“Acting White”: The Consequence of School Desegregation in America

When studying the past of humankind, it is important to acknowledge the presence of multiple histories.  Amid discussing American history, the seldom mentioned forgotten past of native peoples residing on the land before Christopher Columbus’s discovery of “America” in 1492 must be recognized.  Although, as Sucheng Chan writes, “generations of schoolchildren have learned that American history began with the voyage of Columbus”, the land named “America” by invading outsiders was occupied by a prolific indigenous population that formed its own history prior to European colonization (15).  Estimates transcribed by John Noble Wilford attest that America’s earliest residents, the ancestors of Native Americans, emigrated from Asia across the Bering Land Bridge “14,000 to 18,000 years ago”.  Thus, when discussing American history, the thousands of pre-Columbian years of Native American life are ignored. Clearly, the history of America accounts for a near imperceptible portion of a pre-historical period abundant with life.

The history of America began with waves of immigrants forming a heterogeneous society.  In response to the multicultural montage America had become in the18^th century, Hector St. John de Crevecoeur questioned, “What then is the American, this new man . . . He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater.  Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men” (67).  This melting-together concept gained popularity in the 18^th century and the “melting pot” metaphor is still used to describe the American fusion of multiple cultures into one.  However, the harmonious union of several cultures is an unrealistic utopian ideal proved improbable by the daily collisions of opposing costumes.  In accordance with Horace Kallen, reiterated in Simon Henderson’s text Aspects of American History, America is not a melting pot, but resembles “an orchestra with many different instruments blending to produce one piece of music or a salad bowl where distinct flavors remain within a large fusion of tastes”(135) (my italics).  For Kallen, this salad bowl quality permits the various cultures of the United Stated to mix while each maintains its individuality.  However, this individuality is compromised as each culture tends to define itself in opposition to an “other”, rather than assimilate into the other.  The result is identification as what one is not rather than what one is.

In the United States, African American culture has been classified by John Ogbu as an “Oppositional Culture”, or a subculture defying mainstream values.  Explained by Margaret Spencer and Vinay Harpalani, Ogbu reasons that, “because of their treatment in America, which includes a history of political and economic oppression, African Americans develop a sense of identity in opposition to the social identity of Whites” (224).  As a result of this oppositional definition, blacks in a predominately white America have consciously rejected white values.  Signithia Fordham writes, “What has emerged in the school context in some segments of the black community is a well-defined fear of ‘acting white’ – i.e., a fear of excelling in academic arenas which traditionally have been defined as the prerogative of white Americans” (3).  Thus, African American youth have identified academic success as “acting white”.  In order to “act not white”, African American students develop excessive ambivalence regarding academic achievement.  To more deeply understand Fordham and Ogbu’s concept “acting white”, it is important to identify its origin.  By examining the African American experience in America, specifically the complex history of segregation and desegregation in the United States, the source of the “acting white” hypothesis will be revealed.  Following an in depth analysis of the phenomenon’s origin, it is appropriate to consider contemporary implications of “acting white”.  In recent years, does the over twenty-years-old hypothesis still hold weight or have shifting cultural attitudes toward academic achievement mythologized the theory?

The United States is a nation founded upon oppositions.  Although America represented the spirit of adventure, promise of freedom, and abundant opportunity, the grim reality many endured was a land of isolation, oppression, and misfortune.  Many immigrants journeyed to the new world voluntarily, in search of a better life, but many came involuntarily, forced to make the lives of others “better”.  According the Ogbu in his article “Cultural Amplifiers of Intelligence”, voluntary minorities are individuals “who have come to the United States by choice because they expected better opportunities then they had in their homeland or place of origin . . . [these] immigrants do not interpret their presence in the United States as forced on them by white Americans” (250).  Conversely, Ogbu writes, involuntary minorities are “people who are a part of the United States because they were conquered, colonized, or enslaved.  They have been made a part of the U.S. society permanently against their will . . . these minorities did not chose but were forced against their will to become part of U.S. society” (251-52).  Black Americans constitute an involuntary minority, enslaved by white Americans and inhumanely brought to the new world.  For the sake of brevity, the horrors of slavery will not be recounted, yet they evidence the extreme inferiority with which whites regarded blacks during the founding of the United States.

In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in the midst of the American Civil War.  Although this document did not free all slaves, it supplied the legal structure for the future liberation of four million slaves and was later supplemented by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.  According to James Anderson’s text The Schooling and Achievement of Black Children, in the year 1860, two years prior to the Emancipation Proclamation, “approximately 60% of whites of school age and only 21% of blacks were enrolled in public school” (110).  Clearly, white children constituted the majority of students registered.  With the addition of the Thirteenth Amendment, giving African Americans the freedom to act, did they reject school for fear of “acting white” and conforming to the system of black oppression?  When examining the African American experience in postbellum America, the answer is “no”.

Reiterated in Anderson’s text, Harriet Beecher Stowe commented upon the recently freed ex-slaves. The American abolitionist and author stated, “They rushed not to the grogshop but to the schoolroom – they cried for the spelling book as bread, and pleaded for teachers as necessity of life” (105).  Furthermore, in Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery, the author depicts a race anxious for schooling: “Few People who were not right in the midst of the scenes can form any exact idea of the intense desire which the people of my race showed for education.  It was a whole race trying to go to school” (21).  The enrollment gap between whites and blacks continued to diminish, fueled by African American academic hunger.  By 1930, Anderson writes, “81% of blacks 5 to 17 years old and 82% of whites in this age category were enrolled” (110).  From these statistics, it is apparent that the “acting white” phenomenon had not yet evolved.

Although the amount of African Americans in school increased, racial prejudice and segregation in the United States strongly persisted.  According to Michael Klarman, “in the years 1895-1900, an average of 101 blacks were lynched a year” (3).  Furthermore, the Jim Crow Laws, discussed in Andrew Napolitano’s text Dred Scott’s Revenge, lasted from the late 1890’s to 1964.  In this dark epoch of United States history, Napolitano writes, these laws “separated blacks from whites in all public accommodations, forbade the commingling of the two races, and prevented blacks from exercising the right to vote” (122-23).  Additionally, as stated by David Bartz, the Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson authorized segregation of schools, deeming it “constitutionally permissible to have ‘separate but equal’ public schools” beginning in 1896 (140).  Consequently, from 1896 until the landmark case Brown v The Board of Education in 1954, states separated blacks and whites into schools according to race.

In order to designate the desegregation of schools in America as the origin of “acting white”, it is important to examine segregated black schools prior to 1954.  In Stuart Bucks text Acting White, the author presents a North Carolina woman’s account of her segregated school.  The woman states, “It was like a family.  You knew all the children.  You knew their parents, and they all had gone to the same school.  We didn’t have the same resources that the white students had but we had teachers who made sure you did the very best you could with what you had” (54).  Although a brief description, it exemplifies much of the African American academic experience.  Black schools in the era governed by Jim Crow Laws thoroughly lacked resources.  According to Buck, African American schools “often consisted of dilapidated clapboard shacks, with perhaps a potbellied stove for heat in the winter” and relied upon books discarded by white schools (54).  These books, as a teacher from Virginia criticizes, were “so old and dirty I don’t even want to touch them myself” (55).

Further evidencing the inequality produced by the segregated system was the lack of black schools overall.  For instance, Buck writes, “many towns didn’t have a black high school – or perhaps any black school at all – and the black children either went without schooling or had to travel miles to a neighboring town” (55).  Thus, children were forced to trek many miles in order to receive an education comprised of tattered books and substandard facilities.

Although many segregated schools epitomized domination and deprivation, some offered students a good education.  Out of the cruel oppression of segregation, inspiration and motivation arose from within the system.  According to Vanessa Siddle Walker in her text Their Highest Potential,

It is true that these schools were often treated unjustly and victimized by poor resources. But in spite of the legalized oppression, many teachers and principals created environments of teaching and learning that motivated students to excel. They countered the larger societal messages, which devalued African Americans, and reframed those messages to make African American children believe in their ability to achieve (219).

Black schools provided a comfortable family atmosphere, instilling confidence within the students.  Rather than reinforce stereotypes depreciating African American value, teachers preached the importance of education and each student’s ability to succeed.  In Barbara Shircliffe’s article “We Got the Best of that World”, she discusses segregated black schools as sources of empowerment.  The author reiterates an account provided by a former segregated student who stated, “As a student, we were indeed a family. We were embraced by teachers, protected, taught everything that they thought we would need to go out there and improve the world, as such.  Whatever you did in school, everybody knew it . . . We were a proud, proud, proud group” (69).  Within a segregated school, those succeeding and failing possessed the same skin color.  At a black school, the model for academic success and achievement was a black individual.  As a result, pre-desegregated students considered school to be the experience of blacks.  Separated from whites, African Americans were unable to “act white” without a white model for action.  It is not until Brown v. Board of Education that said model was introduced, providing the stimulant for the pejorative notion of “acting white”.

In 1954, the decision of the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education ended the accepted doctrine of “separate but equal”.  The conclusion of this landmark case evidenced the utter importance of equal education in American society.  In Kermit Hall’s text The Supreme Court in American Society, the author provides a passage from the Court’s verdict which underscores a focus on education.  The case proclaimed that education is “the most important function of state and local governments . . . It is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education.  Such an opportunity . . . is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms” (719).  Rather than base their argument upon the inferior tangible aspects of the African American classroom, plaintiffs condemned the psychological and social damage of segregated schools.  The plaintiffs stressed the intangible because, as Alvis Adair points out in Desegregation: The Illusion of Black Progress, “there is no evidence of a correlation between quality of facilities and quality of education” (72).  As previously discussed, many African American schools provided students with a good education.

According to Andrew Hartman and Martin Maehr, the plaintiffs expressed three areas of harm as a result of segregation: “(a) children have lowered self-esteem, (b) have lowered ambition and motivation, and (c) show an increase of maladaptive social behaviors. They argued that segregation, as a symbol of inferiority, was related to these problems” (38-39).  Ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, the court found segregation unequal, and therefore, unconstitutional.  The Supreme Court’s decision was based upon intangible inequalities, ruling that “segregated schools may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone” (Hartman, 39).

Although attacking the psychological harm of segregated schools was effective, the Supreme Court’s conjecture of low African American self-esteem conflicts previously provided testimonies of black pride and motivation.  For example, as Buck writes, a former student living in North Carolina stated, “Yesterday, in the all black school, we had pride, we had dignity, we had self-gratification” (64).  Furthermore, the respect held by communities and students for black teachers served as a source of student motivation.  Written by Buck, an ex-student named Robert Barber reflected that “his teachers went the extra mile to instill the importance of a good education.  For him, it was the black male teachers who stood out. It was something to aspire to. It was [his] first time seeing a black male with a tie. [He] had somebody there who understood where [he] came from” (65).  In many black schools, student self-esteem and motivation was not damaged but improved as a result of influential African American teachers and principals.

The severe problems of segregated schools, however, should not be forgotten.  As previously stated, many black students lacked an education as a result of school scarcity. Children fortunate to attend schools did so in dilapidated buildings reading tattered books.  Providing an unequal education based upon race and segregating blacks from whites, resulting from the formers “inferiority”, is a hideous evil that had to be stopped.  However, desegregation caused problems many had not foreseen.  According to Adair, “blacks and whites alike were caught without specific strategies for addressing the problems of desegregation . . . The legal mandate to desegregate public education caught the entire American society totally unprepared at every level” (44-45).

In order to desegregate schools, school boards had to decide where integration was to occur.  Although tangible segregation was eliminated, racial discrimination strongly persisted.  As a result, it is appropriate to conclude that white parents did not want their children attending black schools.  As previously mentioned, these schools were administered by black principles and classes were taught by black teachers.  Just as African American students modeled themselves upon African American teachers, Anglo-American students identified Anglo-American teachers as role models.  As a result, discriminatory white school boards and parents feared black prototypes for white students.

Furthermore, in pursuit of academic merging, African American desegregationalists emphasized the inferiority of black schools.  Although an extremely valid point, continued reinforcement of black school inferiority, as Buck writes, “naturally led to one conclusion when it came time to desegregate: the inferior school would have to close, or at least be heavily reconstructed. . . The closing of black schools had unintended consequences” (77).    As a result, many African American schools were closed.  For example, according to Buck,

In North Carolina . . . out of 226 formerly all-black high schools that had existed as of 1964, only thirteen survived as high schools by 1972.  The rest were either closed or changed to elementary schools.  Thus, over a very brief time in the mid-to-late 1960’s, black high schools were almost completely eliminated in that state (78).

As a result of the removal of many Black schools, African American students found themselves in white schools with white students.  In Gerald Rosenberg’s text The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring About Social Change, the author provides statistics detailing the percentage of black children in elementary and secondary schools with Whites from 1954-1972.  According to the data, .001 percent of black children living in the south from1954-55 had white schoolmates.  However, by 1972-73, the percentage of black students with white classmates drastically increased to 91.3 percent.  Clearly, the level of exposure to white classmates greatly amplified in the years following Brown v. Board of Education.

Not solely were students integrated, but teachers and administration as well.  However, rather than an equal incorporation, many black teachers and principals were fired in order to accommodate whites.  As Erika Frankenberg writes in “The Segregation of American Teachers”, the credentialing of teachers “began to receive more attention after the Brown decision as when faculty desegregation as well as student segregation was required of districts in dismantling their prior system of segregated schools and pushed many minority teachers out of jobs in the South as faculties were integrated” (8).  Unfortunately, the amount of African American role models for black students was diminishing.  In order to truly understand the implications of decreasing black teachers, it is important to provide an example.  In an article about Columbus, Ohio, re-transcribed in Buck’s text, an author writes,

Black teachers now make up only about 24 percent of the teaching force, while black students comprise about 60 percent of the student population . . . A veteran black teacher remarked that Columbus had all-black schools before desegregation, and it had virtually all-black schools after desegregation.  The crucial difference was before desegregation, black teachers taught black students and had more power to influence their lives (77).

As the amount of African American authority figures decreased, black students lost classroom mentors of the same skin color.  In the majority of instances, African American students were educated by white teachers in schools governed by white administrations.  In an era plagued by bigotry, the integration of blacks into white schools was a dreadful experience abundant with controversy.  In Richard John Perry’s text “Race” and Racism: The Development of Modern Racisms in America, the author describes the integration of a “few courageous” black students into a white school.  The author writes,

In 1957, African Americans attempted to integrate public schools in Little Rock Arkansas . . . Governor Orval Faubus activated the Arkansas National Guard and ordered the troops to block the school entrance while white adults in the crowd taunted, threatened, and screamed at the black children.  The disorder escalated until President Eisenhower . . . sent federal troops to Little Rock to enforce the law” (181).

This example suggests that a post-Brown v Board education was characterized by the consequences of desegregation rather than the equal opportunities presented to African American students.  Furthermore, black students faced inhospitable white classmates fueled by their parents’ ideologies.

However, the most devastating aspect of black integration into white schools was the presence of discriminatory white teachers.  As reported by Buck regarding post-desegregation, “many black children were taught by white teachers who disliked them, did not care about their success, underestimated their capabilities, or–at the opposite extreme–coddled them out of guilt” (79).  Before desegregation, many African American students developed strong pride as a result of their inspiring teachers. After desegregation, black pride in the academic arena deteriorated.  It is the decline of African American pride in the classroom that led in part to the notion of “acting white”, which Ogbu and Fordham later articulate.  As students’ self-esteem was damaged within the context of the classroom, academic success became a white experience.

Another element developing the phenomenon of “acting white” was the implementation of academic tracking in desegregated schools.  Although in theory academic tracking is intended to improve learning by matching course content with the student’s aptitude, in practice it obstructs lower performing students’ ability to learn.  According to Stephen Caldas and Carl Bankston, “track placements are strongly correlated with student’s race, ethnicity, and social class.  In racially diverse schools, white students typically are disproportionately found in the top tracks while students of color . . . are disproportionately found in the lower ones” (98-99).  Furthermore, the authors write, “tracking limits minorities’ access to the higher quality education and maintains white’s access to it” (99).  As this occurred in segregated schools, further separating whites from blacks, hindering the latter’s opportunity to learn, the notion of academic success as a white characteristic was fortified in the minds of many black students.  A classroom where whites were predisposed to achieve developed a clear partition separating whites from blacks.  In this uncomfortable environment, the pronounced division of race aided in the development of African Americans as an “Oppositional Culture”.  Because schools lacked equal opportunities for black students, white students tended to succeed.  Therefore, academic achievement was deemed a characteristic of white students.  Consequently, as Kitty Oliver writes, “black students began to tease one another by pushing their smart peers into the ‘white’ category”.  However, before desegregation, as Beverly Tatum aptly points out, “in the context of a segregated school, it was a given that the high achievement students would all be black.  Academic achievement did not have to mean separation from one’s black peers” (65).

Although desegregation of schools ended the atrocity of segregation, the way in which many schools were desegregated harmed black communities.  By proclaiming that segregated schools negatively influenced the psychology of black students, the Supreme Court implied that the cure of segregation was desegregation as restoration of the “hearts and minds” of black students.  However, rather than reinstate self-esteem, motivation, and ambition, desegregation initially created an inverse result, transplanting black education to a discriminatory white world.  Doing so altered the African American perception of education, finding themselves in schools developed for white students.  As a result, blacks were reduced from the majority to the minority within the academic world.  Rather than identify the academic experience as black, African Americans attending white schools perceived education as a white experience.  As John McWhorter explains, “With the closing of black schools after desegregation orders, black students began going to school with white ones in larger numbers than ever before, which meant that whites were available for black students to model themselves against.”  Because black students were oppressed by whites, the former group expressed opposition toward whites by resisting academic achievement for fear of “acting white”.  As a result, a clear achievement gap developed between blacks and whites.

The term “acting white” was coined in the 1980’s and gained popularity in 1986 with Signithia Fordham’s article, “Black Students’ School Success: Coping with the Burden of ‘Acting White’”.  Although it has been over twenty years, the hypothesis is still used to address the academic achievement gap.  When examining the complex history of segregation and desegregation in America, it is clear that the notion of “acting white” developed shortly after the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education ended school segregation.  However, when studying Karolyn Tyson’s 2005 article “It’s Not ‘A Black Thing’: Understanding the Burden of Acting White and Other Dilemmas of High Achievement”, we find that although “the burden of ‘acting white’ exists for some black students”, it is not “prevalent among the group” (3).  At the conclusion of Tyson’s study on the “acting white” hypothesis, researchers found that ambivalence toward academic achievement was present “among black students at just one of eight secondary schools” interviewed (19).  According to Tyson, “the black students in this study avoided advanced courses . . . for fear of not doing well academically”, not for feat of “acting white” (19).  Those students decided not to pursue advanced courses because they were concerned “that they might not be able to handle the amount or level of work required and that their grades might suffer” (19).  Furthermore, Tyson writes, “racialized ridiculing of high-achieving black students was evident for only 2 of 40 black adolescents, both of whom attended the same school” (19).  According to Ogbu, race-driven mockery is the source of African American ambivalence toward academic achievement.  Black students disregard school for fear of being called “white”.  Tyson’s study, evidencing a severe lack of “racialized ridiculing” among black students, serves to downplay Ogbu’s hypothesis as the main source for racial gaps of success.

Furthermore, in a recent study conducted by the UCLA Civil Rights Project, researchers discovered that American schools are more segregated at present than ever before.  As stated in the article “US Schools are more Segregated Today than in the 1950’s”, written by Gary Orfield, “schools in the U.S. are 44 percent non-white, and minorities are rapidly emerging as the majority of public school students”.  As the number of African American students in school increases, the minority becomes the majority.  As a result, black students are exposed to a greater amount of black academic success.  Consequently, the notion of “acting white” is inversed as academic achievement is perceived as a black experience.

Desegregation ended the monstrous evil of racial segregation in schools.  As a result of black school inferiority, African American students received an unequal education.  This paper is not a validation of segregated schools but attempts to highlight the unforeseen consequences of desegregation.  Following the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, many black schools were closed, resulting in the incorporation of black students into white schools.  These schools were comprised of unfriendly white students and discriminatory white teachers making black integration a psychologically damaging experience.  One consequence of desegregation was Ogbu and Forham’s notion of “acting white”.  As white students began to succeed in a classroom designed for white academic achievement, black students, perceiving whites as the oppressors, rejected school for fear of “acting white”.  Although the “acting white” hypothesis explains the academic achievement gap in the years following Brown v. Board, recent studies have minimized the theory’s significance, stressing its overgeneralization.  It has become apparent that attitudes of opposition cannot be assigned to black students for merely having black skin.  Alternatively, African American attitudes toward academic achievement are related to daily encounters with inequality and subject to individual experiences.  Therefore, the achievement gap currently existing in the academic arena lacks empirical evidence addressing the issue and will continue to require specialized research for years to come.

 

Rhetoric: Then and Now

A2: Explain the classical and Enlightenment definitions of rhetoric and propose a contemporary definition.  Account for differences between the three.

To begin, it is important to examine the development of rhetoric as an art, which was initially questioned by Plato but defended and actualized by his pupil, Aristotle.  Thus, the classical definition of rhetoric will be derived from Aristotle’s Rhetoric, which has become the predominate representation of classical Greek rhetoric.

In Plato’s Gorgias, Socrates confronts Gorgias, the famous rhetorician, and demonstrates that the teacher does not truly understand that which he instructs.  According to Socrates, “the whole of which rhetoric is a part in is not an art at all” but “flattery” he explains, that when employed, is focused upon “pleasure . . . without any consideration of good and evil”.  Furthermore, Socrates insists that rhetoric “is not a techne, but an empeiria because it has no account of the things it applies, what sort of nature they are, and so it cannot state the cause of each thing.  I refuse to call anything irrational a techne”.

Although Socrates’s argument attacks rhetoric, defining it in negative terms, in his text Phaedrus, Plato develops a defendable rhetoric rooted in dialectic, detached of the pleasure-seeking attributes developed in Gorgias.  In a conversation between Phaedrus and Socrates, the latter concludes that “anyone . . . who seriously teaches the art of rhetoric, will first describe the soul with perfect accuracy” then “he will classify the speeches and the souls and will adapt each to the other”.  Thus, rhetoric is art solely when the speaker knows the soul, is aware of what is good, and produces speech to promote said good to the soul of men.  This notion is further developed in Quintilian’s Insitutes of Oratory.  In book two, chapter sixteen, the author writes, “if eloquence is the art of speaking well (the definition of which I adopt), so that a true orator must be a good man, it must assuredly be acknowledged that it is a useful art” (Quintilian, II. xvii. 11).  Thus, in the hands of Plato and Quintilian, rhetoric can be viewed as an art.

However, Plato’s argument questions the rhetorician’s ability to speak to multiple souls at the same time, acknowledging that common thought is inhomogeneous.  Thus, Aristotle creates his text Rhetoric in defense for the art, fully aware of the incongruity of public opinion. Beginning his text with the declaration, “Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic”, Aristotle challenges Plato’s previous arguments while setting rhetoric up as an art equivalent to Dialectic, commanding thorough exploration.  Aristotle explains that “the framers of the current treatise on rhetoric have constructed but a small portion of the art” and these writers “deal mainly with non-essentials. The arousing of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions has nothing to do with the essential facts but is merely a personal appeal to the man who is judging the case”.  Thus, Aristotle insists that the legislation creates “sound laws” in order to counteract the perversion of the judge “by moving him to anger or envy or pity”.

Lastly, before we arrive at Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric, it is important to elaborate on the role of legislation in Rhetoric, highlighting Aristotle’s philosophic thought countering the modern definition of rhetoric this essay will present later.  Aristotle supports the creation of “sound laws” to temper the ability to wrongly persuade judges.  These laws are unbiased because “they are made after long consideration” and “the law giver is not particular but prospective in general, whereas members of the assembly and the jury find it their duty to decide on definite cases brought before them”.  Thus, Aristotle explains that the assembly and jury,

“lose any clear vision of the truth and have their judgment obscured by considerations of personal pleasures or gain. In general, then, the judge should be allowed to decide as few things as possible. But questions as to whether something has happened or has not happened, will be or will not be, is or is not, must of necessity be left to the judge, since the lawgiver cannot foresee them”.

Although Aristotle is speaking on rhetoric, he is fusing the subject with his philosophy, which is instrumental in his definition of rhetoric.  According to Aristotle, there are dependable principles at the foundation of reality assisting individual/communal actions (i.e. “sound laws”).  However, certain “questions” arise in which the individual/communal must face that the foundation of reality “cannot foresee” because actual reality is constantly changing.  Thus, Aristotle asserts that rhetoric and its study can bridge the gap between the principles (laws) guiding individual actions/decisions and the shifting reality that causes improvisation.  Therefore, Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric is thus: “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion”.  It must be used so that “we may see clearly what the facts are”.  Persuasion consists of three kinds: “the personal character of the speaker; putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself”.  The “enthymeme” incorporates these three in the form of communication.  Because the “enthymeme” necessitates both speaker and listener, Aristotle’s rhetoric is a bidirectional process of understanding.

Peter Ramus’s text Arguments in Rhetoric Against Quintilian criticizes Quintilian’s jumbling of five parts, “invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery”, under the heading of rhetoric. Rather, Ramus argued:

“There are two universal . . . Reason and Speech; dialectic is the theory of the former, grammar and rhetoric of the latter. Dialectic therefore should draw on the general strengths of human reason in the consideration and the arrangement of the subject matter, while grammar should analyze purity of speech in etymology, syntax, and prosody for the purpose of speaking correctly, and also in orthography for the purpose of writing correctly. Rhetoric should demonstrate the embellishment of speech first in tropes and figures, second in dignified delivery (6).

Thus, one can conclude from Ramus’s text, as does he, that “from the development of language and speech, only two proper parts will be left for rhetoric, style and delivery, rhetoric will possess nothing proper and of its own beyond these”(10).  Ramus reduces rhetoric to the final process of communication, preceded by Dialectic and Grammar.  Thus, rhetoric lacks the art of invention, marking a heavy diminution of the study.

However, Ramus is not the sole representation of Enlightenment rhetoric.  Whereas Ramus sought to isolate rhetoric, Giambattista Vico believes rhetoric should be incorporated in the study of all disciplines.  In his text On the Study Methods of Our Time, Vico writes, “the greatest drawback of our educational methods is that we pay an excessive amount of attention to the natural sciences and not enough to ethics” (33).  Furthermore, Vico concludes that “whosoever intends to devote his efforts . . . to a political career . . . let him cultivate his mind with an ingenious method; let him study topics and defend both sides of a controversy, be it on nature, man, or politics, in a freer and brighter style of expression(41).  With this statement, Vico reconnects rhetoric to Aristotelian ideas of rhetoric as an art and topic on its own.  Thus, in the 18th century, rhetoric was depicted as an art that can be studied by itself or something that may be integrated into the emerging scientific revolution.

Although it is difficult to offer a modern definition of rhetoric, modern texts on the subject have sought to reexamine classical rhetoric in an attempt to redefine the subject in a culture where rhetoric flourishes.  This is clearly evident in Richard Weaver’s The Phaedrus and the Nature of Rhetoric and in Kenneth Burke’s A Rhetoric of Motives, in which Burke writes “rhetoric is the art of persuasion, or a study of means of persuasion available for any given situation. We have thus, deviously, come to the point at which Aristotle begins his treatise on rhetoric”(46).  However, interest in rhetoric has been sparked by the modern ideology that language can alter reality because it alone creates meaning, as Burke writes, “rhetorical language is inducement to action”(42).  As a result of our complete dependence upon language, rhetoric is unquestionably necessary.  Furthermore, Burke believes that rhetoric is “rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic, and is continually born anew; the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols”(43).  Thus, because man responds to symbols, rhetoric is the root of action and cooperation.  Therefore, from a modern standpoint, rhetoric can be viewed as the way individuals “identify” with each other and “contributes variously to social cohesion”(44), which in the ever-changing world of modernity is an immense contribution.  Thus, it is my belief that modern rhetoric has indirectly arrived at its Aristotelian roots.

However, an aspect greatly differentiating the two is Aristotle’s philosophical thought and that of modernity.  As previously discussed, exemplified in Aristotle’s argument for “sound laws” at the base of judgment, Aristotle believes that certain generalities at a subsurface level guide individuals through life.  Rhetoric rests atop said level and helps to navigate the uncertainties of the tottering surface.  However, since Aristotle’s time, levels upon levels have been added to the underlying reality, thus deeply separating individuals from a common foundation.  As a result, where Aristotle was able to establish systematic rules regarding the study and use of rhetoric, the rhetoric of modernity is deeply embedded within the multiple layers or our reality, mudding up modern attempts at definitions and implementation.  Rhetoric is all around us and yet far from our perception.

B2: Is it possible to really understand the rhetorical tradition of another culture? Explain why or why not? Draw on course texts as needed for examples and arguments.

In order to undertake a cross-cultural examination of rhetoric, it is important to understand the foundation of one’s own rhetoric, then relate it to the other.  Western rhetoric is essentially based upon the writings of Plato and Aristotle.  According to Xing Lu in the text Rhetoric in Ancient China, “until Plato coined the term rhetorike in the fourth century B.C.E., rhetoric had not been conceptualized or treated as a separate discipline”(2).  As a result of the ancient Greek’s isolation of the term rhetoric, they developed systematic rules regarding the study and use of rhetoric.  In Aristotle’s influential text Rhetoric, the author clearly distinguishes the subject, elevating rhetoric to great importance: “Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic”. Furthermore, Plato highlighted rhetoric as scientific, suggesting that “Rhetoric is like medicine . . . because medicine has to define the nature of the body and the rhetoric of the soul . . . not empirically but scientifically” (Phaedrus).  In handling rhetoric as a definite topic of discourse, the ancient Greeks were able to define it.  Plato asserted that the rhetorician “will classify the speeches and the souls and will adapt each to the other” (Phaedrus).  Thus, rhetoric is an art when the speaker conceptualizes the proper speech for each soul and organizes his discussion accordingly.  According to Aristotle, rhetoric is “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion” so that “we may see clearly what the facts are” (Rhetoric). For Aristotle, truth is an actuality and people are generally reasonable yet swayed by emotions.  Thus, rhetoric is necessary in assisting to uncover the truth of the good.

In contrast, ancient Chinese rhetoric was not treated as its own discipline.  Thus, a definition of the topic was not developed.  As a result, Xing Lu explains that “ignorance and denial of non-Western culture’s rhetorical traditions” has developed, leading to “the mistaken notion that rhetoric is the sole property and invention of the West, fueling cultural prejudice and bigotry with regard to the intellectual histories of other cultures” (1).  It is not that the ancient Chinese did not have a rhetorical tradition.  According to Xing Lu, undefined “rhetorical practices are contained in literary and historical texts. Ancient Chinese rhetorical theories . . . are embedded in works of ethics, epistemology, and statecraft”(2-3).  As a result of the harmonious fusing of rhetorical practices into other disciplines, it is difficult to unearth the specific origin of Chinese rhetoric.  However, when one closely studies ancient Chinese texts, a definition of rhetorical practices evolves, similar to that of the ancient Greeks.

In the text Rhetoric in Ancient China, the author suggests that the Chinese “Study of Naming (Ming) and Argumentation (Bian)” corresponds with Western rhetoric.  In definition of this study, Xing Lu explains that “ming aims to seek the truth and justice and bianconcerns the art of discourse and persuasion”(4).  Furthermore, “ming is in some sense similar to the Greek notion of logos, in that both are concerned with issues of language and epistemology, while bian shares some common ground with the Greek wordrhetorike, in both refer to argumentation, rationality, and the artistic use of language”(4-5).  Thus, Western rhetoric and rhetoric of the East, clearly share much of the same ideology.  Therefore, why is there difficulty understanding the rhetorical traditions of another culture?

The difficulty arises not out of pronounced dissimilarities between rhetorical traditions but out of cultural differences.  Culture shapes that which exists within it.  Consequently, “each culture will have a general sense of rhetoric based upon the culture’s experience with speech and language”(Lu, 3).  Therefore, what prevents bian and ming from being equal to rhetorike and logos, is culture.  More clearly, terms “are always culturally specific, ancient Chinese and Greek thinkers would necessarily have attached their own linguistic and cultural understanding to such terms. Therefore, attempting to find exact cross-cultural correlations and linkages is futile” (Lu, 5).  Thus, each culture’s rhetoric is a reflection of the culture itself.  To understand another culture’s rhetoric, one must understand their culture.  As Xing Lu writes, “the task of a rhetorical scholar, then, is to remain open to the universal sense of rhetoric, as well as to the transformative power of a particular culture on the practice of rhetoric”(3).

As a result, the question, “is it possible to really understand the rhetorical tradition of another culture”, breaks down to, “is it possible to really understand another’s culture”.  The problem of comprehending Eastern culture from a Western standpoint is amplified by Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism and the inconstancy of Hermeneutics (interpretation).  According to Said, Orientalism is “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and ‘the Occident’(1997).  Furthermore, Orientalism produces “distorted and inaccurate views of non-Western people, ideas, and traditions” projecting “a narrow view of Oriental cultures that has helped perpetuate racism and cultural stereotypes”(Lu, 15).  Thus, Orientalism depicts a negative view of the East from the West. Because we often arrive at definitions through opposition, this negative view further separates the Orient from the Occident, leading to problems identifying with the other culture.

Hermeneutics, in general, “from the Greek hermeneia, meaning ‘interpretation’, is a discipline concerned with the interpretation of historical texts”(Lu, 19).  Thus, rather than arriving at word-to-word translations of texts from different cultures, hermeneutics is an active process of reconstructing texts by the translator.  As a result, many texts interpreted cross-culturally are subject to misconception.  More clearly, “interpretation does not take place in an ideological vacuum but is subject to the preconceptions of the interpreter who see things through certain ideological lenses, revealed in his or her choice of and approach to the texts”(Lu, 20). These “ideological lenses” skew the interpretations, since the “ideological lens” looked through by the author of the original text can never be known to the interpreter.

As a result of Orientalism, false notions regarding the Orient from the Occident have been internalized. Thus, when Eastern texts are interpreted by Western translators, the result is skewed interpretations.  Clearly, the West is frequently twice removed from Eastern texts and their implicit rhetorical practices.  Thus, is it possible to really understand the rhetoric of another culture?  Yes, if one is able to do so.  Although this seems to be a safe answer, it is the best I am able to conclude.  It is possible to understand Eastern rhetoric but the requirements for cognition are intensely demanding.  For example, understanding another culture and its texts “is not a cognitive function of the mind, but a re-experiencing of the world as lived and experienced by the original author”(Lu, 20).  Thus, one most clear their mind of preconceptions and open up to the possibilities of another culture, an extremely difficult, if possible, task.  Once one develops an understanding of another culture, they may then move to interpreting their rhetoric.  In regards to Eastern rhetoric, rather than an isolated ideology rhetoric is fused within multiple disciplines.  Thus, in order to understand Eastern rhetoric, we must first recognize it within Eastern discourse then represent it honestly in meaningful ways without destroying its true nature.  This seems to be a difficult task to say the least.

Spivak: Loosely Defined Ideas Left for Interrogation

Spivak’s discourse in itself, regardless of meaning, seems to be a rebellion against phallocentric language.  Her ideas lack rigid definitions and are transcribed in a nonlinear way.  Unfortunately, though I try to be as aware as possible to the systems shaping my ideas and discourse, reading Spivak’s interview brought to my attention the phallocentric foundation of my own mental processes.  However, this is far from a bad thing. I believe Spivak would rejoice in my confusion, which, to my knowledge, is her agenda: to put my mental processes into “crisis” and to highlight the “tensions” between the phallocentric foundation in the reader and the circuitous train of thought she presents.  By acknowledging the “crisis” and “tension” rather than creating a “balance”, we leave a window open for continuous discussion and analysis which is the only way to counter “privileging” one over the other.  I found it difficult to find clarity in Spivak’s words, but had I been able to, Spivak would have been using the language which she has dedicated her studies to critique.

Having read much of Said’s Orientalism, I found his article Orientalism Reconsidered to be more of a response to his critics Lewis and Pipes than a “look at the problems that first interested [Said] in [Orientalism] but which are still far from resolved” (89).  Said begins by disclaiming “I would not want it to be thought that the license afforded me by the present occasion is an attempt to answer my critics”and then goes on to explain, “I have been helped to achieve this broader understanding by nearly everyone who wrote about my book”.  Thus, I believe Said should acknowledge the article as a response to his critics in an attempt to better understand Orientalism, thoroughly highlighting the need for multiple perspectives regarding one ideology.  However, what I found new regarding Orientalism Reconsidered was Said’s declaration that “no one trying to grasp it (the ‘Orient’) can by an act of pure will or of sovereign understanding stand at some Archimedean point outside of the flux”(92).  Thus, Said believes that is is impossible to occupy a disconnected vantage point from which to understand a culture.  Do we agree with Said and can anyone truly understand culture?

Anti-Marijuana Rhetoric of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics

Anti-Marijuana Rhetoric of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics:

Cultivating an Understanding of the American Marijuana Debate

The year is 2010 and the state of California is in an economic crisis.  In a recent study conducted by California’s Nonpartisan Fiscal and Policy Advisor, the Legislative Analysis Office, researchers concluded: “the state must address a General Fund budget problem of 20.7 billion (http://www.lao.ca.gov).  Dwelling in the overwhelming shadow this monetary sum casts, California voters are considering the legalization and taxation of marijuana in order to alleviate the budget crisis.  Derived from an article entitled “Legal-Marijuana Advocates Focus on a New Green”, featured in The New York Times on March 25, 2010, “The California Secretary of State certified a November vote on a ballot measure that would legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana, a plan that advocates say could raise $1.4 billion and save precious law enforcement and prison resources” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/us/26pot.html).  Utilization of the term “advocates” in the previous sentence implies the presence of opponents; of which there are many.  Skip Miller, chairman of D.A.R.E, a drug abuse prevention program, opposes the attempted legalization, stating, “Do we really want this habit forming drug easier to get, particularly as the nation has made significant strides in reducing illegal drug use” (http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/28/opinion/la-oe-miller28-2010jan28/2).

In Miller’s proclamation, he employs the negatively associated term “drug”; a word deeply permeated with content in American society.  According to the text Rethinking our War on Drugs, written by Gary Fisher, “The actual term ‘War on Drugs’ can be traced back to 1971 during the Nixon Administration, due to a concern that many serviceman returning from Vietnam were addicted to heroin” (4).  By declaring a war on drugs, America has established drugs as the enemy.  Furthermore, in defining marijuana as a drug, America has delegated marijuana as an adversary, in a similar fashion to the heroin designation.  However, as a result of the saturation of the word “drug” by its environment, in this case, by American society, it is difficult, if at all possible, to define.  What is a drug?

The War on Drugs in America is not a physical form of combat but a rhetorical battle of opposing ideologies.  In accordance with William Elwood in his text Rhetoric in the War on Drugs: The Triumphs and Tragedies of Public Relations, I will examine the War on Drugs “as most people see it: through rhetoric” (3).  Within the context of this essay, exploring the publicity through which drug discourse seeps to the masses, I refer to rhetoric as defined in the text Rhetoric and Composition, written by Edward Fulton, as, “the art which consists in a systematic use of the technical means of influencing the minds, imaginations, emotions, and actions of others by the use of language” (3). I will center upon the rhetoric of the marijuana drug war in America, referring specifically to the anti-marijuana discourse of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics; a government agency established in the 1930’s in order to counteract the use of marijuana in the United States.  Rather than argue for the legalization or prohibition of marijuana, an argument with no clear synthesis of the opposing ideologies, marijuana should be elevated as a word with a malleable concept made malleable by the word’s environment and the rhetorical discourse shaping its meaning.  Thus, one may not be able to define drugs, but one is capable of examining its conceptual discourse, a discourse which has further determined marijuana as a drug.

In Jacques Derrida’s Rhetoric of Drugs, the French philosopher provides the founding ideology from which I build upon in this essay:

“Drugs” is both a word and a concept . . . A plant, root, or substance, is also for us a concept, a thing apprehended through the name of a concept and the device of an interpretation.  No, in the case of “drugs”, the regime of the concept is different: there are no drugs “in nature”.  There may be natural poisons and indeed natural lethal poisons, but they are not as such “drugs”. As with addiction, the concept of drugs supposes an instituted and an institutional definition: a history is required, and a culture, conventions, evaluations, norms, and an entire network of intertwined discourses, a rhetoric, whether explicit or elliptical (19-20).

According to Derrida, “drugs” is not solely a word but a concept susceptible to multiple connotations influenced by various elements.  More specifically, the rhetoric of drugs has evolved through time, altering the meaning of drugs, bending its implications in order to satisfy diverse factors of the historical process.  Thus, the word “drug”, as Derrida explains in his text Dissemination, can be rendered as a “poison” and paradoxically, a “remedy” (71).  The term “drug”, as a result of its flexible meaning, or rather, as Derrida clarifies, the “roles and strange logic that links” the signified to the signifier, “has been dispersed, masked, obliterated, and rendered almost unreadable . . . first and foremost by the redoubtable, irreducible difficulty of translation” (The Rhetoric of Drugs71-73).  Therefore, “drugs” is a word but one untranslatable.  Consequently, it cannot be linked to a solid concept or definition.  Accordingly, I will not attempt to classify the term, but rather examine the “intertwined discourses”, or rhetoric, that assign meaning to the word “drug”.

In Plato’s Phaedrus, a dialogue is presented between the Classical Greek philosopher’s foremost protagonist Socrates and his intermittent orator Phaedrus.  In discussing the art and practice of rhetoric, Socrates associates the written and spoken word with the term “drug”.  Referring to Phaedrus’s vocal influence, Socrates states, “you seem to have discovered a drug (pharmakon) for getting me out. A hungry animal can be driven by dangling carrot or a bit of greenstuff in front of it; similarly if you proffer me speeches bound in books, I don’t doubt you can cart me all round Attica” (71).  If words are analogous to drugs, having the ability, as Derrida writes, to make “one stray from one’s general, natural, habitual paths and laws”, then interchangeably, the term “drug” is a word (Dissemination 70).  Given that “drugs” is both a “word and a concept”, the word has power to rhetorically render the concept of the drug as a “medicine and/or poison” (Derrida 70).  Thus, the word “drug” is not a truth but an interpretation reinterpreted throughout history.

In order to examine history as an impressionable entity rather than an absolute truth, thus exemplifying the history of drugs not as a history of truth but rather a variable history of rhetoric, it is essential to review Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideologies regarding truth.  In the 19th century philosopher’s critical essay “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense”, Nietzsche questions, “What is truth? – in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished, poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to people”(my italics) (42).  If truth is a product of human society, than the possibility of objective truth dissolves.  Thus, the only way to study the truth is to examine the subjective, or the rhetoric augmenting the aggregate of human relations.  However, throughout the process of history, “the sum of human relations” which alters truth has been inescapably susceptible to its relationship with power.  Thus, the rhetoric of those in power eclipses the rhetoric of the less powerful.  Therefore, it is appropriate to consider truth not solely as the sum of human relations, but the sum of human relations subjugated by systems of power.

The concept of truth not as an independent entity but rather derivative of power is thoroughly explored in Michel Foucault’s landmark text Discipline and Punish. In the chapter entitled “The Body of the Condemned”, Foucault writes, “Power and knowledge directly imply one another . . . there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations” (175).  Thus, knowledge regarding the concept of drugs is instilled to the masses by those in power, using various rhetorical strategies to introduce their own agenda.  Furthermore, as Foucault explains in his text “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History”, those in power are granted more control by “giving rise to the universe of rules” and installing these rules within humanity (150).  Those who have been “successful” throughout history, as Foucault writes, “are capable of seizing these rules, to replace those who had used them, to disguise themselves so as to pervert them, invert their meaning, and redirect them against those who had initially imposed them” (151).  Thus, rules are established within society by the dominant group and used to reinstate dominance over the less powerful.

The ancient relationship between knowledge and power is firmly embedded within contemporary society by the recent advent of mass media as a source for information.  The term “Mass Media”, coined in the 1920’s, is described in Alan Wells’ text Mass Media and Society as referring to “newspapers, magazines, television, film, radio, and recording” and “a product of mass society” (4).  Clearly, mass media is designed to reach a large audience.  In successfully doing so through the multiple mediums generating information, those in control of said media can be referred to as the dominant group holding the power to impart “knowledge” to the masses. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), established in 1930 in an era of mass media development, had the means to reach large audiences with their drug rhetoric, shaping the foundation of American ideology regarding marijuana.

Harry Jacob Anslinger, born in 1892, became the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics on August 12, 1930 (Booth 176).  Although pilloried as the individual responsible for the criminalization of marijuana in the United States, anti-marijuana organizations were in existence prior to his appointment.  However, as Martin Booth writes in his text Cannabis: A History, Anslinger masterminded  “a very efficient national campaign that was to do much to determine public attitudes toward marijuana . . . As such, he is probably the most important player in the history of both American and international anti-narcotics law enforcement and legislation” (174).  Furthermore, according to David Musto, during his reign within the FBN, Anslinger’s radical assessments were unrestricted.  Musto writes, “Anslinger’s opinions on how to best put teeth into the law met with almost no objection.  He rarely found himself curbed by the administration under which he worked” (212).  As a result of Anslinger’s dominant presence in the establishment of public thought regarding marijuana, a presence made dominant by his ideological free-range, it is crucial to examine the anti-marijuana rhetoric he created and ratified under the FBN.

As stated by Booth, regarding Anslinger, “where marijuana was concerned . . . he was out to get the drug and all those connected with it, almost at any cost and often with a blunt disregard for the truth of any facts that were contrary to his argument” (177).  However, when first appointed head of the bureau, Anslinger “had been dismissive of a federal ban on marijuana.  At the time, he simply did not see it as that great a threat” (Booth 178).  In a 1932 report provided by the FBN entitled “On the Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs”, the bureau’s de-emphasis on the marijuana problem is evident.  The report reads,

A great deal of public interest had been aroused by newspaper articles appearing from time to time on the evils of the abuse of marijuana, or Indian hemp, and more attention had been focused upon specific cases reported on the abuses of the drug than would otherwise have been the case.  This publicity tends to magnify the extent of the evil and lends color to the inference that there is an alarming spread of the improper use of the drug, whereas the actual increase in such use may not have been inordinately large” (221).

Therefore, why the later fixation upon marijuana? What lead an individual with “only sporadic contact with narcotic control” (Musto 210) and an initial “reluctance to address marijuana” (Booth 178), to target cannabis?

Two years after the formation of the FBN, the effects of the Great Depression began to place economic pressure on the organization.  This notion is evident as Booth writes,

The Depression caused a considerable fall in tax revenue and government spending plummeted.  The FBN budget was substantially cut.  In order to boost his organization, Anslinger had to find a new target – a new drug menace – upon which to peg a budget increase.  Although he had previously given marijuana little thought and differed putting it under federal legislation, he now set about demonizing it, circulating pamphlets and painting stories in the press about murders committed whilst under marijuana intoxication (180).

In order to regain the power momentarily abated by the Depression, Anslinger directed his attack on marijuana, spreading grotesque anti-marijuana literature and reports.  As evidenced in the FBN’s 1932 report supplied previously within this paper, Anslinger understood that publicity rhetoric “tends to magnify the extent of the evil” of its target.  Consequently, working within the rules regarding the active maintenance of power within society, Anslinger alters his own apprehensive response toward marijuana in favor of a dramatic, extremist approach to gain federal funding.  In Lewis Hershey’s essay “Burke’s Aristotelianism: Burke and Aristotle on Form”, the author examines Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric and the Aristotelian association of rhetoric and power. Hershey writes,

Careful examination of Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric reveals an intuitive knowledge of a dynamic, process view of human communication. Aristotle defines rhetoric “as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion”.  It is interesting to note that the Greek word for “faculty” is variously translated as “technique” and “power”. “Observing” across many possible and varying situations is an exercise of “power” that implies a conscious, on-going activity. Recognizing “available means” demonstrates an awareness that means vary with ends, an observation consistent with a process orientation towards language use (182).

The FBN, interested in the maintenance of power through the acquisition of money, allowing the bureau to survive in a capital-driven society, employed rhetoric, or “power”, by “observing” the “available means” in which to persuade, thus obtaining monetary support.  This “conscious, on-going activity” varies based upon one’s observations.  Observing the media’s ability to amplify public fear of marijuana, the FBN inverts prior apathy toward the drug, emphasizes its “evil”, and consequently increases FBN power by manufacturing publicity.  Thus, the FBN engaged power through rhetoric, rhetoric through power.

Having established the inconsistency of the FBN, evidencing the flexibility of ideologies dependent upon a variable environment, we now look to specific examples of Anslinger’s rhetoric, previously characterized as inconsiderate of the truth.  In support of the Uniform State Narcotic Act, which gave states the ability to utilize police authority in the seizure of drugs and punishment of users, featured in the Hearst Newspaper on September 11, 1935, Anslinger states, “the insidious and insanity-producing marijuana has become among the worst of all narcotic banes, invading even the school houses of the country, and the Uniform State Narcotic Law is the only Legislation yet devised to deal effectively with this horrid menace” (Bonnie &Whitebread 101).  However, regardless of the FBN’s support of the Uniform State Narcotic Act, as Richard Bonnie and Charles Whitebread write, by the end of 1935, “only ten states had enacted the Uniform Narcotic Drug Law. This lack of success led Anslinger to . . . dictate a new strategy. The bureau needed to arouse public interest so that the professional objections would seem inconsequential beside a ‘felt need’ of the legislatures” (96-97).  By intensifying public concern, Aslinger’s goal was to establish a subjective feeling within a legislation attempting to objectively weigh marijuana.  In doing so, the FBN evidences the ability of rhetoric to upset the formation of objective judgments.

In an attempt to classify marijuana as a demonized drug, Anslinger sought newspaper support in reiterating stories enlarging the bond between marijuana and violence.  Through the Union Signal, a paper that did not, as Bonnie and Writebread state, “reflect any significant interest . . . in marijuana until 1934”, whose prior focus had centered upon the “narcotic nicotine”, Anslinger’s stories reached the masses.  In February of 1936, the Signal transcribed Anslinger’s approximation that “fifty percent of the violent crimes committed in districts occupied by  Mexicans, Greeks, Turks, Filipinos, Spaniards, Latin Americans, and Negroes may be traced to the use of marihuana” (Bonnie 106).  Another story released by the Universal News Service in 1936 regarded marijuana as a “killer drug” and “those addicted . . . lose all restraints, all inhibitions.  They become bestial demoniacs, filled with a mad lust to kill” (Booth 182).

Not solely did newspapers join the anti-marijuana movement but Anslinger’s operation generated movies that reflected societal fears by depicting “evil-weed”.  The most notable being the 1936 film Reefer Madness directed by Louis J. Gasnier.  Described by Booth, the movie presents the story of Mae and Jack who “introduce their fellow students to marijuana.  The lives of all are shattered, especially that of one committed to an insane asylum for life” (183).  The movie seems to echo Anslinger’s famous comment that “marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users, insanity, criminality, and death” (Booth 191).

According to Booth, although Anslinger’s initial objective was state legislation, federal lawmaking would “considerably raise the FBN arrest rate, giving the organization a higher standing both in public and government eyes and, consequently, generate a greater budget. He [Anslinger] increased his efforts” (182).  In 1937, Anslinger’s comment, “If the hideous monster Frankenstein came face to face with the monster Marihuana, he would drop dead of fright”, was published in the Washington Herald.  Furthermore, in the same year, Anslinger authored an article in American Magazine entitled “Marihuana: Assassin of Youth”.  The article reads,

The sprawled body of a young girl lay crushed on the sidewalk the other day after a plunge from the fifth story of a Chicago apartment house. Everyone called it a suicide but actually it was murder. The killer was a narcotic known to America as marihuana, and history as hashish. It is a narcotic used in the form of cigarettes, comparatively new to the United States and as dangerous as a coiled rattlesnake (Booth 190).

Within the same article, Anslinger rhetorically enhances another significant story:

An entire family was murdered by a youthful addict in Florida. When officers arrived at the home they found the youth staggering about in a human slaughterhouse. With an ax he had killed his father, mother, two brothers, and a sister. He seemed to be in a daze… He had no recollection of having committed the multiple crimes. The officers knew him ordinarily as a sane, rather quiet young man; now he was pitifully crazed. They sought the reason. The boy said he had been in the habit of smoking something which youthful friends called ‘muggles’, a childish name for marihuana (Booth 190).

To be clear, these were not unbiased stories but elaborate devices used to strengthen the bond between marijuana and criminality.

Two weeks following this shocking propaganda campaign against the “evil drug”, Congress met to measure The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.  The law decreed that any person “cultivating, transporting, selling, prescribing, or using the ‘drug’ had to be registered and pay a tax levy of one hundred dollars an ounce every time the drug changed hands . . . the price of a brand-new Ford Model-Y saloon car in 1937 was $250”( Booth 188).  Implementing a punitive tax of such a great amount would control social use, making marijuana unattainable by repressive taxation.  In deliberation of the act, only one individual was allowed to speak in opposition.  Dr. William C. Woodward of the American Medical Association, according to Booth, stated that “the whole hearing process was biased, there was a lack of scientific proof for the claims being promulgated, witness testament was vague, the assumption the medical use of cannabis was responsible for the marijuana menace was unfounded” (187).  However, when the bill reached Congress, when asked about the AMA’s opinion, “a Democrat supporter replied . . . They support this bill one hundred percent” (Booth 188).  Thus, on August 2, 1937, the Marijuana Tax Act passed.

Derrida explains that Plato, as evidenced in Phaedrus, remains suspicious of all drugs (pharmakon) in general, “even in the case of drugs used exclusively for therapeutic ends, even when they are wielded with good intentions, and even when they are as such effective. There is no such thing as a harmless remedy. The pharmakon can never be simply beneficial” (Dissemination 99).  Rather than adopt Plato’s skepticism of every drug, studying the “poison” and “remedy” within each, the public tends to become exceedingly fearful of specific drugs while accommodating others.  Much of this specified discrimination is the result of the power of rhetoric.  In the 1930’s, the FBN’s anti-marijuana rhetoric generated fear regarding the “drug” to a public first encountering the substance.  In response to Anslinger’s article “Marihuana: Assassin of Youth”, the FBN received over “fifty letters addressed to the commissioner which say, ‘Your article was the first time I ever heard of marihuana’” (Bonnie 99).  Thus, Anslinger’s biased rhetoric, which disregarded scientific evidence, defined marijuana as a drug in a world unprepared to make objective judgments, thus primed to subjectively judge drugs.  Consequently, Anslinger’s rhetoric facilitated the development of American society’s view concerning marijuana.  Before 1938, the federal Pure Food and Drug Act contained only two jurisdictional definitions of “drug”:

1) medicines and preparations recognized in the United States Pharmacopoeia or National Formulary … and 2) any substance or mixture of substances intended to be used for the cure, mitigation, or prevention of disease.  In 1938, Congress added a third definition . . . articles (other than food) intended to affect the structure or any function of the body

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/98-1152.ZD.html

Marijuana fits into this third definition, created shortly after Anslinger’s campaign and the pass of the Marijuana Tax Act.  Clearly, the FBN’s rhetoric assisted in defining marijuana as a drug.

Although, much has changed since the FBN’s lurid anti-marijuana campaign, rhetoric is currently shaping the concept of marijuana.  The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a United States federal department responsible for the promotion and protection of public health, classifies marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug.  In order to inhabit this category, the drug must fit three criteria:

1) The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse. 2) The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States. 3) There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision. Examples include heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana, and methaqualone.

http://www.justice.gov/dea/pubs/abuse/1-csa.htm#Schedule

Susan Bro, a spokeswoman for the FDA, in a New York Times article entitled “FDA Dismisses Medical Benefit from Marijuana”, concluded, “smoked marijuana has no currently accepted or proven medical use in the United States and is not an approved medical treatment”, thus maintaining marijuana’s classification as Schedule 1http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/21/health/21marijuana.html.  However, within the same article, Bro’s statement is said to contradict a review by the Institute of Medicine “the nation’s most prestigious scientific advisory agency”.  Their review found “marijuana to be ‘moderately well suited for particular conditions, such as chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting and AIDS wasting’”.  Dr. Jerry Avorn, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, summarizes the general sentiment of the article, stating, “Unfortunately, this is yet another example of the F.D.A. making pronouncements that seem to be driven more by ideology than by science”.  Clearly, the rhetorical battle of opposing ideologies, equally comprised of facts and fabrications, continues to this day.

In Language as Symbolic Action written by Kenneth Burke, the literary theorist provides his definition of humankind.  The author explains that man is a “symbol-using animal” (5) because what we refer to as “reality”,

has been built up for us through nothing but our symbol system. . . What is our “reality” for today . . . but all this clutter of symbols about the past combined with whatever things we know mainly through maps, magazines, newspapers, and the like about the present . . . And however important to us is this tiny sliver of reality each of us has experienced firsthand, the whole overall picture is but a construct of our symbol system (5).

Rhetoric, part of this “symbol system”, shapes each individuals “reality”.  It is difficult to measure the extent of truth or fallacy at rhetoric’s source, having previously been imbued with prior truths and fallacies, vulnerable to systems of power.  In a position of power, the FBN, with their campaign against marijuana, unavoidably operated within this “symbol system” to create anti-marijuana rhetoric, shaping multiple realities.  Reiterated by Robert Heath, Burke argues that “rhetoric is shared social knowledge which can be manipulated in ways that motivate people to believe and act one way as opposed to others” (198).  In an era of mass media development, the FBN manipulated “shared social knowledge” to induce individuals to fear marijuana and bestialize its users.  In A Rhetoric of Motives, Burke suggests, “rhetoric is not only persuasion but identification as a social cohesive force”.  When an institution of power identifies a substance as a “poison” or “remedy” through the persuasive force that is rhetoric, this identification predisposes individuals to unite in endorsement of the former or the latter, rather than acknowledging the presence of both.  Anslinger and the FBN identified marijuana as a “poison” through an exercise of power, thus unifying society in marijuana condemnation.  However, although rhetoric is a “cohesive force” unifying others in opposition to some, it concurrently is a contrasting force separating individuals into different groups of opposition.  When conflicting groups exchange rhetoric in argument, the “tiny sliver of reality each of us consider firsthand” may alter.  In contemporary society, as rhetoric spreads through multiple mediums of mass media (most importantly the internet), the hierarchy of power disseminates as individuals receive more information from various sources of power.  Consequently, individuals may arrive at less subjective judgments regarding marijuana, more free from monopolies of power  However, rhetoric is an extremely powerful force and as long as people are “symbol-using animals”, complete objectivity is inaccessible.

Works Cited

Bonnie, Richard & Whitebread, Charles. The Marijuana Convection. Charlottesville, VA:

University of Virginia Press, 1974.

Booth, Martin. Cannabis: A History. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005.

Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1969.

Burke, Kenneth. Language as Symbolic Action. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1966.

“Chapter 1 The Controlled Substance Act.” justice.gov. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, n.p. Web. 10 May 2010.

Derrida, Jacques. Dissemination. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1981.

Derrida, Jacques. “The Rhetoric of Drugs.” High Culture: Reflections on Addiction and Modernity. Ed. Anna Alexandra. New York: Stat University of New York Press, 2003.

Elwood, William N. Rhetoric in the War on Drugs: The Triumphs and Tragedies of Public Relations. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1994.

FDA V. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp.” law.cornell.edu. Cornell University Law Shool, n.p., 21 Mar. 2000. Web. 10 May, 2010.

Fisher, Gary L. Rethinking Our War on Drugs. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2006.

Foucault, Michel. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays.  New York, Cornell UP, 1977.

Foucault, Michel. “The Body of the Condemned.”  The Foucault Reader. Trans. Alan  Sheridan. New York: Pantheon, 1984.

Fulton, Edward. Rhetoric and Composition. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1906.

Harris, Gardiner. “F.D.A. Dismisses Medical Benefit from Marijuana.” The New York Times. The New York Times. 21 Apr. 2006. Web. 10 May 2010.

Hershey, Lewis. “Burke’s Aristotelianism: Burke and Aristotle on Form.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly. Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 16.3 (1986): 181-185.

McKinley, Jesse. “Legal_Marijuana Advocates Focus on a New Green.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 25 Mar. 2010. Web. 10 May 2010.

Miller, Skip. “Don’t Legalize Marijuana.” Los Angeles Times Article Collections. Los  Angeles Times, 28 Jan. 2010. Web. 10 May 2010.

Musto, David. The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1973.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense.” The Portable Nietzsche. Trans.  Walter Kaufmann. New York: Penguin Group, 1954.

Plato. Phaedrus. Trans. R. Hackford. The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1961.

“The 2010-11 Budget: California’s Fiscal Outlook.”  lao.ca.gov. Legislative Analysist‘s Office, n.p., 18 Nov. 2009. Web. 10 May 2010.

Wells, Alan. Mass Media & Society. Greenwich, CT: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1997.

My Face on Space Book

Maintaining a notion upheld the length of human history, human beings are naturally social. According to the 2009 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the word social is defined as: “the interaction of the individual and the group, or the welfare of human beings as members of society; tending to form cooperative and interdependent relationships with others or one’s kind.” Therefore, as human beings, the necessity to be social enhances the well-being not solely of one’s self but of the others composing society. Paraphrased from Michael Tomasello’s text Origins of Human Communication, human collaboration and communication are motivated by the needs of helping and sharing: humans interact through speech to ask for help, give information to others regarding things helpful, and share attitudes in order to bond within their cultural community. In order to socialize, we have developed advanced and intricate systems of communication. From the earliest evidence of human life to the technologically-laden twenty-first century, communication has ranged from simple non-verbal exchange procedures to lengthy conversations and communication on an immense scale through various forms of media. Although media allows for an interminable amount of uses, it is appropriate to argue that the foundation of media creation was the need for mass communication. More specifically, the ability to deliver a message from one medium to another, ranging in form, content, importance, and purpose. The first operation of the internet for example, although created for military purposes, was to send a message from the University of California-Los Angeles to Sanford University. An aspect of human sociality that has advanced apace with the various systems of communication is the human ability to utilize communication for self-expression, exchanging ideas, and group organization. With the advent of the computer and development of the internet, self-assertion and group collaboration has found a new medium in which to flow. In a sense, self-expression lost for those with an inability to communicate successfully with society has been restored. An example of this notion, strongly supporting the restoration of lost self-expression, can found in Vermillion, Hannafin, and Whitescarver’s article “Using Technology to Promote Expression and Self-Concept”. In discussing the notion of the effect an individual can have on the world and its dependency on the individual’s ability to communicate with society, the authors present the following assertion: To appreciate the riches that individuals with disabilities can offer when able to communicate ideas, one need merely bear in mind that the immense contributions to quantum physics made by Stephen Hawking, afflicted with the complications of ALS since the age of 21, were only possible with the aid of an adapted computer and a voice synthesizer (22-23). Additionally, in their article of technological support and the computer’s ability to give a voice to those lacking speech, Vermillion, Hannafin, and Whitescarver transcribe Joy Nightingale’s discovery of her disabilities caused by Apraxia, losing the ability to speak. Nightingale divulges, “I cried long and bitter tears the day I realized I was disabled but since my disability mutes my voice, no one new the significance of the day to me”(1997). An emotional response such as this, illuminates the importance of self-expression. As a result of computer technology, individuals like Nightingale, Hawking, and others around the world have been given a voice, allowing the sharing of information and ideas, emotions and feelings. However, it is not solely those with intense disabilities that are effected, but rather the individual technically described as “healthy”, possessing fears of or anxiety toward person-to-person communication. The computer may provide this individual with a safe arena to express their self. Furthermore, these individuals have been given an environment in which they are able to join and form groups that may have otherwise been nonexistent. Nothing illuminates the limitless potential of mass communication through self-expression and communal organization as social networking sites. These virtual spaces of interaction have attracted millions of people throughout the world, ranging in sex, age, nationality, political affiliation, religion, economic status, and education level. Many of these individuals have incorporated these sites such as Facebook and MySpace in their daily activities, embedding them deeply in their lives, and rearranging priorities to fulfill their social networking needs. As a result of their dominant presence in the lives of hundreds-of-millions of people inhabiting the earth, scholars have deeply analyzed these sites in an attempt to find meaning, unravel their implications and effects on society and the individual, and come to conclusions regarding the benefits and disadvantages of social networking site usage. Similarly, this paper will analyze the most widely used social networking sites, Facebook and MySpace. To develop a thorough understanding of each, this essay will detail both sites, exploring their onset and development and technological features and applications. Proceeding this foundation of facts, we will examine the individuals utilizing these sites, the amount of time engaged with them, and the effects of large scale virtual interaction. As Danah Boyd acknowledges in her article “MySpace Vs. Facebook: A Digital Enactment of Class-Based Social Categories Amongst American Teenager”, social networking sites are creating a cultural divide among users in the virtual world where “race and gender and socioeconomic status . . . matter”. Thus, we will study this interesting division between users of Facebook and users of MySpace. To conclude, with the accumulation of facts and personal accounts, this essay will list the positive and negative effects these sites have on today’s youth and the possible opportunities for utilizing social networking sites in the classroom as a tool for learning. To begin our inquiry into the world of social network sites, it is appropriate to start with a definition. Danah Boyd, of the University of California-Berkeley, and Nicole Ellison, of Michigan State University, define social network sites as follows: web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site (”Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship”). This definition highlights an important aspects of these sites. Although meeting new people and networking with strangers is possible, Facebook and MySpace more importantly allow their users to create a virtual and palpable representation of the social network they have attained, whether in the world outside of the computer or within. Many of the individuals utilizing these sites, do not attempt to convert strangers to friends but make contact with individuals whom they are familiar with in the “real world”. If an individual meets someone new, it is often an acquaintance of an individual with whom they are already “friends”. Although there are hundreds of social network sites presently in operation, offering a multitude of technical applications, the majority share many commonalities. With regards to Facebook and MySpace, when an individual joins, they create a profile and in doing so, as Jenny Sundens coins in her text Virtual Materialities, they “type themselves into being”. From this profile, they are able to connect with those whom they are familiar and make new friends. A profile consists of information such as a name or pseudonym, photographs, age, hometown, gender, ethnicity, religion, likes and dislikes, and other personal information. In order to acquire friends or contacts, an individual sends a friend request to another that may choose to accept or decline the request. When two individuals becomes friends, if their profiles are set to “private”(privacy and security discussed later), they are granted access to each others page, able to post comments and communicate in a more publicly viewed arena than that of messaging. On an individual’s profile is a list of their friends displayed publicly. Therefore, an individual granted access to another’s page is able to examine their list of friends and expand their personal list of friends through acquisition of friends referenced from the other’s page. After developing an awareness of the aspects of social networking sites, we turn our focus to the first virtual network and specific sites. According to Boyd and Ellison, “the first recognizable social network site launched in 1997. SixDegrees.com allowed users to create profiles, list their Friends and, beginning in 1998, surf the Friends lists.” SixDegrees.com was the first site that allowed users to create profiles and present their list of friends, a crucial element for the success of sites whose users’ goals are self-assertion and friend acquisition. The main goal of this site was to allow individuals to communicate easily and meet new individuals. However, the site failed in 2000, claiming to be too advanced for its time, paving the way for the onslaught of sites yet to come, more apt for success in a generation more familiar with the computer (Boyd). In 2003, MySpace was created by Tom Anderson in Santa Monica, California while working for eUniverse. According to the MySpace website, the company is identified as: http://www.myspace.coma technology company connecting people through personal expression, content, and culture. MySpace empowers its global community to experience the Internet through a social lens by integrating personal profiles, photos, videos, mobile, messaging, games, and the world’s largest music community. MySpace is a division of News Corporation (www.myspace.com/pressroom?url=/fact+sheet/). One aspect of MySpace that the company greatly emphasizes is its music community; a community that Facebook has yet to or does not strive to thoroughly explore. Although the site was not created simply for bands, “Indie-rock bands from the Los Angeles region began creating profiles, and local promoters used MySpace to advertise VIP passes for popular clubs. Intrigued, MySpace contacted local musicians to see how they could support them”(Boyd and Ellison). Thus a relationship between MySpace and music was born, both utilizing each other for promotion in an attempt to grow. According to Danah Boyd in her article “Why Youth Heart Social Networking Sites,” “when young music aficionados learned that their favorite bands had profiles on MySpace, they began checking out the site.” Once a member, an individual is allowed to search the multitude of music profiles. From said profiles, users are able to listen to songs and apply them to their page. As a result, when friends log on to view a profile, not only do they encounter the pages visual elements but also an audio dynamic as well. The result of this interaction is band exposure through user profiles and the users forge stronger identities through an affiliation with certain bands. As Boyd submits in her article, “music is cultural glue among youth . . . Given the degree to which youth are active participants in music subcultures, it is not surprising that MySpace attracted young fans.” In other words, musical taste is an important aspect of youth interaction. On MySpace, users can search for music, display their musical preference, and meet others with similar likings. Another aspect contributing to the growth of MySpace is the user ability to freely customize their profile. This personal profile creation was allowed on MySpace because the site, “did not restrict users from adding HTML into the forms that framed their profiles; a copy/paste code culture emerged on the web to support users in generating unique MySpace backgrounds and layouts”(Boyd and Ellison). Rather than a dull, black-and-white web page wherein an individual is solely allowed to express themself through text, MySpace allowed users to create “virtual bedrooms” of bright colors, loud music, photographs and digital graphics (Boyd). These “virtual bedrooms” paint a more vivid picture of who an individual is or trying to be. According to Mike Thelwall in his study on MySpace and its member’s profiles, entitled “Social Networks, Gender, and Friending: An Analysis of Myspace Member Profiles”, “In 2007 the social networking Web site MySpace . . . overthrew Google as the most visited Web site for U.S. Web users.” However, in the past two years leading up to this paper, Facebook has overthrown MySpace as top-used social site in the United States. In December of 2008, Facebook had 108.3 million users globally compared to MySpace with a total of 81 million users (ComputerWeekly.com). According to Facebook.com’s statistics page, as of November, 2009, the site has more than 300 million active users. Of these 300 million, more than 50% log on to Facebook everyday and worldwide, more than eight billion minutes are spent on the site. These staggering numbers greatly validate a thorough study of Facebook. As the popularity of social networking sites began to greatly increase, more were created in an attempt to target specific demographics. In 2004, Facebook was created by Mark Zuckerburg who currently serves as its Chief Executive Officer (facebook.com). Mark attended Harvard University and began the site as an in-house Harvard site, solely accessed through a user’s possession of a harvard.edu email address. However, this exclusion did not last long, as “Facebook began supporting other schools, those users were also required to have university email addresses associated with those institutions, a requirement that kept the site relatively closed and contributed to users’ perceptions of the site as an intimate, private community” (Boyd and Ellison). Yet, as the company began to grow, gaining stronger popularity, in 2005, Facebook allowed any individual with an internet connection access to their site and ability to create a profile. Similar to the description of MySpace, Facebook is defined as: a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. The company develops technologies that facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph, the digital mapping of people’s real-world social connections. Anyone can sign up for Facebook and interact with the people they know in a trusted environment (http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?factsheet). One aspect of the site that Facebook illuminates, in differentiation from MySpace, is the privacy offered to its users. Presently, Facebook leads the virtual social networking industry in allotting users with the necessary devices giving control to users of their information. This allows individuals to be more restrictive in whom they share themselves with. Furthermore, users of Facebook are “unable to make their full profiles public to all users” (Boyd and Ellison). Therefore, Facebook has developed a more trustworthy reputation than MySpace. Another dominant element of facebook that users view automatically when logging on to their home page is the “News Feed.” When an individual posts a comment, photo, or video on their “friend’s” page, that comment is displayed on the News Feed for all in their network to see. Furthermore, when an individual befriends another, that friendship is posted on the news feed as well. Although users may feel this blemishes the privacy supported by Facebook, users are fully aware that what they post will be displayed on others’ home pages. This aspect points to the notion of social network users’ desire to “type themselves into being”, which is the foundation upon which Facebook “Status Updates” were created (Sundens). Status Updates are like “twittering” through the Facebook medium where users are stimulated to answer the following question: “What are you doing right now?” The fact that the answers to this question are not “Typing on the computer” or “Updating my status” but rather “Going to the Gym,” reveals unique insights into individual need for self-assertion or justification in a group setting. In the fast-paced, ever-evolving, chaotic world of the twenty-first century, individuals and their actions can be overlooked or forgotten. With Facebook’s introduction of Status Updates, users are able to create tangible representations of their actions and feelings, fully aware that others will read about them, and taking ownership of these things in the process. In this sense, the individual grows stronger through group interaction. Put differently, Status Updates bring attention to aspects of a person’s life that may have otherwise been lost in impalpability. Prior to detailing the types of users on these sights and the cultural divide being created as a result, it is important to examine the amount of privacy users possess when on these sites and the level of trust individuals exercise on-line. In detailing the issue of privacy and trust, we will illuminate reasons as to why some users choose Facebook and why others, MySpace. As defined in the 2009 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, trust is an”assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something; something committed or intrusted to one to be used or cared for in the interest of another.” As a result, trust is vital to the interaction between two or more individuals where information is shared. In the process of sharing information, new relationships are formed. Thus, we can conclude, in the arena of online social networking sites, where personal information is shared in an attempt to connect with others, trust is an important trait for sites like Facebook and Myspace to develop. In order to develop a level of trust, these companies have created privacy features that users either have to accept, may choose to accept, or completely disregard. When individuals interact online, they are surrounded by millions of “strangers” whom they can either make connections with, greatly publicizing their information, or avoid, keeping this information private. This choice guides many individuals through the selection process of a social networking site. Therefore, the level of concern for privacy Facebook and MySpace possess is important for this study. As explained previously in this essay, Facebook began in the college system and expanded from there. This foundation of authenticity is reflected in the greater amount of trust users have for this site. Conversely, as noted in the article “Trust and Privacy Concern within Social Networking Sites”, ” MySpace . . . has a poor reputation in terms of trust. Schools have attempted to prohibit their students’ use of the site, and law enforcement officials allege that MySpace is used by sexual predators to lure teenagers“( Dwyer, Hiltz, and Passerini). To further illuminate Facebook’s concern for privacy, when an individual creates an account, their profile is private by default, no matter the user’s age. In order for other users to view their personal information, they must be approved as friends. In contradiction, in order for a MySpace profile to be private, an individual must actively set their account to private if they are eighteen or above. In Similarity, if user profiles on both sites are set to private, only friends can access personal information. With regards to the minimum age qualification for site access, both sites restrict individuals under the age of thirteen. In the important study by Dwyer, Hiltz, and Passerini, in which they questioned 117 subjects, they were able to come to an insightful conclusion: Subjects from Facebook and MySpace expressed similar levels of concern regarding internet privacy. Facebook members were more trusting of the site and its members, and more willing to include identifying information in their profile. Yet, MySpace members were more active in the development of new relationships (9). From this conclusion, it is appropriate to suggest that Facebook, viewed as more trustworthy, is aimed at individuals with the desire to connect with people whom they already know. Conversely, MySpace, seen as less private, is geared toward the user wanting to make new connections and explore their virtual world. This conclusion easily lends itself to life outside of the computer. If an individual is more private, they may tend to eliminate the possible of acquiring new friends. If an individual is more willing to share their self with others, exposing their self more freely, they have the possibility of developing relationships with new people. After detailing both of these sights, it is important to examine the individuals using social networking sites, the effect these sites have on them, and the class division created by Facebook and MySpace. An important role of social networking sites in today’s society is the formation of identity. As noted in the article “Gender, Identity, and Language Use in Teenage Blogs,” identity is “characterized in terms of one’s interpersonal characteristics, such as self-definition or personality traits, the roles and relationships one takes on in various interactions, and one’s personal values or moral beliefs”(Calvert & Huffaker). Individuals develop a sense of who they are during adolescence. In the 21st Century, the arenas in which adolescents develop have greatly increased, specifically through online forums. As a result of the dominant existence of social networking sites in society, youth who have developed with the presence of these sites have created their identity apace with the creation of their online self. As acknowledged previously, an individual must be thirteen in order to create a profile on MySpace and Facebook. According to Calvert and Huffaker, “The most pronounced search for identity in the adolescent years generally begins with puberty.” Although puberty occurs at various ages among youth, during this time of significant identity search individuals are beginning to create profiles. Therefore, many utilize these sites to define who they are. More clearly, youth are provided with a platform on which to write about themselves and reflect upon their revelations. The relationship between social networking sites and identity is explored in Danah Boyd’s article, “Why Youth (Heart) Social Networking Sites : The Role of Networked Publics in Youth Social Life .” In this essay, the author attempts to answer why youth participate in social networks and the effects of these virtual spaces on youth identity. The article begins with a statement from an eighteen-year-old interviewee named Skyler, whom explains to her mom: “If you’re not on MySpace, you don’t exist.” This statement reveals an important question: “If you do not social network online, do you exist?” Apparently, in the minds of some, you do not. Therefore, the necessity to create an online profile is apparent. Although identity creation is an important aspect of participating in a social networking site, the motives of youth engagement greatly vary. In order to participate, individuals must have internet access. According to Boyd’s article, “in 2004, PEW found that 87% of teenagers aged 12-17 have some level of Internet access. In a study conducted in late 2006, they found that 55% of online teens aged 12-17 have created profiles on social network sites with 64% of teens 15-17.” It is appropriate to assume that this number has greatly risen sense PEW’s survey. Although participation is seen as “cool” by many, the underlying factor of youth engagement is the ability to stay connected with friends. Furthermore, individuals join these sites “for entertainment; social voyeurism passes time while providing insight into society at large”(Boyd, “Why Youth (Heart) Social Networking Sites” ). In order to counteract being bored, sites like MySpace and Facebook provide youth with a social activity. However, it is appropriate to argue that an upheaval in boredom is created through the large amount of social site usage. Boredom is subjective. It is a state of mind that occurs when an individual has a lack of activities or is disinterested in the surrounding options. An individual is bored when they are not using MySpace or Facebook simply because they are a user of these sights. With constant access to social networking sites and the ease at which such access is achieved, with a slight onset of boredom, an individual may quickly jump to Facebook or MySpace rather than exploring alternate options. However, when on a cross-country road trip, possessing a Smart Phone providing internet access, the choice to defeat monotony by “logging on” is easy. A final reason why youth participate in social networking sites is to escape their highly structured lives and parents reinforcing the structure. According to Boyd, “The power that adults hold over youth explains more than just complications in identity performance; it is the root of why teenagers are on MySpace in the first place.” As a result of the negative connotations of being lazy, culture has forced youth and their parents to develop extremely busy schedules. In the paper entitled “Young People, Ethics, and the New Digital Media: A Synthesis from the Good Play Project”, its authors explore this notion further, exemplifying a busy life as an inhibitor of identity development. In regards to adolescence, the authors write: the length of time and spaces available to them for exploration may also be disappearing. Adolescence today involves more pressures, related to schoolwork, extra-curricular activities, and college admissions, than it did . . . the moratorium is being cut short by the highstakes pressures facing today’s youth. It seems that adolescents have decreasing amounts of time and space to explore their identities (James, Davis, Flores, Francis, Pettingill, Rundell, Gardner, 14) However, as the pressures of adolescent life escalate, they do so in parallel with new digital media development. Therefore, individuals are being provided with new forums to explore themselves. More clearly explained, with access to the internet, “freed from the physical, social, and economic constraints of ‘real life’ . . . individuals can experiment with multiple identities in an environment that is perceived to be ‘low-stakes’”(14). As one can conclude, it is self-exploration, robbed from adolescents in the “real world”, that drives individuals to social networking sites. However, in order to develop a thorough exploration of the sites Facebook and MySpace, it is important to highlight their negative effects as well, followed appropriately by an analysis of the class divisions these sights are creating. As previously observed, a dominant element in social networking online is identity creation and self-reflection. However, when an individual creates an online identity greatly dissimilar to their self in the “real world”, it can be extremely harmful to their maturation and human development. By creating and embodying an “other” self online while simultaneously identifying with one’s true self outside of the virtual world, an individual betrays the responsibility of developing a clear, autonomous self. According to Erikson, in Identity, Youth, and Crisis, paraphrased in the text “Young People, Ethics, and the New Digital Media “, ” the ultimate goal of an adolescent’s identity explorations is a coherent, unitary sense of self, not a series of fragmented identities”(18). Facebook and MySpace, where users are allowed to create these alternate identities, threaten the unitary self, possibly aiding in its division. To further the discussion of self-expression on social network sights, it is important to examine the content individuals are presenting on their profiles. A recent poll conducted by Common Sense Media and featured in the Los Angeles Times in August, 2009, surveyed over 1000 teens regarding their participation on FaceBook and MySpace and produced the following results: ”37% of teens said they used social networks to make fun of other students . . .13% of teens said they posted naked or semi-naked photos or videos of themselves . . .28% of teens posted personal information that they normally would not have revealed in public”. Although bullying or ridiculing are common elements of teenage life, the virtual worlds of social networking sites have provided teens with more opportunity to execute ill conduct and provide personal information otherwise withheld. At the current college generation, studied in the article “Examining Student’s Intended Image on Facebook: ‘What Were They Thinking!?’”, students’ actions in the “real world” are being dictated to some degree by the image they wish to present on their profiles. In the article, the authors explain that “alcohol and risky sexual behavior tend to be a big part of college life and are even considered as a right of passage for some incoming freshman . . . The desire to be socially accepted is what appears to be promoting individuals to engage in such behavior”(Karl, Peluchette, 2). The desire of social acceptance manifests on the individuals online profiles, prompting them to post comments, pictures, or videos detailing this behavior. In order to appear “wild or as someone who likes to party”, it can be argued that students participate in these activities in the “real world” so that they may have material to post online, creating a desired virtual image (Karl, Peluchette, 2). The positive and negative aspects of social networking sites are numerous and currently being interpreted. Whether beneficial or detrimental, this paper proceeds to discuss the division among social lines these two sites are creating. It is apparent that the online social world mirrors the real world. In the world outside of the computer, you have regions divided into neighborhoods, separated by race, divided by class and economic status, and parted by lifestyle choices. Thus, when individuals begin using these social networking sites, they are bringing these divisions with them, interacting in ways similar to their real worlds. Social media researcher Danah Boyd has dedicated much of her time to the study of online social interactions and states, “inequality persists online in all sorts of nefarious forms. We know that not all access is created equal . . . We know that race and gender and other categories are visible in new forms online. We know that issues of social capital and cultural capital extend to the digital environment”(2009). Facebook and MySpace are competitors providing various features and applications. As a result, some users will choose the former while others will opt for the latter, being a matter of personal preference. Furthermore, the majority of those utilizing these sites do so in an attempt to stay connected with those whom they are familiar with in the real world. Therefore, if an individual has more friends utilizing Facebook, this will be the clear choice. Many individuals have developed profiles on both sites, using one more greatly than other or addressing both with equality. The divisions being created on each can partially be attributed to the history of each site and early patterns of adoption. As previously mentioned, Facebook was created by an individual attending Harvard and circulated the Ivy League system prior to spreading to the rest of the world. As a result, you have individuals like Halie Pacheco, interviewed by National Public Radio in October, 2009 stating, “No one uses MySpace . . . [Facebook’s] safer and more high class” (npr.org). Conversely, MySpace began in Los Angeles and spread to musicians first. Thus, youth flocked to the site in order to listen to their favorite artists and exchange tastes. As a result, Anindita, a 17-year-old from Los Angeles interviewed by Danah Boyd, submits, “Facebook’s easier than MySpace but MySpace is more complex. You can add things to it. You can add music, make backgrounds and layouts, but Facebook is just plain white and that’s it”(Boyd, 2009). As Facebook and Myspace have grown in popularity, divisions began to occur. These social divisions were created by individual choices that reflect patterns in the formation of classes in America. These developed separations “are not cleanly based on socioeconomic factors, but those are there. The divisions are not cleanly based on race, but raced-based categories are unequally represented in each cluster. These divisions are not cleanly based on “lifestyle” but patterns of taste and cultural capital are present” (Boyd, 2009). After thoroughly studying the separations that exist and will continue to occur, a general conclusion has been developed regarding the varying participation of the two sites. According to Penny Eckert from her text “Jocks and Burnouts,” paraphrased by Danah Boyd: Those who are drawn to Facebook are more likely to represent privileged, educated, stronger socioeconomic backgrounds. They are more likely to be respectful of adult society and more likely to connect with adults who hold power over them. Those drawn to MySpace are more likely to come from immigrant families and from poorer, urban communities. They are more likely to be resistant to normative value and affiliate with subcultures. Of course those divisions are not clean and a good number of teens straddle both worlds (”MySpace Vs. Facebook. . .”, 2009). Whether Facebook of MySpace exacerbate social divisions or simply maintain the status quo is yet to fully be explored. However, it is clear that the presence of these sites will remain in the lives of its users for many years to come. Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are in extremely widespread use, ranging in the hundreds of millions of users. Therefore, these web 2.0 applications deserve a large amount of scrutiny from the academic platform. More importantly, scholars should analyze the possible implications social networking sites have for classroom usage. T his paper will focus on Facebook’s possible educational use in the university setting as it has been adopted more widely by students at college level. In Neil Selwyn’s article “‘Screw Blackboard. . . Do it on Facebook’: An Investigation of Students’ Educational Use of Facebook”, he presents a study that took place at Coalsville University School in the United Kingdom that analyzed the Facebook postings related to education. Once the analysis was concluded “five main themes emerged from the data: recounting and reflecting on the university experience; exchange of practical information; exchange of academic information; displays of supplication and/or disengagement; and exchanges of humour and nonsense”(Selwyn, 8). After exploring these themes with great scrutiny, Selwyn was able to ascertain certain conclusions. For example, the author explains that “Facebook has become an important site for the informal, cultural learning of being a student, with online interactions and experiences allowing rules to be learnt, values understood, and identities shaped”(18). Rather than what can be an intimidating and formal classroom environment, Facebook provides a nonthreatening situation in which to share classroom ideas comfortably and freely. Furthermore, Selwyn notes that the date collected proposes that Facebook has been “established as a prominent arena where students can become versed in the ‘identity politics’ of being a student – a space where the role conflict that students often experience in their relationships with university work, teaching staff, academic conventions . . . can be worked through”(19). This dissolving of conflict is crucial as it allows an important element of individual development: the ability to develop one’s self apace with the development of their education. If an individual identifies with the self that their education is molding and shaping, they will retain more of the information presented because with it they will identify. Therefore, it is clearly justifiable to incorporate Facebook into the classroom. Thus, we must provide an example of Facebook’s educational use. According to Daloz, Keen, Keen, and Parks, in Common Fire: Leading Lives of Commitment in a Complex World, written eight years prior to Facebook’s creation, the commons “is a place where the diverse parts of a community could come together and hold a conversation with a shared sense of participation and responsibility”(1996). This “shared sense of participation and responsibility” is the main goal of classroom education, often difficult to achieve as a result of student anxiety or nervousness. However, if Facebook is utilized with discretion in the college-level classroom as a student and teacher interaction tool, student engagement may greatly increase. It is important, however, to consider the possibility of inappropriately transgressing the boundaries of the personal and the professional and thus do not recommend “friending” students without forethought or precaution. However, creating a Facebook group page for one’s class, wherein students can congregate through an online assemblage would greatly improve the quality of the course. Rather than a formal virtual meeting assigned to a certain time on a school affiliated forum, a Facebook page would provide students and teachers with an ongoing, nonthreatening arena to ask questions, provide answers, and exchange ideals. As a result, students would enter the physical classroom with conversations and ideologies carried over from the virtual classroom. When students leave the “real world” classroom, focus on the subject matter may vanish until the next class meeting. However, in a time when individuals spend more time on Facebook than checking emails and possibly even doing course work, when logged into their personal Facebook account, they can easily view the class page and interact, viewing passively or commenting actively. Furthermore, a Facebook class page would provide timely responses as a result of the number of members in the group and large amount of time spent on the site. In Fletcher and Ragins’ text, The Handbook of Mentoring at Work: Theory, Research, and Practice, paraphrased in the article “Facebook: The New Classroom Commons” written by Harriet Schwartz, the authors discuss the benefits of single interactions, labeling them “mentoring episodes”. These “mentoring episodes” are effective when the individuals involved undergo “the ‘five good things’: increased energy and well-being, potential to take action, increased knowledge of self and other, a boost to self-esteem, and an interest in more connection”(Schwartz, 2009). Classroom interaction on Facebook has the potential to accomplish these five objectives. As previously discussed, human communication and interaction is necessary for well-being. When an individual posts a question on the Facebook class page, either another student or the teacher are influenced to take action. Additionally, the answer received invokes the questioner to act based on the information presented. Furthermore, gaining knowledge and understanding as well as imparting intelligence and providing useful information increases self-esteem. This boosted self-respect fuels an individuals’ interest for further connection with the source of said boost. Lastly, Facebook being an arena where self exploration and familiarization with others flourishes, provides an ideal setting for mentoring and classroom support. Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are staples in multiple societies throughout the world. With users numbering in the hundreds-of-millions, many of whom logging on to their profiles daily, these virtual worlds are seemingly unstoppable forces. The reasons why individuals join greatly vary but one can conclude that profiles are created in order to communicate with others, both known and unknown, explore ones self by “typing themselves into being”, and for entertainment. There are positives and negatives associated with social networking sites and it is important to understand both so that we may utilize these sites with caution. An end result of cautious involvement with Facebook or MySpace is the application of these sites for educational use. An element of the academic world with a large amount of potential that will continue to grow as we look towards the future.

Learning through Games!

Both articles, “Learning and Games” and “Productive Gaming: The Case for Historiographic Game Play” are built upon the statement “video games are virtual experiences centered on problem solving, they recruit learning and mastery as a form of pleasure” (Gee, 16).   In order to deeply understand something, it is crucial that we enjoy the process leading to this thorough cognition.  The former article takes a broader approach, legitimizing the use of games as learning tools and the latter examines the game Civ3 in an attempt to illuminate the  benefits and capabilities of Historiographic Game Play.  Both articles stressed the importance of participation in social groups to maximize the learning potential.  Through an open forum, individuals can address a group and the learning process evolves.  After reading both texts, the usefulness of games as a learning tools was somewhat illuminated.  Especially Civ3, in its benefits for a class on World History.  As someone wanting to teach Literature, I became curious as to  how a game could be applied to developing an understanding of, say Huckleberry Finn? Possibly a game that allows an individual to take Huck’s place on the raft, interacting with Jim while stoping from time-to-time, getting glimpses at society?  A game that would allow the user to take the place of the book’s protagonist may be a great way to develop a better knowledge of the character and his/her experiences . . .

Media Artifact

For this exercise, I was experiencing difficulty selecting a specific artifact from the list of examples Dr. De Vries provides.  However, out of this minor frustration, I discovered a way to analyze and explore the entirety of artifacts by focusing on one: the cellular phone. This artifact today, with the development of Smart Phones, is an all-in-one device functioning as an extension of the hands of 21st century human beings.
Although there is no concrete definition of a Smart Phone, Dave Packham of the University of Utah defines it as “a phone that runs complete operating system software providing a standardized interface and platform for application developers”(2009).  In an attempt to provide this definition with clarity, he explains  that a Smart Phone is “simply a phone with advanced features like e-mail and Internet capabilities, and/or a full keyboard. In other words, it is a miniature computer that has phone capability”(2009).  The cell phone has been engulfed by computer technology and transformed from a mobile telephone used to make calls to a fact-checking, internet-browsing, game-playing, social-networking, all-inclusive communication machine with the ability to be a phone.  In this sense, the phone has assimilated into the computer yet still able to maintain its basic characteristics while satisfying the needs of powerful computer culture in America and other places around the world.
As a result of the cell phone’s affordability, Professor James Katz of Rutgers University explains that “statistics indicate that two billion people currently have subscriptions for cellular phones . . . Enough phones for one-third of the worlds population.  In fact there are some countries with more cell phones than people”(2005).  This excerpt was withdrawn from a forum on Cell Phone Culture at MIT in 2005 and I suggest that this number has grown in the four years passed.  Katz further submits that “Unlike the internet, which has sparked fears of the “digital divide” between industrialized and developing worlds, cell phones have become popular all over the world. The cell phone is portrayed as glamorous, but also inexpensive”(2005).   With the development of Smart Phones, with internet capability, individuals in developing nations can purchase phones and have access to the web, creating less of a “digital divide.”  In this sense, the internet reaches more people through cell phone use that were previously disconnected to the internet.  The Smart Phone is seen as a familiar medium in which to access the unfamiliar (internet, email, digital society).
These Smart Phones are changing public culture and allow individuals to develop micro-societies in which to reside.  In a large crowd, an individual can place headphones in their ears and watch an episode of the Office.  While walking from work to the gym, you can update your Facebook page and check your email.  Although Smart Phones afford less social individuals a less threatening medium in which to socialize, I fear these Smart Phones will create too many private “micro-cultures.”
Personally, I just received a free (with 2 year contract renewal) Samsung Impression Smart Phone.  It has a full touch screen, internet access, full keyboard, multiple applications, camera and camcorder, etc.  It is like the “Iphone for people who don’t want Iphone phone.”  Previously, I had always accepted friend’s hand-me-downs, claiming “I don’t want a new phone.  I would probably just break it.  Besides, I am not cool enough for a phone like that.” However, this phone has greatly effected my routine, positively and negatively.
To develop a more thorough understanding of the role this Media Artifact plays in my life, I will outline my daily routine.  As a result of the variation of my daily routine, I will provide a schedule in which my phone is heavily present.   My day begins as I wake up to an Alarm Clock programmed and sounded from my phone, with a song downloaded off of the internet from my phone. In order to check my email, which I do every morning, I consult my phone if I am too tired to rise from my bed.  The internet option allows me to check my email and log on to social networking sights such as Facebook.  I can then respond to emails and messages from friends directly from my phone.  I am always curious about the weather and use my Smart Phone to check it every morning as well.  As my day progresses, I send and receive multiple text messages (at least 20-40 a day), while walking, driving, or stagnate, and make a few calls.  In my down time, I catch myself exploring the internet, playing games, listening to music, and developing a better understanding of the “phone” itself.  Before I am “off to the land of nod,” I set my alarm clock, relying on my phone once more to rise me in the morning so that I am able to wake up and do it all over again,  My phone battery is always charged and rarely do I allow it to “die”.  Besides my girlfriend, it is the first thing I see when I wake up and the last before I fall asleep.  The amount of time I spend using my phone for its original concept (i.e. making calls), is very small in comparison to time spent utilizing its other features.  In fact, I would argue that “making calls” is slowly becoming a trivial feature of Smart Phones.
I think phones are important.  They allow you to communicate with people around the world.  I use mine to speak with my best friend in South Korea.  Phones are also very useful in emergency situations and have undoubtedly saved many, many lives.  Although I  often sound skeptical with regards to technology and our heavy reliance upon it, it is not my goal to disrespect and illegitimatize cell phones entirely.  However, I do find it utterly important to question and analyze their effect on our lives.  Lives that began before mobile phones were in existence.  I would like to conclude examining a final aspect of cell phones in our culture.  The state of California has made it illegal to speak on a mobile phone when driving.  However, people are still talking while driving.  There are not many instances in which moral-driven individuals break the law.  This law is steadily becoming broken on the level of speeding . . .Not that cell-phones criminalize us, all I am saying is that we advance with an extremely cautious mind.

Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother

Cory Doctorow’s text Little Brother yields multiple implications for the society in which we (hopefully not blindly) reside.  Doctorow’s entertaining yet horrifying depiction of Marcus and his experience with the Department of Homeland Security, exemplifies a reactionary response to a terrorist attack with which we as a society, still feeling the aftershocks of terrorism,  are able to commiserate.  After reading much of the text, finding it at times a bit preachy or pedantic (particularly the Constitution debate in the classroom), although I am a strong advocate of individual privacy, freedom,  and anti-totalitarianism, I was overwhelmed with questions regarding the amount of privacy we actually have in America.  Are the events in Little Brother and the police state that San Francisco becomes that far-fetched?  In this age of technological wonder where smart phones are becoming more and more dominant, are we just implanting world-wide tracking and surveillance devices into our hips?

Unfortunately, in an attempt to answer these questions, I belive that given certain circumstances, a particular governing body such as the Department of Homeland Security would have the ability to invade our privacy(if they are not already) and take over through the use of force.  When a government body exercises too much undisciplined, violent control in an attempt to protect us from terrorists attacks, they eliminate our privacy and freedom in order to catch the “bad guys.”  However, if everything about any individual (you, me, him, her) was broadcasted, wouldn’t we all be incriminated at some level as a “bad guy?” 

Furthermore, Doctorow’s novel illuminates certain post-September 11th strategies implemented by Bush and company such as the Patriot Act.    This act elevates government agiencies’ ability to search phones, emails, personal records, etc.  Although the effects of the Patriot Act are not as evident as the mental torture and embarrassment Marcus experiences executed by the Department of Homeland Security in Little Brother, the Patriot Act can be seen through the lens of the novel, as a post-terrorist attack response that is ethically questionable (reading this novel has made me apprehensive about posting stuff like this online…)

What truly reached me from the novel, greatly pertaining to the discourse of English 5010, is Marcus’s ability to implement the use of technology to counteract the invasion of privacy and injustices brought on by the DHS.  It is through the use of the XNet that Marcus is able to communicate freely and organize resistance.  Therefore, the novel is not anti-technology but anti-technological abuse.  However, are people able to use technology without abusing it? (a question I believe will be exceedingly important as time precedes).  Marcus is able to resist the DHS because he is tech-savy.   If Little Brother’s protagonist was computer illiterate, I believe Cory Doctorow’s novel would have ended long before it begun.  Therefore, should we as instructors or future instructors be required to teach computer education to prevent tech abuse?

 

Paticipants Beware

Mirko Sahefer’s account Participation Inside? provides useful insights into the world of user participation in the web, specifically social interaction and content sharing.  As a result of the dominant presence of media and internet, the definition of participation has evolved from “the state of being connected to a larger whole” (merriam-webster.com) to, in reference to cultural studies, an “audiences engaging in culture by receiving, interpreting, and deconstructing media texts, and most recently through acts of appropriation and creation” (Shafer, 2008).  Therefore, participation is measured through interaction with and contribution to a variety of online arenas.  Consequently, resulting from the human desire to participate, the designers of digital media provide platforms from which users are presented with the opportunity to modify, create, and share digital content.  In this sense, users develop the conjecture that participation has been afforded to them from those with the power of providing platforms for cooperation.  However, utilizing the Star Wars fansite Theforce.net, Shafer develops the idea that allowing fans to contribute “while . . .  denying these fans any form of authorial compensation and even freedom of creativity, is highly questionable.”  While providing users the ability to participate, Lucasfilm is befitting while the users/creators falsely assume they are in total control of their participation.  Acknowledging this notion, Shafer concludes that “it will be necessary . . .  to critically analyze how software design affects user behavior and how power structures are reestablished through implementing participation into information systems” (Schafer, 2008). This statement points to the ideology that those with the power to produce the arena where participation occurs, do so in a way that reinforces their power while exploiting the users participating.

Scouting Report: Project Gutenberg

Although this report involved a minimal amount of scouting, the archive I discovered this past year is and has been revolutionizing internet users’ access to literature on the web.  After thoroughly exploring the site and personally utilizing it for the study of literature, I can easily conclude it to be a beneficial tool to be used in a literature or composition class.  The online archive I am introducing is Project Gutenberg or gutenberg.org.
Project Gutenberg was founded by Michael Hart upon the mission to “encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks” (Hart, 2004).  An eBook is an electronic book that is the equivalent digital text of a printed book.  In 1971, while at the University of Illinois, Michael was given $100,000,000 worth of computer time on a Xerox Sigma V computer.  Honored with this privileged opportunity, Hart resolved to create a value to the computer world worth $100,000,000.  After nearly two hours of contemplation, Hart concluded that “the greatest value created by computers would not be computing, but would be the storage, retrieval, and searching of what was stored in our libraries” (Hart, 1992).  Therefore, Hart began top type the Deceleration of Independence and it became the first posting of a text in electronic format, and in this sense Project Gutenberg was born.
The philosophy fueling Project Gutenberg was the reproduction value of eBooks.  Essentially, when a text is written on and stored in a computer, “then any number of copies can and will be available. Everyone in the world, or even not in this world (given satellite transmission) can have a copy of a book that has been entered into a computer” (Hart, 1992). With this in mind, Project Gutenberg began developing a digital library featuring three forms of literature: Light, Heavy, and References.  The category of  Light Literature was implemented to draw people to the computer and includes texts such as Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland.  Heavy Literature was introduced for the more dedicated, experienced reader incorporating texts such as Moby-Dick or Paradise Lost. The final class, References, is composed of thesauruses, encyclopedias, etc.
The best feature of Project Gutenberg, particularly from the perspective of a thin-pocketed college student, is nearly all of the eBooks on the site are free and easily downloaded.  The texts are free as a result of the expired copyright on most of the books in the United States.  Therefore, “anybody may make verbatim or non-verbatim copies of those works” (Project Gutenberg, 2007).  Furthermore, Project Gutenberg accepts donations and receives volunteer assistance in maintaining its progress as an eBook archive.  The site is simple to use and an altogether valuable source for teachers, students, or anyone with internet connection and the desire to read.
To further demonstrate its usefulness for a literature classroom, I have created a website on webs.com (kmontero.webs.com).  This mock site was designed for an American Literature class and features links to Project Gutenberg eBooks that the “students” are assigned to read.  The students simply view the home page, scroll down to each assigned reading, and click the link.  In an instant they are face-to-face with the full texts of Melville’s Moby-Dick or Chopin’s The Awakening.  Although I love opening a novel, feeling the pages between my fingers, and smelling decades of use in between these pages, these on-line texts eliminate the cost of books and gutenberg.org provides access to a number of individuals who may have never been exposed to Huck and Jim’s journey up river in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or the cruel judgments cast upon Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter.
Literacy is complicated.  At its most basic form, it refers to one’s ability to read and write.  This ability allows an individual to function within and contribute to a society.   However, the term literacy is in a constant state of evolution paralleling the advancing technological world attempting to claim literacy and define what is constituted as literacy.  Consequently , a “literate” individual twenty-five years ago, may be an “illiterate” person today. Furthermore, as technology develops at a constant rate, it may be impossible to be completely “literate.”  Therefore, rather than assign literacy a static definition, we must view it as a dynamic force, in constant flux with its ever-changing environment. In our best attempts, literacy relates to an individual’s knowledge of a certain subject area.  Therefore, one may be computer literate but not political literate.  In the context of our course, English 5010, I would like to refer to computer literacy and the evolving presence of New Media Literacy.
For an individual to function and contribute to the dominant aspects of society, it is necessary to be computer literate (having the ability to use a computer).  As a result of the advancing media environment in which we reside, New Media Literacies are quickly developing.  A research enterprise within MIT’s Comparative Media Studies known as Project New Media Literacies “explores how we might best equip young people with the social skills and cultural competencies required to become full participants in an emergent media landscape and raise public understanding about what it means to be literate in a globally interconnected, multicultural world”(Comparative Media Studies at MIT, 2007).  Essentially, their goal is to counteract the ever-evolving definition of what it means to be literate, by maintaining a speed of instruction similar to this evolution.  This is the developing goal of teachers in the classroom as well.  To train their students in the New Media Literacies that are at the forefront of progress.  It is my opinion that Project Gutenberg, with their easily assessable full texts, is one way to maintain the literacy of individuals in a world where to be literate is becoming more difficult each day.