6. [Writing is] everything a man does when he works,
but to an outstanding degree.The writer, too,
produces something - a work in the highest sense of
the word. He produces this work by transforming
human and natural realities.When he writes, his
starting point is a certain state of language, a certain
form of culture, certain books, and also certain
objective realities - ink, paper, printing presses. In
order to write, he must destroy language in its
present form and create it in another form, denying
books as he forms books out of what other books
are not. (Blanchot 371, qtd in Pender 116.)
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8. All writing-regardless of its form and its content-has
the potential be (and to be experienced as) both an
object and a tool. And try as we might, there’s no
reliable way to distinguish one from the other. (119)
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9. Rhetoric insists that
language work but in
doing so inevitably risks
its ability to work. (121)
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11. ...If we run away from language, it will come after us
(Paulhan)...The more intent we are on keeping language
quiet and transparent, he suggest, the more attentive to
it we have to be.Yet the more attentive to it we are, the
more likely we are to notice its noise and opacity. ...
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12. And while noticing those features not always (or
obviously) change how we write, I do think it changes
why we write. I think it makes us write not just so that
we can put language to work but also so that we can
experience its resistance to working. (120-121)
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16. For him, a conception of techne that does not account
for experience is one that does not account for
unexpected situations in which the artist’s ability to
impose a preconceived form onto the materials is
compromised by certain contingencies, for instance, the
“feedback” she might receive from these materials.
(126)
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17. For him, a conception of techne that does not account
for experience is one that does not account for
unexpected situations in which the artist’s ability to
impose a preconceived form onto the materials is
compromised by certain contingencies, for instance, the
“feedback” she might receive from these materials.
(126)
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19. Karrieann asks:
In relation to Dunne’s work, how can we consider the
concept of passivity as something productive in the act
of writing? Could it be that by being passive our
thoughts can become clearer?
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22. Jana writes:
Historically, we have valued techne because it focuses our
attention to external goals; or to put it more precisely, we have
valued techne because it allows us to align writing with particulalr
external goals” (142).
As poesis, or a bringing forth, techne allows students to write as
writing to achieve an external goal. And while she is careful not to
easily dismiss using techne to achieve external goals (something
like problem solving), she explains that such an emphasis on goals
of writing have caused us to overlook the thingness of writing,“the
ability of writing to engage us in a process of bringing forth that is
more aimed at doing something than knowing something” (143).
This stresses the teaching of writing as a means of textual
interpretation over a means of textual production – we aren’t
using techne to make (techne as theory vs. techne as
methodology).
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23. • What would a methodology of techne in teaching
writing look like?
• How can teaching writing as writing allow for the
entanglement of writing and making?
• What composite definition of techne (from
chapter one) would this approach make use of?
• Does this something, or a way to make some
things, fit in the writing classroom – techne as
method?
Saturday, September 7, 13
