Thanks for this perspective Russ.
Miriam
Quoting Russ Hunt <[log in to unmask]>:
> It's interesting to me how regularly "inkshedding" is defined as
> pen on paper, in-class public freewriting. If you define it
> that way, I hardly ever use it any more. But in my view what
> inkshedding has become is writing with an immediate,
> instrumental audience and purpose. The introduction of computer-
> mediated text into the situation has changed everything. I use
> physical, paper-based inkshedding in class when something comes
> up that it seems appropriate to, and that's almost never planned
> (here's a problem or a surprise or a controversy; let's inkshed
> about that), and happens one or two times a year.
>
> What I _do_, however, almost as a default mode for conducting
> class, is to use short-term texts immediately read as a basis
> for oral discussion, or as a substitute for it. For example,
> toward the end of last term's course in John McPhee, everybody
> had written on an online bulletin board a short reflective
> description of the McPhee articles they'd chosen. Nobody had had
> much of a chance to read them, so I printed them out and brought
> copies to class. We took ten minutes or so to read each others'
> -- as we would with an inkshed -- and then I did a round,
> inviting people to ask someone else a question about hers.
>
> Is that inkshedding? Well, I don't know. But I do know I'd
> never have thought to do it (or most of the other things I do)
> if I hadn't been working on and with inkshedding. Inkshedding,
> for me, has always been about making text rhetorically real in
> an immediate and authentic sense, one that's very hard for the
> writer to ignore; as far as possible, I don't use writing in any
> other way (no term papers, indeed no writing at all for the
> purpose of being evaluated by an authority).
>
> What does all that say about the future of the practice? Well,
> it says to me, anyway, that it's alive and well, even if
> unrecognizable.
>
> There are other things to be said about the future of Inkshed as
> a community, but I'm most interested right now in whether other
> people are, like me, doing things that are clearly descended
> from, shaped by, inkshedding.
>
> (I think of it as filling the empty generic spaces between text
> messaging and the formal essay.)
>
> -- Russ
>
> St. Thomas University
> http://www.stu.ca/~hunt/
>
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
> To leave the list, send a SIGNOFF CASLL command to
> [log in to unmask] or, if you experience difficulties,
> write to Russ Hunt at [log in to unmask]
>
> For the list archives and information about the organization,
> its newsletter, and the annual conference, go to
> http://www.stu.ca/inkshed/
> -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
>
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
To leave the list, send a SIGNOFF CASLL command to
[log in to unmask] or, if you experience difficulties,
write to Russ Hunt at [log in to unmask]
For the list archives and information about the organization,
its newsletter, and the annual conference, go to
http://www.stu.ca/inkshed/
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
