I got word that my Computers and Writing 2009 proposal was accepted, but I’ve been hesitant to blog about it, for reasons that may be apparent in my proposal, which follows in slightly paraphrased form.
My proposed presentation poses as its problem the environment of pervasive computer-enabled surveillance at the United States Military Academy at West Point. The problem is both practical, in the labor and logistics associated with the ubiquitous application of technologies of surveillance, and ethical, in my concern that ubiquitous surveillance may inhibit the development of the risk-taking thinkers essential to the Army’s mission. The presentation theorizes possible responses, contrasting the writing of political philosopher Leo Strauss and Roman historian Gaius Cornelius Tacitus on writing and domination. Finally, the presentation offers suggestions for how those responses might be enacted at West Point, and possible implications for other institutions.
At West Point, Web surfing is monitored, and spiders crawl the web for any mentions of the Academy, with mentions sent to the chain of command. (Interestingly, the Academy writing program endorses the use of digital technologies in the classroom, following the lead of the Academy’s general embrace of digital technologies.) Such a seemingly contradictory context requires a rhetorical response that moves beyond crude applications of Foucault’s “unequal gaze.”
I pose two alternatives for such a response: first, using the analysis of simultaneously esoteric and exoteric texts suggested by Leo Strauss in Persecution and the Art of Writing, and second, using the perspectives implied by Tacitus in his Dialogus de Oratoribus wherein authors intentionally place their meaning sous rature in ways that deliberately challenge hermeneusis depending upon interpretive context. Both writers suggest the possibilities of texts that can be interpreted in opposite ways by different audiences, depending on all parties’ positions of relative power within the rhetorical situation. However, I argue that Tacitus’s accounts implicitly offer the possibility of a counter-imperial micro-politics of resistance to the combination of domination and surveillance. The presentation then explores ways to enact that possibility of resistance in ways that open up opportunities for rhetorical risk-taking without compromising military missions, principles, or hierarchies.
And that’s it for the proposal, which I know will make the crawls come Monday morning, and which my bosses will see. (Hi, sir!) That’s enough for some nervousness on my part. But I’ve also been thinking that a blog entry — this one, for instance — is really the only way I can frame the project (after all, the conference program’s going to be indexed at some point) without making the presentation into some sort of rhetorical ambush. So I feel like there’s a whole lot of stuff in here: about classroom pedagogy, first and certainly, and about theories of rhetoric, but there’s the back-text as well, the usually unsaid except in my explicit invocation of it, about professionalism and what it means to talk about your job. (I don’t think I’m saying anything bad, but some might suggest I’m better off not saying anything at all.)
We’ll see.
As someone who walks a similar, if decidedly less fraught, tightrope regularly — good luck. IME sometimes it’s WORSE when the critique comes through formal rather than informal channels, because they can’t pretend they didn’t see it.
But the formality of the channel itself is some protection. I hope it’s enough for you.
I dealt with this quite a bit as a former cleared employee of a National Laboratory. The irony of everpresent surveillance at a nuclear lab when one is trying to innovate your country ahead of foes was never lost on me. I constantly tried to keep my “handlers” on their toes. Hamhanded spiders sent my managers scrambling when they saw the word “pornography” had shown up on my desktop (“since when does pornography ever actually use the full word in their metatags? Yes, sir, I was reading a WIRED story on using metatags to avoid looking like a porn site. Yes, I hope you have a good day as well, sir.”). I’ll have to read more on Tacitus, as I think Hollywood, Bollywood, and other major culture producers create multistreamed narratives that create simultaneous stories and coded counter-stories that resist hermeneusis. Every time I see “American Beauty,” for instance, I see two movies that resist each other. I am more than curious to see how you deploy this kind of theory in a setting like the Acdamey (do they register misspellings?).
I’m intrigued by the same ironies Doc Mara raises above.
I wonder, too, whether there is some angle here that speaks to the rise of social networks and the sort of “equal gaze” that coworkers or classmates (at USMA or, say, where I work) can also bring to bear.
I may be talking entirely through my hat. I’ll have to think on this.
I think Tacitus anticipates Foucault, in that his historiographical perspective takes as its fundamental assumption (given that Tacitus was writing under empire, and had seen the terror of Domitian’s regime) that there can be no “equal” gaze. Power always looks in a certain direction.
Congrats on the proposal acceptance. Just found your blog by accident (searching through blogs that mention West Point). How do you like it there? I just accepted a civilian job in the Management office. I’d love to hear any advice about the area and insights about the Academy you might have.
Lauralea, thanks for the comment. I’ve sent you an email reply.
Ever seen this, Weapons of the Weak by James Scott?
http://dannyreviews.com/h/Weapons_of_the_Weak.html
Phil, it’s good to hear from you — it’s been too long since I read Wealth Bondage. The review is fascinating, and it sounds like the book might help me (or at least demand my engagement) as I turn my own scholarship into a publishable monograph.