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Articles Conference Reviews |
2008C15CostelloWhere is the ‘Rhetoric’ in Rhetoric and Composition? Panel Chair:
Speakers:
This session was originally scheduled in a large ballroom and was then moved to a much smaller room with no explanation. The room change caused many to arrive late at the session—including me, so I missed a few opening sentences. The new room was quickly filled to overflowing and many people had to stand. The audience listened raptly as Michael Bernard-Donals stood and opened with an introduction. Michael Bernard-Donals, University of Madison, Wisconsin, “Why Composition Needs Rhetoric” As the organizer of the panel, Bernard-Donals had brought these speakers together and thanked them for presenting on rhetoric. His paper involved a brief discussion of rhetoric and language from several perspectives. He first discussed Lyotard’s concept of difference. This is an important concept to continually reconsider because language, as Bernard-Donals insisted, involves marking conflict as conflict. He noted Janet Hapwell, who contends that rhetoric should determine the nature of social practices and serve as a means to their investigation. Finally, he cited Paul De Mann’s notion of finding rhetorical means, a means by which we should find the “rich potential of that being translated.” From here Bernard-Donals echoed the title of the panel: Where is Rhetoric in Rhetoric and Composition? Since the 1994 CCCCs conference in Nashville, TN, “rhetoric” as a subject has been in decline. He decided to work through CCCCs programs from 2001-2007 looking for “rhetoric” in panel titles. In each year, “rhetoric” appeared thirty to fifty-five times in each conference (more frequently toward the end). Getting more specific, he then asked: when and where does it show up on the program? Of forty-eight sessions in 2001, more than half fell under either the “History” or “Theory” divisions. In the “Teaching” divisions, “rhetoric” was barely visible, appearing in just nine of two hundred panels. When it showed up in “History,” it dealt with topics like Burke or women’s rhetorical histories. When it showed up in “Theory,” the term “rhetoric” seemed a metonym for theory, and it often appeared with regard to technical writing and visual rhetoric. Only nine panels in seven years (out of 400-600 panels every year) had “rhetoric” under the “Research” division. His conclusion from these findings was that, although our field is called Rhetoric and Composition, rhetoric is marginalized. It is seen as more of an archive, a history, or a methodology—but it isn’t seen as a good avenue for research. Rhetoric, however, is fertile ground that can represent identities and race conflict. The marginalization of rhetoric reflects our field as “seeking consensus,” and reflects how the field of Rhetoric and Composition still feels anxiety about its own identity. Materiality cannot be integrated linguistically, and because rhetoric engages precisely with material situations fraught with instability, it naturally threatens the tenuous nature of our field’s identity. Rhetoric as difference and as translation becomes more with that translation. Bernard-Donals suggested that we need to pay more attention to rhetoric because it makes us aware of what is not translatable or stable. Rhetoric can do all the things we seek but the problem is that— “we aren’t at home in the field we inhabit.” Writing as rhetoric displaces social and political positions in language, allowing us to radically reposition ourselves in relation to our students. Thomas Rickert, Purdue University, “Rhetoric beyond Pedagogy and Critique: Plans for Vitalization” Rickert began with some quotes from a Nation article, which looked at the MLA job list. It showed the field of literature shrinking and the field of rhetoric and composition growing. He found the description of rhetoric and composition in this article disturbing: “expository writing and the service arm of English.” Citing Robert Mayhew’s essay on rhetoric, Rickert discussed how rhetoric is distributed across the university. First-year writing, a major component of many rhetoric and composition programs, is outside the question of “where is the rhetoric in Rhetoric and Composition” because rhetoric doesn’t even exist there; it exists in English, communications, and speech departments. According to Mayhew, the separation of these departments makes rhetoric fragmented. Departments of speech concentrate more on speech than writing. Rhetoric and composition is very focused on first-year writing. Mayhew advocates for “cultural rhetoric study” to reunite the strands. Cultural studies, however, was (and is) controversial. Some say it’s too political or that it squeezes out other forms of writing, but Mayhew suggests we can depoliticize it. Rickert then asked: Why is there such an uneasy relationship between rationality and critique? It is because rhetoric is not rational. Rickert’s hypothesis is that we cannot imagine rhetoric at the university because of this fact. He suggested looking back at where we came from—toward the German model. The empirical research model became a move toward research over teaching, which elevated literature over rhetoric. Overall, this model valued critique. If we look at the early German universities in Berlin, we see a split between higher and lower faculty, professions/careers of government interest and the humanities respectively. Humanities research is linked to “truth” and reason, which allows scholars to critique society. Thus we can see the connection to Mayhew’s cultural study of rhetoric, which ultimately devalues rhetoric because cultural critique and causal explanations allow the debasement of persuasion. It “re-territorializes” the areas and allows reason to function as a demand and a principal. Why do we have so much faith in reason when so much defies reason? Rickert’s final conclusion was that Mayhew’s proposal may be “reasonable,” but that rhetoric is not reasonable. In the university it is defanged. We need to use rhetoric as more than a critical paradigm. Rosa Eberly, The Pennsylvania State University, “Rhetoric’s CCCClosets” Eberly began by discussing Steve Earle’s music. She asked the audience if anyone knew a particular song. One person said yes, but couldn’t sing it. There was laughter and a light mood to begin her piece. Her first claim was to have a “speech impediment” – that is, she teaches both speech and composition. She then turned the audience toward the idea of kairos. Bernard-Donals has been asking about kairos for a long time, she said, and it is the “most exigent question” for our field. The paper she presented actually began in 2004 when she was speaking to a group of speech and rhetoric and composition folks. Joking about the irony of these two fields together in one room she said—and don’t think that the “performative” nature of my talk means that I don’t take this seriously! The audience laughed, enjoying themselves. Rhetoric, she noted, as one of the oldest fields of study, is a field where you “risk having your mind changed.” Living this divide is different than describing it. She called herself a “rhetorician” and while she does public relations for rhetoric, her faith in it is gone …well, it was gone, she said, until Michael asked her here. Her main point was that even though the arguments for rhetoric are difficult in difficult times, we need to unite rhetoric within fields. Why is rhetoric so marginalized in the academy? Why, as history and practice, is rhetoric not looked at centrally? Why can’t we work collaboratively to promote rhetoric? She claimed that we cannot do these things because rhetoric is “closeted.” Michael Warner in Publics and Counterpublics, talks about the public sphere, as does Nancy Fraser. This should be of special concern to rhetoricians. Eberly stated, however, that Warner doesn’t mention Bitzer, Ede, or Lunsford on audience. His book talks about the “invisible presence of publics,” and moves to the gendered nature of publics—and that which is closeted. The “closet” is culture’s problem according to Warner. Eberly said it really was Plato that put the “ick” in “rhetoric,” (a line that also got a lot of laughs), but rhetoric has formed a closet for itself—it’s invisible but everywhere. She finished by stating rhetoric’s predicament in terms of Morgan Mercy’s notion of walls: “Sometimes you have to get out of the closet and sometimes you need walls.” Discussion and Overview There were many questions in the discussion portion of this panel and all reflected a sincere commitment to the question posed in the panel’s main title. One of the questions from the audience was: Why do we substitute terms like “literacy” instead of “rhetoric” or “multimodal literacies” instead of “multimodal rhetoric”? Eberly responded that the reason is the history—rhetoric is elitist and white, but literacy has less baggage. Rhetoric never recovered from Plato’s thumping. But, she wondered—is it even important what we call ourselves anymore? Composition studies is degraded, but believe me, she said, communication studies is degraded even more. The thing is, if “everything has turned to rhetoric” as some claim, does it even matter how you define it? What do administrators hear in “rhetoric”? They hear lying and posturing not strategies. Michael pointed out that one way to talk about what we do is to talk about the “effective use of language in civic space.” The caveat is that the annunciation of space may silence “non-members” of that public, which also makes clear the ethical dimension of the study of language. We can ask: “How can we make rhetoric visible at CCCCs,” but grants aren’t motivated by the word “rhetoric” either, and this is where corporate universities are going. It is about common goods, but what if certain fields are not invited? Eberly added: It’s about seeing, making, and doing. For rhetoric, we need to make it easy for our outside audience. All the speakers concluded that what we share in thinking about rhetoric is that language has consequences and can bring people together. It has a power that is getting lost. This was a concise, united finish, which I thought was appropriate to the panel topic. The panel got loud applause. About half the audience filed out and half stayed to chat with the panelists. Many had to move outside to talk with panelists as the next session drifted in. |