My research question: How does the demand for flexibility from Composition and Rhetoric Ph.D. candidates make them feel economically exploited?

Composition and Rhetoric is the field I plan to do into in grad school and my future Ph.D. endeavor, and it’s always attracted me because I am fascinated in communication. Comp/Rhet students do a lot of writing, as they are in the process of creating their thesis—which is often on the topic of writing itself. With a job so based in writing, though, I wonder what kind of position this can put these students in, in terms of exploitation.

Both because of their complicated role as students/employees/teachers, and the way being part of the knowledge economy can lead to people being the means of production themselves, I’ve noticed that there is a huge demand of flexibility from these students. From their students they teach, the bosses they report to, their colleagues depending on them, going from role to role each semester…it seems like there is a never ending amount of change being inflicted on these students, and I wonder if that makes them feel economically exploited.

The concepts that have influenced my research question come from “Writing for a Living” and “On Friday Night Drinks.” I want to combine the ideas of people being the means of production with the concept of a higher demand of productivity—I think both of these concepts are complimentary, and could deeply impact how Comp/Rhet students feel exploited.

I think the best way to answer this question is to collect the opinions of multiple Comp/Rhet Ph.D. students. I think interviewing just 1 student wouldn’t be enough, so I am hoping to collect answers from 3 students. This way, I can get a more holistic view on how the average student feels.

Interview Protocol:

1. How did you decide to go into Comp/Rhet?
2. What are you currently studying?
3. What do you hope to do after your program?
4. What is an average day like for you at work?
5. Do you do similar tasks day to day?
6. Do you hold similar positions semester to semester?
7. How flexible does your job demand you to be?
8. How does this level of flexibility make you feel?
9. Do you feel like you earn enough money for the work you do?
10. Do you ever feel burnt out?
11. Do you ever feel exploited?

Script:

Hello! I am currently working on a project for my 245 seminar that explore a topic in the area of writing and the economy. I would like to interview you for my project, as I am working on a paper that focuses on how Comp/Rhet students feel under a high demand of flexibility in the work place. Would it be ok if I record our interview? Your name will be changed to an alias in my paper to protect your identity.

Step 1: Quality in labor environment–weird binary between poor work conditions and great chairs. Templates for writing–different genres of writing, streamlining, common trend in writing?

Step 2: Surprise–emphasis on avoiding more emotional labor. Why do these people call these centers when they can look up info on their own?

Step 4: Automation and avoiding emotional labor seems vital to avoid stress as a call center employee

Interview Q for linguistic Prof:

How do you balance the writing you do for your research with the writing you do for your classroom? Does the strain between these two areas of writing make it difficult to keep up with different aspects of your research?

In this article, Lisa Nakamura discusses how the online community members who actively fight sexism and racism on their online platforms are doing labor, akin to more traditional laborers. These online laborers are often women of color, and people part of racial and sexual minorities who put in time and knowledge to educate people online and interrupt racist and sexist discourse online. Though they may not seem like traditional laborers, Nakamura argues that the internet creates new kinds of labor in the first place. These activist claim that they do in fact generate revenue for the platforms they work on, as they cause more traffic to these sites.

            Nakamura connects these women of color who labor online to the women of color who physically labor to keep the internet running. As Nakamura explains, “Cheap female labor is the engine that powers the internet”. She discusses how both Asian and indigenous women create the physical chips that run our internet, and are paid extremely poor wages and endure bad work environments to do so. Nakamura then compares this to the typical idea someone might have of a digital laborer—a high paid cis white man in the software developing field. These laborers are called venture laborers, as they take risks and use time outside of paid hours to rise up their chain of command. The question then arises of whether or online laborers who fight racism can be labeled laborers like either above, since they aren’t inside the point of production. Nakamura argues that these laborers might be undoing the knot that keeps them considered outside the production.

            This article helps me think about how a lot of writing I would consider labor isn’t treated as such in the economic world. I think this is how writers often get exploited—as writing is often viewed as outside the point of production. I want to learn more about how writing is unarguably part of the point of production for all fields of work.

I think the most interesting question that came up to me as I read the past readings came up in “Writing for a Living”, when it was mentioned that those who participate in the knowledge economy, like those who write for a living, become the means of production, which makes it easier to be exploited. Building of of this idea of exploitation, another thing that interests me is the idea of flexibility, and how that also translates to exploitation in some environments. I might be interested in how those who write for a living might be susceptible to economic exploitation. I am interested in interviewing PhD students in the field I want to go into–composition and rhetoric. Here is a practice research question:

How do PhD students at UW-Madison in Composition and Rhetoric feel that they can be exploited economically?

I think interviews would be the strongest data collection option, as I don’t think observations would lead to answers to this questions–as I think it is not something easily observed. I think some text analysis of different readings would also be fitting for data collection, so I can use data from other fields of work and other places of research to back the findings of my own research.

            In Deborah Brandt’s “Writing for a Living,” she explores how the knowledge economy affects and intermingles with the idea of literacy, and how the relationship between these two things affect those who actually write for a living. Brandt starts the article by explaining that literacy is inherently at the heart of the knowledge economy—as literacy is a major aspect of sharing and creating knowledge. Knowledge encoded in writing alone makes up ¾ of the value added to the production of all things.

            Brandt defines the knowledge economy as an economy where wealth is created by “generating and leveraging knowledge.” It relates to literacy as literacy itself if a way of generating and leveraging knowledge. The article explains that the knowledge economy is both good and bad for the humans that create it, as it turns humans into the means of production. This is a good thing, because it leads to things like more investment in education, but it can also lead to dangerous things, like intrusion and exploitation of the human mind and the ideas it creates.

            Brandt explores the idea of literacy in the knowledge economy by interviewing a group of people who hold writing heavy jobs—or people who spend at least 30% of their business day writing. This includes people who exist outside of academia, and includes people like attorneys, editors, accountants, and more. Brandt finds common features in all of their work places in terms of literacy—such as the tendency of a piece of writing to be completed collaboratively, writers being utilized as mediators in the workplace,  writers needing to be flexible to outer changes that affect their job, and the importance of these writers to have a good basis of knowledge of their own in their economy.

            I really found the part of this article about how humans become the means of production really interesting in this article. I never thought about how being part of the knowledge economy could lead to exploitation—which is a good thing for me to think about, as my career is based in literacy. The idea of humans being exploited in the knowledge economy reminds me of the original Godzilla movie—where a main story line is about a scientist who initially refuses to share his findings on a weapon he made that could defeat Godzilla, because he knew his mind would be exploited once different international governments realized the technology he created, and would want to get their hands on it. To avoid this exploitation after using his weapon against Godzilla, he burned all of his written research and killed himself, as he was aware that staying alive would lead to his brain being exploited. It’s a strange example, I know, but I found it relevant, because it explores the idea of whether or not humans can really make a choice to not be exploited if they participate in the knowledge economy.

Genre/composition choices: My article is written as an article that would be seen on the site Pitchfork–a site made for music journalism. I wanted to write my article with this specific audience in mind, as I would assume that a general audience might not have the same interest in up and coming artist Kali Uchis as a more specific, music interested audience.

Who needs to hear analysis: At this point, I am writing my analysis hoping that men who have violent beliefs towards “gold diggers” are able to drop those beliefs by better understanding why and how women engage in relationships for resources.

I think the strongest uses of rhetoric by Tolentino happen when she is uses her analysis of the Kavanaugh hearing to persuade the reader that women speaking up is also causing more men to relish in their defensiveness. I think she makes a really logical rhetorical jump to how men enjoy the feeling of being threatened, and use the anger from that position to rally more towards maintaining power and the hierarchy. I do think, however, her rhetoric wouldn’t appeal to the opposing side to her position. Though she uses rhetoric strongly, it is apparent that she is appealing to a certain audience, which might mean that the exigency isn’t mediated fully.

When I first moved into my apartment, I got a note slid under my door that my TV was playing too loud (Which could have totally been my bad–I have poor hearing and sometimes don’t realize the proper volume of things). But I literally just moved in, like a week in, and received this note! I remember it used language like “for the respect of all of those who live here” and stuff like that. I think what is weirder is that my apartment has THICK cement walls, so it is really hard for the person next to you to hear anything through the walls–so my TV must have been REALLY loud, or they were very sensitive. There has been no complaints since then at all, so I wonder if they moved away. Usually when there are significant noise issues, I just knock on my neighbor’s door to ask them to turn it down, and it is usually not a big deal, and rarely happens. I still wonder why they chose to write a note rather than just confront me.

            In this article, Melissa Gregg describes different coping mechanisms and social structures white collar workers are complicit to as a result of the “drudgery of workplace life,” and larger economic shifts in the middle class. Gregg describes current white collar employees as falling victim to precarity—which is described as the state of not having certain or guaranteed “exploitation”. She explains that traditional skill sets are paling in importance to being “flexible.” The desire for flexible employees demonstrates a new exploitation of the middle class. White collar employees then deal with their monotonous and stressful work environments through different means of online communication. One way is through snark—which Gregg describes as a converse response to the mandatory pleasantness of the office. Another coping mechanism is by jeering passive aggressive communication throughout the office on online platforms. Both of these mechanisms use language to separate those employees who can keep their “professional cool” apart from those employees who can’t. These online mechanisms show that there is an unspoken judgement that is constantly in play between all of the employees that is only expressed anonymously online.

            In addition, Gregg discusses how white collar employees all act performatively when on the office floor. Gestures of friendship rather than coming from a place of sincerity come from a place of routine. As Gregg explains, following these routine actions are a vital part of successfully performing the “user friendly” interface that these employees must maintain—and only can find a break from when they are unmonitored in the bathroom.

            Gregg finishes the article by explaining that these routines and coping mechanisms may be a result of larger economic issues affecting office places, but don’t do anything to change them. Gregg makes an argument for white collar employees to genuinely connect so they can mobilize to solve the larger problem.