BOX-LOGIC
Geoffrey Sirc begins his essay "Box-Logic" by expressing his frustrations with the typical learning in writing while society is ever-changing. He says, “The rapid advance of technology has meant a pedagogical dilemma for me: just what do I do in the classroom, what do I teach?”(113) He battles with the traditional way of writing and creating some other style of writing that the world seems to going towards. He uses several pieces of works by different writers and poets to argue his points.
Geoffrey has some questions that he has to ask himself and anyone who is in the teaching profession. Essentially he is saying, what do you do, when everything you have been taught seems to be changing? He looks at a writing from Marcel Duchamp’s Green Box (1934) to help him find some unconventional ways to view writing. From taking notes, to rearranging post-its to playing with the way you present the words, in an art form . He also looks at Joseph Cornell, Walter Benjamin, and George Maciunas to gather more information throughout history to be able to justify his point-of-view, or to give it some sort of credibility.
While "Box-Logic" was quite long in length and at times hard to understand the dialect, Geoffrey does an excellent job of getting his point across. He also uses many different writing styles in this piece. He uses different fonts, bolds and word boxes to show that writing can be creative. This is something that helps break up the piece in estetical ways and gives the viewer something esthetic to look at while reading. Writing does not have to be boring or one dimensional. It is an art and as such we can adapt or modify the rules that were once considered “the gospel.” We have to look at what is currently trending, like rap and the artistic ways that artist present themselves. If you really want to get your students engaged in your class you have to think outside the box. You have to grab them at point where their attention is, during that time period of life.
At the end of the day Geoffrey just wants his students to not be limited in the way that they think. He wants them to write with no boundaries, leave no stone unturned, go where no man has gone before with writing. He has found a way to truly make writing an art form. Sometimes you have to look at yesterday to see where you are, then look at tomorrow to see where you should be heading. He has now opened up an entire world of ways to write through different genres and eras.
I'm glad you see the rap connection, Natasha. Sirc teaching Rap and/as Rhetoric, and he's written quite a lot about it. I appreciate that you see his work trying to find new ways of looking at writing. And writing, itself, of course. Yes, he wrote from a frustration, from a desire to understand how to move with how everyday language practices were changing and how these changes might affect academic writing and how we teach "it." Frankly, as you might imagine, Sirc views academic writing as many things, but he's very much invested in text that matter to students, texts that move them so that they can edge ever closer to feeling emboldened to create, to resist, to critique, to curate even if this curatorial practice means *beyond routine or convention*.
ReplyDeleteLook at those typos! I must have written this in a rush! (sorry) :)
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