The strongPolitical Economystrong of Computers and Composition Democracy.pdfVIP

The Political Economy of Computers and Composition: Democracy Hope in the Era of Globalization M.J. Braun Ina review of recent critical work in the field of computers and composition, Ken McAllister writes, By and large, the history of the incorporation of computers into educational settings has been opposi- tional, the technophiles and the technophobes exchanging verbal barbs with too little attention paid to history and economics (192). In academic journals, the opposition has been too often depicted as conflicting identities: on one side, the luddites (driven by modernist, humanist, or Marxist idealism) resist the brave new computerized world; on the other side, the cyborgs (inspired by theories of differance, language games, and simulacra) dive head first into the electronic stuff of our postmodern era. Both depictions are harmfully reductive because they ignore the historical complexity of each identity. The luddites of the early nineteenth century were much more than machine-smashers; their war on technology ensued only after their attempts to intervene democratically in economic and political agendas were frustrated (see Dinwiddy; Peel; Sale). The cyborg, as constructed by science-fiction writers and academic critics of scientific rationalism, experiences its machine/flesh condition through its implica- tion in a multiplicity of political and economic contradictions (see Haraway). Luddites were not politically naive after all, and neither are cyborgs uncritically assimilated into the new economy. Ahistorical and reductive depictions of luddites and cyborgs in scholarly literature help to reproduce the verbal barbs that McAllister cautions us aga