Some ruminations on Fraiberg etc.

One thing that struck me about Fraiberg's article is the structure.  It is not radical or anything, but perhaps bears some note. It is not a bad map for putting together a theory article of this sort.  What sort?  The kind that calls for a particular direction in the field.  It's future-oriented, which is appropriate for a CCC special issue on The Future of Rhetoric and Composition.  

First word is "I" and signals beginning with an anecdote.  In this paragraph, he calls what he is doing "a study" and lays out a general claim about the future direction he advocates. 

Next segment is a "literature review."  This covers what has been already done and argued and with what theories in the area of the field he is extending and plowing.   He is bringing together work on multimodal comp. with multilingual theories and studies. This may not be new, but he makes it seem that way (performance!) and he identifies a "much needed gap" to quote an old joke.  He notes the limitations of the extant work in this area (multilingual/multimodal process) and stakes out a need. He situates himself in the unfolding conversation.

Then, still in lit review sort of mode, he lays out his theoretical foundations.  In the intro to these segments (separated by different, though related, theories) he says that he is "mashing" together some cross-disciplinary (and boundary/border) theories that are the "key to remixing composition in the context of globalization" (104). Note the use of these two (cooking?) metaphors.  He goes on to discuss and do very selective lit reviews of ecologies, knotworking, remediation, and actant-network theories.  (It may be an indication of your growth in this class if you can read this and have a pretty good idea of what is being discussed.)  Note how rhetorical genre theory seems to be in there, Bakhtin (who we did not read but who is ubiquitous, like Kenneth Burke, Foucault and Anzaldua), and some new-to-us folks like the knotworking theorists and Bruno Latour (Paul Lynch has a new article using his work).  Although he does not use the terminology of complex emergent systems, this theorizing is easily connected to that.  

So, onto his "study" which he does not lay out as one might for a journal of empirical studies.   Here he discusses a high tech company he studied ethnographically and, contrary to his stated proposals, hermeutically.  That is, he interprets the web site as a text, but does so though multiple lens and in various contexts. He notes the link to dominant nationalist discourse and military symbols.  He is using the theories he has laid out, but is also adding more (convergence culture) and mentions remix again. Bakhtin's "double-voiced discourse" is morphed to "double vision." He uses some military metaphors of his own and notes the influence of the US. He lists the many tools the team uses and calls them an improvised "genre ecology."  We hear of their discussion of Betty Crocker's site (though I never really got what that was all about).


OK, whew.  On to "Re-articulating Composition." He calls for five such points and goes though them boom boom, first, second etc. His last one renews a longstanding call for "an expanded definition of writing itself" (118). Again he presents this as if new. He returns to remixing.  Perhaps what is new is his particular mashing of these theories, plus the multilingualism.  Exactly how that gets into it is not clear to me.  The idea is to get students to cross boundaries between genres, media, languages, audiences etc.  The point is not to lay out a specific pedagogy but to create a set of related ideas to guide us going forward.  

This was published one year after Yancey's "Re-designing Graduate Education." Close enough.  it is fair to compare Y's revised grad program with Fraiberg's calls.  How do they compare?