Post-structural Purpose

John Duffy’s “The Good Writer: Virtue Ethics and the Teaching of Writing” reached my eyes and brain with eerily perfect timing, and, as a result, I have a lot to say about it.  But let me start off by saying: I loved this essay!  I feel like it’s both necessary and timely in light of Trump’s election (alongside America’s polarized, divisive political and ideological climates) and the fact that I will be a teacher of composition and argumentation at CSUN this fall.  Moreover, Duffy’s essay connected so many disparate rhetorical “dots” for me; it’s almost as if the beginning of the semester’s discussions (on Aristotle, in particular) have folded back onto themselves at the semester’s end.

            Duffy, at several points in his essay, very rightly cites the fact that the study of ethics (and the more loaded terms “virtue” and “vice”) has all but disappeared from the rhetorical conversation and study.  Religious issues aside, teachers very rightly do not wish to make their students feel indoctrinated or brainwashed into the teacher’s system of beliefs.  Duffy’s answer—rhetorically speaking—involves new conceptualizations of argument as more than “winning and losing, authority and control” (10).  Furthermore (and this was perhaps my favorite part of the essay), Duffy adds:

                        …when we teach students to include counterarguments in their papers, considering seriously opinions, facts, or values that contradict their own, we are teaching, potentially, the most radical and transformative behavior of all: we are asking students to inhabit, at least for a while, the perspective of The Other and to open themselves to the doubts and contradictions that attach to any worthwhile question.  In teaching counterarguments, we are teaching the rhetorical virtues of open-mindedness and intellectual generosity. (10)

Sadly, “open-mindedness and intellectual generosity” are seemingly debatable virtues in the year 2017, when even the President of the United States appears incapable of accepting a modicum of counterargument or counter-anything.  However, teachers exist in a privileged position of (grade-based) power that can be used for good or ill, and, clichés be damned, teachers can and should be the change they want to see in the world.  Or, to actually quote Ghandi, “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. ... We need not wait to see what others do” (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/opinion/falser-words-were-never-spoken.html).

            Ghandi, MLK, and Aristotle share a common theme of nonviolence, but only the first two receive much attention as such.  Aristotle, however, pioneered the nonviolent form of confronting (and persuading) The Other, and we now call this (often condescendingly) rhetoric.  Furthermore, not since studying Aristotle’s old texts have I seen any substantive discourse on the place of ethics (virtues vs. vices) in the study of rhetoric, and I’ve certainly not seen any commentary on the nature of happiness and its place in argumentation.  Duffy ends the drought:

For Aristotle, the supreme good, the summum bonum, the end to which all other ends contribute, is what he calls eudaimonia, typically translated as “happiness,” “well being,” or “flourishing,” though a better rendering might be Hursthouse’s idea of eudaimonia as “the sort of happiness worth having,” by which she means the happiness that comes from a life of purpose. […] Aristotle’s ethics in this sense are teleological, meaning they assume there is a purpose, or telos, for all things, living and nonliving. […] Human beings, too, have a purpose, and that “distinctly human” activity, that which separates us from knives, plants, and horses, is rationality, the ability of humans to exercise reason. (5-6)

I can think of no better intellectual approach to rhetoric and, indeed, life—everything is an argument, after all.  And in an age of instant-everything, atheism, and existential ennui, I believe we would do well as a society to adopt a belief that there is a greater, unseen purpose behind reality as we know it.  This belief need not be religion-based; rather, postmodern/post-structural faith should simply acknowledge the fact that each individual human—in and of theirself (intentionally gender neutral)—is limited to one (short) time and place in human history, but is capable of transcending those limits through a space-time ripple effect that begins with one’s self.

Note to Selfe: Beware Doxa

Cynthia L. Selfe’s “Technology and Literacy: A Story About the Perils of Not Paying Attention” shows off a wide range of persuasive and rhetorical moves in order to prove “the moral of [her] story” (which she states plainly “up front”), that “as composition teachers, deciding whether or not to use technology in our classes is simply not the point—we have to pay attention to technology” (1166).  It was a very interesting (eerily time-machine like) experience to read Selfe’s nearly two-decade-old treatise on the simultaneous importance and danger of technology as it permeates (perhaps infiltrates) the field of English/Language Arts/Composition studies.  A lot has changed since 1999, and a lot hasn’t; indeed, many of the problems Selfe describes are ones we still grapple with today (e.g., equitable, fair distribution of technology and technology-based education). 

Perhaps the most intriguing concept from “Technology and Literacy...” was the word “doxa,” which she borrowed from Pierre Bordieu, and denotes, “A position everyone takes so much for granted, is so obvious, that people no longer even feel the need to articulate it” (1166).  Doxa comes up again later in the essay—albeit not by name—and reminded me of today’s social media and smart phone addicted generation to whom these “literacies” are second nature.  Even more interestingly, Selfe cites books as forms of technology—which totally blew my mind! 

These examples and countless others give Selfe’s argument a sense of well-made balance that avoids polemical assertions (almost to a fault) by doing more than simply acknowledging a counter-argument with a cursory, throwaway line or two.  What Selfe does instead (and this is where the aforementioned “fault” may enter the picture) is to operate as a rhetorical moving target, shooting her own argument in the foot and moving on before repeating the same technique again.  For example, her thesis is ultimately that the use of technology in an English classroom setting is already “doxa” (a subtle rhetorical move in itself), and that the “main point” is to pay attention to technology itself.  Over the course of her defense of this thesis, Selfe details many negative elements (pitfalls, precautions, etc.) of technology without ever going into great detail about its potentially positive aspects—maybe subtly arguing that the positives are, simply put, obvious.  The use of technology, then, isn’t Selfe’s concern; rather, she subtly uses traditional logos in order to reach what I saw as her “secret” thesis that:

We need to resist the tendential forces that continue to link technological literacy with patterns of racism and poverty.  We need to insist on and support more equitable distributions of technology. (1182)

Selfe repeats this refrain of “we need” often over the last few pages of the essay in order to ground the text in call-to-arms territory as opposed to mere academic theorizing; indeed, Selfe’s not-so-hidden agenda is ultimately more humanistic (and socio-political activist-based) than it is pedagogical.

You, Talking to Me

No apologies for the pun in the title.  Ok, maybe a small apology only if you promise to keep reading.  You see, my viewership numbers are down, so I really need you to keep reading this and to like it and to share it.  Please!

            Neediness not too different from this exists across the Internet without question.  Why is that, especially when neediness and shameless self-promotion are usually viewed as negative characteristics in the “real world”?  The answer to this question, imaginary reader, forms the basis of the biggest hole in Xiaoye You’s Cosmopolitan English & Transliteracy: if you build it, they won’t necessarily come.  What do I mean by this, you ask?  Allow me to explain at what I consider to be “A”-worthy length/depth.  This is, after all, an assignment.  And my blog, after all, is read by precisely no one outside the small confines of our Spring ’17 ENGL 651 class at CSUN (so far as I know, at least).  After all, I have to be constructing these sentences for a reason, right?  If you’re still reading, that means you’ve trusted me this far, so I urge you to hang on just a bit longer.

            Returning to the hole in You’s argument, I just want to say (type) that I agree with most everything he says.  However, the problem with “new media” technologies is that the intended interconnectivity can backfire as equally and oppositely as it can “fire.”  In my own experience with blog-type class assignments, they work only under a set of necessary circumstances: 1) the posts must be graded for accountability purposes, 2) the grades should come from a clear rubric and/or set of expectations, 3) the professor/teacher must respond promptly (even if that response is only the assignment of a numeric or letter grade), and 4) students must be held clearly responsible for responding to one another’s posts.  Like load-bearing support beams on a wobbly building, if any one of these four pillars is missing, the structural integrity of the classroom’s blog environment will collapse like Barad-dûr after Frodo drops the Ring into Mount Doom.

            (Still hangin’ in there, reader?)

            You spends a great deal of time discussing how these digital media can work well, but what about when they don’t?  What about those classes where Barad-dûr has fallen but the professor (perhaps not unlike a heavy sleeper aboard the RMS Titanic), has no idea?  You does a great job of highlighting the benefits of “direct experience,” and discusses at length the importance of “establishing an infrastructure for exchange.”  However, as I said (typed) before, “if you build it, they won’t necessarily come.”  There are certain instances where I feel like I’d be equally well served to deposit my blog post on http://screamintothevoid.com/ than on a legitimate blogging website because the result will be the same either way: no one will ever read my writing, and the same sense of power and agency that new media purports to create will inevitably crumble.  Or, to reference the metaphor I began parenthetically at the beginning of this paragraph, maybe I’m just the sleeping passenger on the RMS Titanic who wakes up always already underwater.

            Regardless, “real” social interaction in the classroom is often sacrificed at the altar of the Internet, and the issue of whether our English is “cosmopolitan” and fluid enough deserves to be considered only after the issue of ennui, of Screaming into the Void, is settled.  In short: You's talking to me, and I'm talking to you. 

Freenglish!

The readings for this week (and our class forum discussions) were exceedingly interesting to me—especially in the context of the film Arrival.  For starters, I just wanted to mention the high probability of an *actually* universal language made possible by future technologies that render speech & writing obsolete. Trials with mice, for instance, are already proving that information can be electronically "programmed" into living beings, so it's not too far fetched to think that in the next ~100 years, humans will be instantly "downloading" concepts like calculus into their brains and communicating with one another telepathically via iPhone 100 cerebral cortex implants. Or something like that.

Until that time arrives and humans are stuck with our mortal shells, however, I agree with the notion that it would do us well as a species to be more accepting in terms of our grammars. The dichotomy of "right" and "wrong" grammar deserves the same overhaul as the oppressively rigid hierarchies that operated behind the scenes of sexuality, race, and gender for centuries (and still do to this day). The “cosmopolitan” communication advocated by Xiaoye You, I think, offers a great opportunity for beginning this endeavor of deconstruction.

For my purposes going forward after this class, this act of deconstruction logically leads to a “non-blanket” approach to teaching writing/composition/rhetoric. America has a proven track record for being about as flexible as a brick. One-size-fits-all cookie cutters might be all well and good for actual baking purposes, but this approach falls far short of meeting the educational needs of the multitudinous clusters of diverse groups across America (and the world at large).  Student compositions need to feel “real” outside of the classroom, and this, I think, is an area where Rhet./Comp. programs could flourish–by enacting a cosmopolitan, decentralized, bottom-up (student-centered) approach to pedagogy, classrooms need not fall prey to the well intentioned (maybe?) but misguided top-down government attempts at cookie-cutter standards.

All of this reminds me a lot of the Linguistics class I’m taking this semester, and the concept of I-Language (until Apple monopolizes it as “iLanguage”) wherein each speaker/writer/reader/listener of a language has a distinct, unique version of that language which is enough to communicate with others, but that can never be 100% identical to anyone else’s. I’m also reminded of a grammar course I took here at CSUN where the professor commented that grammar only exists so that we can understand one another. Lots of quirky/strange linguistic-y things congeal within this concept, but, as always, our brains come to the rescue by smoothing over the endless differences in language (including accents and dialects) in order to grant us a greater capacity for comprehension across I-Languages.  In this way, English has always been, is, and will always be cosmopolitan—regardless of whether or not we acknowledge it. 

The Roots of Reality

V.N. Volosinov’s Marxism and the Philosophy of Language exists as a bridge between multiple disciplines.  Reading the first chapter especially interested me since I’m also enrolled in a Linguistics course this semester (ENGL 604), and many of the concepts Volosinov discusses reverberate beyond the boundaries of our 651 course.  Human language (especially spoken language) seems to be, for Marx-via-Volosinov, the primary core of existence; indeed, without the powers of communication bestowed upon mankind by language, no dialectical (social) progress would be possible between and among groups of humans.  Volosinov beautifully summarizes language’s impact on ideology, arguing:

[Ideology’s] real place in existence is in the special social material of signs created by man.  Its specificity consists precisely in its being located between organized individuals, in its being the medium of their communication.  Signs can arise only on interindividual territory. […] It is essential that the two individuals be organized socially, that they compose a group (a social unit); only then can the medium of signs take shape between them.  (Volosinov 12)

Volosinov’s underlying idea here is, ostensibly, that the term “ideology” can roughly be defined as “the special social material of signs created by man.”  This conclusion might seem obvious, but most groundbreaking discoveries (e.g., that the Earth is round and not the center of the universe) usually appear this way in hindsight.  Furthermore, Volosinov seemingly elevates communication to the highest level of significance in terms of the development of any ideology; indeed, Volosinov argues that:

Every ideological sign is not only a reflection, a shadow, of reality, but is also itself a material segment of that very reality.  Every phenomenon functioning as an ideological sign has some kind of material embodiment, whether in sound, physical mass, color, movements of body, or the like.  In this sense, the reality of the sign is fully objective […] (11)

I’m reminded here of John 1:1 from the Bible, which states, “In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God.”  When Volosinov argues that words/signs are “fully objective,” he simultaneously presents words as physical objects while defending signs as verifiable, unquestionable entities (as opposed to something speculative or opinion-based).  Through the use of signs, humans not only “reflect” reality (a la Plato’s cave-like “world of appearances”), but we create and revise reality through ideology over time.  Spoken words, then, act more like Derrida’s notion of the “transcendental signified” (i.e., universal truth) than shadow-like distortions and reductions of Absolute truth.

            In terms of rhetoric, Marx-via-Volosinov’s perspective on the value of mankind’s capacity for meaning-making offers an intriguing conclusion: if socio-cultural ideologies (and their changes over time) are based on signs, and rhetoric depends on the use of signs for persuasion, then rhetoric, through Aristotelian syllogistic logic, is capable of both creating and revising ideologies.  Rhetoric’s value, therefore, is validated.  Moreover, Marx’s assertions should serve as inspirations in times of great anxiety and precautions in times of great joy because signs, as we’ve seen, are malleable, and to reinscribe a sign is to redefine its ideological (and/or political) value.

Nuts

"If we seem nutty to you, and if we seem like an oddball to you, just remember one thing: the mighty oak tree was once a nut like me." -Glenn W. Turner

The Bain/Hill selection does a good job of linking the study of rhetoric to the study of composition, which, in turn, connects to many of the familiar concepts that modern students of English start learning at an early age.  Bain’s short piece at the end of our selection reads like a glorified stack of vocabulary notecards.  Description, Narration, Exposition, Oratory (or Persuasion), Poetry, and many, many more “key terms” make rapid-fire appearances over a scant three-page passage.  This treatment is admittedly reductive (and just a tad overwhelming).

            However, Bain follows his own prescription by structuring each paragraph—and, indeed, each sentence within each paragraph—logically and cohesively to form Unity (Bain’s capitalization).  It’s astounding to me that Bain’s writing, which seems exceedingly obvious and commonplace to me as a master’s student of American English in the year 2017, revolutionized the future of rhet./comp. studies in his 1866 treatise, English Composition and Rhetoric.  Over one hundred and fifty years later, Bain’s work stands as the foundation for what I referred to as “obvious” and “commonplace” to modern rhetoricians/composers of written language.  Indeed, the introduction to the excerpt from English Composition and Rhetoric distills the historical significance of Bain’s theories, arguing that:

Brief though it is, Bain’s book settles the definitions of the modes of discourse (description, narration, exposition, and persuasion) for future textbooks.  Bain is also responsible for the idea that paragraph unity and topic sentences are important elements of writing.  Through Bain’s followers in the United States—Adams Sherman Hill [who we’re also reading this week], Barrett Wendell, John Genung, and others—these ideas became standard parts of the English composition course. (1143)

I, as an admittedly small sample size, can attest to this assertion that Bain’s ideas are seminal in the modern study of English, which subsumes rhetoric, composition, and all of Bain’s capitalized concepts.  Furthermore, within the category of rhetoric, Bain argues for the importance of “Style in General,” which includes the seemingly unrelated topics: “The Figures of Speech” and “The Paragraph.”

            The figures of speech Bain describes have changed very little since the text’s inception, but the Figures “based on the operations of Intellect, or Understanding” are of special import for rhetorical studies.  “Discrimination, or the feeling of Difference, Contrast, Relativity,” the first Figure, is closely related to concepts of “antithesis or contrast,” and, “the greater and the more sudden the change, the stronger is the effect [on the audience]” (1147).  The second “power,” “Similarity, or the Feeling of Agreement,” is the opposite of Discrimination, and highlights similarities in thought patters between a rhetorician and his audience (e.g., Trump’s appeal to the masses of fearful, xenophobic Americans in the 2016 presidential election).  The third power, “Retentiveness, or Acquisition,” describes the human capacity to create memories based on associations and connotations: feelings over facts.

            Bain closes this excerpt with his proposal and prescription for wholesome, unified paragraphs.  The textual unity Bain advocates is reminiscent of Aristotle’s notion of organic unity, but Bain delves deeper into the particulars and minutiae of paragraph structures; indeed, he lays out—numerically, to avoid any possible confusion—the exact features that each paragraph in an essay should possess, including: Unity, the logical progression of ideas (i.e., “Free from Dislocation”), and a topic sentence.  “The confining of each paragraph to a distinct topic,” Bain concludes, “avoids some of the worst faults of composition; besides which, he that fully comprehends the method of a paragraph, will also comprehend the method of an entire work (1148).  In very Aristotelian fashion and based on a developmental, progressive model, Bain offers a convincing argument for paragraphs as the seed versions of the fully-grown trees that are essays/compositions as a whole.  The whole, for Bain, is greater than the sum of its parts, which is true on each level of the progression from idea-nut to mighty essay-tree.