Object Oriented Writing Theory: Writers, Texts, Ecologies
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Object Oriented Writing Theory: Writers, Texts, Ecologies A dissertation presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy John H. Whicker August 2014 © 2014 John H. Whicker. All Rights Reserved. 2 This dissertation titled Object‐Oriented Writing Theory: Writers, Texts, Ecologies by JOHN H. WHICKER has been approved for the Department of English and the College of Arts and Sciences by Albert Rouzie Associate Professor of English Robert Frank Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3 ABSTRACT WHICKER, JOHN H., Ph.D., August 2014, English Object‐Oriented Writing Theory: Writers, Texts, Ecologies Director of Dissertation: Albert Rouzie What is writing? For most of the history of writing studies, writing has been assumed to be the activities of a writer, a writing subject. More recently, however, scholars have realized writing is ecological; it emerges through complex dynamic interactions of humans, non‐humans, places, technologies, bodies, etc. In this recognition of writing’s ecology, writing studies, however, has still not fully theorized writing itself, its being, its ontology. What is it that circulates and connects humans and non‐humans, and places to form ecologies and networks? What is writing? Also, while writing is so much more than the actions of writers, writers still act individually and in groups. As writing studies recognizes that the concept of the subject inhibits ability to explain writing, it must somehow still account for individual experience, individual agency. What is writing, and what is a writer? This dissertation articulates a theory of what writing is, an ontology, that does not depend on a concept of subjectivity while still accounting for individual experience and agency. It does this through a turn to the new realist philosophies of Object‐Oriented Ontology (OOO). OOO radically defends individual, different, and autonomous objects as the basic unit of being, which allows for an object(ive) agent as an alternative to subjectivity. Theorizing such an agent as a writer reveals that writing emerges as the operation through which objects become aware or sentient; 4 it is the production of meaning through selective physical marking that begins first as the recording of memory in the brain. The emergence of writing, thus, allows for consciousness. Writing, as an object, is the unification of all continuing selective marking that generates meaning. From this understanding of writers and writing, this project continues on to articulate a model of communication and textual production, arguing for the recognition of all objects, writers, texts, bodies, technologies, etc. as individual autonomous objects. Building from the agency of objects, then, this project radically connects individual experience with the dynamic interactions of writing ecologies in a way that defends the individuality, autonomy, and agency of all objects. 5 DEDICATION To Juli, always. To Greyson, Charlotte, Colin, Evangeline, and Taran for making it all worth while. To Joan Clyde Whicker (1947–2009) for always believing in what she could not see. 6 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My deepest thanks go to Dr. Albert Rouzie for reading through each draft of each chapter and carefully guiding them and me through my own maze of theory. Thanks also to my other dissertation committee members Mara Holt, Sherrie Gradin, Raymie McKerrow, and Thom Dancer for helpful feedback and a willingness to stay with me to the end. Thanks to Sidney I. Dobrin, Jeff A. Rice, and Matthew Heard for your participation on various Conference on College Composition and Communication panels where I worked through many ideas both those that are included here and those that led me to them. I am grateful to Matt Vetter and Matthew Nuñes for listening to ideas before they were translated onto paper. I am inexpressibly grateful to Juliann, Greyson, Charlotte, Colin, Evangeline, and Taran Whicker for everything. Finally, I am grateful to God and my Savior Jesus Christ, who have sustained and prospered me in this endeavor. If there is any glory in this work, let it go to them. 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ..........................................................................................................................................................3 Dedication .....................................................................................................................................................5 Acknowledgments .....................................................................................................................................6 List of Figures ..............................................................................................................................................8 Chapter 1: Writing Theory Writing....................................................................................................9 Chapter 2: Counter‐Points in Writing Theory ............................................................................ 42 Chapter 3: Theorizing Writing: The Need for an Object‐Oriented Approach .............114 Chapter 4: Writing the Object..........................................................................................................171 Chapter 5: Object‐Oriented Ecologies and Individual Autonomy....................................231 Works Cited .............................................................................................................................................292 8 LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1: Flower and Hayes cognitive writing process model .......................................... 60 Figure 2: Networked Subjectivity ................................................................................................. 73 Figure 3: Activity system model .................................................................................................... 78 Figure 4: Complex writing ecology model ...............................................................................106 Figure 5: Quadruple object ............................................................................................................168 Figure 6: Interaction of objects with their environments .................................................181 Figure 7: Interactions of sentient objects with their environments.............................186 Figure 8: Object‐oriented communication (large)................................................................226 Figure 9: Object‐oriented communication (small)...............................................................235 9 CHAPTER 1: WRITING THEORY WRITING I began this project as an attempt to articulate a process model in the face of the challenges of postprocess. Writing, however, has led me far afield from my original reaction to reading postprocess texts. My engagement with texts, colleagues, conferences, and so forth, took me in the direction of complexity and ecological theories, and this project became an attempt to articulate an ecological model of the writing process. After Sidney I. Dobrin published Postcomposition, I found that Dobrin articulates just such an ecological model and my research began to focus on the speculative turn in continental philosophy as I searched for a way to distinguish my project from Dobrin’s. As I read more and more of the works of Object‐Oriented Ontology philosophers like Levi R. Bryant and Graham Harman, I was drawn toward the allure of objects. At about the time I was beginning to make articulating an object‐oriented ontology of writing part of my ecological process model in the Spring of 2013, I headed to the Conference on College Composition and Communication in Las Vegas Nevada. At CCCC, I attended a panel by Dobrin, Sean Morey, and John Tinnell titled New Media Ecologies in which each of the presenters addressed writing in a way that challenged traditional understandings of writing as alphabetic print. They focused on topics from the ecology of multimodal digital texts to the texts of sharks. During the question and answer time, I asked the panelists the very questions that have come to drive this project: “What is writing when we understand that modes from audio to digital to gestural are all still writing? What is writing if we acknowledge that computers and technologically augmented sharks and even non‐ 10 augmented animals can write?” In response, Dobrin gave what I immediately felt was an unsatisfactory answer. He reminded me that in the previous session, I myself had given a presentation on an ecological process model and been asked by an audience member how we can know when a text has emerged, to which I had responded that we can only know after the fact. Dobrin’s response to my question was the same, we can only know after the fact what writing is, which, I infer, means we can only know writing happened by its productions, circulations, relations. Writing is identifiable only by a lingering “Writing was Here” note. It was from this moment that I became more committed to articulating a more satisfying answer to my questions. From the beginnings of my work, I have been pushed and pulled, drawn and alienated by texts, conversations, colleagues, technologies, language, presentation papers, and the other texts that I have produced until I have arrived at the theory I am articulating here and in the following chapters. The intense labor of drafting out these articulations of a complex and difficult theory, one that delves into