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James Berlin argued that within any study of rhetoric, especially that informed
by cultural study, questions of ideology and power always maintain presence.
Berlin wanted to empower students to understand their positions in relationship
to such ideological formations in order to resist institutional power.
Our effort is to make students aware of the cultural codes - the various
completing discourses - that attempt to influence who they are. Our larger
purpose is to encourage our students to resist and to negotiate these codes - these
hegemonic discourses - in order to bring about more personally humane and
socially equitable economic and political arrangements. (Berlin 50)
Berlin's work informs a great deal of the essays in Race in Cyberspace. Berlin, however important
he may be to rhet/comp, may not be the best model for digital study. The limitations
of Berlin's arguments surface in understanding how discourse functions in the digital.
A more appropriate theoretical position may instead come from William S.
Burroughs. Burroughs understood in the early '60s the concerns
which would eventually become those of cultural studies: ideology, power, and
control.
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