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Articles Conference Reviews |
2008N17GageComposed in the Wake of Disaster: (Re)Writing the Realities of New Orleans This session began with Byron Hawk’s presentation “Katrina Didn’t Happen? On Baudrillard and the Tragic Image.” Byron started by citing three essays Jean Baudrillard wrote in response to the Gulf War: “The Gulf War Will Not Take Place,” “The Gulf War Is Not Taking Place,” and “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place.” Of particular interest to Byron was Baudrillard’s focus on the media’s complicit role in masquerading a “dead war”—a battle of two unequal sides—as an actual war: The media heightened information to redefine the event, which created affect and, in turn, separated the audience from the reality of what had happened. The media, Byron contended, circulate disaster in the same manner in which it circulates war, and it is with this frame that he examined the media’s representation of Hurricane Katrina. Focusing first on the media’s build up of the approaching storm and then on its use of spectacular images to produce what he referred to as “rhetorical spin,” Byron argued that the media’s management of information positioned the audience as captive spectators. It is this form of mediation that prevents the audience from seeing the actual event. As a result, the storm, just like the Gulf War, was a reality transformed into spectacle. The second presentation further explored the realities of Hurricane Katrina, namely how those realities have been captured in historical narratives. Rodney Herring’s “Questioning the Histories of Katrina: Narrative Analysis in the Writing Classroom” began with a discussion of Frederic Jameson’s critique that Burke’s Pentad offers only a limited view of symbolic action in that it does not account for purpose. Rather than maintaining the distinction between Burke and Jameson, however, Rodney constructed his analysis according to a Burkean/Jamesonian interpretation of the Pentad. He then used this model to examine two histories of Katrina: Douglas Brinkley’s The Great Deluge and Michael Erik Dyson’s Come Hell or High Water. Rodney used his data set to reveal discrepancies in how the realities of Hurricane Katrina have been constructed. He then tracked the rhetorical strategies employed in each history as a means of determining the purpose behind each writer’s symbolic act. The next speaker, Sean McCarthy, presented a shift in the conversation. His paper, “Insurgent Architecture: Building the Writing Classroom and Rebuilding New Orleans,” explored the potential of using Second Life as a mechanism for teaching students rhetorical principles. Showing digital images of a project in which Sean and others had used Second Life to build virtual homes in East Austin, he demonstrated how this cyber environment might be employed pedagogically: First, students could work in groups to engage in virtual civic activities. (Sean used rebuilding neighborhoods in New Orleans as an example.) Second, students could adopt the persona of someone involved in civic action, which would require students to navigate the various discursive activities demanded of that persona. Both examples highlighted the potential of virtual environments to create an embodied writing experience one might find, Sean suggested, in a service learning class. Daisy Pignetti, whose paper was titled “Blogging New Orleans: Locals Creating Realities Online,” served as the final presenter. Her talk returned to the session’s emerging theme—how the realities of Hurricane Katrina have been and continue to be written. Daisy offered a personal context for her study: As a native of New Orleans, her knowledge of the city conflicted with the news reports she heard on television, creating confusion for her as to what was actually happening in the wake of the storm. Daisy observed this same confusion in the blogosphere, where cyberliterate citizens wrote to establish what was true (Daisy’s handout documented the extensive use of the Internet as a means of gaining information about Hurricane Katrina). Since then, those same citizens have used blogs to continue determining accurate information, to, in some instances, entertain, and most importantly, to persuade others toward community action, namely the rebuilding of the city. Daisy’s talk tracked this ongoing conversation and revealed how local bloggers have created a narrative that adds a new frame to our understanding of the storm. The realities of Hurricane Katrina continue to be written, and this session provided interesting perspectives as to how—whether by way of images in the media, historical narratives, or online writing. The commonalities among Byron’s, Rodney’s, and Daisy’s presentations formed a nice thread that contributed to our understanding of how we’ve created meaning from the catastrophe. Even though Sean’s paper didn’t necessarily connect with the others due to its pedagogical emphasis, it was still an engaging look at how we might employ virtual environments in the writing classroom. My only real complaint involves time management. Without a chair keeping track of time, the audience was not allowed the opportunity to participate in a Q&A. Yes, the presenters did make themselves available after the session, but that doesn’t quite compensate for what I’m sure would have been a fruitful discussion. |