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Articles Conference Reviews |
C.29 Mapping Genre RelationsC.29 Mapping Genre Relations: Using Metaphors to Explore and Traverse Boundaries Amy Devitt, Anis Bawarshi, and Mary Jo Reiff combined to form a panel titled “Mapping Genre Relations: Using Metaphors to Explore and Traverse Boundaries.” As can be assumed by the names of the panelists, the room was packed, with people standing, sitting on the floor and even spilling out into the hall. As the title of the panel suggests, the panelists attempted to find new metaphors that would help to better explain the ways genres work or the ways that people have historically used genres. According to Devitt, metaphors reveal how we perceive, think about, and understand our world, and thus, the metaphors we use for genres reveal our perception of how genres work. Devitt began her talk, “Creating Within Genres: How Genre Metaphors Shape Student Innovation,” by discussing some of the metaphors that have typically been used for genre. Some have argued for a “genre as container” metaphor that identifies genres as a way to pass information from one person to another. Theorists of Rhetorical Genre Studies, though, reject this idea in preference for metaphorical references to genres as tools, agents, and/or sites. However, Devitt believes these metaphors are too limiting as descriptions of genres’ power. “Tools” limit genre to a form – a pre-existing object that is selected and used without being changed. “Agents” takes agency away from the writer: writers choose a genre, and then the genre does the action. In other words, “the genre acts on the student” rather than the student writer acting within genres. “Sites,” which has most often been used (see Bawarshi 2004), are for Devitt, too stable. With this metaphor, “A person goes to a site … to a pre-existing genre space.” Therefore, it is not a space that can be changed or manipulated in any way. Having revealed the limitations of existing metaphors, Devitt suggested several new metaphors to help us think about genre theory: genres as construction, genres as plays (bringing in performance theory – students as actors), genres as toys (to play with). She ended with a suggestion that we see genres as playgrounds. In this metaphor, genres become “sites where writers play with possibilities [and] imaginings … As writers play, they use existing equipment to perform their intentions and act out scenarios … [and] the resulting performance constructs possibilities for others.” According to Devitt, teaching genres in this way would overcome the danger of teaching students to view them as static and rule-bound, as things that act on writers. Instead, using playgrounds as a controlling metaphor for genres, students could be taught how to act within, through, and in genres creatively. In Anis Bawarshi’s “Genres as Rhizomes: Mapping the Performances of Genres” he drew on Deleuze and Guattari in order to discuss what this metaphor might mean to genre uptake. A rhizome, which is a term from botany, is, according to Bawarshi, a nonhierarchical network, and a rhizome-like uptake is a “bidirectional relation between objects.” Rhizomes are underground networks that don’t have singular points of position, beginning, or ending. They are directions in motion, the state of being in the middle, of coming and going. They are defined by the lines and directions of motion, without predetermined paths. According to Bawarshi, “Rhetorical Genre Studies has already been thinking about genres in rhizomatic ways” (see Russell’s work on activity systems). However, for Bawarshi, to think of genres in terms of rhizomes, we must look to uptake, which is the line that connects genres. Such thinking about genres as rhizomes, Bawarshi argued, would allow us to see the connections between genres, see textual and embodied genres, map nomadic genres, and examine how some genres are territorial. The final presentation, Mary Jo Reiff’s “Geographies of Genres: Navigating Metaphorical and Material Relations,” discussed how women in the 19th century took up spatial metaphors when using the genre of the public petition. Through a historical genre analysis, Reiff showed how women used the public petition to help them create political space for engagement, and build bridges for public participation. Since genre analysis typically focuses on textual and discursive networks, according to Reiff, such research can occlude the actual material existence of people using the genres. Grounding the inquiry in the material, on the other hand, could show how material conditions can impede material action and social change. Several critiques were voiced during the Q and A session of this panel. First, the point was made that the metaphor of the playground de-emphasizes genres as constraints and yet genres are constraining; writers cannot just write however they want if they want their work to be seen as legitimate. Devitt’s response to this comment was that although genres are constraining, there is still a lot of room for improvisation. Freedman’s game metaphor was also brought up, but was (respectfully) rejected as being too rule-bound. Although Devitt’s argument emphasized the creativity allowed within genres, she did admit that those who are most expert in their field are often allowed to play more within their disciplinary genres, that there is a fixedness of the equipment in the playground which structures the kinds of play that happens, and that there are “rules” about what one can or can’t do within the confines of the playground. Overall, the panel was engaging and interesting and gave audience members several new ways to think about how we understand, use, and teach genre. |