Sunday, July 9, 2006

Barton, "Interpreting the Discourses of Technology"

Barton, Ellen L. "Interpreting the Discourses of Technology." Literacy and Computers: The Complications of Teaching and Learning with Technology. Cynthia Selfe and Susan Hiligoss, eds. Research and Scholarship in Composition Ser. New York: MLA, 1994. 56-75.

Barton is chiefly concerned with two discourses of technology: the first, enthusiastic, euphoric, celebratory, and triumphalist, tends to correspond to teaching (look what we can do!); the other, an antidominant discourse of technology, corresponds to a "skeptical interpretation" most often theorized and politicized. 

Dominant: "the substance is based on an unquestioned assumption that progress in technology brings a variety of benefits to individuals and society" (57).  Assumptions that go along with this are that technology is here to stay and that the benefits are for everyone.  This stance or discourse also contends that the educational system must prepare technology users (58).
Antidominant:  "exists as a minority voice, critiquing the assumption that technology always brings progress and pointing out some of its less desirable consequences" (60). Baron attributes this stance--reading it through Rorty and Pratt--to the "cultural Left." 

"Critics of the cultural Left, in contrast [to cultural literacy orientations], present an antidominant discourse, arguing that the integration of technology most often functions to maintain existing lines of power and authority" (65).  This connects with the problem of literacy as either a.) an indoctrination to status quo (which does little to destabilize power structures) or b.) a critical project motivated by making explicit inequities perpetuated (often unwittingly) by the dominant discourse of technology.

"Slatin's article ["Reading Hypertext"] reflects a common theme in the dominant discourse of technology, that of the creation of new and potentially significant products, products that may, in this case, assist theorists in understanding the associative process of reading and help teachers in developing mature student readers and writers" (67).

"In sum, even this brief review of the literature shows a clear association between pedagogical research describing the use of computers in the teaching of writing and the dominant discourse, which assumes the advantages of technology in education" (69). Here, Barton leads up to the conclusion that much of the scholarship in Computers and Writing enfolds the antidominant discourse into the dominant discourse, blending (perhaps infelicitously) the two forces with the edge going to enthusiasts--or those who, at the very least, grant that techonology literacy is good.

"As I argued earlier, much of the research in computers and writing that adopts the antidominant discourse actually merges into the dominant discourse in its explicit or implicit focus on pedagogical goals. But research in computers and writing more closely reflects the key ideas of the antidominant discourse when it exposes the unequal distribution of resources across groups using technology in literacy education" (74). This is a succinct statement of the both-and bind facing C&W researchers in 1994.  What followed?  Is technology still reducible to dominant and antidominant discourses? Is this more than a killer dichotomy (the antidominant skepticism putting the brakes on productive uses of technology, for better or worse)? 

Related sources

Lanham, Richard. "The Extraordinary Convergence: Democracy, Technology, Theory, and the University Curriculum." Gless and Smith 27-50.

Slatin, John M. "Reading Hypertext: Order and Coherence in a New Medium." College English 52 (1990): 870-83.

Rorty, Richard. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1979.

Posted by Derek Mueller at July 9, 2006 6:48 PM to Writing Technologies