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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 January 28, 2007 08:47 PM
Comments
Count yourself lucky if this is the only time you feel the enterprise is futile.
And when that futility is staring you in the face, look away. Pretend you didn't see it. And keep on.
Posted by: madeline at January 28, 2007 10:27 PM