Main Theoretical and Practical Issues of Disciplinarity Disciplinarity Michael Leff: For me, one of the most interesting results of planning and attending the conference was the view of disciplinarity that emerged. Rhetoric has an ambiguous status in the contemporary academy—it both is and is not a discipline. Some scholars in English and Communication departments who regard themselves as rhetoricians discover, once they start talking with one another, that they have more in common with people from the other “discipline” than with colleagues in their own department, and they tend to regard rhetoric as “their discipline” even though its identity crosses the departmental lines that ordinarily define a discipline. On the other hand, a lot of people study rhetoric seriously but think of it as an interdisciplinary activity that necessarily crosses the boundaries of the various human sciences. For these scholars, it may seem parochial and artificial to fix rhetoric in disciplinary accoutrements. Rhetoric, after all, pertains to modes of argument and expression that apply to most, if not all, types of discourse, including the types produced within the academic disciplines. And in a strong formulation of this perspective, rhetoric becomes more than an aspect of discursive practice—it opens a general perspective on life—a mode of being in the world. Disciplinary and interdisciplinary rhetoric Michael Leff: In recent years, this difference has expressed itself as a debate between “big (interdisciplinary) rhetoric” and “little (disciplinary) rhetoric.” The exchange has sometimes become heated, and the opposition between the two camps has begun to degenerate into something like trench warfare. But after sitting through the conference, I now think that there is a relatively simple resolution to this dispute: Both sides are right—this is a matter of both/and rather than either/or. Adherents of disciplinary rhetoric are right to say that their subject has a specific and important role to play in the academy, and it cannot play that role without having something like the dimensions (and hence the limitations) of an academic discipline. Adherents of big rhetoric, however, are right to say that the subject encompasses more than what we can pack into courses on composition, public speaking, argumentation, and the like. Without reference to these larger horizons, our view of the subject would be hopelessly cramped—so much so that disciplinary teaching would lose its vigor. And all of us should know by now that a “rhetorical consciousness” is possible and has serious philosophical and political implications. The difference between these two positions is real and substantial, but they are not mutually exclusive, and under the right circumstances, their recognition might yield a productive (and thoroughly rhetorical) competitive collaboration. That is, interdisciplinary rhetoric can act as a check against disciplinary rhetoric turning into a dreary set of routines. Disciplinary rhetoric can act as ballast to stabilize the ethereal tendencies of big rhetoric. Neither side should try to discard or trivialize the view of the other. Andrea Lunsford: I agree with Mike that these “sides” are not mutually exclusive and that rhetoric can and should operate in both disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts. I would add only that for many feminist scholars—across disciplinary boundaries—rhetoric as a discipline, a theory, or a set of strategies and practices—is problematic because of its long association in Western history with masculine, agonistic discourse. Some of the working groups grappled with this issue, but we need to do much more to resolve the tension between “traditional” rhetoric and those it has traditionally excluded. Challenging the canon Michael Leff: As far as I could judge, the people at the conference tended toward disciplinary rhetoric, and there seemed two common features that marked this tendency. The first is a knowledge of and interest in a group of canonical texts. This is not to say that the canon is fixed. It isn’t. As Pat Bizzell has noted, it changes as a function of the evolving attitudes and interests of rhetoricians, but as Pat also explains, change is never immediate and overwhelming. The monument is sometimes eroded, sometimes expanded, constantly altered, but it does retain recognizable shape over very long periods of time. Moreover, the interpretation and evaluation of works within the canon is also a matter of dispute and change: Aristotle’s Rhetoric, long admired as the paradigm of sound rhetoric, recently has become the object of vehement critique; the once scorned Sophists are now thoroughly rehabilitated; attitudes toward Isocrates have shifted in keeping with contemporary interests in contingent reasoning and the importance of performance, and so on. Interpretation of these works is a restless business, but while revisionists and traditionalists are constantly attacking one another, the attacks normally have to do with the same texts. So I think that despite the recent turmoil about the tradition and what it should include, the canon still stands (though in much modified form) and remains a common concern. Andrea Lunsford: I was pleasantly surprised to find as much openness to challenging one traditional canon as there was at this meeting. In general, most people I heard speak seemed to accept the fact that we have multiple traditions of rhetoric and that, even within one tradition, there is wide variation. Speaking of an American rhetorical tradition, for example, doesn’t obviate the fact that Native American rhetorics have their own strong place and tradition. The working group I spent most time with, one on Rhetorical Traditions, explored several metaphors for thinking about traditions. They rejected pretty much out of hand the tree/root metaphor (with classical western rhetoric the taproot) in favor of something more like a constellation (an array of different traditions that, when viewed from different positions, might shine more brightly than others or be of greater interest) or even of a rain forest metaphor, with rhetorical traditions lush and still often unexplored. Most intriguing to me about the possibilities for re-imagining the rhetorical tradition is the re-connection between theory and practice. As several scholars at the ARS conference noted, the history of Western rhetoric, and especially in English Departments, has privileged a set of canonical theoretical texts. Once rhetorical practice is included, however, it’s easy to find those often left out of the rhetorical tradition—women, people of color—everywhere! Top Main