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?
Sunday, February 18, 2007
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).
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.
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. . .
"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.
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.
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.
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.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
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.
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.
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 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.
Friday, February 16, 2007
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?
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?
Thursday, February 15, 2007
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.
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.
Monday, February 12, 2007
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.
"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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Some quick thoughts
I couldn't figure out how to cohere these, and I'm not sure what to write about. I figured I would leave these holes in the network to perhaps inspire someone else:
- Did anyone else notice how, despite the fact that the Berlin's book was published in 2003, he uses a lot of sources from 1970-1990?
- Since we haven't read Part Three yet, which according to the Table of Contents describes a practical application of Berlin's ideas, does anyone want to take a crack at predicting what a Berlinian classroom might look like? I'm thinking lots of discussion, group work, learner-centered. What about a Berlinian English department? A Berlinian writing assignment?
- What kind of agency do writers have, according to Berlin?
Social-Epistemic Rhetoric
Berlin states, "For social-epistemic rhetoric, the real is located in a relationship that involves the dialectical interaction of the observer, the discourse community (social group) in which the observer is functioning, and the material conditions of existence" (488). The influences which create a piece of rhetoric or writing are innumerable, to say the least.
Circling back around to LeFevre's "Invention as a Social Act" it is easy to see some agreement between the authors. Yet, the end of Berlin's quote "and the material conditions of existence" brings individuality into mix. Our reality is based on our dialogues, conversations, and arguments that we participate in within a social group that we interact with. Okay, that makes sense, and then there are the material conditions of existence. I think this means the conditions of the individual -- which help to shape our minds --also play a part in in the social-epistemic rhetoric. Anyway, the "social" arenas that make up most of our ability to view the world may be right in front of us, such as school or the workplace, but we are also being influenced by past social arenas. Whether these are prior schools, families, or institutions is probably irrelevant. What is relevant is what these prior situations left us with. My existence, to within the last few years, has been volatile and has lacked structure. So, it appears, that that existence "flavors" most everything I read, discuss, and think about.
So, if this is the case, then isn't social invention, social epistemology, or anything else with social in the name, made independently unique by the stamps made on the mind of the individual? While everything remains social, it is indelibly stamped with the individual. Or maybe not.
Circling back around to LeFevre's "Invention as a Social Act" it is easy to see some agreement between the authors. Yet, the end of Berlin's quote "and the material conditions of existence" brings individuality into mix. Our reality is based on our dialogues, conversations, and arguments that we participate in within a social group that we interact with. Okay, that makes sense, and then there are the material conditions of existence. I think this means the conditions of the individual -- which help to shape our minds --also play a part in in the social-epistemic rhetoric. Anyway, the "social" arenas that make up most of our ability to view the world may be right in front of us, such as school or the workplace, but we are also being influenced by past social arenas. Whether these are prior schools, families, or institutions is probably irrelevant. What is relevant is what these prior situations left us with. My existence, to within the last few years, has been volatile and has lacked structure. So, it appears, that that existence "flavors" most everything I read, discuss, and think about.
So, if this is the case, then isn't social invention, social epistemology, or anything else with social in the name, made independently unique by the stamps made on the mind of the individual? While everything remains social, it is indelibly stamped with the individual. Or maybe not.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
On Viewing Stephen Toulmin As Awesome
It has been a while since I last read Robert Scott’s “On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic,” and this time around I was struck by the piece’s overarching ethical concern. I believe that like most elements of Scott’s essay, the attention to ethics is a result of his reliance on the work of Stephen Toulmin. While it might be an exaggeration to position Toulmin’s as a complete coup of the West’s stilted logo-centric traditions, I believe it is still worth praising the emancipatory potential of Toulmin’s work. For better or worse, this quick essay probably perpetuates the idea that the social turn is also a somehow liberal turn.
Stephen Toulmin caught the chill of philosophers when he outlined practical argument and highlighted the impersonal and tyrannical nature of formal argument. Toulmin maintained that human beings were to be the standard for judging argument, not mathematical formula (recall Protagoras’ “Man is the measure of all things.”). He believed that when people argue, they are doing so to justify conclusions that they’ve already arrived at in their own minds. He further notes that arguments are dependent on situational factors (which of course are determined by the social).
Philosophy’s fascination with certainty (which was nurtured by the work of Rene Descartes among others) focuses on how humans should ration to determine certain knowledge. Toulmin argued that such formal logic is too impractical for regular use. Perhaps more importantly, it’s always ethically questionable to tell people how to do anything, particularly how to think. Racism, sexism, class-ism, etc. have each been perpetuated by the idea that certain groups of people are more logical/reasonable/rational than other groups. Toulmin’s ideas moved (some of) academia away from the troublesome reliance on logic. His approach is both practical and person-centered – he modeled how humans actually reason in a world where probabilities run the show.
Today, the same criticisms that Toulmin hurled against the logicians of his day can be directed at Toulmin himself. His model is indeed a bit stiff and overly formal, and probably still a bit Euro-centric. However, I’d say rhetorical scholars like Walter Fisher and Wayne Booth have done a nice job of job of picking up where Toulmin left off. In summary, Toulmin was one of the first minds to take us away from a traditional model of “logic” and its destructive antecedents and consequents. Basically, I think formal logic is scary – and not just because I almost failed it as an undergraduate. Toulmin threw some of the first stones at this monster of an institution, and for that I think he deserves a post on a blog for a class on rhetoric and composition.
Stephen Toulmin caught the chill of philosophers when he outlined practical argument and highlighted the impersonal and tyrannical nature of formal argument. Toulmin maintained that human beings were to be the standard for judging argument, not mathematical formula (recall Protagoras’ “Man is the measure of all things.”). He believed that when people argue, they are doing so to justify conclusions that they’ve already arrived at in their own minds. He further notes that arguments are dependent on situational factors (which of course are determined by the social).
Philosophy’s fascination with certainty (which was nurtured by the work of Rene Descartes among others) focuses on how humans should ration to determine certain knowledge. Toulmin argued that such formal logic is too impractical for regular use. Perhaps more importantly, it’s always ethically questionable to tell people how to do anything, particularly how to think. Racism, sexism, class-ism, etc. have each been perpetuated by the idea that certain groups of people are more logical/reasonable/rational than other groups. Toulmin’s ideas moved (some of) academia away from the troublesome reliance on logic. His approach is both practical and person-centered – he modeled how humans actually reason in a world where probabilities run the show.
Today, the same criticisms that Toulmin hurled against the logicians of his day can be directed at Toulmin himself. His model is indeed a bit stiff and overly formal, and probably still a bit Euro-centric. However, I’d say rhetorical scholars like Walter Fisher and Wayne Booth have done a nice job of job of picking up where Toulmin left off. In summary, Toulmin was one of the first minds to take us away from a traditional model of “logic” and its destructive antecedents and consequents. Basically, I think formal logic is scary – and not just because I almost failed it as an undergraduate. Toulmin threw some of the first stones at this monster of an institution, and for that I think he deserves a post on a blog for a class on rhetoric and composition.
Berlin, Jameson, and the self-reflexive nature of social-epistemic rhetoric
I'd say one point of connection with what we've already gleaned of LaTour's work can be found in Berlin's appropriation of Fredric Jameson's (version of) dialectical criticism. Borrowing, it would seem, from The Political Unconscious and articles that led up to Postmodernism, of the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Berlin asserts the following:
"The guiding narratives to be invoked in writing history that I am recommending similarly offer this capacity to provide connections while never determining in advance exactly what those connections will be. The narrative and the details it discovers engage in a dialectical interaction in which the two terms of the encounter are always open to revision, the narrative revealing data while the data revises the narrative" (Berlin 79).
Again, this seems to intersect with our discussion of Reassembling the Social, particularly Latour’s overview statements like "the last thing to do would be to limit in advance the shape, size, heterogeneity, and combination of associations. . .the duties of the social scientist mutate accordingly: it is no longer enough to limit actors to the role of informers offering cases of some well-known types" (Latour 11). One mutation of the social scientist and his/her "duties" may also mirror the mutation of rhetoricians’ and literary theorists’ duties in a poststructural age: each must become more self-reflexive and self-aware of their own duty and function as "social scientist," "Marxist literary critic," or "Social Epistemic rhetorician" in a dynamic--or dialectic--with the actors / poetics / rhetorical texts being analyzed. Berlin's version of this arrives at the top of pg. 88 when he claims that social epistemic rhetoric "does not deny its inescapable ideological predispositions, its politically situated condition. It does not claim to be above ideology, a transcendent discourse that objectively adjudicates competing ideological claims" (later he mentions that social-epistemic rhetoric is "aware of its historical contingency"). Although he doesn't cite Jameson's influence in this section (clearly he does in earlier passages), this necessary self-awareness of “historical contingency” seems right in line with how Jameson reconfigured the role of the Marxist critic in response to the postmodern condition.
"The guiding narratives to be invoked in writing history that I am recommending similarly offer this capacity to provide connections while never determining in advance exactly what those connections will be. The narrative and the details it discovers engage in a dialectical interaction in which the two terms of the encounter are always open to revision, the narrative revealing data while the data revises the narrative" (Berlin 79).
Again, this seems to intersect with our discussion of Reassembling the Social, particularly Latour’s overview statements like "the last thing to do would be to limit in advance the shape, size, heterogeneity, and combination of associations. . .the duties of the social scientist mutate accordingly: it is no longer enough to limit actors to the role of informers offering cases of some well-known types" (Latour 11). One mutation of the social scientist and his/her "duties" may also mirror the mutation of rhetoricians’ and literary theorists’ duties in a poststructural age: each must become more self-reflexive and self-aware of their own duty and function as "social scientist," "Marxist literary critic," or "Social Epistemic rhetorician" in a dynamic--or dialectic--with the actors / poetics / rhetorical texts being analyzed. Berlin's version of this arrives at the top of pg. 88 when he claims that social epistemic rhetoric "does not deny its inescapable ideological predispositions, its politically situated condition. It does not claim to be above ideology, a transcendent discourse that objectively adjudicates competing ideological claims" (later he mentions that social-epistemic rhetoric is "aware of its historical contingency"). Although he doesn't cite Jameson's influence in this section (clearly he does in earlier passages), this necessary self-awareness of “historical contingency” seems right in line with how Jameson reconfigured the role of the Marxist critic in response to the postmodern condition.
Anna Nicole (and Me)
On the day of Anna Nicole Smith's death, I got one facebook message, an email, and two text messages from concerned friends and family. In the days since, at least three people have brought up her death in conversation with me. First, the concerned person asks if I've heard that she died, then they ask for my theory (or the larger popular culture's theory, which is usually the same) as to why she died.
Anna Nicole Smith's death was not the only thing that happened in the world this last week. A lot of people died in Darfur. A war raged halfway around the world. Barack Obama decided to run for president. I can't be certain, but probably something important happened in the stock market (as I understand it, it's a place where important things happen).
But no one text messaged me any of this news. All I got was the cocaine-fueled passing of a failed reality-TV star/gold-digger heiress/diet pill spokeswoman, a meta-celebrity (famous for being famous). Of course, it's depressing (and telling of me) that I know all the attributes of Anna Nicole, and that knowledge is likely why people alerted me to her death.
What KILLS me is that I CARE about Darfur. And I LIKE Barack Obama. But no one ever text messages me this information. I'm going to use this example to make several points (seriously).
- Are we supposed to judge whether or not the social-epistemic nature of rhetoric (Berlin) or Invention (LeFevre) is a good thing or a bad thing? What if all my social world teaches me is garbage? Or are we supposed to accept it as an inevitable thing? Should I reach for higher-minded things or should I give up and embrace the network? 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?)
- Was the moment when I realized my place as the go-to girl for celebrity gossip a moment that Berlin would describe as a moment when I realized “the ideological design” on my “formation as subject” (101)?
Friday, February 9, 2007
Berlin, Graff, Scholes and reuniting the sacred and profane
I have to say that when I read Chad's response to Hairston's article, my own first response was "Oh dear sweet God is my CMAP due Monday?" And, at least according to the syllabus, it isn't. I like a lot of Chad's assessment, though, and will offer some of my own next week. Of course, "my own" sounds dated and romantic. Really, if others want to blog about Hairston this week, by all means do so, and feel encouraged to cognitively map connections to other authors and send those maps to me as jpegs as soon as possible. I want to make my project collaborative and then, in homage to antiquated notions of atomistic authors, I'd prefer just having my name on the assignment.
In terms of Berlin. . .
I wish I had read this book long before now. In the way that LeFevre's text seemed like necessary reading for an "origin point," Berlin's seems necessary in ways someone once told me Graff's Professing Literature: An Institutional History (1987) would be (like many, I was disappointed by the very marginal attention given to rhet/comp in Graff's, and others', "histories of English studies"). Berlin's intro and first chapter provide a good "go to" guide for the history of rhet/comp in English as well as some Jamesonian "historicizing" of how literary texts (the poetic) were elevated to "sacred" status in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I have read Graff and Scholes' Textual Power (1985) before--though not in their entirety--and really liked having Berlin's summary of the dialogue (and its conflicts) on pgs. 5-17. That is, their "constructions" of The English Department really need to be read as rhetorical, which Berlin handles efficiently.
Berlin also adds a social-epistemic voice to this dialogue when he later "dislodges" the binary oppositions found in both Scholes and Graff's accounts of English studies (i.e. "the division between sacred and profane texts, the division between the priestly class and the menial class, the placing of beauty and truth against the utilitarian and commonplace"). Basically, Berlin refuses "the inherent distinction between representational and creative texts" (92). This poststructural response seems to bridge some of the depressing divide in English studies. Berlin's response also makes me ask old nagging questions such as, are we (rhet/comp folks) forbidden to analyze ("work out the semiotic codes of") literary texts now that "we've" overturned their primacy (the canon, the individual author, etc.)? Must we, as rhet scholars, also create binary oppositions by only analyzing "rhetorical texts" outside the realm of the poetic? I mean, of course, no one is going to say we can't take on (or "apply discourse theory to") literary texts, but going to college in the late 80's and 90's, I began to assume that social-epistemic rhetors were not interested in the "poetic"--or that, if they were, these sorts of analyses were nothing one could publish.
I'm hoping Donna will share some thoughts here, since I know she also comes from a lit-interpreting / creative writing background. Was there a time in which a grad school mentor nudged you beyond the poetic, or was it that other rhetorical texts (those of labor, management, etc.) hailed you--as you've said--away from focusing on "sacred texts" in your English studies? Really, I'm asking this of everyone, since most of us have "found our way" to rhet-comp (I know Court mentioned this, and that Faith, David and others--myself included--are creative writers who came from a "poetic" background en route to rhetoric).
I have other thoughts on Berlin's appropriation of the poststructural, but I'd say this post has gone on long enough. I'll add more tomorrow. . .
In terms of Berlin. . .
I wish I had read this book long before now. In the way that LeFevre's text seemed like necessary reading for an "origin point," Berlin's seems necessary in ways someone once told me Graff's Professing Literature: An Institutional History (1987) would be (like many, I was disappointed by the very marginal attention given to rhet/comp in Graff's, and others', "histories of English studies"). Berlin's intro and first chapter provide a good "go to" guide for the history of rhet/comp in English as well as some Jamesonian "historicizing" of how literary texts (the poetic) were elevated to "sacred" status in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I have read Graff and Scholes' Textual Power (1985) before--though not in their entirety--and really liked having Berlin's summary of the dialogue (and its conflicts) on pgs. 5-17. That is, their "constructions" of The English Department really need to be read as rhetorical, which Berlin handles efficiently.
Berlin also adds a social-epistemic voice to this dialogue when he later "dislodges" the binary oppositions found in both Scholes and Graff's accounts of English studies (i.e. "the division between sacred and profane texts, the division between the priestly class and the menial class, the placing of beauty and truth against the utilitarian and commonplace"). Basically, Berlin refuses "the inherent distinction between representational and creative texts" (92). This poststructural response seems to bridge some of the depressing divide in English studies. Berlin's response also makes me ask old nagging questions such as, are we (rhet/comp folks) forbidden to analyze ("work out the semiotic codes of") literary texts now that "we've" overturned their primacy (the canon, the individual author, etc.)? Must we, as rhet scholars, also create binary oppositions by only analyzing "rhetorical texts" outside the realm of the poetic? I mean, of course, no one is going to say we can't take on (or "apply discourse theory to") literary texts, but going to college in the late 80's and 90's, I began to assume that social-epistemic rhetors were not interested in the "poetic"--or that, if they were, these sorts of analyses were nothing one could publish.
I'm hoping Donna will share some thoughts here, since I know she also comes from a lit-interpreting / creative writing background. Was there a time in which a grad school mentor nudged you beyond the poetic, or was it that other rhetorical texts (those of labor, management, etc.) hailed you--as you've said--away from focusing on "sacred texts" in your English studies? Really, I'm asking this of everyone, since most of us have "found our way" to rhet-comp (I know Court mentioned this, and that Faith, David and others--myself included--are creative writers who came from a "poetic" background en route to rhetoric).
I have other thoughts on Berlin's appropriation of the poststructural, but I'd say this post has gone on long enough. I'll add more tomorrow. . .
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Great Scott
Scott's article left me feeling like my brain is tiny, and his is big enough for me to rent a room in. I understood it better--I think--after doing a little research, but am definitely interested in being corrected by anyone who can follow his brilliant intricacies.
He starts out referring to Gorgias, the dialogue by Plato where Socrates problematizes rhetoric. In that dialogue, the most definite thing Socrates says about rhetoric, from my reading of it, is that it's a ghost of politics, and should be confined to that realm. Rhetoric can't be considered the art of persuasion, because persuasion is involved in too many other arts, like teaching, that don't employ rhetoricians. Scott also refers to Aristotle's statements about rhetoric, which assert it as the art of persuasion, and nothing but, in my (late-afternoon, caffeinated) reading of it. Looking at both of these helps me understand his brilliance a little better--he's trying to show why rhetoric has been given such a slight role since its codification by the ancient Greek philosophers.
Another area that got me googling for background material was his discussion of Toulmin's arguments. He talks about Toulmin's distinction between analytic and substantial arguments. Not knowing what those terms meant, I found that the analytic argument is thought to look for eternal principles or theories, while the substantial argument is thought to look for immediate, or practical answers. What Scott is saying, if I'm reading the brotha correctly, is that no argument can really be considered analytic, since all analytic conclusions are based on past experiences, so nothing can really be generalized into a theory that will inevitably come true. Nothing can be abstracted from time, so no analytic ideal exists. Therefore, rhetoric can't be used to make any truth just sitting out there into something that will persuade people, so we can't go by the classical views of rhetoric anymore. So this part of his article doesn't portray rhetoric as epistemic, but portrays it as unmoored from old ideas.
He starts out referring to Gorgias, the dialogue by Plato where Socrates problematizes rhetoric. In that dialogue, the most definite thing Socrates says about rhetoric, from my reading of it, is that it's a ghost of politics, and should be confined to that realm. Rhetoric can't be considered the art of persuasion, because persuasion is involved in too many other arts, like teaching, that don't employ rhetoricians. Scott also refers to Aristotle's statements about rhetoric, which assert it as the art of persuasion, and nothing but, in my (late-afternoon, caffeinated) reading of it. Looking at both of these helps me understand his brilliance a little better--he's trying to show why rhetoric has been given such a slight role since its codification by the ancient Greek philosophers.
Another area that got me googling for background material was his discussion of Toulmin's arguments. He talks about Toulmin's distinction between analytic and substantial arguments. Not knowing what those terms meant, I found that the analytic argument is thought to look for eternal principles or theories, while the substantial argument is thought to look for immediate, or practical answers. What Scott is saying, if I'm reading the brotha correctly, is that no argument can really be considered analytic, since all analytic conclusions are based on past experiences, so nothing can really be generalized into a theory that will inevitably come true. Nothing can be abstracted from time, so no analytic ideal exists. Therefore, rhetoric can't be used to make any truth just sitting out there into something that will persuade people, so we can't go by the classical views of rhetoric anymore. So this part of his article doesn't portray rhetoric as epistemic, but portrays it as unmoored from old ideas.
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Initial Response to Hairston
I've just read the Hairston article, and haven't gotten to the responses yet, but the former has definitely gotten me going. She makes a number of points about the causes, problems, and solutions to the liberal focus that she sees in English classrooms, and a few, in particular, caught my attention and inspired a little thought.
First, Hairston offers a number of quotes to support the claim that rhet comp classes show a trend of liberal politicization, where theorists we've discussed, like Bizzell and Berlin, say that the class is necessarily a political atmosphere. Other theorists are quoted as saying that it's necessary to confront students with these political views, to jolt them out of the patriarchal model of the class-- they need to be exposed to feminist and other focii, so that they're no longer being indoctrinated into the capitalist system wholesale. Presented in this setting, these quotes come across as reactionary, inspiring a reaction not just by conservatives, but by anyone opposing the leftist indoctrination of students struggling to represent their own views in writing. Her own arguments, that this move is an attempt to deal with a diversity better represented by traditional practices, and that politics need to be trained away from the classroom, carry a manifesto kind of momentum, like they need to be urgently studied and followed.
What this makes me think is that she's answering a question I had after reading LeFevre, and that Donna raised in class--how much has the social concept of invention influenced the writing classroom? LeFevre's call for students to be directed toward social involvement and consciousness seems to be answered, on some level, by teachers' attempting to raise students' political awareness. The writing classroom is now seen by a number of teachers as a place where social change can occur, which partly explains why they're trying to mold students' ideologies (if that's not too strong a word).
What I mostly wonder is how real this politicization is. Is Hairston documenting a wide-ranging phenomenon? Would the people she quoted in her article want to contextualize their arguments? I could maybe read the responses and find out. Have a great day, brothaz and sistaz.
First, Hairston offers a number of quotes to support the claim that rhet comp classes show a trend of liberal politicization, where theorists we've discussed, like Bizzell and Berlin, say that the class is necessarily a political atmosphere. Other theorists are quoted as saying that it's necessary to confront students with these political views, to jolt them out of the patriarchal model of the class-- they need to be exposed to feminist and other focii, so that they're no longer being indoctrinated into the capitalist system wholesale. Presented in this setting, these quotes come across as reactionary, inspiring a reaction not just by conservatives, but by anyone opposing the leftist indoctrination of students struggling to represent their own views in writing. Her own arguments, that this move is an attempt to deal with a diversity better represented by traditional practices, and that politics need to be trained away from the classroom, carry a manifesto kind of momentum, like they need to be urgently studied and followed.
What this makes me think is that she's answering a question I had after reading LeFevre, and that Donna raised in class--how much has the social concept of invention influenced the writing classroom? LeFevre's call for students to be directed toward social involvement and consciousness seems to be answered, on some level, by teachers' attempting to raise students' political awareness. The writing classroom is now seen by a number of teachers as a place where social change can occur, which partly explains why they're trying to mold students' ideologies (if that's not too strong a word).
What I mostly wonder is how real this politicization is. Is Hairston documenting a wide-ranging phenomenon? Would the people she quoted in her article want to contextualize their arguments? I could maybe read the responses and find out. Have a great day, brothaz and sistaz.
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Perhaps I've jumped the ...
My syllabus says that the readings for next week are on Eres...but, not for me..
I'll be patient(er).
I'll be patient(er).
Monday, February 5, 2007
Taking the plunge
I think I have undiagnosed social anxiety disorder--the very idea of blogging (a form of collaborative writing, it seems) scares the hell out of me. I've been reading the material and reading the posts and I keep thinking of things to say--and I even go so far as to make drafts--but when it comes to actually hitting "publish" I freeze up. Here goes:
In thinking what my own conceptual map for LeFevre, I came up with a few Arnoldian touchstones, two of which have already been mentioned by Mark--Saussure and Fish. As I was reading LeFevre, I thought about the idea of collaborative understanding and the invention involved with language, both in terms of making meaning--even at the phonemic level, but certainly at the lexical level of Saussure's signifier/signified--and "decoding" it, a la Fish's "interpretive communities" (I'm thinking of _Is There a Text in This Class?_ as opposed to _There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech...And it’s a Good Thing_, simply because I've read the former and not the latter), and then thinking of Fish's interpretive communities reminded me of Freire's critique of the teacher-student dichotomy (in terms of the discussion of collaborative writing, I would add the idea of critical pedagogy to what would possibly work to meet the goal--and I've been reading _This Book Is Not Required_, which raises some interesting issues, as well).
I'll be the official hack, too, and be the first to say that in terms of other posts, the discussion (by Faith and Aaron, I believe) of what constitutes authorship reminds me of Foucault's "What Is an Author?" and Barthes' "Death of the Author." Foucault interrogates the very notion of the author--how it's historically contingent and bound up with cultural practices--and he asks how an author's name "functions" in our society, how an author is associated not just with a single work but with entire discursive practices (authors can serve as "founders of discursivity." Barthes, meanwhile, asserts that the reader should be freed from the "constraints of fidelity to an origin, a unified meaning, an identity, or any other pregiven exterior or interior reality" (one of my favorite lines of all-time is "We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single 'theological' meaning (the 'message of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.")
In thinking what my own conceptual map for LeFevre, I came up with a few Arnoldian touchstones, two of which have already been mentioned by Mark--Saussure and Fish. As I was reading LeFevre, I thought about the idea of collaborative understanding and the invention involved with language, both in terms of making meaning--even at the phonemic level, but certainly at the lexical level of Saussure's signifier/signified--and "decoding" it, a la Fish's "interpretive communities" (I'm thinking of _Is There a Text in This Class?_ as opposed to _There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech...And it’s a Good Thing_, simply because I've read the former and not the latter), and then thinking of Fish's interpretive communities reminded me of Freire's critique of the teacher-student dichotomy (in terms of the discussion of collaborative writing, I would add the idea of critical pedagogy to what would possibly work to meet the goal--and I've been reading _This Book Is Not Required_, which raises some interesting issues, as well).
I'll be the official hack, too, and be the first to say that in terms of other posts, the discussion (by Faith and Aaron, I believe) of what constitutes authorship reminds me of Foucault's "What Is an Author?" and Barthes' "Death of the Author." Foucault interrogates the very notion of the author--how it's historically contingent and bound up with cultural practices--and he asks how an author's name "functions" in our society, how an author is associated not just with a single work but with entire discursive practices (authors can serve as "founders of discursivity." Barthes, meanwhile, asserts that the reader should be freed from the "constraints of fidelity to an origin, a unified meaning, an identity, or any other pregiven exterior or interior reality" (one of my favorite lines of all-time is "We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single 'theological' meaning (the 'message of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.")
I took issue, slightly, with the following:
LeFevre, Tenure, Collaborative Writing
It's revealing that when rhet/comp scholars took on the study of invention, they had to look beyond the "borders" of their own English departments. In her introduction, LeFevre discusses a first exigency for studying invention across the curriculum (i.e. "investigating the interelationships of rhetorical invention and invention as a generic study would . . .focus on invention as it occurs in and across various fields. . .to see what the modes of inventing [in those often scientific fields] may show us that would benefit the study. . .of rhetorical invention"), but much later (pg. 124), she reveals another reason (4-5). "While collaboration is more common in some areas of science, medicine, and engineering," LeFevre confesses, "English professors are uneasy about dealing with the issues collaborative invention raises" (124). I have known assistant profs, upon coming up for third year review, having to justify every co-authored item on their C.V. in terms of how much they individually authored or "created." A friend of mine was told she didn't provide sufficient evidence for her contributions to a co-edited anthology (I remember her worrying that her picture, name and bio appeared second on the jacket), but that this could be overlooked since she did have a single authored manuscript conditionally accepted (or however we term the "preliminary negotiation" phase of publication).
The point being: this was a university that fostered the same 90's era rhetoric of collaborative learning, alternative means of assessing ("The evaluation should take into account a student's ability to interact constructively with others. . ."), and, in particular, a "push toward interdisciplinarity" while still holding to its Old Skool emphasis on single authorship as pages toward tenure (132-133). I guess an added irony, then and now, is that tenure is not commonly awarded for "single authored" creations published in non-peer-reviewed journals; instead, a network of colleagues must be brought into the dialogue of a text (i.e. "here's where the scholarly dialogue has gone to date" as an opening move) and must weigh in on--offer editorial advice for--the same text before it can be published.
Relatedly, I agreed in principle with LeFevre's broad suggestions for how we might grade collaboratively ("socially"?) constructed writing, but I remained cynical about the paradigm shift needed (from the top down in university structures, English departments, etc.) to actually foster "a classroom climate in which it is in a student's interest to cooperate rather than compete" (132). I began teaching comp in what now seems like the heyday of collaborative writing and the social turn that is our focus. As such, I persisted with different approaches and assignments that sometimes worked and sometimes failed based on group dynamics and, often, students' desire for really specific, atomistic sorts of evaluations (the rubric as social contract?). Many desire assurances that they won't ever be individually blamed for the least of their members, for The Dude They Already Know Will Screw Up Their Group. I was hit and miss on the ideal rubric (not being a fan of translating "everything worth knowing" into "point totals"), but I remember having some luck turning their concerns into discussion about individual vs. collaborative achievement, about "creating in groups" as an invaluable (unavoidable?) life skill.
Maybe in class we can share a few examples of bringing LeFevre's view of invention into the comp classroom; my guess is that we've all tried something like it whether we had read LeFevre or not. I'll see everyone later. . .
The point being: this was a university that fostered the same 90's era rhetoric of collaborative learning, alternative means of assessing ("The evaluation should take into account a student's ability to interact constructively with others. . ."), and, in particular, a "push toward interdisciplinarity" while still holding to its Old Skool emphasis on single authorship as pages toward tenure (132-133). I guess an added irony, then and now, is that tenure is not commonly awarded for "single authored" creations published in non-peer-reviewed journals; instead, a network of colleagues must be brought into the dialogue of a text (i.e. "here's where the scholarly dialogue has gone to date" as an opening move) and must weigh in on--offer editorial advice for--the same text before it can be published.
Relatedly, I agreed in principle with LeFevre's broad suggestions for how we might grade collaboratively ("socially"?) constructed writing, but I remained cynical about the paradigm shift needed (from the top down in university structures, English departments, etc.) to actually foster "a classroom climate in which it is in a student's interest to cooperate rather than compete" (132). I began teaching comp in what now seems like the heyday of collaborative writing and the social turn that is our focus. As such, I persisted with different approaches and assignments that sometimes worked and sometimes failed based on group dynamics and, often, students' desire for really specific, atomistic sorts of evaluations (the rubric as social contract?). Many desire assurances that they won't ever be individually blamed for the least of their members, for The Dude They Already Know Will Screw Up Their Group. I was hit and miss on the ideal rubric (not being a fan of translating "everything worth knowing" into "point totals"), but I remember having some luck turning their concerns into discussion about individual vs. collaborative achievement, about "creating in groups" as an invaluable (unavoidable?) life skill.
Maybe in class we can share a few examples of bringing LeFevre's view of invention into the comp classroom; my guess is that we've all tried something like it whether we had read LeFevre or not. I'll see everyone later. . .
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Thomas Alva Edison
I grew up about 20 minutes from Schenectady, NY which is where Thomas Edison eventually moved his Edison Machine Works (now General Electric). So I’m a little bit excited that LeFevre has given me the opportunity to talk about Edison in this post.
When speaking about the implications of a social perspective of invention, LeFevre extends “invention” to include physical innovations, arguing that scholars should “study the ecology of invention - the way ideas arise and are nurtured or hindered by interaction with social context and culture” (p. 126). She continues, “We will also do historical studies of invention in which we examine the social relationships of writers with other thinkers, or those of inventors with collaborators who aid invention in a variety of ways” (p. 127).
Charles Bazerman’s The Languages of Edison’s Light is a fantastic example of the type of re-interpretation of the invention process for which LeFevre is calling. If people were asked who invented the light bulb, or more generally electric light, most people would name a solitary individual – Thomas Edison. However, Bazerman’s book shines a light (pun most definitely intended) on the countless teams of researchers that worked on the project, the interactions between them, and the ways in which rhetoric was crucial to every single step of the invention process – from the research notebooks, to formal and informal meetings between scientists, to Edison’s attempts to dazzle the public and get funding for his project.
According to one review, the book “represents the best of what can be done when contemporary theorizing about the historical and social nature of language is grounded in analyzing the rhetorics surrounding a particular invention, innovation, or discovery; the result is an accessible and enlightening re-understanding of the original "incident" and a re-appreciation of how rhetoric is the field through which we negotiate our inventions, our discoveries, and their various meanings for us.”
I imagine that a similar, more contemporary study of how either Bill Gates or Steve Jobs worked with others to create their respective operating systems and have great influence on our society could produce interesting results. Does anybody have any special knowledge of those guys?
When speaking about the implications of a social perspective of invention, LeFevre extends “invention” to include physical innovations, arguing that scholars should “study the ecology of invention - the way ideas arise and are nurtured or hindered by interaction with social context and culture” (p. 126). She continues, “We will also do historical studies of invention in which we examine the social relationships of writers with other thinkers, or those of inventors with collaborators who aid invention in a variety of ways” (p. 127).
Charles Bazerman’s The Languages of Edison’s Light is a fantastic example of the type of re-interpretation of the invention process for which LeFevre is calling. If people were asked who invented the light bulb, or more generally electric light, most people would name a solitary individual – Thomas Edison. However, Bazerman’s book shines a light (pun most definitely intended) on the countless teams of researchers that worked on the project, the interactions between them, and the ways in which rhetoric was crucial to every single step of the invention process – from the research notebooks, to formal and informal meetings between scientists, to Edison’s attempts to dazzle the public and get funding for his project.
According to one review, the book “represents the best of what can be done when contemporary theorizing about the historical and social nature of language is grounded in analyzing the rhetorics surrounding a particular invention, innovation, or discovery; the result is an accessible and enlightening re-understanding of the original "incident" and a re-appreciation of how rhetoric is the field through which we negotiate our inventions, our discoveries, and their various meanings for us.”
I imagine that a similar, more contemporary study of how either Bill Gates or Steve Jobs worked with others to create their respective operating systems and have great influence on our society could produce interesting results. Does anybody have any special knowledge of those guys?
Tending Inward, Tending Outward
Hi. I was going to finish this last night, just so I could post the title Saturday Night LeFevre, but then that began to seem sad.
Some have already mentioned Emerson, and I'll say I was also put in mind of American Scholar and Ralpha Waldo's notions (or his society's notions as they moved him and he moved them) regarding education. On one hand, we have the Platonic influence on New England transcendentalism and LeFevre's critique of current-traditional through Elbovian process through cognitivist comp theory being focused on "the individual inventor apart from sociocultural contexts" and composition, like invention, being depicted as "a closed, one-way system, and the inventor as an atomistic unit" who is seeking a priori ideal forms not by turning to the social but to the inner voice of inspiration (32). On the other, we have LeFevre's post-process call to "writers in all discourse communities" to attempt "to clarify and possibly expand the prevailing sense of what constitutes collaboration and how it should be acknowledged" (123). Both sides began to remind me of our post-Emerson icon, Walt Whitman.
After one of Whitman's more famous lists in the fifteenth canto of "Song of Myself" (after the conductor, child, president, and Missourian are rendered coequal with the opium-eater and the "prostitute draggl[ing]her shawl"), he offers that famous conclusion: "And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them. / And such as it is to be of these more or less I am / And of these one and all I weave the song of myself"). Of course, you could leap in on any page of Leaves of Grass and find support for rhetorical invention spawned by 1) the "Me" and the "Not Me", 2) by the inner voice seeking to sound its "barbaric yawp" and announce its identity, and 3) by the "collective masses" that are America at this moment in the mid-19th century, who are acknowledged as co-creators of Whitman's unspooling poem.
When LeFevre posited that "an understanding of invention as a social act helps direct us toward a possible synthesis of the fragmentation of knowledge existing in the academic disciplines," I was still thinking of Whitman as both uber-Platonist and denier of the purely "atomistic individual." Then I remembered another connection to Whitman. I was at a conference once where two Whitman scholars did not find themselves heading toward a "possible synthesis"; rather, they disagreed sharply and in the territorial way that signifies "the fragmentation of knowledge existing in the academic disciplines [or, within academic disciplines]". Using this week's rhetoric, I would say both Whitman scholars wanted to own Whitman (like Jack Gladney comes to own Hitler in White Noise), or at least wanted to own the Whitman each had invented. I guess it took me twelve years and this week's reading to appreciate the irony of their posessiveness regarding their (somewhat invented) subject matter.
Some have already mentioned Emerson, and I'll say I was also put in mind of American Scholar and Ralpha Waldo's notions (or his society's notions as they moved him and he moved them) regarding education. On one hand, we have the Platonic influence on New England transcendentalism and LeFevre's critique of current-traditional through Elbovian process through cognitivist comp theory being focused on "the individual inventor apart from sociocultural contexts" and composition, like invention, being depicted as "a closed, one-way system, and the inventor as an atomistic unit" who is seeking a priori ideal forms not by turning to the social but to the inner voice of inspiration (32). On the other, we have LeFevre's post-process call to "writers in all discourse communities" to attempt "to clarify and possibly expand the prevailing sense of what constitutes collaboration and how it should be acknowledged" (123). Both sides began to remind me of our post-Emerson icon, Walt Whitman.
After one of Whitman's more famous lists in the fifteenth canto of "Song of Myself" (after the conductor, child, president, and Missourian are rendered coequal with the opium-eater and the "prostitute draggl[ing]her shawl"), he offers that famous conclusion: "And these tend inward to me, and I tend outward to them. / And such as it is to be of these more or less I am / And of these one and all I weave the song of myself"). Of course, you could leap in on any page of Leaves of Grass and find support for rhetorical invention spawned by 1) the "Me" and the "Not Me", 2) by the inner voice seeking to sound its "barbaric yawp" and announce its identity, and 3) by the "collective masses" that are America at this moment in the mid-19th century, who are acknowledged as co-creators of Whitman's unspooling poem.
When LeFevre posited that "an understanding of invention as a social act helps direct us toward a possible synthesis of the fragmentation of knowledge existing in the academic disciplines," I was still thinking of Whitman as both uber-Platonist and denier of the purely "atomistic individual." Then I remembered another connection to Whitman. I was at a conference once where two Whitman scholars did not find themselves heading toward a "possible synthesis"; rather, they disagreed sharply and in the territorial way that signifies "the fragmentation of knowledge existing in the academic disciplines [or, within academic disciplines]". Using this week's rhetoric, I would say both Whitman scholars wanted to own Whitman (like Jack Gladney comes to own Hitler in White Noise), or at least wanted to own the Whitman each had invented. I guess it took me twelve years and this week's reading to appreciate the irony of their posessiveness regarding their (somewhat invented) subject matter.
I have LeFevre and a headache
I hate working when I don't feel well. However, that doesn't make the work go away, and I go through the process wondering (even more than usual) if I've missed the most important point. Yet, this time there were so many points that occurred to me that missing one doesn't bug me.
And then someone (David) wrote Emerson--with a negative connotation--and now I love Emerson.
Emerson's "Self-Reliance" is one side of the coin, however, "The American Scholar" is another. In "American Scholar" Emerson wants us to think on our own, but he also states, "Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? . . . They are for nothing but to inspire" (Wilchens 66). Inspiration is an act of combined intellect, the readers' and the author's. While Emerson does speak of becoming the individual creative intellect, he also states that we should use the books of the past in order to create a better future. I could point out a number of other quotes that demonstrate his agreement with LeFevre, but I'm just on my soap box so I won't.
Many times when reading LeFevre I thought of Emerson. Yes, I really like to read him. The point is that when we invent or create we are not alone, we are relying on the thoughts and inventions of others in order to jump to a new place.
When mapping I could not deal with all the authors cited, so I chose a few and decided to see where the links were. There were many, but what was more interesting to me was the number of fields of study that were part of the whole. Politics, cognition, math, philosophy, composition, anthropology and the list goes on. Writers rely on the ideas and notions of others, but not necessarily of others in their field. I'm not sure how it works in math or science, but I was pleased to see that those who are involved in the field of English, whether as creative writers, composition scholars, or rhetors, they draw from a wide field. It seems that creativity in this field involves thinking outside of everything, not just the box.
What I concluded was this: We create with the ideas and help and words of others, but we are driven by our own passions. It is that passion that is our own to rely on and to use in order to delve more deeply into what we are studying.
Maggie
And then someone (David) wrote Emerson--with a negative connotation--and now I love Emerson.
Emerson's "Self-Reliance" is one side of the coin, however, "The American Scholar" is another. In "American Scholar" Emerson wants us to think on our own, but he also states, "Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? . . . They are for nothing but to inspire" (Wilchens 66). Inspiration is an act of combined intellect, the readers' and the author's. While Emerson does speak of becoming the individual creative intellect, he also states that we should use the books of the past in order to create a better future. I could point out a number of other quotes that demonstrate his agreement with LeFevre, but I'm just on my soap box so I won't.
Many times when reading LeFevre I thought of Emerson. Yes, I really like to read him. The point is that when we invent or create we are not alone, we are relying on the thoughts and inventions of others in order to jump to a new place.
When mapping I could not deal with all the authors cited, so I chose a few and decided to see where the links were. There were many, but what was more interesting to me was the number of fields of study that were part of the whole. Politics, cognition, math, philosophy, composition, anthropology and the list goes on. Writers rely on the ideas and notions of others, but not necessarily of others in their field. I'm not sure how it works in math or science, but I was pleased to see that those who are involved in the field of English, whether as creative writers, composition scholars, or rhetors, they draw from a wide field. It seems that creativity in this field involves thinking outside of everything, not just the box.
What I concluded was this: We create with the ideas and help and words of others, but we are driven by our own passions. It is that passion that is our own to rely on and to use in order to delve more deeply into what we are studying.
Maggie
Thoughts on a cognitive map
Writing as self-expression is linked to the romantic idea of the inspired writer (as exemplified in the Phaedrus example and Emerson) which in turn influenced composition studies, leading to the work of Elbow and Flower and Hayes. On the other hand, collaborative writing emerges through what LeFevre terms social resonance, interaction, and the collective. Collaborative writing has been in practice for centuries (example: the Bible), and in many other disciplines, but can lead to plagiarism hysteria.
The map was kind of fun to make, but I'm not sure if I have anything groundbreaking to say about it. Basically, I put sticky notes in the book whenever I encountered a source that I'd either read or a subject I knew about, then I tried to plug them all into the map. Here are some thoughts:
It's a lot easier to summarize the book from looking at a mind map rather than reading my notes.
I think cognitive maps are useful for thinking about how you think about something. My cognitive map shows that when I'd been reading this book, I'd sort of been thinking of LeFevre's argument as a dichotomy between writing as self-expression and writing as collaborative, even though I know it's more nuanced than that. This is interesting because LeFevre specifically says that this kind of thinking is an “unhelpful opposition.” I also sort of dropped the idea of “invention” specifically, and had been thinking more about the social nature of writing as a whole. So for example, if you had students make a cognitive map of assigned reading, it would be a lot easier to see where they're going wrong.
It's harder to BS in a mind map, because you have to be so concise and because you have to think about how things are related to each other.
My mind map showed me that there is plenty of precedent for collaborative writing. Why are compositionists the last ones to get on board? I wonder if it has to do with the fact that we don't have an infrastructure, for ourselves and for our students, to evaluate or reward it. To what degree has composition accepted writing as a social act in the 20 years since this book? If I had to guess, I'd say very little, especially with the plagiarism hysteria present in today's society.
The map was kind of fun to make, but I'm not sure if I have anything groundbreaking to say about it. Basically, I put sticky notes in the book whenever I encountered a source that I'd either read or a subject I knew about, then I tried to plug them all into the map. Here are some thoughts:
It's a lot easier to summarize the book from looking at a mind map rather than reading my notes.
I think cognitive maps are useful for thinking about how you think about something. My cognitive map shows that when I'd been reading this book, I'd sort of been thinking of LeFevre's argument as a dichotomy between writing as self-expression and writing as collaborative, even though I know it's more nuanced than that. This is interesting because LeFevre specifically says that this kind of thinking is an “unhelpful opposition.” I also sort of dropped the idea of “invention” specifically, and had been thinking more about the social nature of writing as a whole. So for example, if you had students make a cognitive map of assigned reading, it would be a lot easier to see where they're going wrong.
It's harder to BS in a mind map, because you have to be so concise and because you have to think about how things are related to each other.
My mind map showed me that there is plenty of precedent for collaborative writing. Why are compositionists the last ones to get on board? I wonder if it has to do with the fact that we don't have an infrastructure, for ourselves and for our students, to evaluate or reward it. To what degree has composition accepted writing as a social act in the 20 years since this book? If I had to guess, I'd say very little, especially with the plagiarism hysteria present in today's society.
Saturday, February 3, 2007
I'm Already Weaving Webs of Meaning
Even before this week’s assigned reading (LeFevre), I had already found myself analyzing texts in my 19th century lit course, inspired by on our previous week’s readings (LaTour, Gaonker, Trimbur, Gee, LeFevre). While poring over Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “The American Scholar” and “Self-Reliance,” I was struck by the degree to which Emerson consistently and repeatedly denies society. For instance, in “The American Scholar,” Emerson writes, “He [the scholar] and he only knows the world. The world of any moment is the merest appearance. Some great decorum, some fetish of government, some ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is cried up by half mankind [. . .] as if all depended on this [. . .] The odds are that the whole question is not worth the poorest thought which the scholar has lost in listening to the controversy.”
Will someone please write half my post?
So I'm reading page 123 of "The Fever", and thinking, "Exactly." Between all the X's, Y's, and Z's, there's a bevy of points that seem to illustrate a particular problematic. This also seems to hearken back to an earlier Faith-based point, regarding acceptance speeches...who DO we thank, versus who do we leave out. Who won't WANT us to mention them....etc. etc.
This reminds me also, speaking cross-discipliny, of the song writing business, where everyone claims they've been ripped off by someone else. While this is more about copyright infringement, I think it still holds true for citation/quotation. If Beck uses a sample (today, rather than before the laws got more stringent) he HAS to pay those people for its use. The sampling business tends to take as an unsaid premise, though, the idea that collaboration is inherent and even, .....good?
In the same way, when I, as a hack songwriter, use that guy in my hometown as a character in a song, do I necessarily have to note that "borrowing"? Do our students have to actually write, "This idea came to me the other day as I looked at the paper about the virgin Mary on the tortilla chip, and then I too saw Jesus in my toast, and then wrote this essay about the way that intersection of me, the newspaper, and my god-envisaged breakfast, along with all the prior trips with my parents to church and the people that came up with newspapers, and the guy who first invented the toaster all came together to create my blisteringly good introduction to this close reading assignment in your English 1000 course." To me, this seems overthetop.
Sure, it illustrates the fact that a generally infinite number of things/sources/inspirations come together to form our inventions, but at what point does it become nonsensical BS...like the bit above...? Where do we draw the line when we write our acceptance speeches?
Finally, If the above paper is granted an A? Is that A the writer's or some product of the collective? Does Charles Strite get a line in the Works Cited? These are the questions that try men's soles.
This reminds me also, speaking cross-discipliny, of the song writing business, where everyone claims they've been ripped off by someone else. While this is more about copyright infringement, I think it still holds true for citation/quotation. If Beck uses a sample (today, rather than before the laws got more stringent) he HAS to pay those people for its use. The sampling business tends to take as an unsaid premise, though, the idea that collaboration is inherent and even, .....good?
In the same way, when I, as a hack songwriter, use that guy in my hometown as a character in a song, do I necessarily have to note that "borrowing"? Do our students have to actually write, "This idea came to me the other day as I looked at the paper about the virgin Mary on the tortilla chip, and then I too saw Jesus in my toast, and then wrote this essay about the way that intersection of me, the newspaper, and my god-envisaged breakfast, along with all the prior trips with my parents to church and the people that came up with newspapers, and the guy who first invented the toaster all came together to create my blisteringly good introduction to this close reading assignment in your English 1000 course." To me, this seems overthetop.
Sure, it illustrates the fact that a generally infinite number of things/sources/inspirations come together to form our inventions, but at what point does it become nonsensical BS...like the bit above...? Where do we draw the line when we write our acceptance speeches?
Finally, If the above paper is granted an A? Is that A the writer's or some product of the collective? Does Charles Strite get a line in the Works Cited? These are the questions that try men's soles.
By "Distracted" and "Lazy" I Actually Mean "Potentially Stoned Out of His Mind"
I think I’m ready to take a seat all the way down at the “Collective Perspective” end of the invention continuum that LeFevre proposes. I particularly enjoyed the arguments that suggest language itself is actually a collective force because it reminds me of what a distracted, lazy professor once told me Stanley Fish’s There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech...And it’s a Good Thing Too is about, even though to my knowledge, this is not Fish’s main focus in that book.
So maybe Stanley Fish would agree with this, or maybe he wouldn’t. I don’t care. The distracted, lazy professor’s explanation of Stanley Fish is what I’m most interested in right now. Basically, the argument isn’t concerned with the First Amendment but with our actual utterances instead. It goes like this: Not only is meaning in people, but meaning is contextual. Every single one of our utterances, regardless of the opinion we express, is socially constrained by our attempts to package our messages in a way that makes sense to others.
Without the agreement of others, our words don’t mean a thing. Add to this the need to meet some basic grammatical requirements in order to be understood. If we were really free to speak whatever we wanted, nobody would be able to comprehend anything that anybody else was saying – it would all be gibberish. This is why it’s actually a “good thing” that there’s no such thing as free speech. Of course, another way of looking at it would be to get upset that the social is robbing us all of our freedom.
Because language is collective force, rhetorical invention must also be a collective force. I can dig that. Now, I’d like to thank Karen Burke LeFevre, Hilary Putnam, Ferdinand de Saussure, Stanley Fish, my lazy, distracted professor, and everyone who tacitly agrees with the general meaning of these words for making this post possible.
So maybe Stanley Fish would agree with this, or maybe he wouldn’t. I don’t care. The distracted, lazy professor’s explanation of Stanley Fish is what I’m most interested in right now. Basically, the argument isn’t concerned with the First Amendment but with our actual utterances instead. It goes like this: Not only is meaning in people, but meaning is contextual. Every single one of our utterances, regardless of the opinion we express, is socially constrained by our attempts to package our messages in a way that makes sense to others.
Without the agreement of others, our words don’t mean a thing. Add to this the need to meet some basic grammatical requirements in order to be understood. If we were really free to speak whatever we wanted, nobody would be able to comprehend anything that anybody else was saying – it would all be gibberish. This is why it’s actually a “good thing” that there’s no such thing as free speech. Of course, another way of looking at it would be to get upset that the social is robbing us all of our freedom.
Because language is collective force, rhetorical invention must also be a collective force. I can dig that. Now, I’d like to thank Karen Burke LeFevre, Hilary Putnam, Ferdinand de Saussure, Stanley Fish, my lazy, distracted professor, and everyone who tacitly agrees with the general meaning of these words for making this post possible.
Cultural Learnings for Make Benefit Glorious Blog Post
I think LeFevre has a knack for using great examples (and not just quotations) to back up her points. So to give us something concrete to talk about, I thought I'd try one of my own.
The Oscar nominations came out this past week. The movie Borat was nominated for “Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay.” The nominees from Borat are three writers for “screenplay/story,” one for just “screenplay” and one for just “story.” This strikes me as interesting for several reasons. First, although the main character of the movie – Borat – is a fictional creation of his portrayer, the rest of the movie presents itself as being improvised – Borat goes up to people and asks them questions. So although one question to be asked is how much of the movie was staged (read: scripted) and how do we feel about that, I think more interesting is the question of what an improvised movie's screenplay would look like. Is the screenplay just a list of questions that Borat was going to ask, and funny things he was going to do? Did someone write down the supposedly spontaneous responses of his interviewees and submit them as “the screenplay” to the Academy? If all the writers wrote was questions and a overall structure, is that creative process on par with the other nominees? Is that fair? Does this mean that documentaries can now be in the adapted screenplay category?
I am not the only one asking these questions. The Writer's Guild of America, when pressed, said that Borat did indeed have a script, although they wouldn't say what it was, issuing the following cryptic statement: “The Writers Guild basically recognizes the creative process of writing, whether it's traditional drama or comedy, whether it's reality or documentary or animation. It's all writing.” The WGA is also fighting for recognition for reality-TV writers (who apparently need recognition). Sacha Baron Cohen, the head writer and main character of the film, said that the “script” for the movie and how it finally turned out are “remarkably the same.”
In my mind, this raises a number of deliciously rhetorical and social questions. If I interview someone and put their spoken words on film, does that make them a writer? Am I ethically required to “cite” them, so to speak? Would Cohen not be getting sued if his interviewees had received credit, and the Oscar nomination, for their words? Overall, how do we represent the social nature of writing? (As Maggie sez, LeFevre's name is the only one on the cover.) Do we need to think of new ways to pay tribute to our influences, or do we call the whole thing off and only give credit the “main” writer?
(As an addendum, if we want to see the social nature of a lone creative act, we only need listen to the endless thank-you's of the Oscar acceptance speech.)
The Oscar nominations came out this past week. The movie Borat was nominated for “Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay.” The nominees from Borat are three writers for “screenplay/story,” one for just “screenplay” and one for just “story.” This strikes me as interesting for several reasons. First, although the main character of the movie – Borat – is a fictional creation of his portrayer, the rest of the movie presents itself as being improvised – Borat goes up to people and asks them questions. So although one question to be asked is how much of the movie was staged (read: scripted) and how do we feel about that, I think more interesting is the question of what an improvised movie's screenplay would look like. Is the screenplay just a list of questions that Borat was going to ask, and funny things he was going to do? Did someone write down the supposedly spontaneous responses of his interviewees and submit them as “the screenplay” to the Academy? If all the writers wrote was questions and a overall structure, is that creative process on par with the other nominees? Is that fair? Does this mean that documentaries can now be in the adapted screenplay category?
I am not the only one asking these questions. The Writer's Guild of America, when pressed, said that Borat did indeed have a script, although they wouldn't say what it was, issuing the following cryptic statement: “The Writers Guild basically recognizes the creative process of writing, whether it's traditional drama or comedy, whether it's reality or documentary or animation. It's all writing.” The WGA is also fighting for recognition for reality-TV writers (who apparently need recognition). Sacha Baron Cohen, the head writer and main character of the film, said that the “script” for the movie and how it finally turned out are “remarkably the same.”
In my mind, this raises a number of deliciously rhetorical and social questions. If I interview someone and put their spoken words on film, does that make them a writer? Am I ethically required to “cite” them, so to speak? Would Cohen not be getting sued if his interviewees had received credit, and the Oscar nomination, for their words? Overall, how do we represent the social nature of writing? (As Maggie sez, LeFevre's name is the only one on the cover.) Do we need to think of new ways to pay tribute to our influences, or do we call the whole thing off and only give credit the “main” writer?
(As an addendum, if we want to see the social nature of a lone creative act, we only need listen to the endless thank-you's of the Oscar acceptance speech.)
Friday, February 2, 2007
LeFevre Fever
Maggie's comments about LeFevre made me think about her overall distinction between individual and social, and whether the weirdness of it stems from her work being a little older (LeFevre, not Maggie :)). It was actually when I was using the reading protocol from our syllabus that I discovered that I did, possibly, disagree with something that she said, so holla, Donna, for making disagreement a potential part of the reading process.
The main question inspired by what I read so far is, "What is this individual that's being juxtaposed with the social?" Class discussion covered how we juxtapose the two naturally, but LeFevre's concessions to Platonic invention techniques, as allowing student writers to "look inside" for material, seems a little strange, since we're talking about invention as a social act, and it follows, maybe, that the "inside" where students are looking is a social space, even if it's one where they interact with the Buberian (Buberistic? Buberlicious?) Thou. So the idea that students could retreat into themselves, using Platonic invention, works as a concession to Platonists reading the book, but seems like it might weaken her overall attempt to demonstrate the social as the necessary focus for invention.
Again, I wonder if I'm reading material that would have been groundbreaking in 1987 (and still is, to me, definitely) with a mindset brought on by the social turn that her work may have helped to promote. I may also be making assumptions about LeFevre and the social; she may not think that knowledge is an inherently social thang.
The main question inspired by what I read so far is, "What is this individual that's being juxtaposed with the social?" Class discussion covered how we juxtapose the two naturally, but LeFevre's concessions to Platonic invention techniques, as allowing student writers to "look inside" for material, seems a little strange, since we're talking about invention as a social act, and it follows, maybe, that the "inside" where students are looking is a social space, even if it's one where they interact with the Buberian (Buberistic? Buberlicious?) Thou. So the idea that students could retreat into themselves, using Platonic invention, works as a concession to Platonists reading the book, but seems like it might weaken her overall attempt to demonstrate the social as the necessary focus for invention.
Again, I wonder if I'm reading material that would have been groundbreaking in 1987 (and still is, to me, definitely) with a mindset brought on by the social turn that her work may have helped to promote. I may also be making assumptions about LeFevre and the social; she may not think that knowledge is an inherently social thang.
Navigating LeFevre
It seems to me that invention must be a social act if one is to go by the number of references to other authors, philosophers, rhetors, and various others mentioned by LeFevre. One needs a map to make it through. The number of names contained in the work is confusing and make the reading choppy and cumbersome. Perhaps this is because I’m watching for her references to others because of the “map”, so I wondered if anyone else found this overwhelming.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)