Monday, October 28, 2013

A preview of coming attractions....

After that whole thing about not remembering the play about a tree in Flusser, and not exactly recalling why I asked you to think about the writing due last week as collaborative, I will admit to doubting myself a bit. So I went back to my office and opened up the doc where I sketched my plan for the quarter's writing.

Now, I willingly admit that I'm tweaking the plan a little in response to what you all are doing--initially I had scheduled the first collaborative (as in working with someone else on a post) assignment for next week, for example, but what I read this past week suggested now was the time.

Thus the question, why had I so insisted last week that the "pick up a thread" from someone's post assignment was collaboration? My assignments in this class are always pretty open--dictating that baseline structure of dialog between theory and primary work is about as far as I want to restrict you. Why hadn't I left everyone free to take the "thread" assignment where they wanted, even if that meant being antagonistic?

The answer, the arc of writing assignments I devised in September revealed to me: the antagonism project comes later.

Not this week! Don't be antagonistic towards your writing partner! Keep your antipathies at bay for a little while longer! Play nice! But please know you won't be able to do so forever....

JM

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