technologies are not responsible for texts,”  she writes, “we are, within the limitations of what different technologies afford.” (p. 19)  Later, again she includes: “I hope we teach a generosity towards the positions that others produce…and that through our readings we can help each other achieve positions that are the most responsibly produced we can.” (p. 23)  Power and control entwine and propagate themselves in language, constantly reinforcing messages of capitalism, the literate elite, consumerism, and so forth.  Unraveling those messages and examining their contents gives the reader power.  This potential of power, the ability to recognize and change situations through discourse, must also come with checks and balances, and thus the discussion of responsibility.  What does responsibility look like in rhetoric?  A conversation too long for here, but a worthy one none the less.

Materiality...

Another beauty of Writing New Media is the discussion of embodiment, materiality.  Wysocki expertly shows how texts, and our manners of producing them, become material products of their lived environments, situated within specific historical junctions.  Too often we regard writing (and the authority it carries thereof) as non-physical and use its perceived bodiless-ness to justify drawing lines between the academic/personal, rational/emotional, even male/female.  She writes of “materiality effacement,” when texts work to not show their physical nature.  These are the ones to watch out for, the ones that will carry rich meaning.  We do this “material defacement” to politicians, doctors, academics, too.  When you read that Obama might smoke, the public goes, “what?”  Prominent figures are built up as bodiless, ruling symbols excluded from the infirmities of physical nature—something on which we can depend, seemingly exempt from human fallibilities.   

Connected, connected, Wysocki breathes throughout her text—everything is always jointed, laced in, dependant and contingent on something else.  There is no text in a vacuum, no intention-less writing.  Everything is always written at the stake of something else.  Thus asking, “who’s power and control is at stake in this text?” becomes a highly valuable form of analyzing.

Finally, I cannot conclude without an respectful nod to her discussion of identity.  If we are

"New technologies are always designed out of existing technologies
and out of existing material economies, patterns, and habits...
 our compositions only ever work within and  as part of other, already
existing, structures and practices." (p. 8)

seeking after anything, in all our explorations of knowledge, our writing and our discussion, the reason we put astronauts on the moon and decipher quantum physics, and argue about rhetoric and ways of knowing, is it not to discover ourselves?  Wysocki stages the analysis of “new media” as a mirror, revealing the disposition and location of our being (as both a noun and verb) in that moment.  Quoting Stuart Hall, “we therefore occupy our identities very retrospectively: having produced them, we then know who we are.” (p. 20)  Quite perfectly, she brings a discussion of the self in line with a commentary on knowledge as a whole: there is no static, unified self that precedes our work, and through working we discover it, but rather: “the work makes visible to us what and where we are at that time.”  From here, we can “try on” positions, constantly moving in this dynamic relationship, until we find satisfaction.

Popular culture may say we “are,” we “exist,” and we apply ourselves to problems and situations the way one might apply a layer of paint, or a piece of clothing. But rhetoric views the self as amorphous, constantly changing in response to the environment and the texts with which we engage.  So be aware of that change—become (verb) intentionally.