Benmayor, Rina.
"Digital Storytelling as a Signature Pedagogy for the New
Humanities." Arts and Humanities in Higher Education: An International
Journal of Theory, Research and Practice 7.2 (2008): 188-204.
Wielding the audio-visual
language of contemporary culture, Benmayor presents her perspective of the
benefits for total inclusion of technology and media through an example of student
work from the “Latina Life Stories” course she facilitates at California State
University Monterey Bay. The final project for the course is aided by the use
of digital media that, according to Benmayor, connects students’ “emotional and
intellectual worlds and constructs an empowered and safe space to speak about
their diverse social realities” (199). Arguably,
the intended effect is one where what she calls “situated knowledge” becomes
shared knowledge through cross-connections between students, and eventually
communities, that inscribes individual cultural, historical, and generational
contexts and identities. Specifically, it is the intention of the pedagogy that
through reflection upon situated knowledge the assets (personal epistemologies)
of individuals create “performances” over media to form a broader integrated
identity consciousness and its relation to other communities.
Benmayor believes “digital
stories are at the crossroads of the creative and the analytical. Both product and process in digital
storytelling empower students to find their voice and to speak out,
especially those marginalized by racism, educational disadvantage and language.”
I find this statement
duplicitously rhetorical. On the one hand, empowering the outliers of society is
certainly an outcome of the access to information technology allows. And yes,
it does indeed allow for multimodalities in communication: writing, voice,
images, sound. It does, too, create a sense of global community simply by
connecting figuratively in hopes of connecting metaphorically, and perhaps one
day connecting literally. It even humanizes, to a certain extent, the user to
her audience through the stories we create about her and her place in time and
universe. But that is the very issue in need of reconciliation: that we create
the stories. We, the audience, the viewer. Multimodalities lead inevitably to
multiple interpretations, each as removed from the origination as the other.
Connections are forged on foundations of perception (the very intent of a “performance”
to use Benmayor’s vocabulary). Digital Media becomes social pedagogy
instructing on rhetorical perspectives alone. What is created is a
meta-commentary on the mediated community.
Those connected to the
digital space are living large portions of their lives telling digital stories that
at once display their situated knowledge and proffer it as experience-by-proxy.
The contribution at the keyboard becomes an implement, what I’ve coined the
Scope of Assets.
If you are unfamiliar
with outdoor sporting, scopes are used in hunting to gain a greater perspective
of a given object through augmentation. It is comprised of several parts but
essentially comes down to an eyepiece that allows for viewing and an objective
lens that augments. The Scope of Assets does that very thing for situated
knowledge. Where the contributor invests her race, gender, capital, resource,
experience, family, among the other things that comprise the self, is the
eyepiece. She sits at the implement views what she knows and sees it augmented
in relevance by global access and connection. Others are like her. Others have
similar backgrounds. Her world is made bigger.
The interesting thing
about optics, though, is that if for any reason someone were to look through
the objective instead of the eyepiece, she would see something very different.
Looking through a scope backwards does not augment, it decreases. This is what
occurs when the digital space reacts to product and process. In exposing
situated knowledge as epistemology that is,
meaning it exists, the contribution to the digital community morphs into
Duchamp’s urinal. It becomes the object, the text. It is not empowered but
studied. It is theorized from the flesh
and taken for its relevance only to the Hegelian Dialectic: “What does this
identity tell me about mine?” And, in doing so, it recapitulates its contributor’s
sophisticated identity to fit the narrative of pre-determined social ambiguity.
Andres, there is a controversy when it comes to digital storytelling. I am old school, and I prefer a textbook over anything that is digital. However, we are living in the 21st century. The methods and practices forms of the traditional classroom are changing in many schools
ReplyDeleteI am no stranger to the paradigm shift in education. It is for all intents and purposes forced upon us at the school where I teach. However the author's claim is that digital media can be an effective tool for comprehension of a given subject/theory at the university level.
DeleteWhen students engage with media and tell stories using theory as a lens through that media, actors are allowed to engage in a meta-reflection for their place within a given phenomenon. An example is given of a Latina student gaining new understanding for how 'her' story is a product of coloniality within the American world-system.
My push-back comes only from the exposure I have had with my students that, like children acquiring language, have not learned the possibilities for the power they weild.
Andres, Does your analysis change when the author knows her writing will be "missread" to use Harold Bloom's terminology for interpretation? When we know someone else will make of our writing something foreign to our intent, and some part of our intent is to facilitate that remaking, how does that change your analysis?
ReplyDeleteI recommend the following story to interact with another identity, perhaps out own:
"Depression Quest"
An interactive digital game designed to "show other sufferers of depression that they are not alone in their feelings, and to illustrate to people who may not understand the illness the depths of what it can do to people." The game both explores identity digitally, and seeks to change identity digitally.
http://www.depressionquest.com/
I don't think my analysis would HAVE to change if a contributor is intent on facilitating the remaking of meaning, though seldom are there any absolutes.
DeleteTake Duchamp, for example. His contribution to the academy was not the urinal, but commentary on the absurdity of environment dictating reverence, and the imaginary (the glass encasement) that invites that reverence. The reference creates a rather simple metaphor when discussing the digital space: Where mediation is the glass case, observation serves only to remove function, purpose, or the like and reveals more about the relationship than the subject or object alone.
However, after engaging with depression quest, I would add that when intention IS to be observed, the imaginary, not the object, creates perceptions for a secondary subject twice removed. The poorly executed graphic that follows might help:
Observer/Actor->imaginary/subject<->subject/object
<->object/imaginary->Actor/Observer