Week 7: Satire Out of Anything I: The Rubric Is a Text

Week 7 — the midsem is over, so it's time to read a marking rubric as satirical material rather than as an obstacle

5 April 2027

Marilyn Strathern’s line on audit culture is the target this half of the course aims at: “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” A rubric is a measure that announced itself as a target from the start, which makes it unusually easy to read as a text — this week is about finding that reading, not yet delivering it.

Outline#

• the difference between a joke and a commentary, and why the assignment brief only rewards one of them
• picking a target worth aiming the last five weeks of skills at
• turning something mundane — a course, a form, a rubric — into a commentary on the systems that produced it
• why this needs a part two next week