Today’s Plan:
- Closing Project 2
- Introducing Project 3
- For Next Class
Closing Project 2
I’d like to go over some of the results from the survey and share a few closing thoughts.
Addicted to Normal
I’d like to start us down the final path for this semester, the third project, which I am tentatively titling “What Can Your Body Do?” This project is tied to Sarah Hendren’s book What Can a Body Do?, and while Hendren isn’t a rhetorical theorist, she teaches at Olin College of Engineering, I feel her approach to design and disability resonates with both classical rhetorical theory (persuasion, audience awareness) and contemporary rhetorical theory as I define it (attention to alterity, to the the presence of others and other(ness)). In our next few classes, I hope to make those resonances clearer. In short, I’ve always considered rhetoric a way of thinking about how we can use words to solve real problems in the world. Hendren works similarly, even if she isn’t designing solutions in words alone. Working materially, she thinks about the significance (emphasis on “sign,” social meaning, interpretation, representation) of the things she encounters and/or builds.
Hendren’s introduction trips upon how the notion of average, taken as a Platonic Ideal, makes life harder on just about everyone (but especially–both materially and spiritually–on people who do not fit the norm). The intro works through how the very idea of “normal,” “typical,” and “average” developed through the previous through centuries, a kind of by product of scientific thinking.
I would frame the idea of average in terms of the Modern Enlightenment, and its search for “objective” certainty: the idea that there is one absolute certain truth that transcends our material world. This was Plato’s Truth. In Platonic ontology, physical reality is a reflection of a higher, transcendent, realm of ideals. This dual ontology forms the backdrop for Modern (18th, 19th, early 20th) century science–the idea, for instance, that there is one healthy notion of human sexuality (and many “deviant” sexual practices). The idea that manhood can be defined as one thing, one set of traits. That there is one perfect healthy body. Etc. The point for Hendren is to recognize that this very idea of normalcy, its instantiation as our idea of “healthy,” are cultural developments. And problematic ones. There problematic dimensions are often invisible to many of us.
Reading Hendren over break recalled for me a book that really changed the way I saw the world: Todd Rose’s The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World that Values Sameness. I first encountered an excerpt of that book a few years ago. There’s an excerpt online that is (theoretically) a 11 minute read. Let’s give it a go. Our addiction to “normal” runs deep.
Project 3
Our semester will end something like this: this week and next week we will read and discuss Hendren. But we will be reading with a purpose in mind: I will ask you to develop a project based upon her work. This project can unfold in any number of ways–it can grow out of intellectual curiosity, personal relationship. It can work towards spatial awareness. It can manifest in a potential chapter to her book, a personal essay, a policy proposal for the University, a prototype object. As we read Hendren, there’s a few questions for you to think about:
- What else could you read? Does she mention something that makes you want to read more (this might grow out of her chapter format, which is often an exploration of a person or space, a history of a disability, a new idea or theory, a circle back to the person or space)
- Where could you explore? Hendren’s chapters are often both pointed explorations of a space’s affordances (or hindrances) and personal phenomenological reflection (rigorously walking through what she is thinking or feeling as a result of being in a space or encountering something/someone).
- What can you design? and/or What can you make? (and who might you be making it for?)
- What’s the point? Why do the thing you want to do, or read the thing you want to read?
After we’ve spent two weeks (this week and next) reading, thinking, and writing, I’ll ask you to develop me a proposal that lays out what kind of work you want to do. This, for me, is the best part of teaching a seminar, since it offers you the opportunity to design your own assignment, one that speaks to how the course material interests you. I hope you find something of interest in Hendren’s work, some lead you can follow.
For Next Class
Read Hendren’s Introduction (pp. 1-32).
For next Monday, I’ll ask you to read the chapters on Chair and Room. Next Monday night, I will ask you to read one more chapter and the epilogue. For next Friday, you will complete your final Write Up for the semester on Hendren and we will share those in class. You will develop your proposal next weekend for Monday’s class.
