I love Computers & Writing, but honestly, I was disappointed this year. Every panel except for ours and maybe part of another one felt like an advertisement for AI. The integration of Whova was so relentless it became labor and looked like clout chasing. Torture as play, which is what I talked about last year, and which felt abandoned this year with the prevalence of AI-uncritical presentations.
We should be able to do better than this, but I’m also not surprised. Over the years of conferencing, one thing seems clear: We chase themes and events like fads, clutching a buzzword close one year only to forget about it the next. It also seems like AI has already changed, or worsened, how people engage with work in progress—stealing without attribution, snitch tagging (basically doxxing, unrealized), and stooping to ad hominem attacks—especially when the work in question is AI critical.
I position myself with AI refusal, even if I’ve only circled the periphery of the scholars and working groups getting this work done (e.g., “Refusing Generative AI in Writing Studies: Quickstart Guide”, graciously drafted and assembled by Jennifer Sano-Franchini, Megan McIntyre, and Maggie Fernandes). I began presenting on AI refusal this year, first at 4C25 just a few weeks ago, now at C&W.
If I have anything unique or specific to add, it’s that I locate similarities between the risk of being doxxed in digital aggression research (by 4channers) and the risk of being exposed to doxxing and microaggressions (by scholars in the field), and that my collective history of genocide means I have to consider people metaphorically armed and dangerous as soon as they opt in. Which is to say, if you have no problem cosigning a technology used to massacre thousands of civilians, just because your hands aren’t physically gloved in another’s viscera, then you have no problem killing anyone, as long as the execution is intangible to you.
This fact made this a strangely difficult and easy piece to write. So did the fact that Mullivaikkal Remembrance is transpiring while Israel engages in its own endgame, AI-assisted missiles and all, in its genocide against Palestinians, set to Sri Lanka’s “successful” choreography.
It’s easy to condemn everyone for committing atrocities, but people really can’t comprehend that sometimes an entire people is left with no choice but to arm yourself or die. Or: they do comprehend it; they just prefer extermination.
As predicted, our audience consisted of folks who did not need to hear what we had to say, and I think they missed out on an aesthetically powerful, critically insightful, interwoven, polyvocal, nuanced performance. Since our hope is to publish it as a webtext eventually, and for other reasons spelled out below, I’m not including an access copy of the talk, but my first few spoken lines of the chorus are below if you want a taste.
Narrating Generative AI Refusal
Vyshali Manivannan, Pace University – Pleasantville (Co-presenter)
Computers & Writing, Athens, GA
May 16, 2025
Due to past experiences ranging from ad hominem attacks and quotation without attribution, the authors regret to inform you that you have made it impossible for us to provide access copies today. We do this to protect ourselves and our work; we do this recognizing that these reasons may not matter to you.
Tell me I’m afraid, and I’ll tell you what it’s like to know what can be done with a voter list, and what it’s like to know today that the artificial intelligence owns this and is ready to accelerate.
