THOMAS WATSON SUBMISSION
Sat down today with Dr. Pruchnic's "Ironic Encounters." Took notes on his discussion of Hannah Arendt's discussion of virtuosity. Dr. P suggested that one way I might go about finding an argument for my own TW submission would be by responding to him. He argues that we've had an ethical take on aesthetics, and now maybe we need to focus more on aesthetics. He's suggesting we teach tactics that work, even if we sometimes find them unsavory. One of the things he recommends is "less what students need, more what they want." But I feel like when he says this, he's not looking at what I'm looking at. For one thing, he's trying to teach students to survive in a world that capital is rapidly making unsurvivable - thinking of this and attempts to de-skill even supposedly virtuoso-oriented work like bill collection, sales, tech support. So that maybe teaching to genre, DC, etc is the one ethical thing to do. Or maybe what I'm doing is outlining more clearly what a pedagogy of student want should look like. Not sure.
Next steps: Re-read my argument. See if Dr. P's slots in somewhere. Think about reading the Arendt he cites. Clarify for myself what I think about this.
POSSIBLE ARTICLE
Re-read my Phoenix Wright paper. Problems: no beginning. No "so what?" factor. I'm explaining what I'm seeing, but not telling anyone why they should give a damn about it.
Next steps: look into some scholarship about video games being harmful? (seems lame, but maybe worth it). Go back to the stuff I have on citizenship as response, and see if it seems helpful for making a comparison between the player and the citizen. Hope for divine intervention.
