An intellectual mentor of mine, Craig Gingrich Philbrook (2012) recently wrote the following about web-based praxis: “I value Web-based praxis precisely for possibilities, less than to destroy so-called ‘traditional scholarship’ than to further mutate its always-already intertextual and constructed condition, never natural, normal, neutral, nor necessary” (p. 85).
It is in Gingrich-Philbrook’s sentiment that I struggle to best articulate my participation in a kind of web-based praxis. My goals with this particular feminist blog are to regularly practice self-reflexivity. I teach a blogging class that specifically centers on blogging about feminist issues with the overall goal or promoted understanding that consciousness raising is possible in online, asynchronous (non-shared space and time) contexts. I think of who I learned the most about feminism from, and the moments when feminist goals were clarified for me—a friend missing a job interview because her childcare fell through, taking a different friend to get an abortion, the discussions about my decision to take my husband’s last name, reading Margaret Sanger in class after a committee meeting about our campus’s vague interpretations of the Family Medical Leave Act. All of these clarifying consciousness-raised moments didn’t happen online. At best they occurred during a phone conversation.
I do not want to be a hypocrite; I want to hold myself accountable to participate in the same forums I expect my students to participate in—with the hope of having productive consciousness raising conversations. I don’t want to embrace my fears that I will not be able to keep up with the dailyness needed to maintain a worthy-of-being-read blog. That I will not engage in any topics worthy of consciousness raising, that are instead navel-gazing that none of my peers, colleagues, or students want to be bearer of bad news and tell me about.
So, how do I orient towards teaching a feminist blogging class? Well, I enter the task from a place of my personal pedagogical familiarity. Mostly, I assess students’ blog posts as class writing. Ability to articulate a solid argument in the perimeters of a blog post’s context, grammatical and stylistic strength, are several of the assessable criteria for me. I also try to take a long view of the semester—consider the first couple of posts from novice bloggers against their most recent blog posts to see a trajectory of progress (knock on wood, because thus far I can say that most, if not all, current bloggers have such a trajectory).
I like the idea of beginning where you are – in digital and in most things 🙂 I think that combining what you know about writing and argument development with a new medium for expression is pretty cool. I also think that when we communicate with students about both our strengths or areas of expertise (feminism & writing) and areas that are new or developing (blogging & consciousness raising via digital) they get to see a commitment to continuing to learn & develop. It’s also an example of how each generation of feminists have something unique to contribute to feminist politics.
I appreciate your focus on self-reflexivity – on coming to an awareness through writing and helping students to see that as a valuable enterprise. I think that really captures the spirit of CR, whether it happens online or face-to-face – you come to understand yourself in new ways as you speak (or write). That’s what I find so appealing about this collaborative autoethnography – we continue to come to an awareness of self through sharing our stories and responding to each others’ stories. It doesn’t so much as snowball, as layers – we add layers and peel some back too.
Janell’s comment regarding allowing students to see what we are still learning and developing is an important insight. To me feminist blogging is an experiment – not an a priori outcome that we can know and predict. My gut is that students like that we’re on the ride with them, rather than looking for a particular outcome or are directing their own feminist consciousness. We’re part of this CR experience too – learning about ourselves through them. I feel if my students aren’t influencing my thought or pushing me to ask new questions, then the space wasn’t really that rewarding.