Bringing Back Ethos (and Remediation) as We Consider Multimodalism in the Classroom

I wrote this a few weeks ago, and wondered how we might think about this after reading Nicholas I. Cordova’s “Invention, Ethos, and New Media in the Rhetoric Classroom” as he describes ethos as a dwelling place:

Let me toss this out for consideration: Online communication forums (CMC) remediate ethos, situated ethos. In the same way that it remediates the embodied subject (as is shown so dramatically in Dibbell’s “A Rape in Cyberspace”), it remediates the rhetorical subject, albeit differently. In both cases, the subject becomes less transparent, somewhat in the way that modern art makes its media come into focus (rather than it just being a means to representation). In both cases, the embodied subject behind the online one has deliberately chosen elements to represent themselves online (their avatar, their constructed profile and actions in the MOO, the documentation that contributes to their reputation in a USENET group). Constructed identities push the older, “natural” subject up a notch as those older identities become more visible, more scrutinized–less transparent.

So what happens in this process of “remediating” the “human” presence? What are we making? What are we abstracting here?

What do you think of Cordova’s “reaffirmation of rhetoric as architectonic practice of lifeworlds” which “emphasizes the centrality of ethos as dwelling terrain from which a liberatory praxis of design can be launched, one ‘crucial for reading Available Designs and for Designing social futures’ (NLG 1996, 81)”?

Are Selfe/Takayoshi and Shipka also concerned with ethos as a dwelling place?  (Think about Shipka’s “history of this space” exercise.) What have we discussed during the last two months that might also serve as an example of Cordova’s remediation of ethos (which, if it is new, is also very old)?

The five pillars of Cordova’s multimodal literacy pedagogy are:
fragmentation and modularity;
articulation;
circulation and dissemination;
convergence;
and interface. (153-155)

 

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