Hermeneutics refers to the study of interpretation. The word’s journey started with an Anatolian origin as a technical expression through Greek hermēneuō (to interpret) to hermeneutes (interpreter) to hermeneutikos (of or for interpreting). Another etymology of the term was established by Martin Heidegger that traces its origin to Greek hermeneuein (v.), which is related to…
Would you characterize Byung-Chul Han’s Non-things as a critical theory, a productive theory, or something else? Why? This week while reading “A Portrait of a Scholar…In Progress” in Composition Forum, the distinction Louise Phelps draws between critical and productive theories queued these questions. If we grant “theory” its etymology, the trace gives us theorein, or…
– In Computer and Composition, technofeminism has emerged to critique the historical domination of male figures in the domain of digital spaces, technology and culture, which were inherently biased against women. The hegemonic designs and definitions of technology often limit women as eternal outsiders in that very realm and perpetuate harmful stereotypes as technologically challenged/inferior…
Banks’s (2011) work on Digital Griots seeks to project afrofuturistic movements to nudging for non-western and diasporic rhetoric to inclusively have a space in Digital Rhetoric. What the field of Writing and Tech Com needs to know is that there is communal and indigenous knowledge from different national cultures that needs to be embraced to…
Prior to my experiences in the US over the past year, I had never given much thought to my positionality within the Black identity space. I was an avid movie watcher growing up, and I’ve always felt a connection to or alliance with the Black characters in the western films and books I’ve watched and…
DJs are models of rhetorical excellence, canon makers, time binders who link past, present, and future in the groove and mix; and intellectuals continuously interpreting the history and current realities of their communities in real time. Banks uses the DJ’s practices of the mix, remix, and mixtape as tropes for reimagining writing instruction and the…
After returning to our course description and August-September conversations, I have sketched the following questions to prompt and guide our RIDE Blog Carnival #1. An in-progress draft is due in your Google Folder by Monday, October 2; the entry deadline for posting is Monday, October 9. Approximate scope should be 800-1000 words, though this is,…
The DJ as digital griot re/de/sutures fragments of cultures whose totality has been elided by—and eludes—Western ontologies, perpetually connecting black rhetorical traditions with the technologies and possibilities of multimedia writing. Digital griots’ use of “arranging, layering, sampling, and remixing are inventions . . . binding time as they move the crowd and create and maintain…
Culture and rhetoric are inextricably intertwined because most of our African cultures, particularly Ghanaian cultures, are rhetorical. Haas (2008) looks at cultural rhetoric as a study of “everyday rhetoric and writing practices of specific cultural groups” and the historical, socio-cultural political context that shape those practices. Going forward, I hope to see a Digital Cultural…
Banks (2011) argues that a DJ is a multimodal storyteller, which is a manifestation of a griot—a traditional storyteller. I can draw comparisons between DJ techniques and preachers, comic creators, poets, and storytellers, not to mention how DJs juggle many topics. What Banks wants to understand is that just as DJing involves, scratch, remixing, weaving,…