DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

From WRD 599, Portfolio, Self-Assessment Paper:

To begin this paper—and to end it I presume—I will have to invoke the “self.” But, at the same time that I invoke the self here, I do so in a historical sense, and in doing so, I invoke a self that is no longer my current self, it is the Other. And as I continue to use “I” here, it refers to my Other-self, because as soon as the “I” is transferred to the screen, it is no longer the most recent I.

I’ll remix here the words of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in her Translator’s Preface to Derrida’s Of Grammatology to demonstrate the trouble of having to write a cover letter (or as I call it, a preface) for my portfolio. I am remixing her words to make them my own and have replaced instances of  ”text” with “portfolio” and De la grammatologie and Of Grammatology with the title of my portfolio, Eric dreamed he was a portfolio.

The [portfolio] has no stable identity, no stable origin, no stable end. Each act of reading the “[portfolio]” is a preface to the next. The reading of a self-professed preface is no exception to this rule.

I am, therefore, presenting a reading here of my portfolio before you read it.

It is inaccurate yet necessary to say that something called [Eric soñó que el era un portafolio] is (was) the provisional origin of my preface. And, even as I write, I project the moment, when you, reading, will find in my preface the provisional origin of your reading of [Eric dreamed he was a portfolio].

My point here is that there is no correct reading of my portfolio. But because my readers might have some familiarity with me as a person (as a student, as a friend, as an annoying classmate, as a co-worker, etc.), conceptions of what constitutes the portfolio precede the portfolio itself. Instead of arguing that a particular preconception be brought to reading and encountering this portfolio, I argue that readers do not consider this portfolio a part of my identities. Instead, I ask that readers see this portfolio as a side-effect of my becoming.

 

The title of this portfolio is a play on the butterfly dream of Zhuangzi. While I’m certain that my existence is not the product of the dreams of a digication portfolio, I sometimes wonder if readers will encounter this portfolio and think that it is an accurate depiction of who I am. Maybe it is; I’m not sure.

 

In the list of contents to the left, you’ll find six sections, which may or may not contain samples of work I’ve completed while in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse masters program at DePaul. I’ve also included reflections about those work samples and the things I’ve learned while in the program. Some of the pages contain illustrations that accompany the text; some of these illustrations don’t have explicit explanations. Those absences were intended. In cases where no explicit explanation is given for the presence of an illustration, I would like you, the reader, to imagine the relationship between the illustration and the text.

 

In no way do the work samples, reflections, and illustrations fully represent the learning and thinking I’ve done at DePaul. I’ve been limited in a variety of ways–thematically, technologically, and temporally—in producing this portfolio. This is an incomplete portfolio, not in the sense that it is unfinished, but because it fails to capture every lesson and concept I’ve learned and every class I’ve taken.

 

By now I’ve said more than I wanted to—I’d rather not have this preface at all.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.