ccr 711: techne, pender conclusion

Pender: Techne Conclusion

CCR 711 ::: 9/5/13

Saturday, September 7, 13

defining techne


and what it means for teaching.


Instrumentality


text as materialtext as object


[Writing is] everything a man does when he works, but to an outstanding degree. The writer, too, produces something - a work in the highest sense of the word. He produces this work by transforming human and natural realities. When he writes, his starting point is a certain state of language, a certain form of culture, certain books, and also certain objective realities - ink, paper, printing presses. In order to write, he must destroy language in its present form and create it in another form, denying books as he forms books out of what other books are not. (Blanchot 371, qtd in Pender 116.)


negation (116-117)


All writing-regardless of its form and its content-has the potential be (and to be experienced as) both an object and a tool. And try as we might, there’s no reliable way to distinguish one from the other. (119)


Rhetoric insists that language work but in doing so inevitably risks its ability to work. (121)


pg. 120


...If we run away from language, it will come after us (Paulhan)... The more intent we are on keeping language quiet and transparent, he suggest, the more attentive to it we have to be. Yet the more attentive to it we are, the more likely we are to notice its noise and opacity. ...


And while noticing those features not always (or obviously) change how we write, I do think it changes why we write. I think it makes us write not just so that we can put language to work but also so that we can experience its resistance to working. (120-121)


Teachability


techne v phronesis techne and episteme

(Dunne)


For him, a conception of techne that does not account for experience is one that does not account for unexpected situations in which the artist’s ability to impose a preconceived form onto the materials is compromised by certain contingencies, for instance, the “feedback” she might receive from these materials. (126)


passivity


Karrieann asks:

In relation to Dunne’s work, how can we consider the concept of passivity as something productive in the act of writing? Could it be that by being passive our thoughts can become clearer?


techne as potentiality of the material (130)


strategic detours


Jana writes:Historically, we have valued techne because it focuses our attention to external goals; or to put it more precisely, we have valued techne because it allows us to align writing with particulalr external goals” (142).

As poesis, or a bringing forth, techne allows students to write as writing to achieve an external goal. And while she is careful not to easily dismiss using techne to achieve external goals (something like problem solving), she explains that such an emphasis on goals of writing have caused us to overlook the thingness of writing, “the ability of writing to engage us in a process of bringing forth that is more aimed at doing something than knowing something” (143). This stresses the teaching of writing as a means of textual interpretation over a means of textual production – we aren’t using techne to make (techne as theory vs. techne as methodology).


• What would a methodology of techne in teaching writing look like?

• How can teaching writing as writing allow for the entanglement of writing and making?

• What composite definition of techne (from chapter one) would this approach make use of?

• Does this something, or a way to make some things, fit in the writing classroom – techne as method?


ccr 711: techne, pender conclusion

Business

unexpected situations

artists ability

preconceived form

valued techne

teaching writing

language

books

teaching