>I think of speech communities
>as SOUNDED in ways _that implicate structural forces/ sociohistorical
>relations_. [I AGREE WITH MYSELF THERE... BUT THEN I GO ON....]
>I see no problem with the notion of "embodied" individual
>voices as "sounding" the voice of a sociocultural group that we abstract
>from multiple instances of hearing the voices of its members. I think of
>voices I have heard as particular realizations of more generalized
> _ways of sounding_ - NOT realizations of abstract sign systems,
>but realizations nevertheless.
Now that last passage really makes fuzzy the sense behind the term
"realization" while it throws into relief a certain phobia
about the notion of "system."
I think the dread of invoking anything so abstract as a system is
behind my own lack of clarity here.
Take Phil Agre's pointed questions:
>Is there anything to say about *which* voices come together in a genre?
>About how the *relationships* among those voices are embodied in the genre?
>About how, if at all, the relationships among the voices reflect the material
>relationships among the social groups whose voices they are (or were)?
>
>Likewise, I am wary of stopping with the observation that different groups
>might interpret a text differently, or that they might systematically
>interpret a whole genre differently. Differently how? And how do those
>differences in interpretation reflect differences in background, strategy,
>intragroup dialogue, intergroup relations, etc? And how, if at all, do
>those material differences feed back into the construction of the genres?
These are questions that refer us to actual texts (Keyssar's study
of black theatre; cinema cartoons) & to the material conditions for the
production of heterogeneous multi-voiced texts, and they presuppose the
systemic relations/ constraints that genres are about. It's not just
that there is a lot of stuff going on with genre as one element in a
heterogeneous stream of equi-valent elements. Genre is more like
the envelope (thanks Phil) constraining a heterogeneous stream
of elements that definitely are not equi-valent.
So when Paul says,
>I think that individual protagonists do affect (I'm not sure what you mean
>by undoing) the multivoicedness of classrooms, courtrooms, etc. I'm not
>sure that these sites are *that rigid* in the stratification of discourses
>in the first place. Even supreme court justices and constitutional lawyers
>seem quite able to generate multiple, often contradictory interpretations
>in that fairly centripetal domain.
I'm uneasy about what gets glossed by reference to multiple and often
contradictory interpretations within a domain. What defines the domain?
Where is the social gravity? What makes it centripetal? I doubt that
the flexible relations evident in some classrooms or the interpretive
scope of constitutional law alter in any fundamental way the locus of
authority, the division of power & resources, within these institutions.
It's helpful to be reminded that genres have some "objective reality";
they refer to what is typical about recurrent situations, but situations
that in themselves are concrete, that involve material relations that
can't be fully formalized. The system is induced and approximate
but SEEING what is systemic transforms what might seem a blur of
possibility and accident into resources for strategizing, for action.
That is, anyway, how I am making sense of genre theory at the moment.
Thanks to Paul for reminding me that terms like dialogic and negotiated
don't necessarily connote reciprocity, though they are often used to do
so. That's probably why I avoid these terms when referring to
actions that are not "egalitarian" -- even consensual interaction
silences, wipes out, dissenting voices. I want to attend to the sense
that some participants may have of talking but not being heard,
a sense that gets lost by reference to dialogic, negotiated
discourse.
There's more, much more to think about. I hope to hear more from
others.
Judy
....................
Judy Diamondstone diamonju who-is-at rci.rutgers.edu
Graduate School of Education Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place New Brunswick, NJ 08903
Eternity is in love with the productions of time. - W. Blake