Situations and Textuality 

Perhaps I should attempt to say what this project is about and what it is not about. It not about what you or I SHOULD do in the classroom. It is not about how WE should order the classroom. It is not even about what I have done in the classroom. It is about textuality--writing. This is not the subject "matter" of this paper in the sense that my thesis is about writing and I've set out to prove something about it--at least not prove in that sense. It is an example of writing. It is a performance of textuality. 

There are three layers to this project. 

The first is the linear, somewhat orderly, paper I presented at Computers and Writing 1998 in Gainesville, Florida. The paper was written to be read--to be delivered and heard. This type of textuality has many features: an attention-getting introduction; a brief, orienting intro that attempts to point the listener in a direction; a simple narration of my experiences with the computer classroom, to give my audience a place to stand; a context to put the abstract discussion in; a section that discusses composition scholars in such a way that turns toward a theory, a way of seeing, that I ask my listeners to consider; a conclusion that links back to my playful introduction to show that there was actually some method/seriousness/order to it. 

The second layer was added as a feature of hypertext. When I inquired about sending my paper in for Kairos' CW conference proceedings issue, I was asked to submit it in hypertext form. How, I asked myself, do I transform one type of textuality into another potentially incompatible textuality? I opted, again, to play with the notion of order and chaos presented in my paper. In an attempt to show, to provide an example of, the relationship between order and chaos, I kept the original format of the paper even in hypertext. This shows the stark contrast of the two modes of textuality under consideration. I then added a "chaotic" element to it...a set of random links to further exemplify the "difference" of these two types of textuality. But my project also shows that there is a definite level of compatibility between these modes. Not only is a linear paper easily cut into separate pages and linked together, I ask the reader to ask themselves whether these random links actually have something to do with my project. Is there "really" any chaos going on here? 

The third layer comes as an attempt to mediate the two previous layers of textuality with a more "traditional" hypertext form that elaborates on the compatibilities and incompatibilities of these three forms of textuality. But what do my attempts at elaboration prove? They certainly don't prove the thesis of my original paper--not in a sense most would consider proof. This third layer asks my audience to think about the three layers. What is the relationship between these textualities, these facialities? My paper is an example of writing. An example of a writing process. An example of multiple layers of rhetorical situations and how they interacted to form another type of textuality. 

The different physical, rhetorical situations created different types of texts that I've tried to weave together and juxtapose to one another--the conference paper, a oral presentation f2f; a quick reaction to a rhetorical situation where I had to produce a certain type of text from a completely different type of text; then an extended situation where I was asked to explain, to give some order to, this madness/chaos I was trying to talk/write about. If anything supports my position, it is this entire process and the product it produced. Just as capital produces schizophrenics and attempts to order them, my context, this combination of rhetorical situations, produced a schizophrenic text and then attempts to order it, to find out what it means. Where is its evidence? What is it ABOUT? But this fourth type of textuality doesn't know whether it wants to be orderly or chaotic, so it becomes both and neither.