Luciana Herman (she/her/hers)

PhD Student, Assistant Instructor of Rhetoric and Writing Studies

University of Texas at El Paso

Description of Work: 

In 2020, the world shifted in so many ways, but one of the most notable shifts was that of location — much of our daily interaction went from the social space to the virtual in an effort to keep us safe from COVID-19 transmission. However, much of the world’s population was excluded from this space change and was left ostracized because of accessibility and literacy differences. So this brings up a line of inquiry for me: what do we do in our space? What can we do in our space? What can’t we do in our space? And how?

For me, these questions are pushing my thoughts towards access, and further toward participation. In a course on Literacy Studies, I wrote my seminar paper about how one’s literacy relates to their survival; within that text, though, I also turned attention to how we navigate space as a means of participation. I defined navigation as a paraliteracy (Wilson): using one’s senses to move through space, both virtual and physical (Herman, Seminar Paper, pg. 3). Beyond that, I offered a working definition of participation as: the process by which one has the opportunity to become actively involved in a project, program, transaction, or activity. It specifically calls into question how one engages in the necessary action, the faculties they use to do so, and the result they achieve from doing so (Seminar Paper, pg. 4). I teased this definition out further to include levels of agency and autonomy as markers of the act of participation. What centers all of this is space’s impact on participation through its position as an agent, thus categorizing it as a ‘thing’ (Heidegger).

Recently, I worked through Hannah J. Rule’s “Writing’s Rooms” as a text linking space to the materiality of rhetoric and composition. While reading her work, I was consistently called back towards Henri Lefebvre’s work, Space, and others that explain space as a text. So, if space is a text, and we compose within space, wouldn’t it stand to reason that space is, too, a composition? Further, if what we do in a space can be dubbed participation, then wouldn’t participation also be an act of composition where we are co-constructing meaning with(in) a space?

I want to know more. I want to see how this plays out in the realm of healthcare. At some point, everyone is a patient. Even if this positionality isn’t “formal” (i.e., a person goes to a clinic/hospital and receives acute care from a licensed practitioner), everyone receives care from another or seeks improvement of their well being at some juncture. So, how does this translate into participation? Using my definition, if participation is a “process by which one has an opportunity to become actively involved in a …. transaction”, then the patient-positionality would beg the participation classification. Ok, so if by accepting ourselves (e.g., the public) as patients, then we, at some point, would all participate in our healthcare. Doing so has to happen somewhere with other agents (space being one such agent), and we would then find the limits to our participation (read: transactions) within this/these space(s).

Contact: lmherman@miners.utep.edu | https://lucianamherman.com | https://www.linkedin.com/in/luciana-herman-m-a-5b3b01a1/