Dissonance Paper

Choosing a topic of inquiry within composition studies for this course’s final research project is—personally—both a simple and difficult task. It is on the one hand simple because I have already developed a deep interest in composition studies, specifically in the possibilities of hypertext and new investigations of the global public sphere. It is because of this interest that I feel at ease picking a topic and trusting that I can adequately research and write on this topic. However, it is at the same time a difficult task because as this course has begun and continued new methods of inquiry and new topics within composition studies have sprung up and captured my interest. If anything, it will not be that I struggle to find a topic on which to study, it will be that I have too many. Therefore, this dissonance blog seems incredibly timely: it will serve as a means to flush out the many interests and methods of research I have become acquainted with over the past weeks and help solidify the one area and one question I hope to research further during the coming months.

First, when considering my past experience in composition studies, I cannot forget that my greatest passion is with Ong’s stages of literacy. As an undergraduate, my capstone project within the English department majoring in rhetoric and composition was to compose a forty-page paper on any subject of relevance to my major and which would display the sum of what I learned while attending college. The paper would be bound up with the three other students majoring in rhetoric and put on permanent display in a series of similar work done by all English students who ever attended my college at the school’s library. A trivial assignment, really, especially as an undergrad. But placed under that pressure, I chose for my topic Walter Ong and his age of secondary orality, eventually titling my final work “Wikitruth: The Post-Public Sphere in Ong’s Age of Secondary Orality.” In it, I explored the notion of omnilogue, where hypertext plays with language as it could be spoken from all voices, and began to suggest how Truth (as both a religious and logical notion) changes with contemporary methods from literary-bound dogma to an active presence available within the seemingly limitless lexia of connected hypermedia.

This thesis was, by far, the most scholarly project on which I’ve ever worked. I took deep cues from literary theory and especially the deconstructionists in claiming in my abstract that “we are fast approaching an age where closed dialogue is impossible, an age where the ideas of private and public are colliding unlike ever before, an age where even the methods of communicating through the written word are changing through impulsive and unlinear works of community-driven hypertext.”

But if there was one area over any that I would fault myself in this work it would be that it was too much theory and no substance. It energized me to commit to a profession in composition studies, but it was not a project that felt complete or was anything but the excited ravings of a twenty-one year old student who felt like he just stumbled upon the secret to the universe. Of course, that is kind of how I felt, but I had no support, only scholars I pitted against each other and their published essays. If I had the opportunity to revisit this paper I would build upon what I theorized and see it actively taking place in the world around us.

So this brings me to the current day. Where is there evidence that hypertext is building new reality which threatens the established truths of high literacy? Certainly online education is a prime example. So, too, is the site I’ve always had my eye on: wikipedia. There seems to be a lot of scoffing at the online encyclopedia that claims to allow anyone (or at least anyone who registers for the site) to edit any entry on any subject anywhere on the site. Pretty groundbreaking. There is no canon, no authority, no explicit structure, no author, no time limit, no page limit, no rules. All you need is internet access and a computer (which is available for free at any library), and you have the ability to define Truth in the age of secondary orality. But this seems too easy, too quick. If this is the subject I choose, which more and more I feel like it should be, it might be an analysis of the discourse of wikipedia’s site and their guidelines, as well as perhaps other sites like online educational sites. Or perhaps I could conduct a study on the threads of other contributors and see if any power struggles emerge from the posts they create and sustain or create and then lose.