The main gist of my discussion here will be to first try and see what is so different about what Myka Vielstimmig calls "an essay of radically different identity politics, of radically different mentality" (91).  This will take up a bulk of my discussion because of the fact i do not believe that what she calls "identity politics" is any type of politics at all, especially within composing writing and "re/presenting" that writing, as Vielstimmig argues.  The second notion that this discussion would like to take an initial cursory glance at will be the supposed change that might occur, that might come about within the new hyper media of the virtual environment, and how specifically different, concrete exercises used in the "traditional" classroom might change and be influenced within the "new" classroom.  My remarks here are meant to be very preliminary, as i find myself constantly drawn into and supporting Vielstimmig at certain points (especially in her discussion of composition/writing as design and aesthetical), but very repulsed by her notion that changing fonts, incorporating other texts from other writers, and a general disregard for compositional standards is anything really that "new" and earthshattering to both theory and pedagogy.  I would also like to say at the outset that my views tend to fall towards a conservative usage of the electronic media available to us, though i do get animated very quickly when new doors are opened in perception, which might have everything to do with identity politics, or nothin to do with identity politics, depending on what identity is being politicized.
 

"We are usually satisfied if we can extract the content of our knowledge from experience and, with that as a guide, construct for ourselves other concepts...[because] we learned that truth is equivalent to identity and that to be true is to be identical."

Martin Heidegger , The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, p. 66-67

Vielstimmig wants writing to be uncontained, wants texts, essays, stories, narratives, expositions, etc to all have the freedom that the new media allows for writing to have, namely that it be unrestricted by the normal boundaries of the old forms of writing, that i assume, many teachers are still teaching to their students.  This would be basically the form of a coherent beginning (with a main idea), middle (that supports the main ideas with concrete examples), and end (that recapitulates and brings to close the discussion).  These ideas are all taken from, roughly speaking, Aristotle's Poetics where Aristotle presents to the reader the ideal form in which good writing, good rhetoric should take place as.  Now this idea has basically been the model from which teachers still teach their students how to write--what it means to make sense.  I would assume, and this is evident very early on in Vielstimmig, that she would more than likely eschew Aristotelian syllogistic logic and replace it with the multi-vocal, the transitory, the bricolage ideas that lie at the foundation of the new texts.  This is a "new" logic that she would like to transition into, and have the rest of the Academy follow in suit.  Thus Vielstimmig would want us to move away from the grand old logic of the West which, even with the whole POMO movement or stimmung,  is short-sighted in its ability to permutate to allow for others of differeing viewpoints and differing perceptions of what the world looks like.  As Vielstimmig points out, "in dismantling the Western self, postmodern theory at the same time integrates it within the vast network of other (non) selves" (95).  So the contradiction in all of this "newness" stuff is that the "new" is always in relation and must be negotiated with those who are still working and thinking within the "old."  If i was to turn in a link to a website for a paper, in many of my classes, i would in return receive an "F" which denotes that i did not follow the directions, i did not play the logical game that makes sense, grounds and founds notions of correctness and truth.  If i turned in a link, i would be laughed at by many stodgy old professors who haven't done anything interesting since the first Nixon Administration (and this is when structuralism was a very cool thing indeed).

But when the idea of a self that constructs texts, and thus constructs meaning, perception, identity, and truth, these are still areas that might change, but any change will still be slow.  As much as Vielstimmig wants to replace the notion of the writer, the self, dissolving into an aetherial "collaborative" conglomeration of writers is still an old idea.  We can, as writers, never start from an epistemic point--it is impossible.  We are constantly writing on top of others; we are constantly appropriating other ideas by others into our matrix which we then turn around and call our own.  This notion of palimpsest is ideal in understanding the electronic media, but i think it is also still ideal for understanding the "old" texts as well.  The "newness" of the self as non-self, or as a conglomeration of an infinite number of authors, only becomes more visual, thus aesthetically apparent because of the way we move and place ourselves within the virtual environment.  So, in a quick and dirty assimilation of Vielstimmig, she can be seen as saying this:  we choose to be who we are on a daily basis based on many, many factors both controlled, contingent, and uncontrollable.  On this basis, we now have a medium that allows for us to fuse with many different  identities that may or may not be ascertained by an initial look, but once a closer examination occurs, other ideas start popping up--associations with other thinkers, associations with popular thought and common sense, associations, especially in the academic and classroom setting, of the other writers within these confines.  I think that, yes, even though identity politics are a necessary grouping of thoughts that need to be examined always, they should not become the foundations upon which an entire pedagogical theory should be based.  Doing so would make the meat and bones of meaning--experience, historical setting, socioeconomic factors, biological realities--seem moot, and the perception of identity wholly based on what we see.

I have not wanted to go on this long on expounding here, so i will get right  to the "traditional" exercise magically transformed into the "new" exercise:   EXERCISE