WRT 105: Mini-Dialogue Assignment - Litstudies.org

WRT 105: Mini-Dialogue Assignment
The purpose of this assignment is to get to know the various positions related to your topic of
inquiry better – especially your own. You will set up a dialogue among yourself and two or three
authors from your research.
The Basics:
Length: 3-4 pages (double-spaced)
Standard 1‖ margins, 12pt. type size
Dialogue format:
The paper should be dialogue, though you may use paragraphs to ―set the scene‖ and to
provide transitions within the text.
Each of the four characters/authors (including yourself) should appear with substantial
dialogue (75+ words) at least three times.
Here‘s a partial example written by ―student‖ Margaret Himley:
We are walking around San Antonio, Texas, looking at the plaques multimedia artist Glenn Ligon
has installed in various public spaces in the city. The bronze plaques resemble official historical
markers but are meant to acknowledge little ‗h‘ histories, the ordinary moments of real people‘s
lives, the transgressive stories that cut across capital ―H‖ history. We are joined by Geography
scholars Geraldine Pratt and Linda McDowell.
Margaret: I am impressed with this installation, because I appreciate your acknowledging the
many different people and the many different encounters that have happened here, because those
are the people and the encounters that never make it into the official story of a place.
Glenn: It‘s interesting to me to memorialize a moment – something fleeting and ephemeral.
Most of history is about big events with a huge cast of characters that had a significant effect on
the world. This is about small moments in the daily lives of people, transitory moments,
insignificant moments.
Linda: The plaques mark personal moments – disruptions of public space. I like that. In my own
scholarly work, I have focused on public spaces too, such as the street or the park or the bar and
shop, and on the gendering of those spaces. For so long, women in the West were relegated to the
private spaces of the home and maybe the workplace. Until relatively recently, ‗decent‘ women
did not walk by themselves on the streets, especially at night. If they did, they were perceived as
sex workers or ‗fallen women,‘ not the ‗angels of the hearth‘ they were supposed to be. That
ideology lingers on, as is seen in rape trials – ‗well, what did she expect? She was out alone at
night!‘
Margaret: That‘s right – there is such a sense of who is allowed in public, and who is allowed to
do what. Gay couples holding hands become hypervisible, while straight couples engaged in
PDA (public displays of affection) are almost invisible.

Geraldine: Well, Margaret, that‘s not quite right. So much depends on what public space we are
talking about. A country like Spain has a long history of tolerating, even expecting a lot of PDA,
even among gays and lesbians and transgender folks. The US is prickly about such things.
And more specifically, there are lots of different public spaces within a public space – a red light
district, for example, in a city – where different expectations hold. In my research I study how
place determines whose life is valuable, and whose is not. From 1978 on women began to go
missing in Vancouver‘s Downtown Eastside neighborhood, an area of Vancouver that is poor and
run-down, despite efforts at gentrification. No one paid attention. Not until 1998 – about 69
murders later – did the police and the media start to talk about a serial killer. Why? Because
anyone living in this neighborhood is considered transient, irresponsible, likely a drug user,
possibly a prostitute, and so altogether expendable.
Glenn: That‘s important research, Geraldine, because it points to the imagined geography of
space – it is imagined that a woman on a corner in the Downtown Eastside neighborhood is sex
worker, it is imagined that a man sitting on a bench in Travis Park in San Antonio is straight, it is
imagined that the students at universities come from at least middle class homes, and so on . . .
and on.
Linda: Exactly! And those imaginative geographies have consequences. In Britain, for example,
the ‗countryside‘ is bound up with images of ‗the nation,‘ and is imagined as an uninviting,
perhaps even frightening place for Britain‘s black population, for those who have come from
other countries and seem to belong only to Britain‘s urban spaces.
Margaret: I wonder if working class and middle class Brits also feel alienated ideologically from
‗the countryside‘ in Britain, with its associations of estates and manors and fox-hunting?
Linda: Yes, that would be worth exploring. Who feels comfortable where? Why?
Glenn: Who is remembered as connected to a particular place? Why?
Geraldine: Who is forgotten or ignored? How does place determine that? Why?
Margaret remembers the stories that her friend and fiction writer Michael Martone tells about the
Midwest, most often about Indiana. Yes, she thinks, I am so from the Midwest. My identity is
shaped by the vast flat space, the fences dividing it up into manageable chunks, the long and
straight roads that create grids, the sense of being close together but not close. Why, she
wonders, did she long to leave the Midwest, to live among the rolling hills and winding roads of
the East? Who did she want to become? How does place matter to that becoming?
Here is another partial example written by ―student‖ Anne Fitzsimmons:
Several of us have gathered to discuss the issue of ―cultural resistance‖: What is it? Who are the
agents? What impact—if any— does it have on society? And, why should we pay attention to
cultural resistance now? Three of us work in the academy—Stephen Duncombe teaches media
and cultural studies at NYU, Douglas Crimp is a professor of Art History at the University of
Rochester and a member of ACT UP, and Anne Fitzsimmons teaches in SU‘s Writing Program.
Stuart Cosgrove is a culture expert and popular media figure in Great Britain.
Anne: I‘m drawn to Stephen‘s discussion of the fluidity of culture, and his claim that cultural
resistance does not have to be ―conscious‖ in order to have an impact or even be political. He‘s

making me think about how all sorts of things—individual behaviors and adornments, lifestyle
choices, seemingly quirky interests or passions—might be forms of resistance.
Stuart: That‘s actually a good way to think about my own research. The zoot-suit riots in LA in
1943 are a great example of the way that style can arise as resistance. The zoot-suiters weren‘t
explicitly resisting anything—not the war, not class difference, not racial oppression—even
though all of those factors were in full force at that moment and in that place. Pachucos wore the
zoot suit to carve out a distinct identity in the predominantly white, middle class environs of LA,
to be cool and hip, and to enhance their status as juvenile delinquents; in essence, pachucos
sported the zoot suit to celebrate their delinquency, their cultural marginalization. The riots
unfolded accidently, not because the zoot-suiters organized or planned them or hoped to produce
some change as a result.
Doug: I‘m quite drawn to Stuart‘s idea of style as resistance, but I have to say that my own
experience with ACT UP suggests that cultural resistance is most effective when it blends the
explicit goal of political action with the ability and resources to respond quickly, creatively, and
spontaneously to issues and crises as they arise. And I can‘t emphasize enough the role of
images/graphics in increasing ACT UP‘s profile—both locally and nationally. The
professionalism, cleverness, and aptness of our graphics suggested to the public how successfully
we could marshal resources; our presence at marches and demonstrations, regardless of how
small in actual numbers, looked much greater because of the power of the images. A distinct
visual style, then, has characterized much of ACT UP‘s protesting—but the style is always
wedded to an explicit political purpose.
Anne: The biggest thing I take away from Doug‘s moving history of ACT UP is how funny,
clever, smart and resourceful ACT UP members were. The goal of ACT UP—to address the
AIDS crisis—was very serious, but the means to that end were often irreverent, raunchy and
refreshingly confrontational.
Stephen: I think that‘s an important point, Anne. I, too, have devoted much of my life to
protesting against a range of cultural issues and I‘ve realized how important spontaneity and fun
are to the success of any cultural resistance: we have to be willing to get out, join in, involve
ourselves in the messy, chaotic process of making something happen. Cultural resistance rarely
arises in the classroom or in the boardroom; it occurs in the streets, at the rave, crammed into a
dorm room, or spread all over a loft. It inspires and relies on community, and it happens when
people have the space and freedom to imagine a different sort of culture, a different set of norms,
and the resources to create something new.
Stuart: I want to qualify something I said earlier about the zoot-suiters not being motivated by
political agendas. One of the important aspects of cultural resistance is that the resistance doesn‘t
necessarily have to be consciously political to have a political impact. The zoot-suiters certainly
confronted and highlighted racial oppression and injustices in LA in 1943, even if they didn‘t
directly speak about oppression and injustice. Just look at what happened in Detroit three weeks
after the riots ended in LA: first, students at one of the city‘s public high schools had their own
zoot-suit riot, and soon after that the city erupted in one of the worst race riots in US history. You
can‘t tell me that the LA zoot-suiters didn‘t influence the Detroit rioters, especially their cries for
racial justice.
Stephen: Exactly! Cultural resistance often unfolds in fits and stages. Cultural resistance, like the
wearing of the zoot-suit, is often a first step toward direct political action or at least the explicit
articulation of political dissent.

Doug: Certainly an important thing members of ACT UP can attest to is how difficult it is and
how much time it takes to enact change on a large scale. It has taken hundreds of protests, piles of
graphics, miles of marching, and years of planning, meeting, and organizing to impact the
government and medical establishment‘s response to AIDS. The battle never ends even if the
tactics change.
Anne: I wonder what we can say to a new generation of college students and citizens about the
role of cultural resistance in culture: why should we pay attention to cultural resistance, for
example? Or, how can we recognize and appreciate cultural resistance?
Stephen: I think cultural resistance deserves our attention because of how deeply it is embedded
in culture. We end up examining not just the resistance, but the cultural conditions that inspired
the resistance—a song like ―We Are Family‖ arising out of the excesses of the disco era and
being appropriated as a symbol for gay pride, for example.
Doug: Cultural resistance is absolutely important to attend to because it often signals a response
to a cultural or political trend that disenfranchises a certain segment of the populace. Cultural
resistance helps change the terms of the debate, calling attention to issues and conditions that
those in power would love to leave shrouded.
Stuart: I guess I‘ll have the last word here…I think it‘s important for young people to recognize
the historical situatedness of cultural resistance, to understand that cultural resistance is always
linked with very specific cultural and historical conditions. The sporting of the zoot-suit as
spectacular style, and the ensuing zoot-suit riots, for example, arose from a particular situation in
LA in 1943: first generation children of Mexican immigrants left without opportunity, resources,
or clear identities, and war-time patriotism and rationing being two of them. Cultural resistances
never arise from nothing.