ENGL 4275/WRDS 4011: “Rhetoric of Technology” » February 1st: Technology and Postmodernism

February 1st: Technology and Postmodernism

Plan for the Day

Writing Workshop

If we need to continue last class’s brainstorming on adding more proof to topics sentences, we’ll get on this Google Doc. It has three three (3) topic sentences, and together we’ll add proof to each. Let’s come up with three ideas, quotes, or arguments to support the different topic sentences.

Your Turn…Reflect on your writing (by yourself or with a partner) and consider the following:

  • Title–if there’s no title, come up with one
    • Remember, you must have a title other than “Technology and Yourself [Essay]”
  • Citations–direct the writer to places in our reading for appropriate quotations
    • Remember, you must use quotations from the course reading and, if you choose, outside reading
    • Works Cited or References…
  • Proof and examples
    • Don’t just tell; show
  • Reflection of Technology not Description of it’s use
    • Remember, you’re supposed to reflect on the technology: discuss your feelings, beliefs, and goals surrounding technology.
    • Don’t explain how to use the technology; instead, how might the technology use you.

Oudshoorn, Nelly. “The Decline of the One-Size-Fits-All Paradigm, or, How Reproductive Scientists try to Cope with Postmodernity.”

See if you can find similarities among our readings. What is the structure of the text? What methods do the authors use to make their arguments? Oudshoorn is talking about the social construction of technology and science, so she’s a good crossover between the rhetoric of technology and the rhetoric of science subfields within Science and Technology Studies.

  • Gynecology developed after a medical “shift in focus from similarities to differences” (p. 326)
  • Women seen as “complementary opposites,” which “was meant to keep women out of competition with men, designing separate spheres for men and women” (p. 326)
  • Female body as “the medical object par excellence” (p. 327)
  • 19th Century understanding of the essence of women: uterus, ovaries, gynaecology (or gynecology)–p. 327
  • Because women were responsible for birth, they’re responsible for birth control (p. 328-29)
  • “The quest for universal contraceptives can be considered as the ultimate consequence of the process of othering” (p. 329)
  • Equation, very positivist, 8133 menstrual cycles = 635 woman years (p. 329)
    • positivism: the idea that only countable, properly verifiable scientific explanations are valid for creating knowledge.
    • Often, a positivist wants a rigid set of steps for knowledge making because EVERYTHING can be quantified.
  • “The pill thus literally created similarities in women’s reproductive functions” (p. 331)
  • Technology doesn’t fail; women do (p. 331)
    • Or, more broadly, users do…or do they? Why do they?
    • “17 pregnancies due to what [Pincus] described as ‘patient failure'” (p. 331)
  • Social Constructivist view of Technology “every technology contains a configured user” (p. 332)
    • Who are the “configured” users for contemporary technical communication?
  • Interesting cultural differences between the West and the “two-thirds world” (p. 333)
  • “Men have a much longer fertile life than woman (Spilman et al. 1976: 2, 3)–p. 335
  • “The cafeteria discourse acknowledges the diversity of users, whereas the one-size-fits-all discourse emphasizes the universality of women and their bodies, a discourse which largely erased diversities” (336)
  • Erosion of subject-object dichotomies. Men are no longer the only authorities (the subjects) that get to study the female object (p. 336)
  • Reproductive choice (industrialized countries) vs. population control (developing world)–p. 337

Questions for this article:

  • What are the possible social consequences that may result from the ideological belief that women are complementary opposites to men?
  • Where does the male as the standard human body type come from?
  • What are the consequences of men determining the medical “truth” of women’s bodies?
  • What are the consequences of viewing reproduction as mainly a woman’s concern?
  • For that matter, what are the consequences of viewing sexual intercourse as mainly a reproductive activity?

We will return to this discussion–the science of women’s bodies being determined by men–throughout the semester. Please be familiar with the arguments.

For an interesting discussion on the history of birth control (including the pill), see “Birth Control,” which is episode 3 of the Netflix series Sex, Explained. (Of course, you need to have an Netflix account to watch this.)

Feminism Introduction

Feminism is the political and social philosophy based on principles of equality for all peoples and specifically promotes ideas of gender equality. But what are connotations of feminism?

If you want another perspective, read over this section of a webpage from a previous class.

Next Class

Have (at least four pages) of the Technology and Yourself essay uploaded to Canvas by 11:00pm, Tuesday, 2/6. We’ll also be covering David F. Noble’s The Religion of Technology next week, so make sure you read the Preface through Chapter 6 (pp. 1-87) before our next class.