Hoax Aftermath

Brief follow-up. . .

It's hard not to connect this morning's headlines (Scorsese, Britney and that war are so five minutes ago) with last night's discussion. Likely, everyone has already seen the UNC "Break Up" video on YouTube (I always assume I'm the last to get a viral video infection), but, if not, it's easy to locate (it rose to the top!). The vague implications of its creator--"the power of internet companies" and the "amount of money companies make from them"--are what I wanted to offer up this morning:

* * *

YouTube Breakup Is a Hoax
AP
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (Feb. 27) - The Valentine's Day breakup of two North Carolina college students that featured singers, hundreds of spectators and a profanity-laced tirade was a hoax after all.

Ryan Burke confessed Monday that the confrontation, which became an instant hit on YouTube.com, was all a stunt to show the power of Internet communities and the amount of money that companies make from them. The pair weren't even dating.

The fake breakup garnered plenty of attention, including more than 747,000 hits on YouTube, where users post video online, and local and national media coverage.

"The fact that actual news agencies are interested was a surprise," Burke told The Charlotte Observer. "We did think it would get some media attention but not from those outlets (like newspapers)."

Last week, Burke, 22, claimed he and Mindy Moorman had been dating for four months but that he broke up with her because of alleged infidelity. He attracted a crowd by promoting the event on the social networking Web site facebook.com., and hundreds of students and several photographers were among the spectators at a popular gathering spot on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus.

When Moorman, 21, arrived, an a cappella group sang the Dixie Chicks hit "I'm not Ready to Make Nice."

When Burke dumped her, Moorman's response was an angry rant filled with expletives.

Moorman, a sophomore at North Carolina State University in nearby Raleigh, said she didn't expect such a big reaction. "No, never, never, ever," she said.

Moorman's only regret: She cursed too much.

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A Rhetorical Passion

Yes, I have a thing about "passion" being an aspect of what people do. Therefor, I am thrilled with Rosa Eberly's ability to be passionate about rhetoric without taking herself too seriously. Well, that and the fact that she is right.

She talks of rhetoric as being the means of being citizens together. What an odd thought, being citizens motivated to work together to achieve a common goal. Perhaps we talk about it a lot, but let's face it, we don't really believe in it. She states, "And given the growing sense that our democracy is composed of deliberating bodies that no longer know how to deliberate, of publics that can imagine themselves as nothing other than consumers, and of leaders who hold in contempt the idea that democracy requires information to be held in common. . ." (Eberly 5). The things we are reading make me think a great deal about teaching, and what that means. One minute I'm unsure of what should be taught (how political, or how controversial) and then I read this and I'm thinking I should teach simply to engage the students in a conversation about something real.

If students begin to understand the power of a well written or spoken piece, perhaps we could engage them further in the practice of writing.

Hmmmph.

Random Thoughts

Some random thoughts…

I appreciate how Hauser specifically connects rhetoric to the political. In this sense, Hauser’s chapter connects well with the Berlin book we just finished. How do opinion polls function as rhetoric, speaking for the public when the public remains largely separated and silent? For Hauser, a democratic government interested and open to change requires an involved and diverse public voice, but sadly, “we [. . .] must overcome the menace of difference that provokes distrust and the antidemocratic rhetorics of intolerance [. . .]” (10). Hauser also recognizes the social in ways similar to Berlin: “For democracy to be a functional form of government in a society of strangers, citizens must learn how to engage difference in a way that recognizes the individual and the group as a subject” (emphasis added) (10). Later, Hauser cautions against viewing the individual as separate from the social: “Subjectivity is not entirely a function of the self-contained individual. It also involves identity, which is inseparable from the social groups with which the individual identifies [. . .]” (10). Hauser also echoes the postmodern sentiments (though I’m not sure if Hauser uses the term “postmodern”) of Berlin, calling for a rhetoric open to change, a rhetoric that is not slavishly indebted to “the Athenian legacy” (3). Thus, Hauser’s chapter is radical in a quiet way. Anyone have ideas what Hauser’s radical, open-to-change, and social rhetoric might look like?

Gronbeck’s chapter nicely follows Hauser’s, as Gronbeck is especially interested in cyberculture and its potential for new rhetoric, a reconceptualiz[ation] of ‘political activity’” (18). He views—and I agree—the Internet as a powerful tool to take rhetoric out of the hands of those who hold power. However, I am not sure that I agree with Gronbeck’s fear of ultratargeting. Who is to say that accessing the Internet to read everything that one can about—to use Gronbeck’s example—abortion will necessarily lead to “driv[ing] other issues out of the electoral decision-making process”? (26). Finally, I would have liked to hear Gronbeck speak more specifically about rhetoric. His section titled “So What’s a Rhetorician to Do?” seems aptly titled.

Logan’s historical overview of the ways in which women of color have used identification and resistance as rhetorical devices is fascinating, but I was again wondering why this chapter didn’t push further. What is Logan’s advice or proposal for now, for the future? Did anyone else feel that this chapter didn’t really go beyond historical analysis?

Eberly’s piece isn’t shy about bias. She is not interested in adopting a neutral persona, as revealed in her President Bush jab: “Is the President an idiot?” (46). The President is an idiot, of course, but this line—among others—made me wonder about the sides we take in rhetoric. Hauser briefly addressed the problem of sides—binaries—when he suggested that opinion polls reduce complex issues to either/or thinking. I felt a bit lost in all the –ike discussion, so I hope that we can clear this up in class on Monday. I sensed that Eberly is arguing for rhetoric to be freed from its –ic-ike-ness because “Plato’s –ike ending removed from rhetoric’s reach politics, ethics, teaching, and discursive studies [. . .]” (49).

Finally, I thought about Mark while reading Simons’ chapter. Simons addresses public speaking, which was fascinating, since as we have said in class, rhetoric books oddly leave out public speaking a lot. However, I did have the feeling that Simons’ chapter was little more than an in depth explanation of TIF and how great it was. Did other people feel the same way? Perhaps Mark saw some “bigger picture” ideas to take away from this chapter. I was left with two impressions: TIF is awesome, and we should all try to implement a TIF-like forum.

Issues Forums and Engaging Civic Discourse

Drury, where I live that other life most days of the week, has a Convo series that also influenced Drake, which is mentioned as being inspired by Temple's model for campus forum debate. In the early days, our Convo speakers seemed to be nomadic academics who brought their traveling medicine show of specialties across the midwest (See the Post-Colonialist and What He Has to Say About Joe Conrad! See the Third Most Cited Voice on Late Abstract-Expressionism!). Since 9/11, our series has become more of a civic-minded public forum for debating the "issues" that students (freshman must attend) will analyze for the rhetoric, philosophy and "American Experience" portions of their year-long FYC course.

This year, naturally, the theme has been "Liberty and Security in a post-9/11 World" and the local media has taken great interest in tallying the (perceived) red or blue nature of our famous and obscure rhetors, which have included Col. Janis Karpinski sharing her first hand account of Abu Ghraib and Eric Posner's thesis that the Geneva Convention may not have relevance for the conduct of the global war on terror.

In this week's readings Herbert Simons writes that "my reckless bias is for TIF itself, and for its commitment to a certain vision of the university as a site of public controversy. . ." Our vice president for academic affairs, who holds a Ph.D in rhetoric, has recently had to enter the public discourse in the form of an op-ed piece in the local paper. I should back up and relate that Cindy Sheehan is scheduled for Theme Day (the uber-Convo experience, a day of debates in leiu of "regular" class meetings) in which she will "publicly debate" Col. Michael Meese. Many in the media--and local letter writers--believe that Drury originally contracted Sheehan and then, after her recent brushes with the law and Dick Cheney, "added on" the presence of the "Right" by asking Meese to come too. However, to my knowledge both were always on the bill. Anyhow, in a Simons-like statement, Dr. Taylor writes:

"In an age in which the quest for understanding is too often subjugated to the politics of demonization or, worse yet, to an insular silence on controversial ideas, institutions of higher education have a special calling to promote — and to insure — the free and open exchange of opinion on issues of public importance. Drury University's annual convocation series embodies the university's larger historic commitment to providing a platform for provocative ideas, as we celebrate the process of 'knowledge in the making.'" Later, in the same piece, he adds: "This day is about understanding the scope and function of dissent. In a sense, this is what colleges do every day; we engage the ideas and beliefs of people we don't understand, occasionally celebrate, and sometimes detest. We do this not because all ideas are of equal merit, but because all people are of equal worth. As such, we seek out dissenting views because they test our assumptions and affirm the importance of informed and engaged deliberation on matters of public significance."

I just wanted to note that that conception of the liberal arts university is still hotly contested, and largely due to this question of "engaging" the community as to the "scope and function of dissent." Interestingly, though, this conception itself has stirred many to write opinions to the editor--enabling civic discourse even among those who feel it isn't our place to "promote" certain political viewpoints.

On a completely unrelated note, Maureen Stapleton just flashed on the screen beyond my laptop as part of the "in memoriam" montage at the Oscars. The clips they lingered on for Stapleton? That's right, Mark: her portrayal of Emma Goldman in 1981's Reds.

See you soon and sorry for leaping in with Crowley in my previous post.

Oscar & Al

I don't have a lot to say here, but it does seem somehow connected that Al Gore is on the stage of the Oscars, clearly using "the rhetoric" to push "the politics" in a variety of ways. Oh and he just won something. How's that for real time news blogging?

A

I Have a Crush on Emma Goldman

Personally, it’s really easy for me to get excited about the need for deliberation and expression in a free society. However, most writers render these goods as subservient to democracy. I don’t think I like that. Aren’t there other reasons and other contexts for which a faith in rhetoric and a focus on deliberation is important? Historically, rhetoric flourishes only in democratic societies. Therefore it is completely natural to associate the two and produce books such as Hauser & Grim’s. Such a book serves two functions. The most obvious function is that it provides means by which democracy can be encouraged and maintained. A less obvious, and more cynical function of this book is to gain respect and importance for our field by raising it to the level of our society’s most sacred and fundamental principle- democracy. Now we’re important. Now maybe we can get some grant dollars.

But does democracy really deserve the pedestal we’ve built for it? There are good reasons to believe that this form of government, particularly the way we institute it in America today, is not necessarily the best means by which individual freedom and growth can be encouraged. Specifically, I’m thinking of Emma Goldman’s straightforward, yet powerful assertions that all government is tyranny. Here’s what her definition of Anarchism looks like:

“The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made
law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore
wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.”

Not only can it be argued that it is unhealthy for a person to submit to the will of others (majority or otherwise) but one may also ask what gives any man or woman the right to order the lives of other men and women. I might argue that the person who spends a lifetime kissing babies, shaking hands, vilifying opponents, telling lies, etc. has no more right to power than the person who organizes a militia to take the government by violence.

I’m getting at two things here. First, I just wanted to be a pain and question the default toward democracy. Before we discuss ways to make democracy better, its worth investigating what, if anything, makes democracy better than other forms of government (or a lack of government). Second, I really enjoy the literature that praises deliberation and discussion, and I’m wondering if I can find a way to reconcile that sentiment with my sympathy for Goldman’s arguments. How would rhetoric function in an anarchist society? Would it be any more or less important to our everyday lives?

Politics, internet and students

I found myself enjoying and learning much from this week's posts. Aaron wrote about what Hauser actually wants of the teachers of rhetoric, what "we" are to give to the students, and I wonder if it doesn't have something to do with what we discussed last week. Hauser states, ". . .instruct our students in the arts of effective argument, adapting appeals to their audience, expressing ideas in language that engages others, and on occasion, even inspires, and the relationship between the discourse they craft and the world they inhabit" (Hauser 13). If you think about this, what is needed is to instruct our students in believing that a) they have valid opinions, b) their opinions can engage others, and c) that in time they can inspire. Maybe I'm wrong, or simply optimistic, but today I think it takes as much education about one's own rights to speak up as it does "how" to do it correctly.

Mark's explanation of the spiral of silence was intriguing. Is this a part of rhetorical studies? It makes sense, the silence could tell one as much as the reams of printed words, I would think.

I wonder if this could also be taught more effectively via the internet. Expressing opinions and ideas over a somewhat anonymous forum. In Gronbeck's piece he talks about what direction the home computing age will take us politically. With each new age of technology there have been changes in how we view politics and politicians.
The WWI had radio and silent film clips and citizens had a chance for the first time to see what actually went on. It was also a time when war lost a great deal of the romantic idealism that had gone with it before. We can express opinions instantly now, and search out more information than what is given in a news sound-bite or a newspaper story. Perhaps soon, we'll be voting for the president from our homes. To be able to understand the process on a more individual level, to rhetorically analyze the process would be fascinating. Gronbeck states: "Simalarly, we must find ways as rhetoricians to study the political search processes in which individuals engage" (Gronbeck 28). A new way to utilize rhetorical skills.

Faith On Rhetoric

I'm convinced that we need more rhetorical debate in the public sphere, but I'm still confused about how we decide our topics for debate. Simon's TIF article shows us one model of public debate, but I wondered, like Mark, how relevant such issues were to our students – ahem, future citizens of a rhetorical democracy. I also wonder about how the choice of debates for such a public forum could be used for political maneuvering – who decides what issues are “big” issues? (This is especially relevant for say, a high school. How do we decide between issues that enfranchise and interest more people and issues that are “important” but maybe less interesting? Debates in popular culture (Stones vs. Beatles, Paris vs. Nicole, the merits of American Idol contestants ) would interest a large group, but I don't know what the outcomes would be, or how one could go about getting funding for such things. (This reminds me – last week I was talking to a friend of mine who teaches eighth grade. He was telling me that recently his students were locked in a heated debate about who would win: Chewbacca riding on a velociraptor vs. the snow monster riding on a brontosaurus. I believe the consensus was Chewy, because Han Solo liked him, and brontosauruses are vegetarians). A debate in the war in Iraq is important, but not as many people will feel like they have something to say. Perhaps I'm too focused here on outcomes: something has to happen because of the debate. But if nothing happens, is it still worthwhile? Can we argue for the sake of argument?

Students.

As is my way, I'm focusing on how the readings this week may or may not influence us in the classroom....I happened upon this in the Gronbeck: "To be maximally useful to our students, to outfit them for the communication environment of our time, we'd bette rbe training them to shred multimeidated work with equal [to their ability to shred literature] expertise, because nobody else is" (27). A couple of things strike me here, and I'm pretty sure I'm both right and wrong in one way or another, so it seems like a good idea to post for the discussion board.

A. I assume when he says, "audience" he means us--that is, what he also calls "rhetoricians"...whether this is true or not, I kind of subsume "teachers of composition (and communication, Mark;))"

So if he's addressing us, then this is a sort of call to arms for both our methods and content and goals for the students.

2. Not only, then, are we to teach writing/lit criticism, we should include all versions of communication in this critical structure.

This seems like something that WOULD be useful to the students, but, on the other hand, are we really all qualified to teach what I'm assuming as all levels of rhetoric, within all mediums? I guess I'm just a wee bit unclear as to what he really thinks we should be doing, if he really is talking to "us".

3. The whole "because no one else is". This seems a bit too much like "crisis" talk. Does he mean folks outside rhetoric departments? Does he mean people who aren't from Iowa? People who aren't him? I guess I find it hard to believe that NO one else is doing this sort of educating.

Perhaps this will become clearer once the responses come pouring in, or I have time to reread. Thanks social-types

A

Spiral of Silence and Civic Engagement

Hauser did a nice job charting a few of the obstacles democracy and civic engagement. His discussion of public opinion polls in particular introduces some other potential barriers to a vibrant rhetorical democracy. I’d like to briefly discuss a theory of mass communication called “spiral of silence” and discuss why it might mean trouble for civic engagement.

Noelle-Neumann (1974) argued that human beings are fearful of isolation and often doubt their own capacity for judgment. If we accept that these particular brands of fear and doubt are indeed common to many people, then there are some serious obstacles to rhetorical democracy and civic engagement that need to be considered. Because expressing an unpopular opinion could lead to censure, ostracism, isolation, etc., it makes sense that human beings would try to gauge public opinion about political/social issues before expressing their own beliefs. Spiral of silence theory therefore contends that willingness to expose one’s views is greater if a person “believes his own view is, and will be, the dominating one or (though not dominating now) is becoming more widespread” (p. 45). This means that minority opinions can be effectively silenced or self-censored due to social pressures alone. When fewer minority opinions are introduced to the public dialogue, even fewer people will speak their opinions, as they will believe themselves to be even further removed from the mainstream beliefs on an issue. This is where the phrase “spiral of silence” originates.

In today’s society, people are likely to get most of their information about public opinion from the mass media. Public opinion polls as they appear in newspapers and 24 hour cable news stations are the most obvious example of how people learn how their ideas fit in with the rest of the public’s. If someone learns that only 33 percent of the American public agrees with them about the fantastic job President Bush is doing, they may choose to keep their opinions hidden so they don’t risk being labeled a deviant. Political pundits and editorial cartoons are a few other media sources from which people can attain this same information about public opinion.

Of course, it’s not a very original move to blame the media for the problems in our society. And moreover, it would be foolish to suggest that pundits or public opinion polls be censored in any way – to do so would be to violate both of Hauser’s requirements for a rhetorical democracy (publicity and free speech). Maybe more background on Spiral of Silence is necessary to help answer this question, but does anybody else believe that a fear of isolation and an inherent doubt in one’s own capacity for judgment could be problems for a rhetorical democracy?

Overall Thoughts About Rhetorical Democracy and the Social

These chapters seem to go furthest of all of our readings to really show the connection between contemporary democracy and rhetoric. They show ways to reconfigure the relationship between the two. They don't focus so much on how to make a pedagogy out of this newly figured rhetoric, but looking at the earlier readings, mostly Berlin, I'm a-wonderin' if a teaching tool or two may be synthesized.

Berlin's model of a classroom that embraces student diversity, helping students to investigate their own backgrounds and delve into the rhetorics that those backgrounds provide, speak to Logan's chapter. The identification-resistance rhetoric could easily be taught with the foundation that such a pedagogy would provide.

The main question I'm left with, after reading and synthesizing, is whether we need to be focusing rhetoric beyond the composition of papers. Do we need to be teaching students the rhetorics of e-mail, blogging, and other forms of discourse that Gronbeck and others see as vital to the future of rhetorical democracy? And how would teaching that kind of rhetoric intersect with composition studies, and speech and communication?

Other questions that the readings raised, while I'm on that jag: how much access to the democratic process will rhetorical training give our students? This isn't meant to be pessimistic or rhetorical (hee hee); I'm wondering what our freshly trained rhetoricians would do with their new skills, to exercise their power to influence democracy. Blog? Protest? Restructure culture to allow for these new voices?

Have a wonderful day, everyone. Thanks for this wonderfully thought-provoking class.

My Summaries of Rhetorical Democracy Chapters

Hey, I hope you guys don't mind me blogging these potentially long, dry summaries of the chapters; doing this partly helps me think out loud, so I don't mean to indulge at the expense of your kind attention.

The chapters in this week's reading do a lot to demonstrate the classical conceptions of rhetoric, the current state of democracy, and the need for expansions of our idea of rhetoric based on that model. All of them seem to echo Berlin in arguing for rhetoric as the place to empower citizens to truly participate in democracy, and all seem to argue for a change in the way rhetoric is approached in the academy. I'll put my own interpretations of how they do the latter, and, as always, anyone's thoughts about incomplete, bogus, or thought-provoking parts of my tiny synopsis are welcome.

Hauser offers a generalized view of what rhetorical democracy means--one where the voice of the people is that of the government. He discusses how democratic governments since the Athenian one have claimed legitimacy based on the will of the people, but how they don't necessarily represent it as they claim to. Teachers of rhetoric can help establish a true rhetorical democracy, that accounts for diversity and does away with hegemony, by teaching students to communicate effectively. His implication is that rhetoric needs a more central position in the academy . . . I think.

Gronbeck focuses on the web's effect on rhetorical democracy, which he sees as potentially revolutionary. Since the web represents an unregulated, collectivist space where no one site stands for the voice of the elite, it's potentially a space where anyone with some grasp of rhetoric can have a powerful voice. He suggests that rhetoricians, teachers of rhetoric, examine what I'll call cyber-rhetoric for its key differences from traditional modes of communication: it can be more chatty than written discourse, and more formal than oral discourse; its inclusion of images, links, and other forms of augmentation complicate it; and it collapses the distinction between rhetor and auditor, or audience. The implication here, too, may be that training in this kind of rhetoric will strengthen rhetorical democracy.

Logan's chapter examines the rhetoric of African-American women, which holds implications for the rhetoric of any marginalized group. This rhetoric relies on two key elements, identification and resistance, which the disenfranchised rhetor uses to persuade an elite audience. The identification lets the rhetor in to the elite group, and the resistance offers whatever protest of oppression forms the thesis of the communication. This is a rhetoric that definitely wouldn't have formed a part of Athenian democracy, where the disenfranchised had no access at all, but needs to be included in a modern rhetorical democracy. Her argument also echoes Berlin's, in that she sees this rhetoric as helping to privilege differences, instead of homogenizing different groups into one. Again, she implies the need for training in the above techniques.

Eberly's chapter seems to argue most explicitly for resituating rhetoric's place in the academy. She goes back to Plato's constriction of rhetoric into a discipline all its own, and seems to pin the blame for rhetoric's continued iffy status in the academy on this narrow conception of it. She quotes Crowley as saying that we tend to seek audiences beyond our discourse community, and seems to argue for a more wide-spread application of rhetoric that may move it beyond the one discipline. Like Hauser, she argues explicitly for the teaching of rhetoric as necessary for democracy.

Finally, Simons' in-depth examination of the TIF and related models shows an application of a rhetoric informed by the demands of a new rhetorical democracy. The issues forum seems to draw on the Athenian model of everyone participating with a voice, while updating its methods to account for what the other authors have pointed out. The forum is wired and broadcast in several forms of media, giving it the cyber-awareness so important to Gronbeck. The inclusion of diverse views answers the need pointed out by Logan, for a rhetoric that lets oppressed groups have a voice. The focus on issues outside of rhetoric facilitates the changes that Eberly seems to be looking for, that let rhetoric interact with the academy as a whole.

All of the above chapters suggest radical ways of rethinking rhetoric along lines that may be post-post-modern, that are definitely socially oriented, and that seem to serve a democratic ideal. They have also made for a giant blog entry, and I thank you for indulging me.

Crowley, Aidos, and the "Low Risk"

At first I thought I was fortunate, in the spring of 2003, to have a class of FYC students who were not immediately out to "vehemently" lob "feminizing" insults at those on the "opposite side" of our escalation into Iraq (Crowley 30-31). Then, as I began to use the backdrop of military invasion as a series of "teaching moments"--class discussions that would segue into written responses to "what are the best arguments for 'liberating' Iraq?"--I started encountered the avoidance issues Crowley discusses in the first few chapters of _Toward a Civil Discourse_. On the positive side, the low key ("low risk"?) nature of the discussions allowed us to stay focused on the pros and cons (and less on ad hominem attacks). The discussions also made me consider--though I didn't have Protagoras handy at the time--how writing classes were better suited to teach "respect" than "justice" (i.e. Crowley's / Atwill's discussion of the sophist who argues that "the political art 'consists of two qualities,' aidos and dike," or "respect" and "justice" pg. 22). On the negative side, I was let down that these students--free of a draft, insulated from seeing Iraq anywhere but on TV--didn't care more to argue and were respectful to the point of immediately agreeing to disagree ("Hey, I see where you're coming from, that's cool, I'm just saying. . .and that's just my opinion"). Finally I decided that it was too easy to blame them. I was also free of the draft, wasn't likely to see any combat directly in my life time, and was probably as let down by my "teaching moment" not being more successful as anything else.

I guess that was the spring I started considering the easy distance from the "real" that rhetorical invention allowed the Left and Right on my campus (and also allowed us to construct the "Left" and the "Right"). One afternoon we took our classes outside to watch a heated debate between two venerable professors, but, afterwards, most students just reported initial feelings of fear ("Dr. ____ and Dr. _____ were really going at it! I thought they were going to throw down!") and massive relief when the colleagues later displayed mutual admiration, to the point of performing aidos as though it were the bigger issue at stake, which made the vehemence of the previous argument also seem like crafted performance, which, to me, was both a positive example and something that cut against "the mobilization of the passions. . .[as the] task for rhetoric" that Crowley emphasizes.

Of course, we should be about finding rhetorical space (or uncovering the "paths" Crowley notes in her introduction) for moving beyond the "current ideological impasse". We should, I suppose, display colleagiality in civic discourse, particularly in civic arenas, as opposed to the peace vigil invective Crowley references on pg. 1. My worry is that, in modeling colleagial and academic discourse, we can also diffuse the conflict--or de-mobilize passions of the students. I'm not saying Crowley endorses this; I'm just considering the ways good intentions can still enable fixed positions. I'm sure many of us have been sent a copy of a reader entitled _Everything's An Argument_. That title makes me wonder if I've convinced students that "everything's only an argument." I like that Crowley offers language--and appropriation of ancient discourse--that could be helpful in conveying how aidos does not mean "carefully avoiding anything that might sound disrespectful" in public or private discourse.

"Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness." -- Analects 13.23

Berlin and Cognitive Development

I'm writing about cognitive development in my thesis this week (I mentioned this in class on Monday) and a lot of it seemed relevant to Berlin, so although this is somewhat retrospective, I thought it might still be interesting.

William Perry's Forms of Ethical and Intellectual Development in the College Years and Belenky et al's Women's Ways of Knowing both posit schemes for understanding college student cognitive development, differing primarily in that Perry focused his study on males and Belenky et al on females. In both schemes, the student begins in a stage Perry terms “dualism” (66) and Belenky et al term “received knowledge” (35). In this stage, the student sees the teacher as an Authority who possesses Truth. It is the student's job to give back the Truth. This is usually where the student is at around their freshman year of college. After this stage, the student is able to move to “multiplicity” or “subjective knowledge” where he or she understands that there are a multitude of opinions with equal value. Then the student achieves “relativism” or “procedural knowledge” where he or she gains understanding of the processes involved in obtaining knowledge, such as using supportive evidence to understand complexities.

Try here and here for helpful charts.

It is only after the students have progressed through these stages that they are able to achieve Commitments in relativism (“an affirmation of personal values in relativism”), or “constructed knowledge,” where he or she sees is able to clearly integrate external complexities with his or her own views. It is also only at this point that the students can tolerate ambiguity and complexity. Students don't usually achieve this until graduate school or beyond.

What's important to note here is that what Berlin is asking students to do most certainly comes in the later stages of development. So what can we do to speed students along? Perry says not much, because it's a highly internalized process. However:

1. Perry suggests that “the realization that in the very risks, separateness, and individuality, of working out their Commitments, they were in the same boat not only with each other but with their instructors as well” facilitated a move towards higher levels (239). The student needs to not only feel that way, but he must also believe that others see him that way.
2. Teachers must have “visibility in their own thinking, groping, doubts, and styles of Commitment” to give the students the sense that they too are in the community (239).
   And this is why the teacher can't stand up there and say their political leanings, or whatever else. Because the discovery of those Commitments needs to be modeled for the students. In fact, as Belenky et al point out, our friend Freire writes that “problem-posing education affirms men as being in the process of becoming—as unfinished, uncomplete beings.”

Apologies and Kudos

After class I mentioned to Donna that I didn't realize the CCC Hairston "counterstatements" were posted on ERES. I've just been locating our readings on JSTOR and Project Muse at Drury--cultivating my outsider ethos, I guess--so forgive that last quote-reading part of my presentation.

Also, I was just checking my MU listservs, waiting to see whom Aaron had thrown under the bus, and I learned of Chad's poem being selected for Best American Poetry 2007. Bravo (to say the least)! I'll have to check out a back issue of Kenyon Review.

Oh, and Court, I would still like that article, so if you don't mind photocopying it, that would be great.

Read everyone soon,

Kevin

Eternal Whatever of the Pomo Hoosier Rhetor

Faith, Maggie and others have already taken up the question of Berlin's pedagogy, and throughout the semester we've returned to the (important) question of how to put theory into practice without merely nodding to the social epistemic as one more writing exercise (i.e. Our next unit will focus on how all of you are socially constructed: free-floating signifiers unaware of the unresolved narratives you consume and the political unconscious you each reify. The unit after that will ask you to describe a place that is special to you, why that is, and what you learned there. For our last unit you'll need to bring Diane Hacker's style guide . . .)

Let me add to this thread by highlighting the conclusion of Patricia Harkin's "Rhetorics, Poetics and Cultures as an Articulation Project":

"The students Jim dealt with are, by and large, products of a homogeneous, rural, politically and religiously conservative culture. My mentees and I have named this typical students the 'postmodern Hoosier rhetor.' . . .When the postmodern Hoosier rhetor has a contradiction pointed out to her, then, she is less likely to contemplate the cognitive dissonance as a spur to invention and more likely to simply say 'whatever.' And since Jim's method calls for students to arrive at genre as a function of their invention processes, the pomo Hoosier rhetor reinvents the 'whatever' genre--the essay that concludes by asserting that 'everyone is entitled to their own opinion'--the very kind of writing that we hoped cultural studies would eliminate." (205)

Maybe we can spend a bit of time sharing how we've either fallen into the rhetoric Hairston would accuse us of ("oh, these "unsophisticated" students. . .) or had to dig in a bit pedagogically (countering the whatever / relativist position with something Berlin might have encouraged).

Hairston admits "careless misattribution"! Britney bald! America still at war!

What follows is basically the intro to the paper I'm turning in tonight. The rest is more CMAP dependent (I'll bring CMAP copies to class and will post as a jpeg tomorrow). Looking through this week's blog, I don't believe I'm facing a hostile crowd of Hairston enthusiasts.


* * *

There are moments in “Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing” (1992) when you can imagine Maxine Hairston preparing to hold for applause—imagining an audience of like-minded pedagogues weary of “literary critics who are at the center of power in most English departments,” interlocutors equally incensed that freshman writing topics “used to be literary [and] now they’re political” (179-180). There are times when, having “cut my teeth” as a grad assistant the year after this was published, I found myself nodding to examples of FYC teachers asserting their “duty” and “right” to “put ideology and radical politics at the center of their teaching” (180). Yet not far into Hairston’s quotes from such “radicals” as James Laditka and Patricia Bizell, I began to shrug and remember it was really only two or three fellow grad assistants who believed you couldn’t teach writing in sixteen weeks, but you could force eighteen year-olds out of Plato’s cave a little faster. We were devotees of Jameson’s The Political Unconscious (1981)—thanks to a Colley Cibber scholar who encouraged us to “lay ideology bare” for our students (he had no patience for Berlin’s heuristic approach; he insisted on de-mystifying his audiences in dramatic lectures)—and as devotees some of us did fall into Hairston’s category of “those who . . . show open contempt for their students’ values, preferences, or interests” (181).

Still, there are so many problems with Hairston’s argument. An early difficulty is that she qualifies (“I don’t suggest that all or even most freshman courses are turning this way”) only to overstate in the same paragraph (“Nevertheless, everywhere I turn I find composition faculty. . .”) (181). As the essay unfolds, Hairston also appears guilty of brushing past arguments she set out to counter. Why have writing courses suddenly become obsessed with the “diversity” and “ideology” of her title? “Major issues about social change and national priorities are involved,” she concedes, “[but] I cannot digress into those concerns in this essay” (183). Later, after citing Berlin’s argument that Flower’s cognitivism, with its “pursuit of self-evident and unquestioned goals in the composing process” parallels “the pursuit of self-evident and unquestioned profit-making goals in the corporate market place,” Hairston dismisses Berlin as “facile” and guilty of “non-logical leaps” sans analysis or counter-argument—in spite of the fact that, five pages later, she claims: “ad hominem arguments don’t impress me.” (183, 187).


As I researched a network of associations for this piece, I found that C.H. Knoblauch, one of the ideologues Hairston uses to establish her Leftist scare, later complained to the editor of CCC that he was incorrectly quoted when Hairston attacked him for “setting up a straw man by attacking a mechanistic, structuralist model of composition [that had] already been discredited in the literature and calling it ‘conservative, repressive, deterministic, and elitist’” (Hairston “Reply” 255). Hairston offers an “apology” in her own reply, which was published alongside other response essays in CCC. In it she admits Knoblauch was “justified in complaining” and claims, “I regret my misattribution; it was careless,” though two paragraphs later she circles back to qualify that “although my quotation was literally inaccurate, I do not think it misrepresented Knoblauch’s views” (“Reply” 257). It’s revealing that in misquoting Knoblauch to attack a straw man argument, Hairston not only creates another straw man but reveals how political even the most purportedly “disinterested” plea to return to the “classics” can be.

* * * *

See you soon,

Kevin

Berlin, Binaries, and the Composition Classroom

I appreciate how Berlin devotes serious time to how a composition might look according to social-epistemic theory. I wonder, though, if Berlin’s hopes have been at least partly fulfilled. In the ten years since Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures was published, I think there has been a concerted effort from teachers to fold in a critique of the various forces (political, economic, cultural) that hail us. First, here’s a reminder of Berlin’s goals for the composition course:

“The course provides students with a set of heuristics—invention strategies—that grow out of the interaction of rhetoric, structuralism, poststructuralism, semiotics, and cultural studies. [. . .] In examining any text—print, film, television—students must locate the key terms in the discourse and situate these terms within the structure of meaning of which they form a part” (125).

Not to pat myself on the back too much, but I believe that I folded in some of these goals in previous courses, long before I ever heard the term social-epistemic, long before I ever read Berlin’s book, long before I knew anything about theory in general. In an English 102 course, the equivalent of the second course in first-year composition (where students read and write analytically, but use literature (fiction, drama, poetry) as primary texts to respond to), I introduced students to binaries. I kept the lecture simple, of course, but I did briefly show how our culture likes to think in terms of “either/or” and that when we think in these terms, we positively valorize one half of the binary (e.g., the male, the self, the heterosexual) while we at the same time negatively valorize the other half (e.g., the female, the other, the gay/alternative sexuality).

This discussion of binaries related directly to one of the units in my ENG 102 course, where we specifically looked at gender, using a variety of texts (Much Ado About Nothing, Pygmalion, Pam Houston’s “How to Talk to a Hunter,” Stuart Dybek’s “We Didn’t,” etc.). We started the unit by reading John Gray’s evil, reductionist text Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Students are great at spotting the binaries in this text, pointing out the book’s flaws (Gray assumes that all men work and that women stay at home, for instance). Having discussed gender in bifurcated terms, we then turn to the literature, to see the ways in which the works resist simple binaries.

Of course, my composition course did not achieve everything that Berlin advocates. Ultimately, students wrote papers that analyzed the literature, using my framing discussions (gender, feminism, what-have-you) as the impetus for the essays. I never really explored political or economic forces. Thus, I am perhaps guilty of the flaw that Berlin associates with expressionists (though my course was not expressionist): my heart was in the right place (a critique of culture), but my course and syllabus perhaps didn’t go far enough.

I wonder about the rest of us in ENGL 8040. How far have some of you gone towards meeting Berlin's social-epistemic, theory-informed goals?

Is a writing classroom big enough to hold everyone's ideology?

Let's just get this out the way, shall we?
Pulling My Hair(ston) Out
Hair(ston) Today, Wrong Tomorrow
I'm Gonna Wash that Leftist Right Outta My Hairston
Come On, Maxine

I think Mark's right that teachers have less power than Hairston attributes to them. But I do think it's wrong for a teacher to stand up in front of a class, state her political views, and then assume that that somehow opens a dialogue. In true Berlinian fashion, I will quote two student texts to make this point (as opposed to quoting, say, Moby-Dick – boo literary canon! Viva la resistance!)

I ask my student to write a short reflective letter to me after they've read my comments on their first submission of their paper. Here are two excerpts (which I am consciously co-opting for my rhetorical purposes):
I really don't see the big deal about using cliches, but if getting a decent grade requires not using cliches then I won't use them.
I agree with all of your comments, on the basis that I am a student learning and you are a student trying to obtain your masters so I will take your opinion. Also you are the one grading my paper so I will do it how you want me to to do it.

Besides the obvious contempt here, we can see the students acknowledging and submitting to my power over them, despite their personal disagreement. “I believe something,” they seem to be saying, “but you say it's wrong, so I can't say it's right.” What irks me is that now it's irrelevant whether or not I tell them why cliched writing is bad, because any knowledge I impart is received as “stuff I have to do to get an A” and not “stuff this smart person thinks for good reasons.” Teachers who mean to foster openness by being open about what they believe miss the point that students, particularly at the freshman level, are less concerned with the ability to voice their opinion than they are with grades. We don't conceal information to be deceitful, we conceal information so that the students' views aren't trumped, shoved aside, or replaced by ours.

The Berlin-Hairston Axis

Just trying to help Chad out--now he's not the only one punning on Jimmy's name.

When asked some time ago (on one of those notecards that prof.s hand out on the first day of a class) to list books that have infuenced me, I included Friere's _Pedagogy of the Oppressed_. As Berlin bases much of Part 3 on Friere, I think the notecard serves as a good shorthand for telling where I land on the Berlin-Hairston continuum, but I'll go one further.

To the list of "revealing quotations" that Hairston includes by those who assert "that they have not only the right, but the duty, to put ideology and radical politics at the center of their teaching" (180), I'll add one more:

"Ever since George Orwell… it has been commonplace of social criticism that whoever controls language controls the way we think and act. With the massive expansion of American democratic education in this century, school and college English teachers have considerable opportunity to shape the way young Americans talk, write, and think about the world. That is no doubt why the teaching of English and the humanities has become a major battleground in the recent war over culture.

In fact, the student movement of the sixties owed much of its inspiration to the widespread teaching of texts like 'Politics and the English Language' in the expanding freshman composition programs of postwar American college and universities. It was in freshman comp that a generation learned from Orwell, Thoreau, Baldwin, and other essayists to contemplate the gap between hypothetical American ideals of justice and equality and the observable realities of racism, exploitation and militarism."

After listing *her* contentious quotes from James Laditka, Charles Paine, Patricia Bizzell and C. H. Knoblauch, Hairston goes on to list "Some names you might look for" in the journals if you want to find "similar sentiments" (181--she's compiling a blacklist!) and, sure enough, she includes Richard Ohmann. The quote I give above is from that foreward Gerald Graff wrote for Ohmann's _English in America: A Radical View of the Profession_ that I mentioned in class last week. I've used that quote before because it articulates for me why I've felt like a fellow traveller to "the literary critics who are at the center of power in most English departments" (179--and I know that this is no longer the case, really, but it actually makes my point nicely because I personally would feel more at home in such an English department). That is to say, I agree with Graff's assessment, and I think the "tenured radicals" were onto something--and I think what they were onto is relevant for composition and rhetoric. We as a culture have stated values and assumptions, many of which are encoded into our educational system (of which rhet/comp is a part). Therefore, I would say that the classroom is already political in as much as *everything* is political, no matter how many eyes roll when that assertion is made.

Hairston is hardly the first to bemoan the "rise of theory." The same criticism was made *of criticism* in regards to its applications to literature, of course. Many have called for the exorcism of theory from literature studies, replacing with "literature for literature's sake" position. But what is true of criticism and theory in literature is true of rhet/comp: that is to say, arguing for "literature for literature's sake" *presupposes* a definition of what literature *is*, an epistemological aesthetics that is anything *but* free of theory. So when Hairston asserts "that we teach writing for its own sake," I'm skeptical. Rhet/comp students are immersed in the culture of the United States (whether it be the Ideological State Apparatuses of Althusser's theory or good old hegemony of Gramsci's). They attend universities and colleges that already have curriculums, set goals and discourses for instruction, measurement and success (not to mention the fact that universities are now largely run on business models, where students are "customers" and cost-effectiveness and what I would loosely call "profits" are main goal). If rhet/comp focuses on "writing as a way of learning," then what's wrong with it first presupposing that students arrive in the classroom with a politic, one that must be actively engaged whether or not you're teaching them *just* how to argue for the views they already have, or if you wish to try and get them to think (and read, and write) *critically* as a way of learning?

Berlin--the guy, not the city or 80s pop group

This (_Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures_)is officially one of my favorite books--seriously.

In my last post I mentioned how I was influenced by _Pedagogy of the Oppressed_, and while Berlin explicitly acknowledges Freire, I found it helpful to connect some dots for myself, especially vis-a-vis what amounts to a critique of the position by Hairston. Here's the move that Berlin is making, in my opinion, starting with Freire:

I had a professor (Dr. Prahlad, actually) who made a connection between _Pedagogy of the Oppressed_ and Frantz Fanon's _The Wretched of the Earth_, the latter of which included a call for native populations of decolonizing countries to be educated as a means of empowerment and while I agree with the assessment, it also led me to think about how easy it probably would be to regard_Pedagogy_ as something outside of the realm of education in the U.S. But, of course, though the moves Berlin makes here, it's apparant that the U.S. is precisely where Freire's pedagogy can and should be employed. Freire's critique of the "banking" concept of education, in which the student is viewed as "tabula rasa," to be written by the teacher, lends itself to the postmodern critique as outlined by Berlin. Berlin asserts that "Placing Freire within a postmodern frame enables us to relate this silencing of citizens through literacy education to the formation of subjects as agents" (101). This brings to mind *for me* Althusser's concept of *interpellation* that we've discussed in class, where the individual is *made* the subject within a discourse--called forth, literally (the classic example is of a police officer shouting "Hey you!"--at the moment one acknowledges and responds to the officer's call, one becomes the subject of it--one is interpellated). As has already been discussed, the presupposition (to which I happen to agree) is that we are all subjects--we all exist within and indeed are constructed by discourses. Freire (and Berlin) want to empower the subject of the discourse of education--that is, the student. Freire possessed a strong aversion to the student-teacher dichotomy of traditional pedagogy--like Berlin, he sought to democratize the classroom, to *enact* democracy as a pedagogical tool (it *is* hard to operationalize, as many have noted, but one simple move, in my opinion, is the simple acknowledgment that teacher--in the traditional sense--can also be students in their own classrooms, learning from their students as much as their students learn from them).

Berlin vs Hairston...I eagerly await your comments

So in an all out, winner take all, who takes who to the mat?

My personal bent, if I haven't been clear in prior posts, is that Hairston is pinned after 1 round. It does seem that they have the same ideas in mind, but "Maxine" (as her critics refer to her) just doesn't DO what JB does. While yes, as I think Maggie brought up, his courses are a bit sprawling in workload, he is quite specific as to where that course GOES. Hairston on the other hand, doesn't ever really go there. (anywhere)...Perhaps if we had a longer piece to work with, she would have done so, but...

Herein is my waning attempt to get someone to comment on one of my posts.

Berlin, Creative Writing, and the Social Epistemic

I enjoyed thinking through the implications of Berlin's (comparatively brief) section on the postmodern creative writing classroom. Here, Berlin re-articulates his opposition to binary oppositions of poetic and rhetoric, particularly as he takes on Fenza's "curious inversion" in making "literary theory the counterpart of poetic in its preference for the subjective, intuitive, illogical, impressionistic, and stylistic," all of which, Berlin feels, would make theory and rhetoric "an ally of the poetic rather than an enemy" (174). I'm inclined to believe that poetic and rhetoric can be fused, even in the creative writing classroom, as students work on moving past the atomistic individual expression and toward a collectively revised piece of fiction or poetry. I'm probably most interested in the "negotiated" construction of identity in workshop environments--interested, that is, in this idea evolving as a discussion across a semester's workshop. Thus, of the three creative writing / rhet / theory critics Berlin invokes, I'm most in line with Tom Andrews (who wrote Writing After Theory (1992):

"To what extent are we "written" by language when we do our work? How is meaning constituted in our work? What social structures are we privileging, unwittingly or unintentionally?" (As cited in Berlin 177).

This seems like a social epistemic approach to what John Gardner offers as a personal attack on the "amateur writer" in his iconic Art of Fiction. Gardner famously suggests to students (and, ok, I'm paraphrasing to make a point, so I'm rhetorically aware of my own rhetoric here) that what is wrong with their fictions (p.o.v., emotional "frigidity," myopic characterization) is what is actually wrong with them as individuals. Andrews and others in the post-Berlin era--or at least those creative writing instructors who have read the growing body of rhet/comp scholarship in creative writing--are less interested in putting the romanticized lone individual poet in his or her place (i.e. "grow morally and your fiction will blossom!") and more interested in using the occasion of the writing workshop to better understand (without somehow "resolving" by a "final draft") the ways in which students writers have been written by a postmodern collage of "high" and "low" texts. In focusing on this, they hope to attune students to where other texts have given rise to the types of texts that they produce and consume (to invoke Scholes' phrase).

This approach to creative writing can be met with great interest (some come to workshop groaning over what they perceive to be the more touchy-feely rhetoric of the "poetic" expressivists they've encountered) and also with great resistance (it is never easy to suggest that someone's fiction, much less his or her identity, is socially constructed). However, among my traditional age students, those who've "come of age" in the last five-to-seven years writing blogs, fan fictions, themselves as MySpace entities, etc., there is nothing controversial about Schector's belief that "'the old "idea of the writer" [is] vanishing beneath the winking cursor of computer communication'" [Berlin's citation of Schector, 178]. Many of my non-traditional age creative writing students would likely take great exception to the notion that "the old language of the intuitive visionary--the 'true self," the "quiet moment," the universal discovery--is gone" (178).

For this latter group, I would probably be overly cautious about a social-epistemic pedagogy--or nudging class discussions toward related concepts--since returning to school and writing about (most often traumatic) life events as fiction (thinly veiled memoir) is often a long-delayed statement of individuality, empowerment, etc. And I see both sides, and seem to waffle between both sides due to empathy with both. It would seem that, like Gardner, Berlin, Schector, Andrews, and Forche have a more traditional age student population (and not a "blended population) in mind.

More on Hairston next time. . .

Becaue Y'all Love It When I Tell You How We Do It Over in the Communication Department

Some of what Berlin discusses in the last few chapters of Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures reminds me of a communication scholar named Roderick Hart. In addition to some really interesting work about rhetoric and political communication, Hart has had a few things to say about teaching.

Most of the similarities between Berlin and Hart come from their concern with democracy and power. In an essay called “Why Communication?” Hart (1993) delivered one of the most quotable little rationales for a career as a communication teacher I’ve ever heard. He wrote that communication teachers understand that “freedom goes to the articulate” (p. 101). In other words, “nobody should be deprived of power, security, or beauty, simply because they cannot share their ideas with others or vent their feelings in a socially useful way” (p. 102). Berlin’s (1996) philosophy is similar, but perhaps more critical. He wrote, “without language to name our experience, we inevitably become instruments of the language of others” (p. 110). In short, although these scholars are from different disciplines, Berlin’s comments are incredibly applicable to the teaching of communication, and Hart’s comments seem equally relevant to teaching composition

Berlin and Hart both advocate equipping students with the necessary critical tools for actively participating in the own government. In a book chapter titled “Teaching Persuasion” Hart adopts what he calls a “consumerist” approach to teaching the subject. The task of the consumerist is to alert students the all-pervading attempts of commerce, government, etc. to influence and persuade individuals. My own personal experience confirms that this approach excites most students. Importantly, I feel like Berlin (1996) takes the idea one step beyond Hart’s ideal classroom when he writes that a teacher ought to “supply students with heuristic strategies for decoding their characteristic ways of representing the world” (p. 111). In other words, whereas Hart asks students to look at the ways others are attempting to exert control and influence of them, Berlin asks students to consider the way they might be exerting control and influence over others.

Ever since I first read Hart, I’ve used his ideas in my Philosophy of Teaching statement. In many ways, I think I could have been using Berlin to accomplish the same end.

Hairston

I wonder how many graduate instructors actually sit around trying to think of ways to introduce their own politics into the classroom discussion. I know my politics probably “leak” out, but I don’t put them forward purposely. I have firm beliefs about being open minded, and I know this comes out in my course because most of our papers center on finding scholars in unlikely places. Is this bad? After reading Hairston’s article, I still don’t think so.

Is freshman composition “a tool, something to be used.” in a place where one has a captive audience? I suppose it could be very well used that way, but do people actually do this? I’ve yet to meet one. Most of the politically charged courses I have attended have been courses for upper-classmen or for graduate students. Perhaps the rest of you (my classmates here) use a political agenda to spur your students to write? Somehow, I doubt it, but I could be wrong.

At one point Hairston asks: “Have they asked those students what they want to learn?” (184) Okay, let’s ask them. How many differing answers will we get? How many of the topics will be amenable being converted into writing assignments? Maybe many, maybe too many, and how do we do this at the beginning of the class, then write the syllabus, and then begin the course? I don’t know, but I find it much easier to have the syllabus prepared before meeting the students. That may be somewhat selfish on my part, but getting forty students to agree on a class agenda would be time-consuming and frustrating. But, just for the heck of it I think I will assign a fourth paper in my class, at the end, asking the students to tell me what they think would be good fodder for the upcoming semester.

She goes on to ask: “By the same reasoning, couldn’t one claim that since we know it is impossible to find absolute, objective truths, we might as well abandon the search for truth and settle for opinion, superstition and conjecture?” (188). She seems to be searching for things to exaggerate here. Maybe she isn’t, but I think she’s taking herself a little too seriously, perhaps. I agree that we are not here to create freshmen students in whatever image we deem best, but I don’t think many are out to “manipulate” the students. I hope we can open eyes and minds, but that doesn’t mean I hope to “change” the student.

Making Connections in Berlin

The most salient issue I took away from Berlin's description of the lower-level course was how friggin hard it looked. I love teaching and I love students. And I don't mean the following comment disparagingly to them, but rather as a critique of Berlin: My students have trouble understanding the idea that a paragraph is only about one thing. And If I stand up there and say that today we are going to discuss “the relation of current signifying practices to the structuring of subjectivites . . . to negotiate and resist . . . hegemonic discourses” (124), I feel that maybe it wouldn't go over so well. I guess my real problem was with the disconnect between rhetoric of the entire chapter, which has wonderful and much-needed ideas about ways to make student more critical written in such lofty and lovely prose and the way students really are. Miller points this out, as does Harkin (though I cringed at her phrase “postmodern Hoosier rhetor”). Good pedagogy begins where the students are and with what they know, and I can't help but wonder if Berlin sees students only as he'd like them to be.

This is related to another problem I saw in Berlin's descriptions of the ideal English departments. He seems to think that the only way we can see connections between lit, creative writing, rhet/comp, etc. is if we are in classes that integrate them all. That to me means that the teacher is the one with the knowledge of the connections, and we just sit there and learn them by way of her brilliant, integrated pedagogy. But doesn't that preclude us from taking distinct classes in each of those disciplines and making the connections ourselves? I'm thinking specifically of a paper I wrote for George Justice's 18th cent Brit lit class spring of last year. At the same time, I was in Marty Townsend's WAC class, and I wrote my paper for Dr. Justice about how to use write-to-learn strategies I'd read about in the WAC class to teach Samuel Richardson's Clarissa. I worry that in Berlin's ideal English department, Prof. Justice and Townsend would, say, team teach, so we could all interrogate each other's texts. But I wanted to make those connections myself, which was only possible by learning from different teachers with different specialties in separate classes. I guess what I'm really concerned about here is how much a Berlinian teacher has to make connections for the students, by juxtaposing reading assignments, by bumping text production and history up against each other, and how much the students are allowed to do it themselves.

Wherein the student blogs through Hairston's ******

The issue that Hairston raises seems to come up in any comp pedagogy discussion that I've been able to attend. Particularly in our department where there's much freedom in terms of course design, the "theme" vs. "no theme" debates have been fairly prevalent. Where she ends up, however, is strange to me, and seems to be so to several of the responders as well.

The idea that "we teach composition" has been something that I've struggled with for a while now. How do you do that? How does a teacher, "powerful" or not, facilitate the learning that needs to happen without content to do so? Her response seems to be, "yes". Then she proceeds with the multi cultural classroom where everyone is from a different continent and can write what appear to be personal essays about their traumatic upbringing. While she defends herself immediately on page 191, with "the teacher can easily design writing assignments..." in order to keep it academic as it were, I'm not sure that this really works as a defense. Yes of course, I'll be the first one to say, after Faith, that personal writing is important to the course. But the way that Hairston presents it seems so....not right.

My synopsis at this point is that, rather than having a preconceived notion of "we'll talk about a give cultural studies issue", the students have their share time, and then "we talk about how that illustrates a given cultural studies issue". Again, while I'm all in favor of showing the students more about who they are--that's how I tend to conceptualize my course, sort of a hippie-drenched composition as life--she seems to simply be doing the same thing that she says comp shouldn't do, only in reverse order. It's not that it's a bad idea, it just SEEMS underhanded, and I just can't get with it.

Some of the reviews take her to task for these things...she DOES seem to figure that the students can't handle topics to begin with, but rather have to be suckered in by their own experiences. While this may be true for some, this, to me, tends to show off her ability to generalize...again....same goes for the teachers that she takes to task. It appears to me that what she describes are not bad IDEAS, but bad pedagogy. GOOD teachers just don't shove feminism down their student's necks, they present it in a way that is useful, even valuable to the children...the same idea goes for any other topic, be it politics, rhetoric, technology, or culture....she could have been far more succint by saying, "don't be bad teachers."


*sigh* Have I said anything here? I should note that I used "blog" in the title as opposed to "slog" in order to include some sort of humorous bent....which seems like acceptable the thing to do when blogging. More later.

Hairston...bleh.

The entire issue about which Hairston is concerned would be irrelevant if not for the assumption that teachers have a major influence on their students. I can’t disagree with this view entirely – if I could I’d probably have to go look for a different profession. Still, I would disagree with some of the things that Hairston proposes about students. I take issue with the way she describes them, and I don't like the way she understands power.

First, it seems as though Hairston reduces the average freshman writer to a mindless receptacle for knowledge. Students, because they are people, have a capacity for reason. They recognize when ideas don’t jive with what they have been previously taught, and any new idea they encounter can be accepted or rejected. Because Hairston claims that teachers will often mock the interests and beliefs of their students in an attempt to imbue social values, she is no position to call these same students “unsophisticated” later on in her essay. I think students deserve more credit. Moreover, I think Hairston’s distrust of ideas is a bit suspect, and maybe even “silly.”

I also take issue with Hairston’s conceptualization of power. She writes, “the real truth about classrooms is that the teacher has all the power” (p. 188). The whole issue of power is far more complicated than this. Power is something that is granted by others, not something that an individual simply possesses. A student or group of students that are really upset with a teacher can render them practically powerless. Sure, that teacher still has the ability to assign a poor grade to those students if she likes, but at that point, assigning grades is really more about vengeance than honest appraisal of a student’s work. In short, power, like everything else is socially and contextually bound. Typically, teachers are granted the power they expect, but communication theory suggests that Hairston is guilty of oversimplification here.

Admittedly, I haven’t necessarily targeted the heart of Hairston’s argument. I just think its important that if one is to accept her point of view, they do so on grounds other than the ones I’ve criticized here. Also, I intentionally wrote this before I read the responses to Hairston, as I anticipate someone will make the same objections as I have here – I just didn’t want my thunder robbed from me so abruptly.

Berlin

As some of you know I have a lot of trouble with theory, so I would like to say thank you to Chad. In his blog he states, "The structuralists and post-structuralists show how signifying systems are fundamentally disconnected from the real world, and how the self is constructed from them, and is fundamentally amorphous and conflicted because of the conflicting systems of signs, or codes, that constitute us." I found this helpful in understanding a great deal of what is going on in Berlin's work, and in articulating what I've gotten out of it.

The job that Berlin sees to be ahead for the college English instructor appears enormous to me, but when I read Chad's post, it appeared that while that job is still huge, we are already engaged in it. Whether a composition class is based on literary readings, or contemporary media,we are attempting to allow our students to explore the text on levels of interpretation that are different from those they may already have, or those that were given to them by others. I see this as a significant part of teaching, which in turn makes me wonder if I would make Hairston mad.

I found his ideas for the classroom extremely interesting, but also daunting. I don't know how anyone else felt, but his course outline for underclassmen was daunting in the material read, watched or listened to. Then the number of responses added in and you have one very busy set of individuals. I understand it, and it makes awesome sense, however, implementing it might be difficult. Someone told me the other day that our freshmen students were simply children. Not young adults, just children, which I argue with absolutely. Yet, even as young adults, I don't see loading them down with so much work for one course that they are unable to keep up the 18 hour course load many carry. Then add in the graduate student instructor who also has his or her own classes, papers, families to worry about and it becomes terrifying.

Berlin talks about the purpose of courses such as the ones he outlines. He states, "Again, the purpose of asking students to undertake this work is to prepare them to consider the ways in which the signifying practices in texts were working to form subjects, to create particular kinds of conciousness, along the lines of gender, class, race, age, sexual orientation, and related categories" (144). I would like to do this, because I think understanding that different voices creates different understanding of how "subjects" and etc., are formed is important. I'm just not sure I'm prepared to do it in the manner which he suggests.

On page 189 Berlin discusses a run in with another English professor. He tells us that the other man thought he was in error. He states, "My error, he explained, was that I grossly overestimated the influence of the English department in the lives of our students and the workings of our society. English teachers, he insisted are in the larger scheme of things just not all that important" (189). This professor from "a large Midwestern urban university" may be right. I also think he may just be bored with his job. I think we SHOULD overestimate the influence teachers and English departments have on students and communities. Not everything one teaches will make a spit of difference to the student, maybe not even a small portion, but then again, if something gets through---consider the networking capabilities.

The Berlin Wall

I promise that will be my last bad Berlin joke, at least today. I'm weaning myself off of them slowly, and appreciate your guys's patience. If I remember right, Kevin talked in class about trying to connect Berlin's revolutionary ideas with a pedagogy, so it's been interesting to read his plans for a postmodern rhetoric class in part III. In chapter 6, I summarized what seemed like the primary recommendations, and am listing them below. If anyone saw anything else there that I'm leaving out, I'd love to learn it, since Berlin is a brilliant fella, and I get lost in said brilliance.

Here's my summary of his elements of a pomo classroom, as defined in chapter 6:
1) dialogic: student diversity is merged into the discourse.
2) heuristic: students follow heuristics that direct them toward structuralist and postructuralist understandings of rhetoric.
3) authority: the teacher sets the agenda, but lets the students play it out with some degree of independence.
4) rules: students make the rules to govern how cultural codes and other controversial aspects of the class are covered.
5) awareness of diversity: the teacher tries to reach students, as much as possible, on their own terms.
6) diversity in material: cross-cultural texts and diverse writing practices are embraced.

One interesting thing for me to see was that some of these elements were highlighted in the classroom--primarily 2 and 6. He doesn't map out how to implement the others in terms of his own classroom models, and is that because he's already detailed their implementation earlier, and assumes that we'll be able to abstract the rules into his suggested classrooms?

Ich bin ein Berliner

I'm sorry to invoke that moment in history (when JFK announced to Germany, and the world, "I am a jelly donut" in German), but it seems to speak to how language composes the self. That little misstep in translation might be seen as an instance of the cultural codes colliding badly as they intersected in the person of the president, or, more likely, that, when he made that speech, he existed to the world as language, as we all exist to each other. Also, it's lunch time, and a jelly donut sounds pretty spectacular right about now.

Berlin has really helped me to understand how social epistemic rhetoric grows from structuralist and post-structuralist thought, and, reading his thoughts on critical literacy, I wanted to reflect on all of the above. The structuralists and post-structuralists show how signifying systems are fundamentally disconnected from the real world, and how the self is constructed from them, and is fundamentally amorphous and conflicted because of the conflicting systems of signs, or codes, that constitute us. Social epistemic rhetoric becomes a way of making students aware of their socially constructed natures, and empowering them, through critical literacy, to become shapers of the codes, to participate in a democratic process where they're either agents of change or victims of semiotic storms. Really cool ideas (that's my critical take on it). Ich bin ein Berliner.

I've been trying to relate critical literacy, and the ideas that Berlin leads up to it, with our previous class readings. LeFevre's ideas seem wedded to Berlin's, since he's proceeding on the idea that rhetoric is not only social, but that it needs to acknowledge its social nature in order to really promote democracy, and not just keep students subservient to the social hierarchy. Gee and Trimbur seem likely to agree with Berlin, in my (possibly botched) interpretation of all of them, since they're showing how the social turn, and, in Trimbur's case, process pedagogy, revolutionize the classroom, but only insofar as they help students to join existing conversations. Gaonkar's discussion of rhetoric, that subscribes to the Platonic view, if I'm remembering correctly, would certainly go against Berlin's conception of it. The one whose work seems most likely to problematize Berlin's discussion, and the poststructuralist conception of language, is LaTour. I've been reading Berlin's description of Foucault, and how Foucault sees language as something we're conduits for, and I wonder how LaTour would see this. Since privileging the social over we who create it is a no-no, how would this concept of language sit with him? The idea of critical literacy is that we're not just conduits for an impersonal force of discourse, but we can shape it as we're shaped by it. LaTour might like that a little better. It seems like the poststructuralists give language an animism that lets them conceive of its effects on us with the power that it deserves. But there is no discourse without we who enact it, and LaTour might point us consistently back to that fact, as Berlin would.

If anyone has anything to add to that discussion, I'd be grateful. Hope you guys are having a great week, and staying warm.

My R. L. Scott Map

Click it good.

Maggie asks:

"Early on in the first chapter he brings up the fact that poetics and rhetoric are always vying for the position of "top dog" in the English department. What I would like to find out is why?"

I think Berlin's suggestion is that there's never really been a competition, then or now. In the past, rhetoric and the poetic were intertwined. For the past one hundred twenty-five years or so, the poetic has been "top dog." There's been no competition. Berlin says, "My argument here is that changes in economic and social structures during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries led to a new conception of the poetic, a conception that defines the aesthetic experience in class terms while isolating it from other spheres of human activity [. . .]" (4) Berlin marks a change where a growing bourgeoisie coincided with changes in education (the move from a liberal arts, church oriented education to a specialized, elective-centered education). With this change, a new configuration of the poetic emerged, and rhetoric--ever since--has seemed somehow has less important.

Maggie's question is still important, since these biases (I had a literature professor at my MA program state, outright, that literature dealt with, well, literature, while comp dealt with essays) still exist. The irony, of course, is that English departments are often the largest departments on campus because of composition.

Post/Modernism, Berlin's use of it and otherwise

Faith and her b/f were at the same shindig as I and my g/f were over the weekend and while we were there, she mentioned my penchant for name-dropping--which I promplty admitted to, but I'm not gonna lay off of it here (I'm too much of a junkie).

Kevin's post about Jameson brought a smile to my face because I had written in the margins of the shorter Berlin piece--among other things--"Always historicize!"--a declaration Jameson makes in _Postmodernism, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism_. I found a hint of Jameson (beyond Berlin's explicit nod), myself, and while I disagree in part with Berlin's (and Jameson's) assessment of pomo, I think I've already formulated my reasons for doing so (more about that in a minute).

I also must admit that while I was reading "Rhetoric and Ideoloy in the Writing Class," I was interested in Berlin's respective histories and assessments of Cognitive Rhetoric and Expressionistic Rhetoric, but I also felt a bit lost, having no background in the history of Rhet/Comp. But when he got to Social-Epistemic Rhetoric, I kept hearing myself saying "Yes! Yes! That's it exactly!" To get to the "why," however, I wanna back up a bit and address what Berlin says about Althusser and Foucault (Ronald Reagan would say "There you go again!"), and tie that in with what David S has to say about pomo in his post and what Faith asks of social-epistemic (Berlin) and invention (LeFevre)--and all of this is by way of getting to why I disagree with Berlin/Jameson on pomo.

Berlin says that he relies on Goran Therborn's usage of the word "ideology" and that he does so because Therborn marries Althusser to Foucault without relying on Althusser's Marxist positivism or without Foucault's "placing subjects within a seamless web of inescapable, wholly determinative power relations"--as Berlin goes on to comment, "For Therborn, power can be identified and resisted in a meaningful way" (478). I read that to mean that Berlin is arguing that Foucault does not allow for any such move. While it's a small matter here, I want to say something about what seems to be Berlin's assessment of Foucault as it will illustrate the bigger concern I have in regards to David S' and Faith's posts. Faith commented--and this is by no means should be read as an indictment of her (guilt by association):

"When Berlin says I am “lodged within a hermeneutic circle” (489), does he mean that there's no chance for my escape?
I still don't understand how I'm supposed to be simultaneously inside of a culture and critique it. Is this like asking a fish
to critique water? (Or like asking a fish to critique other fish? Or maybe kelp?)"

Many have made a charge against Foucault that he does not allow for escape--that he critiques power but constructs power as a "seamless web" from which the subject can never escape. But I find Foucault--both in terms of his biography and what he wrote--to be much more liberating. Explicitly, Foucault states the following in _Questions of Method_:

"The necessity of reform mustn't be allowed to become a form of blackmail serving to limit, reduce or halt the exercise of criticism. Under no circumstances should one pay attention to those who tell one: 'Don't criticize, since you're not capable of carrying out a reform.' That's ministerial cabinet talk. Critique doesn't have to be the premise of a deduction which concludes: this then is what needs to be done. It should be an instrument for those who fight, those who resist and refuse what is. Its use should be in processes of conflict and confronation: essays in refusal."

Sounds a lot like epistemic rhetoric to me--and it gets at the larger issue Berlin addresses and that David S questions in terms of pomo. I wrote a seminar paper on pomo for 8070--Contemporary Approaches to Critical Theory--last semester in which I basically posit that one can speak of at least two forms of postmodernism (or Post/Modernism, as I formulate it)--the post-Fordist, late capitalist economic strand (a postmodernsim of repression) which Berlin outlines in Chapter 3, and a critique of those developments and other forms of repression (a postmodernism of resistance) which Berlin outlines (and critiques, it would seem) in Chapter 4. The quote David S includes from Berlin (from page 67) was one that I underlined--besied it I wrote "hooks quote." bell hooks, in fact wrote something strikingly similar in her essay "Postmodern Blacknesss":

"It is sadly ironic that the contemporary discourse which talks the most about heterogeneity, the decentered subject, declaring breakthroughs that allow recognition of otherness, still directs its critical voice primarily to a specialized audience, one that shares a common language rooted in the very master narratives it claims to challenge. If radical postmodernist thinking is to have a transformative impact then a critical break with the notion of 'authority' as 'mastery over' must not simply be a rhetorical device, it must be reflected in habits of being, including styles of writing as well as chosen subject matter."

But hooks, like Berlin I suspect, sees the emancipatory potential of a postmodernism of liberation--the essay's thrust, for me, is a call to get pomo out of the academy and into the streets, for critics/scholars to engage those that the write about (women, non-whites, the poor, queers--in every sense of the word, the oppressed wherever they are). It's a call for marrying theory with practice (praxis). This call is what drew me to both hooks and Freire, and it's what led me to say "Yes!" reading about Berlin's formulation of social-epistemic rhetoric. *This* is what I want to do when I teach. *This* is what brought me to the English department to begin with--I had read (ironically enough, considering Berlin's critique of them) Graff and Ohmann, as well as hooks and Freire, as well as Saussure and Levi-Strauss, as well as Althusser, Foucault and Derrida (teacher, student and student, again by the way) and Lyotard and Habermas. I must say, I came away not seeing how embracing one set made embracing another impossible--to me, there's nothing mutually exclusive about any two of them. They are all building on the same orientation in my opinion. It'll be my project to synthesize that belief as the semester progresses.

Postmodernism As Anti-Progressive?

First, speaking to Faith’s last post (though I also agree with everything stated in her off-topic Anna Nicole post), I believe that Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures was published in 1996 (maybe it was reprinted in 2006), two years after Berlin’s death. Thus, it does perhaps capture a mid-90s interest in the connection between literary theory and composition and rhetoric. Donna will perhaps correct me, but I see the 90s, even more than the 80s, as a hot time for the comp/rhet field to actively draw upon theory.

Second, responding to Berlin, I liked the moment where he points out that postmodernism, which in the academy we sometimes view as progressive or liberating, can be usurped by groups for conservative or class interests. Berlin writes, after having described the celebratory nature of postmodern de-centering, “There are a number of dangers in this uncritical celebration [of the postmodern]. Most important, it [postmodern incoherence as a ‘triumph of contemporary civilization’] is a narrative told from the limited and exclusive point of view of a small segment of the comfortable classes. The vast majority of workers are outside this circle of professional security, so that glorifying in the possibilities of floating subjects and indeterminate signifiers is unthinkable. Space-time compression for them most often means out of work and out of luck, not the frolic of simulated experiences from other places and times” (71). This section reminded me of the section in James Gee’s piece where he too points out how certain “turns” (the social turn, the theory turn, the postmodern turn) can be used to non-progressive ends. What does it say, for instance, when advertisers use the postmodern in order to create product? The social is tacitly implied here. Postmodernism may strike us as liberating, freeing, but society can use postmodern notions towards its own end--in short, society defines things ultimately.

Finally, a very general comment. I really enjoyed the Berlin book, at least the sections that we read. He hadn’t delved very deeply into composition/rhetoric yet, but is overviews are incredibly lucid yet also very accurate. Anyone, for instance, who needs a primer on structuralism and post-structuralism could do worse than read over Berlin’s summaries of these theoretical movements. I also appreciated Berlin’s overview of the history of English departments, especially where he critiques the William Riley Parker piece, “Where Do English Departments Come From?” which I believe we read in 8010 last term.

A Really Short Synopsis of a Small Number of Our Readings

"Rhetoric and Ideology" helps to put different rhetorical approaches into the perspective of epistemic rhetoric, and it made me think about how our readings so far have spoken to one another. This is my super-short, simplistic version of what we've read up to now (and please feel free to fill it in with anything else, my beloved classmates):

LeFevre: Establishes rhetoric as potentially social.
Scott: Establishes rhetoric as epistemic, because of its power to create meaning.
Berlin, "Rhetoric and Ideology": Distinguishes social-epistemic rhetoric from other types,
arguing that this rhetoric's acknowledgment of its epistemic nature makes it more authentic.
Since Scott demonstrates that all rhetoric is epistemic, social-epistemic rhetoric is the most
honest.
Berlin, Rhetoric, Poetics . . . (pardon the title being bolded; the blog doesn't let us underline):
With rhetoric established as epistemic, the past views of writing can be seen as Romantic
and made to serve the interests of the privileged class. We need to reconceive English
studies as a sphere where the epistemic power of language is really acknowledged.

Berlin

Berlin was interesting and helpful to me in several ways. First, his examination and interpretation of Derrida and Saussure were enlightening.

Early on in the first chapter he brings up the fact that poetics and rhetoric are always vying for the position of "top dog" in the English department. What I would like to find out is why? Is this part of the way Mathematics departments are set up as well? Does geometry take precedence over algebra and then vise versa? Is World History challenging European History to see which one is more important or applicable? It's just that as it appears to me both are of equal worth and interest when studying. We have personal preferences, but that does not necessarily make one more important.

Now we composition vying with rhetoric and whether one is more important than the other. Both appear to be a necessary part of the learning process to me, especially in helping to educate young writers.

I just find the competition somewhat lacking in purpose.

I'm Glad Berlin Agrees with Me

Parts I and II of Berlin’s Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures do a nice job of describing the dilemma facing educators today- particularly those in English Studies (although I feel they apply just as neatly to Communication Studies with which I am more familiar). It appears as though Berlin will propose solutions in Parts III and IV. In the mean time I’ve been thinking about my own approach to teaching (I currently teach two sections of Public Speaking).

Here's what I think.
I've been known to tell other public speaking instructors, as well as my own students that I'm really not interested in preparing them to a) get a job after college, or b) do well at that job. The problem isn't that I don't like my students, but maybe that I like them too much. I believe that at most jobs today, people are subjected to some sort of abuse - emotional, physical, psychological, whatever. People hate their jobs! Even if my students were to land precisely the job they think they want, I don't think they are likely to be any exception. So why would I want to help get them someplace they ultimately will not want to be? Instead, I figure I'll help people develop their communication skills, open their minds up to some new ideas, and let them do whatever they want with them.

Here's why Berlin is helpful to my argument.
While I truly hold the attitudes I've articulated above, I've also felt they were probably unhealthy or unhelpful – I’m not silly enough to put them in my formal philosophy of teaching statement. I've explicitly asked people to convince me differently - nobody has. But Berlin has supplied me with some ideas to at least help me articulate my ideas better and perhaps make them more palatable. For instance, he writes, "the United States has seldom considered it sufficient to educate students entirely for work" (p. 54-55). My arguments, therefore, may actually be in line with traditional education in the United States. Berlin also writes, “students deserve an education that prepares them to be critical citizens of the nation that now stands as one of the oldest democracies in the world" (p. 54). I could probably borrow this quote as a sort of mission statement. Further support for my ideas comes from Berlin’s confirmation of my view of today's workplace: “The net result of this new industrial organization has thus been a significant reduction in the ability of workers to organize for better wages, benefits, and conditions, particularly since they are isolated by the conditions of their employment" (p. 47).

Does this make any sense to any one else? Or is this a self-serving misappropriation of Berlin? I’m still willing to be convinced differently about the whole matter.