roughest of rough drafts. this draft is like sandpaper made of diamonds or something.

In 1964, Justice Potter Stewart famously said of pornography, "I know it when I see it." This sentiment, while short on clarity, is a familiar sensation to most of us, and one which I suspect applies as easily to the definition of genre as it does to the definition of obscenity. When others speak of "the genre of horror" or "the genre of the business letter," we are inclined to nod - having been shown a genre, yes, we see it. When it comes to thinking about genre in circumstances that call for something more specific, however, it's easy to fall back on giving examples, rather than definitions. 

In Scenes of Writing, genres are called "the typical rhetorical ways of responding to a repeated situation." This definition suggests that genres are involved primarily where language - rhetoric - is involved. This then, seems to put us on firmer ground. Does it fit in a category with a name? Does it involve language? Okay, then, it's a genre. But this neat solution only applies if we fall back on a definition of rhetoric which defines language strictly as words, excluding images, sound, and movement. It is the latter I am most interested in here. In particular, I am interested in examining dance steps in the realm of what is called "juke style" blues dancing as a genre. Later in the text, Scenes of Writing calls genres “social scripts," and it has been my experience that social scripts are very much a part of the culture around social dances like swing, tango, salsa, or blues. In my analysis, I will be examining three blues moves: the grind, the low-down, and the mess around. 


So...that's ugly. For something I want to be sort of casual (this is blues dancing after all) it feels stiff in a lot of places, and not much looser in others. I'm spelling out my argument, which is nice and all, but it's not helping me achieve the tone I want. On the other hand, it seemed important to me to start this off with a justification, which I still feel. I don't need anyone being distracted from the word go because they're thinking 'waitaminute...I thought a genre was something else. what on earth is happening here?' So I want to keep that (or some version of that), but maybe revise this for voice later.

I can't clearly feel my audience here. It feels like...well, I don't know what it feels like. Not my peers, obviously, because scholars in rhet/comp are probably at least vaguely aware of genre theory. They'd feel like I was talking down to them. But if this is for a more general audience - what do they care? I can try to think of my audience as within our classroom, but I'd really like to get outside that. It's possible my best bet is to think of my purpose as making an argument that rhetoric (and thus genre) are bigger than people think.

Alternately, I could scrap this beginning entirely, and think of myself as using blues moves to explain blues dancers. In which case I don't need to lean so much on the genre thing at the beginning. I would just focus on the connection between how we dance and what we value as dancers.

Whatever. I'll take this for now. I've got thoughts for later.