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January 28, 2007
Questions?
Eileen was pushing me again last week about my questions. Questions. The bane of my graduate school existence is this requirement of questions.
So today I continued my reading of George Kennedy's Classical Rhetoric and its Secular and Christian Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times, and I got at least some glimpse of what might constitute a question with regard to this major exam on rhetoric. Kennedy's book is a history. It is not an anthology with commentary added. In fact, there are few textual excepts. But there are references to rhetoricians I've never heard of until today. There is a logic to the structure of this history that is more than linear through time. And it is a different history than I've been used to in this "discipline." And maybe that's the core of the question:
What is the difference between rhetoric as an academic discipline in the sense of the modern university, and rhetoric as a series of practices in a variety of social and political contexts over a very long period of time?
In one of the anthologies I read that focused on women, the editor wrote that the canon of rhetoric had largely been a history of men writing textbooks for other (primarily white, educated) men. Thus, the effort to theorize the communicative practices of women and non-white men... well, here's where the words start to stop making sense, and the essence of the question falls apart. If all communicative practices are rhetoric, then what is a canon, or why would there be one? But if there isn't a canon, then how is rhetoric an academic discipline? If the discipline is about theorizing practices of communication/persuasion/influence/instruction, then what makes it a companion to composition when it's already attached to speech? If it's attached to both, then why aren't they working together to theorize it (here is the institutional divide problem)? And how does any theory worked up by one side apply to or gain legitimacy with the other? To what purpose do we theorize these practices by these individuals across history?
In different periods, rhetoric had clearly defined purposes - from the forum of Athens, to the Senate of Rome, to the Church, to the bar - and these purposes drove the instruction. Young men received training in how to speak eloquently in this public places. Rhetoric and the instruction in it aimed at very practical civic purposes.
Pass by the many centuries, and re-enter at the latter end of the 20th century. Scholars work to recover women's communication - mostly written because of the lack of record of any public speaking - from ancient and medieval times. Other scholars seek to enter records of African-American speaking and writing into formal rhetoric studies. Why? Because these communicative practices served persuasive and influential purposes outside the spotlit public arena, and within the theoretical definitions of rhetoric, these communicative practices qualify for inclusion. Do people need to be trained in these forms of communication? Or only trained in how to study and theorize them? to what end is the education in rhetoric when it is all inclusive?
It's too easy for me, when I start with the questions, to end up believing the entire enterprise is futile. Then what?
Posted by cageyer at 08:47 PM | Comments (1)
January 17, 2007
On (Written) Argument
Berrill, Deborah P. editor. Perspectives on Written Argument. Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, Inc., 1996.
Edited collections abound in this discipline, which is nice for exam preparation since I don't have to do a lot of journal searching for articles because there are so many authors involved in these collections.
I think my favorite essay of this collection is Berrill's own on "Reframing Argument from the Metaphor of War." For all the feminist scholarship aimed at inclusiveness and opening up the tradition, this seems to me to take on the core of the male-dominant nature of the history. Argument is not war, but Berrill does a nice job (as do other scholars in other places, to be fair) picking up on Lakoff and Johnson's work in Metaphors we Live By, highlighting how often the descriptions of verbal interaction include metaphors such as "destroy," "smash," and "demolish."
The point of this collection is to ask "what is argument?" and then "formulate what the question means" (2). It is not new information to me that the combative, debate-style version of argument isn't all that argument is. Since my goal was to be a lawyer, I learned that argument is case-building. In my years of biblical research, it might be termed "precept upon precept, line upon line." Story-telling is argument, it's a proposal to see the world in a certain way, to believe certain things are true about that world, and to life according to that view. So in the introduction to the volume, this comment stands out:
These different voices necessarily carry different beliefs about what constitutes validity, about what sorts of evidence are acceptable or even must be include, about what difference is all about and hence, what argument is all about. (5)
Basically, as Berrill says in her introduction, this collection taken as a whole points out that "the essential aspect of argument is the voicing of differences" (6). Some of the essays focus on the way children make arguments - narratives and stories and examples from which they expect others to behave or respond in a certain way. Other authors in the series talk about how people in other cultures (Japan, African Americans, other Pacific cultures) view argument. All these point to the decentering of Eurocentric theory of argument as logical and rational (only).
I'm not sure who the audience for this collection is. The series editor's preface specified "writing in the human world" and that the series "presents scholarly work on written language in its various contexts" (vii). As a CCR student, little in this text was new, though several of the essays were enjoyable to read.
Posted by cageyer at 06:46 PM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2007
Women and Rhetoric
Three collections of essays with one theme: women were a part of the history of rhetoric and henceforth education in rhetoric will open up this previously unaccounted history.
In her Afterword to The Changing Tradition: Women in the History of Rhetoric, Christine Mason Sutherland positions that collection in relation to Reclaiming Rhetorica, the "first of its kind" collection ultimately edited by Andrea Lunsford, and Listening to Their Voices, edited by Molly Meijer Wertheimer. She writes:
In speaking of the archeological project to which her volume contributed, Lunsford emphasizes a need, above all, to listen; this work of listening is continued in the book edited by Molly Wertheimer....The contributors to this volume, too, are less interested in redefining rhetoric than in opening it up and challenging "the basic conception of rhetoric as agonized debate" (253).
She goes on to specify that "inclusivity...is the guiding principle of the present volume."
That seems to be the key to this thread of scholarship in rhetoric. It's not an attempt to stuff women into the existing rhetorical tradition and its theoretical frames. Rather, it is an attempt to expand the notion of rhetoric, to argue that these writings and behaviors of women through history constitute rhetoric, even though they do not match the received and taught traditions. It's about questioning the absent: "Even if it is true [that women played no part in the rhetorical tradition], does that mean that women were excluded from rhetorical activity?" (252). The answer, from all three volumes, is a resounding "No."
Lundfords collection, Reclaiming Rhetorica began as student driven inquiry. Where were the women in the rhetorical tradition? How could these students know? What evidence could they find? In a sense, this collection is an historical archive project, calling up the writings and records of the lives of women in history and making a case that their activities constituted practices of rhetoric. The essays in this collection are careful to set each woman in her historical context, the social, family and power structures within which she made attempts to persuade, instruct, or plead for particular outcomes. This is not easy work, since many of these women left no written texts of their own. Susan Jarratt, for example, makes note of having to begin with the question, "did Aspasia exist?" Building her argument from a succession of other texts mentioning Aspasia, her salon, her compositions, and her circle of influence, Jarratt gives Aspasia the depth of a "real" historical figure. Other women in history did leave artifacts, such as letters, or instruction manuals for their children, or even religious writings. Scholars deadling with these figures, such as Mary Astell, don't have to first prove her existence, but focus instead on styling those writings and communicative practices as rhetoric, and worthy of inclusion in the rhetorical tradition. This collection also opens up the possibilities for more scholars to search for more figures, and thus open up the tradition of rhetoric even further.
Historical figures discussed in this collection include Aspasia, Diotima, Margery Kempe, Christine de Pisan, Mary Astell, Mary Wollstonecraft, Margaret Fuller, Ida B. Wells, Sojourner Truth, Laura Jackson, Susanne K. Langer, Louise Rosenblatt and Julia Kristeva. Significantly, some of these figures and other women discussed in other collections, appear in the 2nd edition of The Rhetorical Tradition (2000). And the collection called Available Means: An Anthology of Women's Rhetoric(s) (2001) presents women's writing and speeches as a collection, rather than having a set of essays about the women who made them. For me, this really shows the importance of the work Lunsford and her group and Wertheimer and her group did. It a very short period, a major anthology of the history was revised, and a free-standing anthology was assembled.
Wertheimer's collection emerged from a different set of circumstances, but at roughly the same time as Lunsford's work. Wertheimer characterizes her collection as within the boundaries of feminist theory. It is an interdisciplinary work, featuring scholars from history and rhetoric, and is positioned for "the promotion of pluralism." Aspasia appears here, along with Harriet Taylor and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, both of whom have remained underexplored and underappreciated alongside their male collaborators. Dhuoda, who wrote an instruction manual for her hostage sons, and Hildegard of Bingen invoked the authority of God working through her to give her writing authority at a time when women were to be silent, especially in the church. Margaret Cavendish broke the barrier of publishing in her own name as a woman, with her husband's support an an audience of his educated friends. An essay featuring the journal of Hestor Ann Rogers shows how the Methodist church under John Wesley encouraged women's rhetorical activity, only to silence them after his death. Additional essays discuss more general the rhetorical practices of women in Ancient Egypt and Rome. Interestingly, in the case of Rome, Robert W. Cape, Jr. discusses how women were allowed to speak in public, and the conditions under which they were hear. Malcom Richardson used business correspondence make his claims about women's rhetorical practices in Medeival England. while Shirley Wilson Logan contributes a chapter on the rhetorical activity of African American women in the nineteenth century, work she later expanded into a book. Mary Wollstonecraft is included here, positioned a little differently than in the Lunsford collection with her work set alongside Hugh Blair's in a feminist reading of Blair. Finally, the collection concludes with discussions of rhetoric handbooks at the turn of the 20th century authored by Gertrude Buck, Hallie Quinn Brown and Mary Augusta Jordan. Each of these women, Jane Donawerth agrues, wrote texts that differed from those intended for men in order to recognize the experiences of women, and the spaces in which their communication lived, more private than public, more conversation than address. These early women instructors works have been taken up since this collection in larger projects on the history of rhetoric and higher education.
The Sutherland/Sutcliffe collection emerged from an international, interdisciplinary conference. These essay extend the project of discovery. Vicki Collins' work on Hestor Rogers re-appears here, as does Jan Swearingen's work on Diotma. Aspasia is again featured, as are Mary Astell and Gerturde Buck. The collection also features St. Catherine of Siena, Lady Mary Wroth, Donna Haraway and Nicole Brossard, along with more general essays about different periods or theories (feminist thought, in particular.) I found the essay on Catherine of Siena particularly interesting, since Margo Husby Scheeler basically reads her life as a text, following Kenneth Burke's notion of behavior as rhetoric. In this case, Catherine's ethos made her iconic, so that the message of her life and its power to influence lived after her as if she were a book to be read and obeyed. Scheeler also makes a key point about recovery work of a historical figure. Following Habermas, she writes, "The researcher cannot merely subject the historical person's life to the researcher's standards but has to endeavor to understand how the person being studied interpreted her actions within the context of her own life." I wish that all my classes deadling with historical figures had begun with this admonition.
From my perspective as a CCR student from 2004 to now, the presence of women in the history of rhetoric, in the rhetorical tradition was "natural." These collections show the efforts that were necessary to make that so.
Posted by cageyer at 09:31 PM | Comments (0)
The project I'm not doing
Geisler, Cheryl. Analyzing Streams of Lanuage: Twelve Steps to the Systematic Coding of Text, Talk, and Other Verbal Data. New York: Pearson Longman, 2004.
This book would be a great text for anyone who was engaged in a coding project (which I am not). When I took M.H.'s 691 methods course a couple years ago, we visited this method (coding) in brief. The whole project of identifying "basic units of language" in a text - the words, "t-units." clauses, etc. seem much more detailed and minute than I am interested in. It's useful to me for clarifying what my project is not, which is why I think LWP recommended it for me. I'm interested in a different level of analysis - something more general, more big picture. But I can see that in rhetorical analysis, the tendency to pick out words and argue for what those words suggest about the text, could easily border on this kind of coding project. Knowing this, I'll be careful to be specific in defining my method.
Now, having said all that, if I ever needed to do this kind of analysis, I would definitely want this text next to me.
Posted by cageyer at 09:18 PM | Comments (0)
January 11, 2007
Of Reading and not writing
I've been reading for my upcoming exams. I had originally planned to takes notes, the same way that I would take notes from a book I was using to work up a seminar paper. But this reading is different. I'm not preparing to write an argumentative paper, not really. What I'm really hoping for is to synthesize a broad base of knowledge in response to a question that is generated to allow me to demonstrate my understanding of the field.
Thus, taking notes on each separate text in my usual manner--where I pull out many pithy or interesting quotes and sometimes, but not often, add my own responsive comments to them--doesn't seem very helpful. What seems more useful here is to talk about these many texts in terms of their relationship to each other and to the larger topic and my goals for understanding it.
I came to this realization with some clarity this morning while considering The Changing Tradition: Women in the History of Rhetoric, a collection of essays edited by Christine Mason Sutherland and Rebecca Sutcliffe. I obtained this book through Interlibrary Loan, and had to specially negotiate a two-week renewal after I missed the original due date (tip: check both the ILLiad system and the library patron info when accounting for the over 100 books checked out for exam purposes). The looming deadline for returning the book put me in front of the computer with it next to me. But there I got stumped. Should I take notes on each essay? Did I even care about each essay? what was really important to me about having read this book? What did I learn that pertains to my exam purpose?
I found the answer in the preface. This collection emerged from an international conference about 10 years ago. Editor Mason Sutherland makes note in the preface about two other collections already in print: Reclaiming Rhetorica and Listening to Their Voices. In the afterword, she discusses how those collections contributed to this and how this one differs. Voila! I had my answer. I have read Listening. So what I'll do next is read Reclaiming and then write about the three taken together under more general prompts like: what common themes appear through these texts? What are these editors/authors saying about the history of rhetoric and the role/place of women in it? What is rhetoric in this frame and how does it differ from the traditional rhetorical canon these texts are challenging?
Yes, there are sure to be some key quotes along the way, but the idea is broad understanding and dialogue between sources (gee.... where have I heard that assignment before?) across the history - my take on it, and how it makes sense to me.
Now that I have this little ah-ha, it seems so much easier to approach all the other texts I've read and have an idea what to do with them in terms of notes and preparation. 5 weeks or so to go. Don't anybody start a countdown.
Posted by cageyer at 11:46 AM | Comments (0)