Couture's Phenomenological Rhetoric
For compositionist Barbara Couture, a rhetoric understood as "intersubjective truth-seeking" (184) is a rhetoric that "inscribes a way of living together, enabling speakers and listeners to reach a mutual truth, even within the context of irreconcilable difference" (185). Resisting what she sees as the destructive and paralyzing relativism of poststructuralist theory, which posits countless truths in the absence of any universally valid truth, Couture argues that the only obstacle to truth is "the unwillingness of those who seek truth to be changed by language, that is, to view truth seeking as bound up with our very being in the world" (91). Thus, truth-seeking and truth itself are inherently social, and our purpose as humans, as understood by phenomenologists Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, is "to participate together in writing the truth of our shared world" (92). Language, of course, is central to this shared project of truth-seeking: "Intersubjectivity – the active condition by which we become conscious of the world and its meaning – is maintained through our speaking with others" (93).
This emphasis on shared truth, which is acquired or achieved through careful reflection on experience in the context of our "speaking with others," reflects a sense of being as fundamentally interconnected and requires literate practice that not only recognizes that interconnectedness but also acts on it. The intersections between Couture's vision and the other pedagogical visions I have referred to in this webtext, such as ecofeminism and environmental studies, are obvious. All promote a genuinely social and ethical approach to teaching that rests on some version of the notion of interconnectedness.
But I would amend Couture's phenomenological framework by broadening her view to incorporate the more-than-human world. In other words, her sustained and crucial emphasis on reflection on our experiences in the context of our relationships with other human beings should extend to our relationship with our environment and nonhuman beings, and it should attend to the consequences of our truth-seeking on those relationships as well. (Such an extension of Couture's focus would be consistent with her phenomenological framework, since phenomenology focuses much of its analysis on perception and experience of the physical.) Only by broadening our understanding of what it means to be human in this way can we enlist Couture's important work in our efforts to address the serious threats to our existence.
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