Digital Delivery

Spectral Audiences and Student Writing

Delivering a Digital Archive [2]

It is this process of “working with” an Other's project that potentially calls forth a spectral audience. Students recognize that their work might someday be exposed before an other; before a student similar but not symmetrical to themselves in a future similar but not symmetrical to the present. Students encounter at least three senses of audience:

  1. Intended Audience First, there is the audience they intend for the piece—this it the audience of traditional rhetoric and composition instruction. The choice of audience for the project is left open to the students; a brief survey of projects in the cooperative shows how broad the range of audiences toward which students direct their compositions: from broad populations (Bush supporters, anorexics, Purdue students) to specific individuals (my brother, my grandmother)
  2. Instructor Of course, students account for the fact that, regardless of their intended audience, I am the one evaluating their work. No matter how “real” we might attempt to make audiences, student's will have anxiety over the teacher.
  3. Spectral Audience This is the audience I consider unique to the CoOperative environment. This audience is perhaps composed by their future (perfect) selves: students are aware that their work could fall under the gaze of a future student in my class (a student occupying the very position that they will have occupied). This audience becomes possible only when student work is delivered (both by students and to students).

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