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I begin this blog post by saying I enjoyed the readings for this week. I found all of them accessible and, frankly, quite engaging. The selections from Adam Banks’ text Digital Griots had the greatest influence on me concerning my positionality as a student in this class and as an instructor who continues to develop a pedagogy informed by the implications of accessibility. The title of my thesis, written for my master’s degree program: “credo quia absurdum est: Redistributed Race and the Neo-Soul Aesthetic in the Works of Percival Everett,” was a literature thesis, so my scholarly background is in literature studies. However, once I began teaching, I found myself leaning, often quite heavily, toward the field of rhetoric and composition studies. Now that I have situated myself as a rhetoric and composition scholar in the ISU PhD program who would like to work within the realm digital rhetoric, it was thrilling to read a text which firmly connects to the previous work I have done in the literature realm. In my estimation, the study of digital rhetoric is, to borrow a term from Banks (who he borrows from elsewhere [boom! boom! —a remix]) post-everything, so the connections to my studies in African American literature, and specifically Percival Everett (and Toni Morrison and Ishmael Reed)—all author’s I associate with the post-modern tradition—are inherent, blatant, and most of all, welcome. Banks sets out to create a remix which defines the digital griot as well as African American Rhetoric 2.0, His primary sources are Black Theology—highlighted by the meshing of ideologies of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, a theological perspective which emphasizes a resistance to the dichotomic—DJ culture and the defining of the DJ as a digital griot, and the work of influential black scholars ranging from Cone to Royster. I believe Banks is successful in his argument. One early highlight in the text is when Banks purposely slips the needle from the record and begins a fiery sermon in the tradition of the Reverend, a crucial figure within the development of African American culture, African American rhetoric, and African American literacy. The Rev (a la Rev Run from Run DMC; for an updated vision, see Aaron McGruder’s transformative televisual cartoon The Boondocks) may be identified as a cultural forefather to the concept of the digital griot Banks posits in his writing. Banks presents his translingual perspective and is dogmatic in his assertion that “at this moment in 2011, anyone still attempting to argue that Ebonics is a problem for black students…it’s time for those folks to be retired” (Banks, 15). James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Cornel West, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. would be proud. As Banks continues throughout his text, his argument reminds me of an article by Ellen Cushman, “The Public Intellectual, Service Learning, and Activist Research” which details The Public Intellectual, a term Banks draws upon, as a scholar who develop a pedagogy informed by service learning and activism. One quote from Banks, drawing on Stull, stuck with me as I develop as a rhetoric and composition scholar and writing instructor: “the study of composition can, should, help set the captives free and give sight to the blind” (Banks, 112). I think this quote could serve as a foundational idea for me as an instructor of writing but find myself worried about the implications. That is, by abiding by the quote, am I framing myself as a master of knowledge? A gate-keeper to the truth? This is not the position I take in the classroom—I instead see my role as instructor as simply the facilitator of a space where meaning and knowledge are created collaboratively through intellectual inquiry and productive discourse. (Perhaps my concerns here mimic the “dual consciousness” asserted by W.E.B. DuBois.) The Banks readings are truly transformational in two ways. First, his argument concerning copyright, plagiarism, and intellectual property—all aspects of remixing—dictate further attention due to the constantly evolving landscape of digital technology use in the academy. Second, I am transformed as a scholar. Perhaps it is precocious of me to muse, but further investigation into the marriage of African American rhetoric (and the rhetoric of other systematically marginalized communities) and digital rhetoric is a scholarly place I want to be. Finally, the I am drawing two connections to my own interests and Banks’ text: development of a pedagogy informed by the tenets of The Public Intellectual and the concept of digital heirlooms, both of which Banks addresses. I can not wait to dig further into this work.
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Charles WoodsPhD student focusing on Rhetoric, Composition, and Technical Communication at Illinois State University. Archives
October 2019
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