Actor-Network Theory and Activity Theory

After reading Collin Brooke's post on Bruno Latour's Reassembling the Social, I ordered a copy of the book for Tunghai's library. With luck, it'll be on the shelf before the summer. (No, I'm not kidding, unfortunately.)

In the meantime (or is it "mean time"?), I did manage to find a multicolored version of the introduction that gives me some idea of what Latour is writing about.

Also, after reading Collin's review of the book, I wonder what connections there might be between Actor-Network Theory (which I know nothing about) and Activity Theory (which I know next to nothing about)--or whether or not they would be compatible. I see Latour's name cited in some works that take a sociocultural approach to writing (Prior's Writing / Disciplinarity, for instance), but Latour's work doesn't seem to be considered part of Activity Theory as, say, Yrj? Engestr?m's does.

Anyway, I feel I should learn a little more about this at some point, but I don't want it to move me too far away from my dissertation work...

(Ignore the "continue" link.)

[Activity Theory] [Actor-Network Theory]

Different things shooting off in my brain...

I read an article today titled "Rethinking Genre in School and Society: An Activity Theory Analysis" by David R. Russell (Written Communication 14.4 (1997): 504-554). It was full of things that made me think about how I should treat genre in my diss.

He defines genres as "ways of recognizing and predicting how certain tools (including vocalizations and inscriptions), in certain typified--typical, reoccurring--conditions, may be used to help participants act together purposefully" (513).

He notes that it is important (especially for scholars of writing) to remember that genre doesn't have to refer to only language. Genre "may apply to the typified use of material tools of many types by an activity system, often in conjunction with one another" (513). This, and something he writes later about power and discourse, reminded me of something I had read in Sun Kang-i's book 走出白色恐怖 (Farewell to the White Terror).

Russell writes that from the point of view that he is developing,

power (social control, domination, hegemony, exclusion, etc.) is not some force that is mysteriously transported or conspiratorially hidden in discourse. Power is analyzable in terms of dialectical contradictions in activity systems, manifest in specific tools-in-use (including within genres) that people marshal when they are at cross-purposes. Nor are genres, in this view, Foucauldian capillaries, micro-level conduits carrying power (Foucault, 1981). Rather, genres come historically to fully mediate human interactions in such a way that some people (and some tools) have greater and lesser influence than others because of their dynamic position(s) in tool-mediated systems or networks. ... To understand power in modern social practices, one must follow the genres, written and otherwise. Power appears in specific, locatable occasions of mediated action and is created in the network of many localized instances. It is not an inchoate climate of force or terror, although such atmospheres and responses are (re-)created by the operationalizing of specific actions in mediated activity systems. (523-4)

In 走出白色恐怖, Sun Kang-i writes about how after her father was released from prison, police started coming to their house in the middle of the night, every 2 or 3 days, supposedly to check their household registration. The police would purposely make a lot of noise in order to let neighbors know that they were there, and the neighbors became more and more reluctant to have any dealings with Sun's family (72-3). This "checking of household registration" (查戶口), including the loud knocking on the door and the loud voices of the police, could be described as a genre of terror, including typified, localized actions by specific people with the purposes of disturbing Sun's family and affecting their neighbors' attitudes toward and interactions with her family.

There's also a sense, though, in which depicting this "terror genre" at such a local level makes it easy to ignore the activity systems of the KMT police state to which those local actors were connected. So one thing that Sun says that I am not sure I accept is that officials who are higher up are usually more compassionate and humane, but the lower officials are more uncooperative and even use their power to bully others (狐假虎威). She also felt that a lot of the other harassment that her family suffered was probably more due to the lower-level officials than the higher-ups--the latter probably didn't even know what was going on. I'm of the opinion that higher-up officials created the conditions for lower-level abuses.

So I think that while I'll mostly agree with Russell's depiction of how power and genre are related--in the sense that power is not "present" in genre-as-text, but rather is (re)produced through specific typified activities which are mediated by tools (including texts)--I also think it's important to map as completely as possible the various interlocking networks that are connected to those specific localized instantiations of power.

[dissertating] [genre] [power] [White Terror]

McDissertating

As I mentioned earlier, I've been taking archival documents to McDonald's recently. They seem to like it there (and they don't eat much, which is a good thing).

Monday night, though, I spent some time reading through Casey Blanton's Travel Writing: The Self and the World to get some sense of how folks in literary studies write about travel writing. This book is also part of Routledge's "Genres in Context" series, which sounded good to me because I've been working recently on genre as it pertains to the archives I'm using.

The book gives a broad historical overview of different trends in travel writing related to the notion of "self" and "other". Blanton argues that "travel literature's longevity" might be well explained by "its narrative power, both literal and symbolic." Blanton continues,

The travel narrative is a compelling and seductive form of storytelling. Its reader is swept along on the surface of the text by the pure forward motion of the journey while being initiated into strange and often dangerous new territory. ... Yet, these works resonate with a symbolic and psychological truth that goes beyond their compelling narrative surfaces. The transformation from a literal journey to a psychological or symbolic one may occur for a number of reasons. The shift works on an intuitive level because of what Joseph Campbell calls the existence of the "monomyth," where the hero is seen as one who travels along a path of self-improvement and integration, doing battle with the "others" who are the unresolved parts of himself or herself. Wholeness is associated with homecoming when the quest cycle is complete. ... Whether fiction or nonfiction, there exists in the journey pattern the possibility of a kind of narrative where inner and outer worlds collide. But, as a survey of the development of the genre will show, the balance of that dialogue between the mind of the traveler and the observable world had not remained constant. As the purpose of travel has shifted from political exploration or mercantile errands to travel for its own sake, gradual but fundamental changes have occurred in the narratives that describe these trips. Those changes occur at the nexus of the traveler's concern with inner and outer worlds. (2-3)

I find this analysis interesting because as it tries to explain the general appeal of travel writing, it also points out how historical changes in the purposes and meanings of travel might have affected what travel writers emphasized in their texts.

But it's not yet going far enough for me. I'm more interested in how the travel narratives functioned as specific "events" and as part of particular situated activities. Blanton alludes to this when she writes,

At one end of the spectrum lie the object-bound journey accounts of sailors, pilgrims, and merchants whose trips were inspired by necessity or well-defined purpose: exploration, devotion, or economics. These journey narratives of early travelers usually appear as ships' logs or, more commonly, as in the case of Christopher Columbus, letters to king, sponsor, or loved ones at home. (3)

This is closer to what I'm dealing with in the rep letters (and the other writings of the OSMA reps). Unfortunately, I'm going to have to look elsewhere for analyses that do more than allude to the specific, situated work that travel writing participates in. I think part of the problem is that (as I knew already) literary studies has a different understanding of genre than does rhetorical studies. But I don't think my time with this book was completely wasted--I think Blanton's text does provide me with some idea of how travel writing is typically talked about in literary studies.

[dissertating] [genre] [OSMA] [travel writing]

A hopeful ending to 2005 and a hopeful start to 2006

Dec. 31: I went to dinner with a few alumni from the class of 2000. I have a particularly close relationship to that group for various reasons. Anyway, one of them is working on his MA thesis and is having some trouble working on it because he's balancing it with a job (sounds familiar). So we decided that we're going to e-mail each other once a week to nag encourage each other. I think that will be a good thing!

Jan. 1: On the way back from my in-laws' home, we stopped at McDonald's and had some coffee. I brought my journal along (as I always do now) and spent about an hour writing in it. Continued working on some methodological issues related to my diss. and worked out some "possible possibilities" for dealing with those issues. Am feeling good about writing this thing again.

(Ignore the "continue" link.)

[dissertating]