Week of June 23, 2025
Oversimplified the Multiplicity
“As I have tried to demonstrate, the use of key terms such as ‘current-traditional rhetoric,’ ‘process,’ and ‘post-process’ has contributed significantly to the discursive construction of the history of composition studies. On one hand, these terms have helped to clarify changing currents in the intellectual practices of composition studies; on the other hand, they have oversimplified the multiplicity of perspectives within each ‘paradigm.’ These keywords also imposed discursively constructed boundaries on complex historical developments, as new ‘paradigms’ criticized previously dominant theories and pedagogies for certain features while appropriating or ignoring other features—as in the post-process dismissal of social process theories and pedagogies. Such negotiation is inevitable because knowledge is discursively constructed in so far as discourse is used as the dominant medium of thought and communication (Bazerman, 1988; Berger & Luckman, 1966; Rorty, 1979)” (74).
—Paul Kei Matsuda. (2003). Process and post-process: A discursive history. Journal of Second Language Writing, 12(1), 65–83. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1060-3743(02)00127-3 #terms #keywords #oversimplification #process #post-process #current-traditional
Gardener’s Ascent—Illustration Paired with the OnlyPoems POTM for June
June’s OnlyPoem’s Poem of the Month, “Diocletian Upon Being Asked to Return to Rome,” by Kate Deimling, greenleafed for me this illustration, an experiment with horizons and scale, rolling and peaked, striped in cabbages. I guess this is the fourteenth monthly POTM illustration I’ve done for OnlyPoems since April 2024. I’m low-key exploring the possibility of an ekphrastics exhibit this fall, thinking through how best to arrange for printing the illustrations alongside each poem. #ekphrastic #POTM #illustration
Taken to be Dogmas
“How many ideas that were so sure they were taken to be dogmas have disappeared from knowledge?” (38).
—Michel Serres. (2020). Branches: A Philosophy of Time, Event and Advent. Bloomsbury Academic.
From the Mail Bag
Zed,
Thank you for writing in. It’s always nice to get old-timey mail. And foremost, my compliments on your handwriting. It looks a lot like my own, the scratches of a Gen-Xer who half-heartedly practiced cursive letterforms forty-some years ago and whose script habits have dwindled though not to the point of illegibility, not yet. I have the weak hands of an aging English professor and so have chosen to type in reply; I hope you understand.
The most number of times I have been stung since moving to Rosemary Road in 2021 is three. Three times. The record is now, this summer, in fact. Last week I was moving a pile of big rocks to the creek bed, procrastinating civilian corp of engineers-style, one by one, giving the flow path something to think about, rocks and water doing their endless dance and such. With the final rock, I bumped the plank fence and out from where the ivy lushly clung to the boards swarmed what I’d guess were 20-30 wasps. I know they say to keep calm because so many of the stinging insects can sense fear. But no. That does not work. There is no keeping calm when swarmed by wasps. I fled, scrambled for some distance. Ribs and left arm. Two stings. And then the third sting was just this week. While walking in flip-flops I stepped such that a bee found its way underneath my left “ring” toe (fourth toe; seems to me strangely matrimonial to call a fourth toe a ring toe). I would have described myself as bee+hornet+wasp allergic in my younger years; now, less so. The toxin is uncomfortable and would be worrying if I was stung more than, say, four or five times, but I’ll be fine, and I know there are more allergic people out there encountering stinging insects with more justifiable alarm. -DM
Stick Henge Update
As of the end of June, just one pile of branches still needs to be integrated with the accumulating sections of the henge. Here, pictured, is one section of the larger circular form. I’m still trying to decide at what rate to clip branches from the red oak, and this week’s “heat dome” discouraged me from working on it.
5ives
The Profiteering Publishing Corps
- Elsevier (Computers and Composition, Journal of Second Language Writing); Dutch, 2022 revenue: £2.909 billion
- Springer Nature; German-British, 2024 revenue: €1.82 billion to €1.85 billion
- Wiley-Blackwell; U.S., 2023 revenue: $2.02 billion
- Taylor & Francis/Routledge (Rhetoric Review, RSQ, TCQ); British, 2022 revenue: £593.6 million
- Sage Publishing (JBTC, Written Communication); U.S., 2023 revenue: $140.0 million
I will never get used to the idea that scholarship gets written, voluntarily reviewed, voluntarily edited, and then it is published by these corporations before being sold back to colleges and universities through library subscription packages.
Farther from Home
“Of course, the farther from home you go to solve your problem, the more expensive the solution will be” (68). from “Three Ways of Farming in the Southwest,” 1979.
—Wendell Berry. (1981). The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural and Agricultural. Counterpoint.
Flock Under Cover
Around ~11 a.m. is the latest the chickens will linger on hot days before seeking shade. Mo appears to be doing his diligent best, keenly alert to disturbances and anomalies, though I am nevertheless nervous because it was just about exactly a year ago when we lost three chickens to a raccoon attack at the edge not 30 feet into the thicket behind the house.
About Collectanea
Collectanea is a series I’m trying out in Summer 2025 at Earth Wide Moth. Each entry accumulates throughout the week and is formed by gathering quotations, links, drawings, and miscellany. The title of the entry notes the week and year (the fifth in this series from Week 26 of 2025, or the Week of June 23). I open a tab, add a little of this or that most days. Why? Years ago my habitude toward serial composition and, thus, toward blogging, favored lighter, less formal, and more varied fragments; gradually, social media began to reel in many of these short form entries, recasting them as posts dropped a Facebook or Instagram or Twitter (while it lasted), albeit with dwindling ripple effect into the ad-addled and algorithm-ambivalent streams. This space, meanwhile, began to feel to me like it wanted more thoughtfully developed entries bearing the shape and length of what you might find on Medium or Substack. But, because I am drafting toward a book project most mornings, I don’t quite have reliable essayistic bandwidth for Earth Wide Moth this summer. Collectanea, if it goes according to my small bites chicken scratch plan, will be a release valve for the piling up of too many tabs open, functioning as a shareable, intermittent (weekly?) repository for small pieces cut and pasted from stuff I am reading, and also as a scrapbook for illustrations. -DM
