The article by Schwartz was published in 1971, but it seems philosophically related to the arguments of some of the theorists we’re reading in class.  For example, Anne Freadman writes that, “If the rhetorical rules of a genre are thought of as etiquette, rather than as fixed laws, it is easier for us to think of them as being to do with how people get on with one another” (“Anyone for Tennis” 57).  I’m intrigued by the idea of genre as “etiquette,” genre as standards for behavior or interaction although such standards are roomy rather than limited, allowing for individual quirkiness as well as for variance in situation.  According to Freadman, genres are “pragmatic,” related to “place and function” rather than content (59).  And as the title of her essay suggests, Freadman thinks of genres as games involving at least two players–if a writer writes in a particular genre, she is writing to an anticipated response, but the reader (perhaps even before she begins to read) is responding to the writer’s text with particular expectations.  This makes sense to me as I do imagine my readers, their responses, and what they’re willing to read as well as what they don’t want to hear, when I compose a ride story.  I am highly aware of the etiquette–the expected writing behavior–that I should follow if I want an audience.  However, I am not so sure that I feel the freedom to be experimental.  Maybe I am essentializing this genre too much?  But it seems to me that the game that randonneurs participate in when they write about their riding has historical roots and rules that are respected and it’s expected that traditions will be followed.  It’s kind of like the British Open, or Wimbledon (why are these events both British?), the traditions are so established by history that the “etiquette” is quite stable.  Isn’t it?

Carolyn Miller seems to echo both Schwartz and Freadman.  She writes that genre “becomes pragmatic, fully rhetorical, a point of connection between intention and effect, an aspect of social action” (“Genre as Social Action” 25).  Further, she writes that, “what we learn when we learn a genre is not just a pattern of forms or even a method of achieving our own ends.  We learn, more importantly, what ends we may have: we learn that we may eulogize, apologize, recommend one person to another, instruct customers on behalf of a manufacturer, take on an offiicial role, account for progress in achieving goals” (“Genre as” 38).  Maybe I’m being dense, but the passage just quoted makes me think that Miller thinks of genre as a relatively stable categorization system since we all know what a eulogy, apology, letter of recommendation, and so on, should look like–and we can teach others to create them.  How does this fit with her stated argument for this essay that, “[she] will be arguing that a theoretically sound definition of genre must be centered not on the substance or the form of discourse but on the action it is used to accomplish” (24).  Genre, claims Miller, “can be said to represent typified rhetorical action” (24).  I understand that for Miller genre is more about the effect it has than the content or format, but the effect is precipitated by the content and form, no?

However, Miller also writes that ancestral genres substantially influence new genres.  She writes: “These ancestral genres should be considered part of the rhetorical situation to which the rhetor responds, constraining the perception and definition of the situation and its decorum for both the rhetor and the audience.  And, within limits, by their incorporation into a response to a novel situation, ancestral genres help define the potentialities of the new genre: the subject-positions of the rhetor(s) and audience(s), the nature of the recurrent exigence, the decorum (or “fittingness” in Bitzer’s term) of response” (“Blogging as Social Action”).  Ok, so, ancestral genres of ride stories would include at least the following genres: travel writing, sports journalism, extreme sports reporting in various forms, journals and diaries, hero tales, pilgrimage tales, spiritual quest tales….  And I need to think through Miller’s statement near the end of this essay: “Perhaps we should see all genres as such backward motions, as efforts at stabilization in the flux of continual change.  But our point is that the blog might be understood as a particular reaction to the constant flux of subjectivity, as a generic effort of reflexivity within the subject that creates an eddy of relative stability.  Infinite play, constant innovation, is not psychically sustainable on an indefinite basis.  In a culture in which the real is both public and mediated, the blog makes “real” the reflexive effort to establish the self against the forces of fragmentation, through expression and connection, through disclosure.  It is, as Vivian notes about rhetoric in general, ‘a precious aesthetic technology’ by which one ‘composes and cultivates one’s being in the world’ (2000, p. 316).”  Of course, most of us want to live stable lives, well, most of the time.  It’s more comfortable although sometimes boring.  When we read, we mostly like to know what to expect although some experimental genres/texts can be exciting.  When I pick up a ride story, I want to hear about the adventure, about how the rider overcame whatever challenges he or she faced, I want to learn about the difficulty of the ride so that I can decide whether or not I might want to do it, and so on.  In other words, I want to read what I expect to read, and so do other randonneurs, so I’m still struggling with when/how/where ride stories change.  I’ll carry on though with my review.

I wonder if Russell helps me here with his summary of Miller, “Viewed from the perspective of social action (Miller, 1994), genre is a way of talking not only about present actions, but also about the historical and imaginable actions of related people over time, kind-ness in a broad sense” (“The Kind-ness” 226).  Did ride stories operate differently 20 years ago?  They read pretty much the same to me; in fact, I see in contemporary writers, visible attempts to emulate style, tone, types of content, of earlier writers.  So, looking at an overview of rider stories, I definitely see “kind-ness,” but ok, let’s play with Russell’s ideas a bit more.  Russell writes that a single text can “function in multiple activity systems to do different kinds of work” (“The Kind-ness” 228).  He’s talking mostly here about the educational setting where a student’s text can function to provide an assessment tool, or to educate the student on the text’s topic and also to enter the conversation in the “real world” genre it is seeking to be an example of.  A single text, Russell argues, can relay to us s0mething of “the range and depth of human activity” that can be addressed in that text (“The Kind-ness” 240), and the many functions that that text might fulfill.  The ride story that I read allows the writer to relive her experiences, to put them into written form in order to better remember them, but when I read this story as a researcher, I analyze the story for its genre-ness, and somebody not connected to cycling at all could read the story as an example of lunacy.

A quick review of “activity system” from Russell’s article “Rethinking Genre in School and Society: An Activity Theory Analysis.”  He defines this term as follows: “An activity system is any ongoing, object-directed, historically conditioned, dialectically structured, tool-mediated human interaction.  Some examples  are a family, a religious organization, an advocacy group, a political movement, a course of study, a school, a discipline, a research laboratory, and a profession.  These activity systems are mutually (re)constructed by participants historically, using certain tools and not others, including discursive tools such as speech sounds and inscriptions” (510).  Further, genres then are “typified ways of purposefully interacting in and among some activity system(s) (“Rethinking” 513).  I like the idea that genres are constructed and reconstructed because they are useful, because they help us think, talk and act in ways we find interesting, useful, productive, and relevant.  I also like the idea, as do other randonneurs I think, that when we write, we are carrying on a tradition of thinking and acting that goes back to 1891 in France, and our writing is a way of honoring that history and finding how and why it’s relevant still today.  And yes, there is something probably “backward” in this effort to carry on a tradition, as Miller hypothesizes when she writes that bloggers blog in an “effort to establish the self against the forces of fragmentation, through expressin and connection, through disclosure” (“Blogging As”).  Writing about our ride experiences makes us think the world is the same as it was in 1891?  No.  Makes us think particular values and activities still matter–that’s closer, but still.  Makes us believe that that history mattered–those people and what they did and how they responded–and that those ideas, philosophies, ways of acting and thinking can still help us make sense of the world today, and/or still provide a hopeful view of the world today.  That’s close.  Not totally there but close.

Miller does such a nice job of breaking down the purposes and uses of blogs in ways I hadn’t thought of (expressionist writing + community + the idea of joining the mediated/celebrity space), and the intersection of private and public is such a juicy topic. It was a good examination of how the rhetorical situation seems to have somewhat inevitably produced blogs. However, I felt a little that the dramatic opening quotes were maybe not quite paid off in the ensuing analysis. She is probing the intersection of the personal /public (which was the thread of the quotes) but I’m not sure she really dug into the uncomfortability of how that collision is operating – all three quotes demonstrated a troubling clash between those two worlds, rather than a harmonious marriage of them. The problem stated in all three was, in essence, that the writers of considered their posts more private than they ultimately ended up being (well, duh). My favorite quote, later in the article, was about how your diary you so jealously guarded from your mom, is now read by (hopefully, according to Andrew Sullivan) millions. Also, I never heard the word “meatspace” before.

The question of the sketchbooks, and whether or not they “are” a genre, was fascinating. By starting with something so concrete and then extrapolating how, exactly, a genre is defined (or undefined) it made the theory more tangible to me. Like the blogs, it is interesting how the social phenomena of the “way” to do a sketchbook seems to invisibly “arise”. Also, like the blogs, I think that the sketchbooks are “semi-readerless” in that they’re ostensibly personal, but personal (in the way of all journals) with an eye to a conjectured possible future reader (I always feel half-conscious when writing in a journal of it being unwrapped someday by my mystified grandchildren – I always feel like there is an eavesdropping reader, perhaps my future self). I heard a quote (I think from Anne Lamott?): “If I die before I wake, throw my journals in the lake.” But the self-consciousness of the artist also posits that the journal may become a coffetable book someday, or perhaps simply be excerpted for the “Senior Show”. I was thinking of my own class notes, which I usually never re-read; they also serve another purpose, I suppose a hueristic one, of storing something in longer-term memory by writing it down.

And thanks for sharing your conference articles, Dr. C. I related the randonneuring stories to other “athlete rhetoric,” including the heroicizing (?) and mythologizing of professional sports – we seem to find great meaning in the stories of warrior/athletes overcoming personal hardships (think of those Olympic closeup moments) and somehow transcending the boundaries of human physical existence. You also touched on the trancelike state I think that some athletes are seeking, similar to the mediation experiences of Yogis and other spiritual quests (like Native American vision quests) that require lack of food, sleep, and extreme physical endurance. There is something death-defying about these deeds. Sort of like the “extreme knitting” I challenge myself with sometimes I actually miss my late-night snack, I’m so engrossed.

The written component of Edwin’s thesis will also, of course, call for a more substantial and developed argument than his earlier design projects had required, so that he now engages, by his own account, in processes of “questioning and answering —why, what, how,” with the result that “my thought processes are more evident in my notebook.” It is the rhetorical factor of an anticipated audience for his ideas that elicits this degree of explicitness. (143)

This later brings us to the concept of an “internalized professor,” whereby the student constructs the text under the expectations of the professor’s response. The majority of my theses are produced under the direction of an “internalized professor,” as I expect at some measure to enter into discourse with them about my paper, perhaps even defending the choices I’ve made. To this end, I’ve had to internally construct scenarios, questions that might be asked, answers I might give, and challenges to those answers. This type of discourse with ourselves only strengthens the final product. That said, I don’t really intend anyone to be privy to these thought processes, especially if I’d written them down. But even though I had written notes to myself without the intention of anyone seeing them in their original form, it would be a bit naive to assume that the content of those notes won’t be made public in the final product.

This is why I feel that there’s no such thing as a “text without readers.” Everything that is produced is consumed at one point or another. Or, rather, everything that is produced is made available for consumption at one point or another – whether as an oratorical presentation, or as a final paper for a class, or even as a manuscript posthumously discovered and published. If it can’t be said that there is no such thing as a text without readers, then let it be said that there’s no such thing as a text without a prospective audience. Even sketchbooks have someone willing to read, interpret, or otherwise consume their content.

Russell seems to be working from a particularly well-represented vein of genre theory. His essay draws on the work of Miller in addition to Bazerman (his development of Miller’s theory) and really only takes issue with Medway’s assertion (although to call it an assertion is unfair because he wasn’t stating a belief as much as  just asking a question) concerning genre being too “fuzzy” for analytical work. And let’s face it, that whole part in the middle where he goes over the methodology for the actual study? Too good.

In approaching genre theory as a a system of intertextual relations (Bazerman’s contribution) over time within an activity system thus illustrating how “one text might function as more than one genre, if it is used in more than one activity system”(228) is really quite succinctly one of the most powerful aspects of genre theory. We’ve discussed the ways that genre enables us to study a host of topic matter from a wide range of perspectives but I think this is equally relevant because here we see how genre not only allows for a text to be interpreted in this way but also from multiple perspectives simultaneously. Though this may not be helpful in obtaining a clear definition of genre I think what it does accomplish (for people like me) is demonstrating the true limitlessness of genre and rhetoric at large.

As Russell states (and I’ll paraphrase because it’s long) Medway’s concern is only viable if we look at genre in “terms of local activity viewed synchronically, because there is no way to judge…how a genre is perceived outside the local and momentary kairotic moment” (239). However, if we “step back to theorize and study the various systems of activity and genre operating in the universe of discourse over time” (239) then genre begins to resemble a dialogue that is continual within human activity. This seems crucial because it, going back to Lloyd because it wouldn’t be a blog post without him,  limits the idea of relating rhetorical discourse to individual instances in time and rather demonstrates how a “single text may mediate as it operates as different genres among different people with different motives and objects…over time” (240). This brings in situational considerations that require individual appraisal as these shifts occur which, again, allows for an expansive and, nearly (although it may be entirely, I need to think more about that one), limitless interpretation of rhetorical “events”.

The issue of individuality and privacy that both Medway and Miller discuss had me thinking of diaries.  Similar to the sketchbooks and blogs (which, in some cases, are merely online diaries), diaries are personal and individualized; so is a diary a genre if only the author reads it?  I think it becomes a genre when you have something like Anne Frank’s diary, which was never meant for public consumption, or the novel Go Ask Alice, which is a diary account of a teenager’s drug addiction.  But again, they became genres when they went public.   Each diary is very different (individualized) but they are both formatted the same, the have the same qualities of a diary, but we wouldn’t know this without their respective publications (privacy becoming public).

As I look at my bookshelves, I see another example: The Journey is the Destination by Dan Eldon.  Eldon was a young Reuters photojournalist who was killed while on assignment in Somalia.  After he died, his mother and sister published his journals, which aren’t written, but rather collages of photographs and newspaper clippings.  This book can be found it the “Art & Photography” section of the bookstore.  They are personal journals (individualized), but when they became public, assumed the genre of “Art & Photography,” a label it was given after publication, not before.

I should probably get to Russell’s article now.

I was interested in his discussion of the “breadth” and “depth” of genres and how genres work together in a system (227), especially how these ideas related to my paper subject.  In the Twilight series, there is a wide breadth of genres available (vampire story, romance, action/adventure, supernatural/sci-fi, etc.); however, the depth of these genres varies from book to book.  The breadth of genres within the series, and how those genres work together in a system, is one of the reasons why the books are so popular among all age groups, not just young adults (which is the genre they are officially classified in).  Well, that and the fact that Edward Cullen is so dreamy.

In the Russell article on the ‘Kind-ness of Genre’, I found interesting the discussion about the dimension of genre being more that just “classifying texts . . . but is also about human relationship over time . . .”   That is what I like about creative non fiction; it’s ability to entertain through story and also inform you about “the historical and imaginable actions of related people over time, kind-ness in a broad sense. (226)   I too am not sure whether a personal memoir really has an audience other than the writer — which makes me wonder where is the social action in a memoir?  But, generally I believe the idea is that you are documenting a moment in time and perhaps  hoping the readers will come away informed, empathic, or changed in some way because of the story and that is social action, albeit a bit more intrinsic than blogging and depending on the story, not quite as entertaining.

Also in this article, I support the idea behind the Kentucky Education Reform Act to include writing in a student’s portfolio beyond the content area classes toward writing that has a real-world purpose. In addition to being allowed some self-expression, there needs to be actual skills taught in high school education  (reading, writing, and arithmetic) so upon graduation you can survive in the world independently.  In addition to reading/responding to great literature, I think it is necessary to learn what to include in a cover letter and resume so students are prepared for adult life and other important writing for real-world purposes.  This article relates to my genre paper idea of workplace e-mails because typically they are a function of information sharing and direction, not entertainment, voyeurism, or exhibitionism and this is a real-world genre that students should also learn to do well to function in the workplace and rhetoric is what makes them effective/or not.

At least Dean speaks like a regular person. I like her logical series of arguments defending the teaching of genre theory. It seems to be another one of those things (like literary criticism) that is often taught without ever being directly named. I mean, students are familiar with some of the formal constraints and “game” rules of narrative story vs. haiku poem vs. five-paragraph persuasive essay vs. YouTube script, but they usually aren’t explained as “genres”. I think part of the “you’d understand it if you were in power” aspect of genres is not very openly acknowledging that, yes! A grant-writing proposal has different language than a letter to Granny! I remember sitting next to two airline hostesses and listening to them discuss, for hours, their travel plans. Their conversation was so full of airline-code about routes, seniority, fly-bys, deadheads, and other jargon it was literally indecipherable. The “genres” of every profession (including ours) seem partially designed to keep outsiders out. So, explaining genre theory (simply!) seems like sound pedagogy. I guess that has to do with, do we teach the forms? Well, yes, but not in isolation? As to how one actually would move beyond teaching form (Genre as Rhetoric, Genre as Practice), that’s not so clearly explained here – I suppose that’s in one of the many further readings.

All these genre definitions start sounding like restatements of rhetoric definitions (ie, it is social, we are embedded in genre, genres are not fixed, genre is historical and dynamic – all true of rhetoric too.)

I like the idea of genres as games. If that is all I retain from Freadman, so be it. It takes at least two: playing it is not the same as describing its rules; a genre is not “in” a text, nor a text “in” a genre; knowing the rules does not imply succeeding at the game.

Don’t most advances happen at the “edges” of the game, or the genre? Where genre-bending (or rule-bending) creates a new form?

I’m familiar with the not-statement idea, defining things in meaning chains or by what they are not, so if that’s your angle, then why not define genres this way too – it does seem to be one way to perceive meaning. Then again it leaves out that Derridean idea of the latent opposite meaning lurking inside the meaning of a word, or the latent opposite of a genre also living in a genre (if dictionaries start having too many pictures they fear becoming encyclopedias?)

I was flummoxed by the use of “generic” as meaning “applying to genres”. It is so associated, to me, with the idea of “non-genre.”

Maybe I will be smarter tomorrow.

Side note with the Freadman essay: Freadman mentions “women’s pages” in Australian newspapers. Seriously, Australia? “Women’s news” can’t be next to the “men’s news”, is it afraid of getting cooties!?! Anyway, moving on…

While Freadman’s article was okay, I really enjoyed the Dean essay. Dean also uses Freadman’s “what is/what it is not” to identify genre, but instead it helps writers identify the genre in which they are writing. She identifies areas of writing like reader expectations, the writing process, and appropriate for the audience or the situation as parts of writing that needs to be analyzed in order for a genre to be applied. In this case it is an office memo because it is not a love letter.

Later, Dean notes that genres are ever-changing: “Because genres are responses to social situations (and situations are always changing), genres cannot be fixed…Genres are stable, but not unchanging” (10).  So, genre has a fluidity (like rhetoric!), which means genres can be combined and transformed into a special genre hybrid.  This makes me think of author Lorrie Moore, who writes, among other things, “how-to” stories (for example, “How-To Become a Writer” and “How-To be the Other Woman”).  It is set up like a manual (first you do this, then you do this), but it is also a work of short fiction.  She combines two genres to create her own.

Side note with the Dean essay: Freadman should take some notes; this was a far more coherent read.

Defining genre seems very complex and objective, yet the writer’s personal ideology expressed in various mediums including narrative prose, could have a very basic premise, suggesting a conflict in what genre actually is.  Theories of genre include some and all of these elements. Similar to the variety of ways in which rhetoric has been defined by Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and in the various articles we have read for this course, each of them either rejected their predecessors’ ideas and came up with their own new ideas, or they integrated existing ideas with their own.  It seems genre theorists do the same.   A lot of pontification : ) for what?     

I felt thinking of genre as a game was too simplistic, yet was made complicated by the way Freadman’s article described the parallel.  And, it focused on the form of the genre too much, downplaying other important aspects.  Freadman and Miller agree that describing genres by what they are not, helps narrow it down to what genres are.  However, this analytical thinking reminds me of computer programming and not narrative expression through genres. Maybe narrative prose and literature are not the kinds of genre they are theorizing about?  I liked Miller’s ideal that genre is a form of social action taken through the expression of individual ideas.   However, I find it somewhat philosophical like Plato’s absolute truth and perhaps not the majority of genres could actually create social action in the large sense, perhaps in the micro sense?  I suppose if the genre is rhetorically effective, it should be somewhat persuasive. So maybe that is what Miller means?

 In “Genre Theory: Teaching, Writing, and Being”, Dean seems to support a theory that considers form and context as inseparable with the focus of genre on social historical context.  In most instances, I prefer reading a text prior to reading any critiques about the text so I can form my own opinion before I read about what others say.  In this article, the idea that a writer should explore the social historical context (situation) prior to reading the text makes some sense to me too because then you’ll might have an idea about what the writer is responding too.  But, as the article points out, unless you are the writer, you may never really know.  And, you could spend much more time reading historical and cultural texts than trying to deconstruct the text itself.    

I was agitated by the “Genre as Text” section of Dean’s article, in which she cites Freedman and Medway . . . “Students have to act and be what the genres represent, not just copy the forms, to assume an insider position.”  Isn’t that what most “marginalized” people have to do to get a foot in the door to a better life, job, etc.?  That does not mean they are the epitome of the people in power.  They go on to say, “The emphasis on access to the genres of power would lead to a spurious kind of equity, in which there was no challenge to the existing status quo of social arrangements.”  In my opinion, if you want access to the means to a “good life”, then you may need to fake it, if you are ever to make it; but is that really possible?  On the other hand, if a writer’s goal is to take social action against an ideology, then sometimes they have to take risks and suffer consequences – civil disobedience sometimes has unfortunate consequences.

At least on the surface, I would assume that the designation of my accounts as “travel writing” would depend on the nature of the visits. It’s one thing to call it “travel writing” if you’re simply going there to drink and enact manifest forms of wanton debauchery. But it’s something else altogether if there’s some sort of merit in the writing itself. Perhaps if it’s an intellectual pursuit or an assignment such as serving as an ambassador that can qualify one’s work for a higher classification of genre.

Maybe this is just a bad example if I’m trying to provide an example for how situation can pretty much define genre. Let me give it another go:

On the first day of class, the professor offers a handout that circulates around the class. The professor doesn’t say a word. Now, before the handout ever reaches your desk, you know what it is. Or, at least, you know what it’s most likely to be. And that’s because the situation/context (the opening moments of your first day in a new class that is just beginning for the semester) has conditioned you to accept that the handout is a syllabus. It is entirely possible that the handout could be something else entirely, but the situation is what conforms our mind to what might be termed the “academic- genre” (think Trowse’s “preaching-genre”). Because of our situation, we expect every text, every speech act, every nugget of information to conform to our expectations for that academic-genre.

The situating of genre within smaller units (or contexts) was one of the elements that jumped out of the reading, and insofar as it applies to some of my favorite genres (film, for instance), I could imagine that it would help a great deal in answering those perpetual “If this, then why not this?” questions, absurd though they might be. Mostly, I gathered that if we are to understand genre as a whole, then a certain premium must be placed on the smaller contexts in which a specific genre is situated. Sort of like a Russian nested doll, where the smaller contexts are embedded within the larger framework. I’m intrigued by these readings, and I’m anxious to talk about this on Thursday and get other takes on the readings.

Oh, and for the record, my “travels” above are entirely fictional. Well, at least the “manifest forms of wanton debauchery” part.