cooperative opposites

Eric Crump (wleric@SHOWME.MISSOURI.EDU)
Wed, 31 Jul 1996 08:29:45 -0500


Ah, one thing I love about this gig is the way it allows for difference to
not just co-exist, but complement. Steve, obviously, as a different way of
looking at how we learn about writing than I do. He's not too wild about
unfettered exploration (or rather, about the validity of the result), and
I'm not all that impressed with conventional methodologies, even though
they have validity coming out their ears (a carefully constructed validity,
I would add, one that we traditionally agree to trust). I'd rather trust to
stories; he'd rather trust to research.

That's cool.

In fact, that better than cool. That presents an interesting and
potentially exciting possibility: How about we see if narrative evidence
and research evidence can, together, construct a new version of what we're
looking at. There's nothing wrong with niches, categories, methodologies,
preferences and predilections, or whatever. They become problems when they
become rigidly compartmentalized, segregated, competitive.

As I tried to indicate in my previous post on the subject (getting to
'how'), I don't think it's necessary to shape this project so's it
privileges one or the other approach. Barry and Victor made the point well
that we ought not to neglect what's been said already. I'd like to try
creating a mechanism that facilitates the copious accumulation of both:
what's been said and learned, and what *we* say now.

So let me unveil the latest addition to the web pages: The Writing Process
Webliography (that last is a neologism I believe I first saw in Mick's
Interactive Historiography pages--couldn't resist). It's an attempt to
create a way to collect writing process resources of all kinds.

/rhetnet/process/process_note.html

[I've been fiddling with glitches all day, so I won't be surprised if you all
turn up a few more. That's ok. it's the only way to get 'em fixed.]

It's not complete or smooth, so please make suggestions about how to
change... anything (design or content).

I hope Barry or Victor or Steve has time to throw in a few of the first
entries to get the ball rolling!

--Eric Crump