This Week's LeFevre and Last Week's Readings

LeFevre's conceptions of the soul show a little of why the individuality of invention is so entrenched in our teaching techniques, and makes the social turn seem all the more revolutionary. The social may be discussed as its own creature, not because anyone thinks of it as a being in itself, but because that focus helps us to turn away from the Romantic vision of the individual. (Apologies if I'm rendering Latour one-dimensional in this discussion; his discussions help to strip the superpower away from "social" as a term, but he definitely does more than that.)

Overall, the readings from last week showed the social turn as a major event, and LeFevre's work helps to put it in context. We've had thousands of years of this focus on the individual informing our invention techniques, so it makes sense that the social would be seen as problematic in whatever light. It's a revolution that's ongoing.

(I'm pretty new to all of this, so pardon any unscholarly zeal.)

This Week's LeFevre

I'm not too far past LeFevre's introduction, but the second chapter has really riveted me. If last week showed that the social isn't an entity in itself, but may be seen that way for the sake of the shift from an individualistic paradigm to one based on intersubjectivity, LeFevre's second chapter shows why the individual has been seen as a sacred entity.

In chapter 2, she details Plato's conception of invention, as an individual (wonderfully discussed in class already) recalling, through introspection, a Reality dwelt in by the soul, wonderfully illustrates why the social feels so foreign to invention. The Romantic myth of the inspired writer springs from that Platonic view, and our invention techniques remain focused that way. Expressivist theorists have adapted that Romantic view to the idea that writers working individually can recover an authentic language of childhood. The social, in this model, becomes a convenient way to cluster individuals, who will compose by transcribing the voices of their innermost selves. Society can inhibit invention, just as much as aid it.

Cohesion of Last Week's Readings

Hey, everyone. Huge apologies for taking so long to post, and thanks for the wealth of thought on last week's readings. You've really helped me to understand them better. It's been interesting to see how last week's readings have cohered--in class, on the concept map, and in contemplation.

At the risk of hugely oversimplifying what's been discussed already, it's interesting to see how the different authors conceptualize the social. Latour, of course, is the one who really grapples with it as an entity, to prove its nonentity, and he also seems to assign it the most identity in the process of critique. The social, in his conception, seems like this phantom mortar that we see as holding us all together. It needs to be recognized as consisting only of those who facilitate it, and what I take away from him is a need to populate the terrain that the word takes up with more human terms.

One of the authors who does that, for me, is Gee, who offers us the social as revolution in pedagogy, and gives us the disciplines that have risen out of it, along with those who have made it possible. Even that act, of naming the theorists of the social turn, seems almost to accomplish Latour's goal, on a small scale. The tracery of assocations among theories and theorists make the social itself look more like a network. Society is no longer an amorphous gravy of discourses; it's a territory populated by the theorists who defined it. Gee's discussion of the new capitalism also speaks to Latour's problematization of "social": the thinkers applying the social turn to economics seem almost to be operating with a sense of "social" as just that entity that it isn't, overlooking those who generate it, putting them into dynamic groups, instead.

In Trimbur's piece, the social comes problematized by some of the facilitators of the social turn. He uses his review of all three to critique the idea that a discourse can empower its practitioners. This idea jives with Latour's goal, for me--if there is no social without those who create it, there is no discourse without its practitioners, so discourses hold no inherent power. The social is definitely not some amorphous power for students to import through osmosis; it's very particular to the individual. The idea of teaching students a specific discourse that will open specific doors for them makes less sense, in this view, than conceptualizing teaching as network connecting those who know the discourse with those who are learning it. Gee's casting of the social turn, as a way of viewing its practitioners and implications, works with this idea of particularization, too.

Our discussion in class linked Gaonkar with the social, because of the intersubjectivity of rhetoric, as someone wonderfully pointed out. While you can't just insert "social" everywhere he has "rhetoric," his idea that rhetoric is supplementary seems to speak to Latour's idea more than that of the other author's. (Donna pointed that out, I'm remembering now; I knew I couldn't have come up with that myself.) Both rhetoric and the social are created by whatever inhabits them. Both Gee and Trimbur would agree, maybe, but neither is out to dissolve "social" as a term, entirely. They're just particularizing it, and helping to attach the idea of "social turn" to different practitioners.

LeFevre's introduction talks about the history of invention as an individual activity; the social seems like a promise not fully realized. She's presenting the social as a bedrock term, but one with more potential than actuality. It's an interesting juxtaposition with the others, because it seems to suggest the social as a concept needing to be implemented. If Latour wants us to unpack it, LeFevre's intro suggests that it might provide a stable foundation for sustained discussion.

Much of the above discussion may have already taken place in class, or may be bogus; mostly, it strikes me that none of the above authors would conceive of the social as an entity in itself, but some use it that way for the sake of helping us to get past an individualistic view of writing.

Mapping tonight's discussion

Here's a skeletal concept map of some of our discussion tonight. As I said, I see tonight as an overview of the trajectory of the class. So, here's how I'm seeing it:



Incidentally, coming up with tags from readings can help in building concept maps and tracing associations. I want to work on a map that will trace some of the readings instead of tags/keywords, but that will be for another day.

Thanks again to you all for helping us to collectively think through these concepts.

Gaonkar

I was curious how others felt about the Gaonkar essay. He does a nice job giving overviews (sometimes competing overviews which are always defined by context) of the history of rhetoric, but ultimately he winds up where he began: rhetoric is supplemental, and Gaonkar is okay with this. I am also interested in the ways in which the various texts we have read this week "speak" to one another. Gaonkar is a professor of communication studies, while La Tour's area is understandably diverse (philosophy, history, anthropology), yet both posit similar ideas. For instance, Gaonkar distrusts any fundamental change to the definition of rhetoric (in order to "save" rhetoric or legitimize it). Likewise, La Tour aims to radically change popular notions of viewing sociology, yet he wishes to do so without perverting the nature of sociology; in fact, La Tour wishes to bring sociology back to its roots.

After reading Goankar, I'd like to look at Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The problem with introductory material is its lack of examples, and I'd like to read more about the internal rhetoric of the sciences to see this rhetoric in action. I'm guessing (or hoping) that LeFevre's text will cover some of this ground.

Trimbur: Taking the Social Turn

I obviously read the wrong "social turn" article the first time. After having completed the correct article, I found it very interesting. I'm really a little unsure of what "social turn" means in teaching writing, except that instructors move from one view of how to teach to others. I found Bizzell's comments to be the most interesting and perhaps the most applicable as far as I'm concerned. Unlike Aaron, I've done little to no reading on the topic other than what we have looked at here.

That's it. Maggie

ANT: Burrowing between deconstruction and absolutist frameworks

. . . or at least I'm hoping that's part of what we'll get to discuss. On pg. 11 Latour suggests a "third and more difficult test" will be whether ANT study "aims at reassembling the social or still insists on dispersion and deconstruction" as he clarifies how (easily) ANT has "been confused with a postmodern emphasis on the critique of the 'Great narratives'." He is careful in his own rhetoric to suggest ANT's rhyzomatic nature will continually determine or "influence" its own (myriad?) directions, so that he (or we) couldn't say whether it will or it won't "reassemble. . . or deconstruct." He does say that "dispersion, destruction, and deconstruction are not the goals to be achieved but what needs to be overcome" even as he insists that "the last thing to do would be to limit in advance the shape, size, heterogeneity, and combination of associations" (and, thus, the outcomes of those associations and what they will "mutate" beyond) (11).

Is he suggesting a purer, framework-free standpoint of observation, sans any a priori "range of acceptable entities" or prescription (as opposed to the description of "a slogan from ANT . . .[that suggests] you have 'to follow the actors themselves,' that is try to catch up with their often wild innovations in order to learn from them what the collective existence has become in their hands. . .") (12-13)? It would seem so. Even Latour, by the end of his intro, uses a "travel guide" analogy to describe how he will help us merely "find our bearings" once we are "bogged down in the territory" (17).

More traditional sociologists are those who, as Latour distinguishes in his first category, "interupt the movement of associations instead of resuming [them]" by labeling, categorizing, or, simply, beginning with "society or other social aggregates" instead of "end[ing] with them" (8). ANT theorists are more interested in charting the vast network in terms of influence, which to me puts them outside an older structuralism (early Barthes, Levi-Strauss, etc.) and not exactly in the tradition of Derrida. In terms of deconstruction, I always think of the desire to "return the free play of fixed opposites" or binary oppositions, etc. ANT theorists seem to want to avoid impeding the "free play" of the network, not by constructing or deconstructing the narrow parameters of "center vs. the margin" but in order to map a broader system of influence (i.e. all the things within the system that lead us to act the way we do).

Sorry if this turned into me typing my way through a few of Latour's "propositions" in efforts to understand them. The above may be way off, but I am interested in how this isn't just the awkward collision of a turn literary theory took in the same era (late 80's / 90's) rhetoric took its social one.

See you tomorrow,

Kevin

Yeah, Well What About Invention!?

The 1971 Report of the speech Communication Association’s Committee on the Nature of Rhetorical Invention gets mentioned a few times by LeFevre in the Introduction to Invention as a Social Act. Not only do I find it inspiring that invention is considered in this text as a social act, but I more generally appreciate that invention is being considered at all. The 1971 Report, like a lot of similar documents, was essentially an attempt to champion invention as a means for refuting the claim that rhetoric deals with nothing other than appearances. Like that report, LeFevre seems to be arguing that within the canon of invention lies the concern with wisdom and knowledge that rhetorical studies have been accused of neglecting ever since Socrates embarrassed the sophists in Plato’s dialogues.

An article in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, by Kneupper and Anderson (1980) is rather representative of rhetoricians’ self-conscious concern with invention. They argue that a renewed interest in invention is crucial for reuniting wisdom and eloquence. In examining rhetorical history, the writers explain how rhetoric’s divorce from philosophy and its own division between invention and expression have resulted in an inordinate amount of attention in communication classrooms being paid to style or elocution. The same may be true of composition classrooms, however, these writers, as well as myself, have little firsthand knowledge of the use of rhetoric in that context.

On a final note, I think that LeFevre chose wisely when she introduced this topic by contrasting the opposing views of invention as either a search/discovery or the creation of something new. Granted, it seems that the latter view will be favored throughout the book. However, by calling upon Aristotle’s often repeated definition of rhetoric (the search for the available means of persuasion), LeFevre reminds us that historically, invention exists at the very heart of rhetorical studies.

A brief noon time post for those of you blogging with your lunch:

Gee writes that:

" It is one of the tenants of the NLS that any piece of language, any tool, technology, or social practice can take on quite different meanings (and values) in different contexts, and that no piece of language, no tool, technology, or social practice has a meaning (or value) outside of all contexts"(11?).

Would the contexts he defines here fall into the category of the social? In my mind they do, which led me back to Latour, somehow. Whereas we might append "social" to Gee's "contexts", does that only do what Latour emphasizes in his Introduction that we should not be doing?

Confusion abounds.

Gee (Whiz) Thoughts

Sorry for taking so long to post. I've had some password problems (namely, forgetting my password and not receiving it via E-mail). I have created another profile, so there are two Davids under the "Contributors" heading, but they are both me. I am responding to the Gee reading, since the LeFevre and LaTour readings felt too general to respond to at this point, and I still have to read the Gaokar. Here goes.

I found the Gee reading interesting, because although this piece was—like the LaTour reading for this week, and the LeFevre—introductory, I appreciated how Gee focused on politics, particularly how developments in theory, often seen in academia as being inherently progressive, can be swallowed by the any social group for its own ends. Thus, I found Gee’s discussion of “new capitalism” interesting. After all, since we are talking about the social, why not examine the ways in which theory is applied “out there”?

The Gee piece also reminded me of some other stuff I’ve been reading recently. In bell hooks’ book Class Matters, hooks also writes about how contemporary corporate culture has shifted its strategies, embracing diversity because diversity means—to borrow from Gee—a “value added.” Under the “old capitalism” (again, using Gee’s terms), makers of goods cared little about reaching marginalized groups because doing did not positively affect the profit line, but businesses today sell the idea of a classless, raceless, democratic world. The African American kid, the Latino kid, the rural white kid can feel included, instead of excluded, because said kid can spend his/her money on a pair of shoes, an automobile, an MP3 player—just like anyone else. Anyway, that’s what the Gee reading reminded me of, and I liked how Gee tackled the question over whether the “social turn” automatically equals progressive thinking, progressive politics. Gee’s focus on the business world serves as a fine example on how meaning is indeed socially constructed. On paper, social constructivism seems radical and subversive. In practice, however, it too can be subverted depending on the people involved and the context at hand.

Finally, I appreciated Gee’s clear examples and nifty comparisons, such as when Gee’s language borrows from the language of science, particularly physics—for instance, Gee talks about the intellectual and creative energy required to produce a specific configuration (enactive work) and then keep that configuration alive and available for interpretation by others (recognition work). Gee’s notion of enactive work and recognition work struck me as both useful and lucid. How did others feel?

I have an answer and a question

to Gaonkar's question of the "content" of rhetoric. This problem comes up all the time in composition studies as well. What is the stuff we're talking about here? Critical thinking? Argumentation? And what kind of thing is a knowledge base like that anyway? This is why so many comp classes end up about something (eg The Simpsons), and use writing to get at that something.

I spent this evening at Mizzou's Newman Center, playing on a trivia team for a fundraiser. Various categories of trivia included: History, Sports, Science, Current Events, Religion, etc. All these are clearly defined categories with obvious substance. Then there was the inevitable Literature category, where my team turned to me for my "expertise" in the field. "She's an English major!" they said, relieved. Now, granted my MA is technically in literature, but my emphasis area is in creative writing-fiction, and my critical thesis (and, I hope, PhD work) will be in rhet/comp. There was not time or occasion to explain this to my team, who was disappointed in my lack of knowledge about Macbeth. "I know stuff about stuff!" I protested. "Just not this stuff!"

The point of this story is that I will believe that rhetoric is a substantive field, more than just a "parasitic" or "nomadic discipline," (Gaonkar 195) if someone can tell me what would have been in the hypothetical trivia category under "Rhetoric." Or better, Composition? And while you're at it, what would have been in Creative Writing (as separate from literature)? In short, in what Jeopardy category will I kick ass once I've completed this degree?

Trimbur, the classroom, and other social stuff

While 2 of the more heady readings this week focus on the "social" and either its vastness or its specific connection to process, Trimbur reviews 3 texts that fall somewhere in the middle. I spent last semester writing a "historical" paper on Spellmeyer, but hadn't focused a lot on the other authors, however each of them, through the review at least, convey a certain attempt to formalize/define the "social" ness of the classrooms where most of us (as composition teachers) spend our time.

I wonder, then, how Latour's views of the social fit into the way these teacher-theorists conceptualize the society that is their ideal classroom. Spellmeyer, for instance, very clearly sees his classroom as a place for social inquiry and understanding. Again, I buy social construction as well, and see the students as situated in their 'life space" that then interacts with the teacher's and other students' "life spaces" (I'm hating that term and still using it twice) but would Latour say, "Sapriste'!! Stupeed Aaron!"? I'm getting ready to read his introduction ...again...but I'm hoping that someone will clarify for me as well, how his views might apply to these other folks. Faith did a little of this in her, as usual, briliant way, but I want more.

Nighty night.

Rhetoric and Its Double

I have to say that I agree with a lot that Mark had to say about this piece. I found it frustrating that Gaonkar brings up rhetoric as having an epistemic function, but then says, at least to me, very little about it. He states he will negotiate the the question of epistemic function around the statement, "Thus, rhetoric is simultaneously empty of subject matter and overburdened with content" (197). He speaks of the "aim" of rhetorical inquiry, Kenneth Burke, Aristotle, and the transforming of conflicting opinions, but doesn't really get into rhetoric as a producer of knowledge. I believe that rhetoric does produce knowledge merely by provoking thought and discussion.

I also had problems with rhetoric simply a "supplement", or that it it is a formal empty discipline which is what causes many to refer to it as "mere" rhetoric. Not that I believe it can't hold a supplemental part, but I also believe that it can stand alone. I realize he goes on to say that twentieth century rhetoric can be read as a revolt against the supplementary tradition, but it doesn't seem to be enough to counter all he has said before.Goankar refers to Brian Vickers as a champion of rhetoric who notes that rhetoric has no subject matter of its own and functions a bit like a "service industry" causing territorial disputes with other disciplines. Rhetoric stands alone in its ability to speak whatever is being spoken, to fit into any specific type of discourse whether it be law, a social science, or literature. I find that fascinating in the same way I find people who can speak multiple languages fascinating.

On page 207 he is quoting an article by Nelson and Mcgill which states in part: "In our world, scholarship is rhetorical." Yet, this too leaves him unhappy with the world of rhetoricians. He states, "We are either dismissed out of hand, excommunicated, cast out from the realm of light and truth, or we are given the whole world all to ourselves and asked to preside over "the conversation of mankind" (207). For my part I think scholarship is rhetorical, but I think as those who study rhetoric perhaps it is what we feel, speak and write about rhetoric that will in the end give its place in academia.

You Almost Had Me, Gaonkar

In “Rhetoric and Its Double,” Gaonkar argues convincingly for the importance of not just the rhetorical turn, but the implicit rhetorical turn. I tend to agree with Gaonkar that the implicit turn is not only more interesting than its explicit counterpart, but probably has more potential for invigorating academic discourse as well. However, I believe in establishing his arguments, Gaonkar failed to fully consider important counterarguments – most significantly, the view that rhetoric does indeed serve an epistemic function. Furthermore, Gaonkar’s conclusion provides few suggestions for fruitfully studying rhetoric in the future.

In order to praise the implicit turn toward the rhetorical in academia, Gaonkar first must establish that rhetoric has no subject matter of its own – that it is a mere supplement to knowledge. The author conducts a perfunctory review of Aristotle and Burke in order but never considers rhetoricians who have dealt with the topic more directly. For instance, Robert L. Scott’s (1967) “On Viewing Rhetoric As Epistemic,” which is an assigned reading for February 15th, effectively argues that “rhetoric may be viewed not as a matter of giving effectiveness to truth, but of creating truth” (p 10). Scott champions the epistemic function of rhetoric by claiming that through speaking and acting, we come to know. Other rhetoricians to successfully defend this position include Barry Brummett and Thomas Farrell.

Even if we look past Gaonkar’s error here, it seems to me that a focus on the implicit turn could be rather debilitating. Basically, those who have contributed to the implicit turn toward rhetoric have had little or no training, background, or even explicit interest in the study of rhetoric. If we follow Gaonkar’s logic, it seems as though it would be counterproductive for rhetoricians to attempt to tease out the implications of this turn. Wouldn’t we just miss the point like those other “rhetoricians” that Gaonkar counts among scholars of the explicit turn? Gaonkar provides such little hope that those scholars more explicitly concerned with rhetoric could ever make a difference, that it seems to discourage honest, worthwhile attempts at understanding the use of symbols in our (rhetorically constructed) worlds. I think it is important to avoid such conclusions, especially when one considers Gaonkar’s ill treatment of rhetoric as epistemic on the way to reaching his conclusions.

Introductions

All I've read is LeFevre's and Latour's introduction, so I am not yet able to respond to Kevin and Maggie, but I'll put some preliminary thoughts here. Here's an imaginary conversation, or social inventive network thingy, between LeFevre and Latour.

LeFevre: Well, so far, all I've read of your book is the Introduction, Bruno, but it looks pretty interesting.
Latour: Sacre bleu! I've only read the introduction of your book as well! What did you think?
LeFevre: I agree with you that the “social” and its implications need definition. I also felt that many of your criticisms of social science were spot on. You left me hanging, however, because I felt as through you didn't give a compelling enough reason why all this redefining needed to happen. That's what I'm trying to do in my book.
Latour: Oui. You seem to be taking the idea of the social and narrowing its application to writing instruction, and the invention process specifically. It's an application, whereas I see my book as more vast redefinition of a traditional concept. In fact, I especially liked the part where you talked about how people were so eager to do research and get results that “we should not neglect what can be gained from contemplation of what it is that we are studying” (9). That's, I think, what I'm trying to do.
LeFevre: Thanks. What did you think about my ideas of the 'other self' and the 'imagined audience' (9)? Would you still define those as social?
Latour: I don't know if I would necessarily define these as 'social,” although I know that I think that two things that aren't social can be social by their association. I do however, find problematic your use of the “social” as a domain for invention because I'm against providing social explanations for things.
LeFevre: I wouldn't say I'm explaining away invention as “social.” At least not in the sense that “this thing happens because it's social.” It's more like we need to see the social side of this phenomenon, and understand it's social nature.
Latour: I'm skeptical, but I'm excited to read the rest, particularly to see the way that you define “social” in parallel or in contrast to my own definition.
LeFevre: I'm excited to read yours too. But first I have to Wikipedia Actor Network Theory. See you in class!

Social Turns, Gee, Vygotsky, and Bourdieu's 'Habitus'

When Gee (1998) summarizes the ways in which rhetoric (or literacy studies) has taken a social turn, he approaches—without pinpointing—some of what we discussed in 8040: Rhetoric of Emotion, Affect, and Motive. Take, for instance, Gee’s fourth summary in “The New Literacy Studies and the ‘Social Turn’”:

“4. Closely related work on situated cognition (Lave 1996; Lave & Wenger 1991), also with an allegiance to Vygotsky, has argued that knowledge and intelligence reside not solely in heads, but, rather, are distributed across the social practices (including language practices) and the various tools, technologies, and semiotic systems that a given "community of practice" uses in order to carry out its characteristic activities (e.g., part of a physicist's knowledge is embedded and distributed across her colleagues, social practices, tools, equipment, and texts). Knowing is a matter of being able to participate centrally in practice and learning is a matter of changing patterns of participation (with concomitant changes in identity).”

I would add that there is also a precognitive level of feeling—emotion that exists or arises responsively in the body prior to language and not necessarily through language—that is also influencing and influenced by the “social.” Relatedly, Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the “habitus” could add “bodily dispositions” to Gee’s list of “the various tools, technologies, and semiotic systems that a given ‘community of practice’ uses in order to carry out its characteristic activities.” Whereas Vygotsky, like Volosinov’s “slovo” or Bakhtin’s dialogic, posits the speech act to be “dynamic” and “distributed across social practices,” Bourdieu suggests that there are internalized, bodily responses that are also socially mediated and socially mediating (reproducing the appropriate body language for the socially defined / prescribed conduct of a gathering), which he labels as the “habitus.”

If “knowing is a matter of being able to participate centrally in practice,” then Bourdieu, in works like In Other Words (1990), believes that this “knowing” and “participating centrally in practice” is imprinted or incorporated on us at such a bodily level that it seems like instinct or a “feel for the game” when we behave socially. Moreover, we have a “bodily disposition” that places parameters on what we see as possible (discovery) and what we may later voice (cognitively) as knowledge. While the habitus is not passed on to future generations genetically, it is through social reinforcement from parents, education, and, as we mentioned Monday, Althusser’s ideological apparatuses of state.

All of this is to say that at the boundary of sociology and rhetoric, there has certainly been interest in how “deep” the imprinting of the social goes, and how early (and bodily) this networking into the “social” occurs. I’d be interested in working with Bourdieu for a semester project, due partly to passages like the following that seem to intersect with what we’re calling the “social turn” and what Lefevre discusses as “invention”:

“The source of historical action, that of the artist, the scientist, or the member of government just as much as that of the worker or the petty civil servant, is not an active subject confronting society as if that society were an object constituted externally. The source resides neither in consciousness nor in things but in the relationship between two stages of the social, that is, between the history objectified in things, in the form of institutions, and in the history incarnated in bodies, in the form of that system of enduring dispositions which I call habitus” (In Other Words 190).

The New Literacy Studies & The "Social Turn"

I don't know about anyone else, but I found this interesting but repetative as well (which considering what he was doing in the article is understandable). I agree with most of them, and found the sociohistorical psychology met my views well. We do "internalize", "appropriate", basically assimilate images and patterns and words from the social activities in which we've taken part, and make them our own. The social imprints us with these images and ideas, and in exchange some imprint the social. Situational cognition, he tells us, argue that knowledge and intelligence reside not solely in heads, but are distributed across social practices, various tools, technologies that a "community of practice" uses to go through its various activities. Science and technolgy studies state knowledge is a matter of "coordinating" and "getting coordinated" by collegues, objects, etc. I'm not just listing various points made in the paper, there is a point to this. All of these things are true, but then where does that leave intellect?

Is intellect then the ability to store all of these patterns and ideas and coordinating them, assimilating them and producing them in a "community of practice?" If so I opt out. Yes, we learn through these various means, we are a communal people for the most part, but it seems that the purely intellectual ideas that come to stand out to us come from an individual mind, just a head. King wasn't going along with the social the most common social knowledge when he wrote "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." I'm sure there are many more examples, but that's what popped into my head. So then, if we gain most of our knowledge from socially constructed areas, obviously we're all in grad school, what is the man or woman who can take those constructions and create new ones. Is he a part of the social turn, or no. Yeah, yeah, another silly question.

Maggie

The Blog Profiles

I have no response to your question Maggie. But don't hold it against me.

How come no one is updating their profiles?

El Bloggo ;)

Silly question, or not?

This isn't a response to a reading, but something that occured to me as I was looking some of them over. Is rhetoric an inherant part of most composition, or is it something that we are taught to produce in our composition?

I know, not exactly on topic, but if anyone has an opinion, I'd love to hear it.

Wierd questions, inc.

Maggie

Welcome!

Welcome to the group blog for English 8040: Rhetoric, Composition, and "the Social." I look forward to reading your responses to the readings as we, with Latour, attempt to reassemble the social this semester.