CWCS Conference #1

Seventh Biennial Conference of the Center for Working-Class Studies (CWCS). This is my fourth time taking part in "the Youngstown conference," by far my favorite academic meeting. In addition to panels, CWCS always features poetry/prose readings, opportunities to take part in community/activist activities, and mini-trips (I toured one of Youngstown's horrific "supermax" prisons four years back). Plus, great group of people.

Last night Mike Rose gave the keynote address. Rose read from The Mind at Work, his exploration of blue-collar workplaces as sites of "neck up" work. I wrote a review of the book for Rhetoric Review and taught the book in my graduate class this past semester, so I've spent a lot of time thinking about Rose's research. One of the thing that fascinates me is thinking about the chapter on waitressing in contrast to other recent representations of waitressing. Rose's gaze is so different from, say, Barbara Ehrenreich in Nickel and Dimed. Rose looks at waitressing and sees complex and often abstract cognitive functioning (memorizing, ordering and prioritizing of tasks, negotiating complicated relationships with various agents, etc.) whereas Ehrenreich looks at waitressing and sees an often abusive labor arrangement. Alright, two different methods, two different sets of interest, and two different focuses. Obvious enough. But given all that we know about the complexity of texts (their ability to be "academic," "civic," "activist" all at once) the contrast between the two representations of the same line of work is interesting. The grad students were quite critical of what they saw as a glossing over of the injustices. Again, the waitressing chapter: Rose refers to how the waitresses (including his mother) respond to sexist comments from customers. For Rose, an opportunity to discuss cognition. But is there an ethical obligation to analyze the gendered nature of this real-world rhetorical situation? Texts like Ehrenreich's and Rose's are such rich teaching texts (little wonder both writers are often anthologized)--my prediction is that exerpts from both Nickel and Dimed and The Mind at Work will become staples of composition readers in the next few years.

There are so many generative opportunities for conceiving of the workplace-as-text and work-as-topoi. It's a shame that rhetoric and composition isn't better represented at the Youngstown conference.

Anyway, Rose's talk was more of a conversation. After a short reading from the introduction, audience members nudged Rose in different directions. Rose spent some time considering the question of whether "mind work" on the job translates into high cognition in other--namely civic--domains. In other words, do these blue-collar workplaces foster particular kinds of thinking when the worker is no longer at work? We sort of assume that, say, learning to think the way one must think in a geometry or foriegn language class has implications for becoming "educated"...Rose raises the question of whether learning to think like a line worker or waitress or hair dresser also gives individuals particular kinds of cognitive skills. Rose's thesis includes the idea that dismissing these blue-collar domains as sites of Fordist disciplining is too simple and fails to account for some interesting mind and body work going on there.

More on conference later.