Erasures

1
Erasures

• The Absence of the Pencil in Rhetoric and
  Composition Studies

Peter England Texas Tech TCR Online
2
A Rough Sketch

• Cumberland, England (1550)
• London street corners by 1790 (Petroski)
• Dallas, Texas, 1941

Peter EnglandTexas Tech www.webpages.ttu.edu/pen
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3
Pencils are Revision

• Mechanics of Revision
• Breadcrumbs
• Erasers (mid 18th century)
• Users
• Engineers, artists, architects, mechanics,
  designers, etc.

Peter EnglandTexas Tech www.webpages.ttu.edu/pen
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4
Focus on Print

• Economic sexiness
• We study rhetoric as social action print has
  incalculable social value

Peter EnglandTexas Tech www.webpages.ttu.edu/pen
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5
Print is Objectifying

• Ong
• the objectifying potential inherent in writing is
  not fully realized until print (281)
• Typography makes words out of preexisting
  objects (types) as one makes houses out of
  bricks it hooks up the words in machines and
  stamps out on hundreds or thousands of surfaces
  exactly the same spatial arrangement of
  wordsconstituting the first assembly line. . .
  (281)

Peter EnglandTexas Tech www.webpages.ttu.edu/pen
gland
6
Fair Copy

• McLuhan on print the first two centuries of
  printing from movable types were motivated much
  more by the desire to see ancient and medieval
  books than by the need to read and write new
  ones (155).
• McLuhan typography represented the epitome
  of detachment and disinterestedness of the
  Enlightenment (159).

Peter EnglandTexas Tech www.webpages.ttu.edu/pen
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7
Going to Press

• Where are pencils in rhetoric and composition
  studies?
• Historical studies?
• Documents related to composition?

Peter EnglandTexas Tech www.webpages.ttu.edu/pen
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8
Hypothesis

• Theories of correctness have dictated, and
  continue to dictate, the technology we use to
  write.
• Can we interrogate rhetorical and composition
  theory through the tools we use to write?

Peter EnglandTexas Tech www.webpages.ttu.edu/pen
gland
9
Extended Conclusions

• Are we missing something?
• OS, hardware, ergonomics?

Peter EnglandTexas Tech www.webpages.ttu.edu/pen
gland
10
Doodling

• Who cares about PowerPoint?
• Computers, but not operating systems
• Print, but not pens and pencils
• Writing, but not paper.

Peter EnglandTexas Tech www.webpages.ttu.edu/pen
gland
11
Bibliography

• Keen, Paul. The Crisis of Literature in the
  1790s Print Culture and the Public Sphere.
  Cambridge Studies in Romanticism. New York
  Cambridge University Press, 1999.
• Miller, Thomas P. The Formation of College
  English Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the
  British Cultural Provinces. Pittsburgh
  University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997.
• McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media The
  Extensions of Man
• Ong, Walter. From Mimesis to Irony Writing
  and Print as Integuments of Voice. Interfaces
  of the Word Studies in the Evolution of
  Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca Cornell UP,
  1977.
• Petroski, Henry. The Pencil A History of
  Design and Circumstance. New York Alfred A.
  Knopf, 1990.
• Smith, Thomas M. Late nineteenth-Century
  Communications Techniques and Machines.
  Technology in Western Civilization The
  Emergence of Modern Industrial Society, Earliest
  Times to 1900. Kranzberg, Melvin, and Pursell,
  Carroll W., Jr., Eds. New York Oxford
  University Press, 1967.

Peter EnglandTexas Tech www.webpages.ttu.edu/pen
gland