Goodbye, Mr. Chips

     In the final chapter of James Crosswhite’s The Rhetoric of Reason, he dollies the camera back to consider the broader context for applying his theories in university writing programs.  After such an ambitious book on elevating rhetoric for purposes of conflict resolution, this chapter’s bald confrontation of real world conflicts seems to introduce the humbling possibility, or probability, that Crosswhite’s theories might face challenges, if not limited application.  After all, writing programs too often view reasoning -- what some might call critical thinking -- not as a vital means for teaching purposeful writing, but as wrong-headed pedagogy promoted by nutty teachers for “ideological ends.” (271) 
      This brings to mind a recent job interview for the Summer Bridge program at a local college.  After a full semester in English 710, where my colleagues and I worked and re-worked our clever thematic courses, I was excited to put the tire to the pavement.  In an email to the Summer Bridge coordinator, I outlined my thoughts on teaching a critical thinking course that examined the food industry.  She said she liked my approach, and called me in for an interview.  When we met, she seemed very impressed with my ideas.  I felt we were on the same page, and thankful for my studies at SFSU.  “To be honest,” she told me, “we’d never even considered having a critical thinking course in our Summer Bridge program.”  Even if she they hadn’t formally offered me the job, her enthusiastic response to my ideas gave me reason for confidence.  In addition, she handed me a textbook and asked me to consider using it in my course.  A week later, though, she called to say, sorry, she really liked me, but she’d decided that “critical thinking was not appropriate for the Summer Bridge program.”  Seriously?  After calling me in specifically because she liked my curriculum ideas?  Of course, this brush-off could have been a ruse, for all I know, but taken at face value, it echoes Crosswhite’s description of the troubled state of writing programs across the country that see critical thinking as too "edgy." 
     In a similar vein, my only other job hunting so far suggests that entry level positions may not necessarily include a class in argumentation as an option.  A mentor/friend, who teaches north of Sacramento in the Placerville area, was very encouraging about job prospects at her school, but cautioned me that “freeway fliers” -- new adjunct profs who work part time at various sites, flying the freeway from job to job -- have limited choices.   “Early on, most likely, you’d be getting low-level composition or even ESL classes.”  Fine by me, I said.  After all, I taught ESL for years in adult education and I loved it.  On the other hand, it's some bittersweet news after a two-year program preparing us for a dialectic classroom where we're constantly challenging students with difficult readings and raising the bar for them to reveal their ultimate inner writers.  Equally vexing, speaking to this mentor, I got the impression that her English department doesn't exactly champion critical thinking courses anymore than the above institution, especially when she informs me that most of the staff are trained with Lit MAs.  With that background, how could priorities be otherwise?
     Still, I look forward to teaching such a class one day.  In fact, one reason I came Comp was to move away from ESL.  The other reason was that I’d always wanted to lead a dialectic-based course like Crosswhite’s or William Coles’.  This passion began in my undergrad Rhetoric 1A course at Cal, which was all about oral arguments and learning to “qualify my conclusions,”  (275) as Crosswhite’s Chinese student puts it.   I agree with Crosswhite when he speaks of the benefits of dialectic and taking part in the discourse community as “a process of becoming acquainted with new interlocutors
. . . (and) of entering conversations that are already in progress, . . . " (282)  Here he's speaking about my ideal teaching environment: the teacher ignites a conversation and stands back as students battle for their ideas, occasionally stopping in the heat of the moment with a feeling of epiphany as their own ideologies take a new shape.
      I especially enjoyed this final Crosswhite chapter because it offers some rich practical thoughts on choosing themes and materials for a Rhetoric of Reason-type curriculum.  It’s not a good idea, he says, to develop a theme from an issue that teacher and students already have a strong opinion about.  “Some things are simply to important . . . to us to argue about . . .” (283)  Great point.  While I generally feel ready to discuss anything with anyone, even if it means re-examining my own stance and changing it,  I have to remember that not everyone feels the same, and it’s important to avoid topics that don’t lead to fertile debate.  His second suggestion is to avoid yes/no, up/down conflicts, as they “force students into . . . polarized positions.”  (283)  I would like to think we’re all able to be more flexible; but on second thought, this angle, too, can lead to dead ends for similar reasons to the first point.  Popular issues in the news can lead to superficial discussion, Crosswhite says, unless students are presented with unusually penetrating angles.  Perhaps the remedy for this is to have students investigate the issues beyond the basic TV/radio media clips themselves.  Finally, the author warns that having students write about their own personal conflicts can lead to dead ends as well, largely because this lacks publicly accessible information.  Crosswhite doesn't see anything that would justify subjecting the whole class to "group therapy," (284) but I think it could be a potentially strong community builder, unless it's taken to the level where people are nauseated or bored with it.  
    After R of R’s heavy dose of theory, I found these solid tips refreshingly pragmatic.
   

I Think I See The Light

Ever since we started reading Crosswhite, I've been scratching my head -- a lot.  Never mind his choice of dense language and arcane terminology, with precious few examples to help us visualize the application of his abstract ideas.  To me, far more dubious was his mission to bring the masses to a place of non-violence through a text that could challenge even the most erudite among his philosopher clique.  Then I came to Chapter 6, and I began, I think, to get a glimmer of the light Crosswhite sees, even if I question the need to pursue the ramification of every point and counter-point prior to arriving at this place.  

In Chapter 6 the author unravels his view of the problems with formal logic versus informal logic. In particular, he focuses on the issue of supposed “fallacies” that arise when using the latter, some of which can work to a writer’s advantage and almost none of which, according to Crosswhite, qualify as official fallacies of logic, since the writer is usually presenting an argument, not a formal logical proof.  He shows how even ambiguity is not a fallacy per se, but depends on the way the audience receives it.  The problem, he says, comes when a particular audience mistakes itself for the universal audience, at which point they have stepped over the line, into the zone of the “unreasonable.”  Though it’s taken him 181 pages to make this assertion, few could maintain that this isn't vital in a pursuit of settling disputes, and  no one could argue that it isn’t founded on solid reasoning.  Anyone who values reason would probably read this chapter and realize, “Yes, even I can be unreasonable."  This is a stinging indictment for every enlightened fool, every religion, every country that prides itself on having discovered “the way” for the rest of the planet.  

I wrote a couple weeks ago that I felt reason alone is incapable in waking people up to our own fallacious potential, an essential awareness for meeting another person in the middle.  Interestingly, through a rhetoric of reason, Crosswhite has arrived at that same point, at least on a theoretical basis.  
     While I still hold that the statesmen who govern us are inherently unreasonable (even the most reasonable are corrupted by the system simply to survive the system), and are therefore immune to any such reasonable remedies, in Crosswhite’s utopia, where even the jaded can be redeemed by reason -- a world we’d all prefer to live in, perhaps -- if anything he offers could change our world, this chapter is it.
     Of course, with money to be made all over the planet -- government and business in cahoots (by nefarious means or otherwise) -- and with a drowsy America unable to raise its sleepy head in objection (assuming they had an opinion), how many folks in Washington will take the reasonable path, even though they know, thanks to Crosswhite, that they're essentially despots foisting their ways on the defenseless?
     Continuing his utopian model for world peace, the author insists on a consistently idealistic means of diplomacy.  Argumentation, he says, depends not on our expectation of an interlocutor's having developed "a common human nature," but is essentially "a practice of hope" and a "desire to create," that is, build bridges.  Expect the worst, he says, and hope for the best. (186-87)  This is rich in wisdom, so far as a utopian model goes.  While, by and large, I embrace this myself, politically, this can lead to trouble.  In the real world, people tend to follow the notion of saving face, rather than turning the other cheek.  The classic situation is the new guy arriving in a prison; the only way to have any peace, it's said, is to confront the biggest, baddest opponent to establish your reputation or end up everyone's punk.  In global diplomacy, the same idea holds true.  After you get into Vietnam, you don't dare pull out for fear that the whole international community will consider you "weak."  How many lives have been lost because leaders couldn't risk looking like a "sissy"?

I would like to ask to what extent we can really adopt Crosswhite's notion that the writing class is "equally uncomfortable" for all participants when some have never really considered the "other," and some, especially minorities, have not only considered it, but may revel in it as a kind of vindication for marginalization.

The Bright Side of Battle

    Chapter 4 in Crosswhite’s The Rhetoric of Reason brings up a number of interesting points, only a few of which are the author’s primary thoughts.  Was I the only one who had a tough time with Crosswhite’s citing Hegel’s notion that, as a society, we need “the purifying experience of war” -- though not war itself, just intense conflict -- lest we lapse into corruption brought on by peace? (115)  I don’t question the aspect of war itself, which seems to be Crosswhite's bone of contention; rather, I question the idea that peace is corrupting and that conflict is the remedy. 
    Supposedly, Hegel’s idea is that war requires us to make sacrifices that fortify our spirits, without which corporations could usurp us.  First, who is he addressing?  Certainly not the wealthy, especially not the folks in the military-industrial complex, and nor their happy stockholders.  Who, then?  One would assume it’s the rank-and-file who actually stand to lose during a war: everyone else.  What kind of sacrifices do they make?  They tend to lose jobs, lose income, lose housing, lose entitlements.  For veterans, at best, they lose years away from loved ones; in combat, thousands die while the injured lose appendages, eyesight, mental and emotional capabilities and any hope of future livelihood, further encumbering themselves, their families or the state.  How does this sacrifice prevent social corruption?  Presumably, it wakes people up from the tendency to get fat and lazy, the tendency to take our freedoms for granted, the tendency to lower our defenses.
     By contrast, nations plunged into war presumably have the advantage of skirting the rot of corruption and steeling themselves, instead, against corrupt corporations.  This would suggest that Syria and Iraq, among others embroiled in battle, have the benefit of knowing who to trust and who not to trust.  Yet few really understand the causes or the culprits, though the mainstream media serve it up like the "blue ribbon special" on the daily menu.  For that matter, the US has been at war for some fourteen years, give or take, in Afghanistan and Iraq.  We’ve lost thousands of soldiers to a cause no one can name.  And, just when we thought there was a hope for peace, we’re marching back into the same bloody limbo.  All this, and barely a voice is raised to question or protest it.  Anyone aware of the corporate ownership of US media and its influence on bending journalism to its own agenda might have a hard time believing that, thanks to Hegel's "advantages" of war, we’ve avoided corporate domination.  Rather, one has to question whether war has stripped the scales of corruption from America’s eyes or added another layer.
    On a less strident note, I enjoyed Crosswhite’s endorsement of teachers’ “seeing things from the students’ points of view” in trying to help them develop claims and counter-claims. (130)  In my mind, the ideal classroom activity for this is debate, whereby students work together, focusing on their own arguments and anticipating the arguments of their interlocutors.  Still, in conferences and in written feedback, teachers also have the potential to play what Crosswhite calls “the ultimate audience-arbiter of the effectiveness of arguments. . .” (130)  Ideally, we can nurture a sense of real back-and-forthness, a dialectic where “(e)veryone has a chance to be taken equally seriously.” (120)  The question is, after we’ve studied for years and polished ourselves to become true professionals; after we’ve set ourselves up as the repositories of Compositional wisdom, to what extent can we keep our minds open to dialogue with students, to really hear their viewpoints, to possibly reconsider our own opinions, “to modify them, or take up new purposes altogether,” to quote Crosswhite. (122)

Crosswhite, Wallace and Heard

    This week’s readings challenge us to break through conventional barriers in curriculum design, argument and in our role in the drama for social justice.  I had to think twice about how I think and act to “the other,” and this is making me question what I’ve come to accept as justice.  In “Repositioning Curriculum Design,” Matthew Heard offers a re-working, in a sense, of Wiggins and McTighe’s “essential questions,” asking us to re-imagine curriculum planning as an opportunity to problematize our thinking and our students’ thinking, rather than, in Brock Dethier’s words, simply trying to “keep your boss happy.” ( 318)  As intriguing as Heard's ideas are, I have to say: easier said than done.  My limited exposure to departmental politics suggests little leeway for personal idiosyncrasies and probably even less when it comes to stepping outside the lines of curriculum expectations.  Nonetheless, several of Heard’s innovations, like “goal-free” evaluations point to a brave, new pedagogy, if and when a teacher has the job security -- and the temerity -- to test conventional limits.

    In The Rhetoric of Reason, James Crosswhite derides traditional argument bereft of emotion, “free from the limitations of culture, politics and commitment.” (41) Instead, he argues for a reconstruction of the theory of argumentation because the conventional assumptions -- that if we could “put aside our strong feelings, . . . our gender, our nationality and ethnic identities, . . . then we could reason our way to agreements” -- in his view, aren’t working. (44)  Of course, it’s hard to argue against Crosswhite's stand on argument.  If our own stalemate Congress weren’t enough validation, just look (if you dare) at the fifty-plus years of dead-end debates between Israel and Palestine (not that you can do so without discussing the sugar-daddy behind the curtain).  Unfortunately, Crosswhite, in this first chapter of his book, engages us only in the problems of traditional argumentation, leaving us to wait for better solutions.

     Like Crosswhite, David Wallace defies conventions that threaten to make us less human.  In confronting discourse in general and the Composition discourse community in particular, Wallace, in his article, “Unwelcome Stories,” takes issue with the pretense that we are to, quoting Lynn Bloom, “‘avoid any suggestion that there’s a real human being’” relating real experiences in our writings and general discourse. (545)  Rather, Wallace champions our rights to speak from a place of truth -- especially on behalf of the marginalized -- despite the dominant politics of the Composition community that both question and resist such daring.  Where Crosswhite puts his faith in fighting for social justice through a reconstructed approach to argumentation, Wallace  advances, quoting Royster, “cross-boundary discourses.”  If I understand correctly, this means to engage the powers that be, addressing issues that have for too long gone unaddressed -- particularly the dominant’s self-satisfied view of itself as the only view, which marginalizes all “others” without regard.   Wallace augments this concept to point the finger at himself as well.  Thus, while he’s a gay man, he takes significant pains to point out his own limits of understanding when discussing a colleague who is both gay and Black.

     You have to hand it Wallace for making the noble effort to “go the extra mile” to understand someone whose shoes he’s never walked in before.  While it’s hardly fair to compare Wallace to Crosswhite since, the latter has yet to unveil his methods fully, for me, it’s hard to deny that Wallace’s approach may well bear more fruit in the long run.  If I get the gist of Crossman’s stance, a re-vamped apparatus of argumentation is what’s needed to bring humanity together.  I’d put my money on Wallace’s take, if only because it’s the only thing that’s ever worked for me: making the effort to try to see another person’s point view.  Unless I’m missing something, this is the first step toward real empathy.  The Spanish-speaking world has an expression that goes far beyond “I’m sorry” and would seem to be the ideal path toward bringing disparate individuals and groups together: “Lo siento” or “I feel (your pain).” 

    As an embarrassingly flawed human with many years attempting self-reflection toward bridging the gap between me and those around me, I appreciate these intellectual moves toward reconciliation.  By themselves, however, I wonder if they can bring us any closer to a sense of justice or peace.  Rather, I worry that they are essentially intellectual moves when what’s needed is spiritual reflection.  Given, such a discussion is probably deemed as controversial in academia as Wallace’s discussions of race and sexuality.  Nonetheless, from my experience, I can’t imagine real success in “cross-boundary” discourse without the profound benefits of coming to know myself, my flaws, my potential, in an ongoing examination of how I communicate -- and sometimes mis-communicate -- with others.  Otherwise, all to often, I end up blaming “the other.”

    Of course, when it comes to developing a system of rhetoric for working out fair play, Wallace is right.  Self-reflection is only the first step in any pursuit of justice.  Beyond recognizing my own fallacies and "the other's" innate values and rights, we need healthy communication skills that center discourse on justice and clarity, and reduce the common human habit whereby I find my foot in my mouth once again.  Wallace's most important point, it seems, is that "language and rhetoric are never neutral" (553).  Never?  But we've come so far!  Some fifty years after the Civil Rights Amendment, Wallace reminds us that there's a "real danger in congratulating ourselves on what we have achieved and failing to continuously attend to our complicity in maintaining the discourses of power." (549)  Maintenance is the key word, I think.  Given that improvements have been made, the job is never over.  Maintenance of our discourse is particularly at issue when speaking/writing to/about the marginalized, as Wallace offers: "I want to show engaged respect for wisdom drawn from experiences with marginalization that I have not lived; I want to seek out both what is common in our experiences in speaking and writing from the margins as well as what is different." (551)  He's taking a stand for something too few of us consider: that the battle of equality is never over and must be attended to in every conversation we have, every paper we write, and to do so, this must be an active pursuit, a seeking out.  Thus, conscious mindfulness is essential for social justice because, while there's no substitute for spiritual self-reflection, for most of us, it doesn't occur to us to self-reflect on matters we consider to be "wrapped up" and laid to rest.

     Repeatedly, Wallace brings up the disturbing notion of universal complicity, that we're all implicated in this interchange.  For me, this comes to a head when Wallace refers to Malea Powell, a Native American, who denounces the dominant discourse for its core imperialism.  When it comes to complicity, I wonder who can finally escape the brand of "imperialist" in this country -- except perhaps those who actively educate themselves and others and resist it.  No doubt, Powell is right on the money with his indictment.  Post-WWII liberals sometimes scratch their heads in disbelief at the atrocities in Vietnam or Iraq or CIA assassinations in Central and South America, but, in fact, this is only good old-fashioned Yankee imperialism, born in our North American land-grab, bought with the blood of Native Americans and slaves, an imperialism just raising its head again after a pretense of nobility during WWII -- a war whose start, we now know, was funded by American corporations with full knowledge of the Oval Office.  At the heart of our grand ole tradition of imperialism is the ignorant American who prefers not to know what's going on and looks the other way (an apt description of myself for too long).  Of course, this is central, again, to Crosswhite and Wallace and Powell's appeals for communication and justice because no bridges can be built between us and "the others" so long as we are ("blissfully") unaware of their lot, or if we are so brainwashed with a jingoism that drains us of all humanity that we grow self-satisfied with the narrowness of personal achievements and material accumulation, resistant to the work and the risk of becoming informed about our own complicity.

Mirror, Mirror

When I compare the content of my blogs to those of more daring students, like the esteemed Mr. Fimbres, Ms. Solis or Mr. Luckett (I never knew the world of medieval monks could be so fascinating!), I’m struck by the self-confidence and exploratory nature of their blogs, and, by contrast, the play-it-safe conventionality, of mine.  I appear to have a need to “color within the lines” compared to some more freewheeling writers, who may or may not feel impressed to address the readings head-on.  I suppose that, after diving into the readings rigorously, I use the blog to sum up my impressions in a sometimes predictable fashion, compared to those who use the blog as launch pad, testing the boundaries of the genre.  While I admire these artistic and philosophical departures, I don’t see myself moving in that direction any time soon.  If the shoe don’t fit . . .
    When it comes to speaking back to the writings, if I speak out too negatively, I find myself wondering if I’ve taken too much license, letting my emotions cloud my judgement, to extent that I might have missed essential content.  Yet, when I read Gabriela’s blog last week, as she lambasted a few of the readings, I cursed myself for missing the rhetorical points she found so jarring and objectionable; her points were so insightful, I wondered for a moment if we’d read the same articles.  Nonetheless, while I was writing, I was certainly sincere in my enjoyment of the articles, especially those building curricula from happenings on the Web. 
    I’ve often thought of myself as reading the world with a critical eye, a bit like the late George Carlin questioning everything he would see.  But this class is informing me that I have a long way to go in terms of truly analyzing rhetorically.  In my second rhetorical analysis, for example, while I feel I’ve come a good distance since my first paper, my weak spot is not extrapolating far enough, not exploring, in Gerald Graff’s words, the “So What?”  I guess there’s no better exercise to build that “muscle” than rhetorical analysis and revision.  And blogging in good company.

Above and Beyond Either/Or

     They say it’s unbecoming to gush, but I have to say this week’s readings were the most interesting and most applicable I’ve read in some time -- great!  As we’re all moving toward our final rhetorical analysis projects, it seems fitting that these four articles are models of rhetorical analysis.  At the same time, I enjoyed the common thread of “back-and-forthness” that they advocate as a rhetorical tool and as a dialectical spirit. 

For Jackson and Wallin, what’s needed in our teaching of argument is more argumentation, that is, focus on the dialectic process.  They point out that we can ask our students to write for the imaginary audience, as Ong suggests, but, in the age of YouTube, this methodology is quickly being outmoded by interactive technology that our students are already using.  While the Internet has its share of drawbacks -- anonymity that can give way to mistreatment of interlocutors -- the authors recommend a “crosspollination” of thought (380), a back-and-forthness to develop “hybrid writing activities,” (391) borrowing from in-class rhetorical techniques and YouTube debates, like the one the authors analyze rhetorically following the Andrew Meyers tasing at the University of Florida.  I think this is one of the most exciting ideas I’ve ever heard of.  I enjoy blogging and occasionally responding to colleague’s blogs.  But, as a teacher, I can see where a “hot topic” could capture a kind of passion that probably only comes from a current event.  In the same way, Alex has a found a way to do that that gets his students involved in critical thinking and social action through local metropolitan politics.  We can all take a lesson from Alex, I think.

There’s a back-and-forthness as well in Wang’s vision of blending Chinese and Western feminist thought to create a new hybrid form, gleaning the best aspects of each.  Where Western feminism has a tendency to argue in a strictly binary us/them fashion, still Wang finds some aspects useful; while initial Chinese feminism was loaded with paternalism (written by Chinese men), she’s not throwing it out completely either.  More representative of her tack, the article deals primarily with the development of Chinese feminist rhetorical terminology and the rhetorical analysis of Chinese feminist rhetoric as represented by authors Chen and Yang.  I found it unusually open-minded of Wang that she refuses to fully embrace the us/them dichotomy of Western feminism, along with what I understand to be the feminist ambivalence toward women’s role as mother and/or wife.  From my experience, having come of age during the 70s and 80s, educated women that I knew, whether or not they called themselves feminists, generally rejected traditional women’s roles out of hand, often disparaging women who would “settle” for motherhood as “baby factories.”  (In truth, I have no concept of the current feminist platform on this subject, so things may have changed.  In fact, until I read Kirsch and Royster, I was under the apprehension that American feminism had faded out.)  By contrast, Wang finds Chen writing vigorously to propose new, positive, creative roles for women in the home and beyond.  This I find both brilliant and common sense, the opposite of an either/or mentality which, in my experience, has the potential for frustrating men, women and the children they’re raising as well, especially contributing to eroded self-esteem for husbands and sons and a lack of intimacy between husband and wife.

Kirsch and Royster present a rhetorical analysis of American feminist writing, at the same time focusing on the back-and-forthness of dialectics to raise the bar on re-examining feminist literature, to take it beyond “the three Rs -- rescue, recovery and (re)inscription.”  (647)  Their method involves a closer look at the writings and the women who wrote them (“tacking in”) and pulling back to view the subject from a broader perspective (“tacking out”). (649)  Perhaps equally important, they say their methodology is built on the give and take of the personal, “paying attention to . . . intuition and sensory experiences,” e.g. Malea Powell’s visceral reaction to the writing of Charles Eastman, on one hand, and examining artifacts with professional scrutiny on the other (657).  I found this passage moving, not so much because of the emotional impact, but because Kirsch and Royster are broad-minded enough to embrace the value of “intuition and sensory experiences,” which strikes me as one of the truly feminine qualities inherent in human beings.  Though we all possess it, for me, women have this in an abundance.  By contrast, I can’t imagine any male organization insisting on such a feature as fundamental to their methodology.  I salute Kirsch and Royster who, like Bo Wang, choose to include this archetypal -- not stereotypical -- feminine element, rather than mistakenly diminishing their femininity by too keenly emulating men, who by and large, don’t even acknowledge such a trait.

If there’s a back-and-forthness to the Enos and Borrowman article, it would be in the subject matter.  Like Jackson and Wallin, they’re inspired by the possibilities of using the Web to teach composition, so, by definition, there’s a built-in interconnectedness, though, where the former method teaches students the concept of audience, the latter teaches ways of establishing ethos for online sources.  Spotlighting Arthur Butz and his Holocaust denier friends’ websites, the Enos and Borrowman illustrate both the challenges of ascertaining online authors’ credibility and various techniques for discerning the legitimate from the fake.  Going back to the topic of our final rhetorical analysis project, this article cleverly models a variety of ways some websites pull the wool over the eyes of the less than savvy.  More than a precautionary guide for our students, we can probably all benefit from paying attention to these subtle ploys in the era of the hyper-slick online ruse.  We would all do well to read this again to soak up the insight, from the rhetoric that avoids even discussing the Holocaust to the false assumption that Butz is on the level just because he’s a prof at a top university, to the other impressive-looking websites he’s linked to.  I imagine there must be hundreds of charlatans on the Internet -- OK, thousands!  If that’s depressing at first thought, it’s a reason to smile in that they all provide opportunities for us to teach this invaluable critical thinking skill to our students, using their tricks as teaching material.

I’m curious: What do my colleagues think about feminism these days, and in what ways is it important in their lives?  To what extent have they been shaped by feminism?  Which has had a greater role in shaping who you are today -- feminism or the Web?

Audience & Agency

    This week’s articles raise some complications and point to opportunities for classroom applications as well.  Principal are the notions of audience and agency -- what they imply generally and specifically for FYC writing.  As Michelle notes, Goffman goes on for many pages about various forms and functions of talking.  While I, too, found this less than fascinating (am I his intended audience?), I have to concede that complicating our thought on audience, to some degree, is exactly what our students need.  Initially, I feel, most novice writers tend to have either no perception of audience, or perhaps a vague, simplistic concept, which can lead to vague, simplistic compositions.  On the other hand, while it’s healthy to stretch our minds to consider the 31 flavors of speaker and audience, I’m actually more reticent to push students too far in this direction, to the extent that they freeze up -- exactly the opposite of where I want to take them.
    The more I read Goffman, the more it occurs to me that we both talk far less and far more these days.  Increasingly, we have less occasion to speak face to face with colleagues, friends or even adversaries, in part due to electronic media, in part because we’re all so busy.  Even in Congress, where a few years back they installed closed-circuit television cameras, I understand that representatives more and more are avoiding debate on the congressional floor, opting instead to receive speech summaries from assistants who take notes from the CCT.  At the same time, nowadays, everyone’s multitasking, returning phone calls or texting while driving; makes you wonder how Western Civilization ever got along without the smart phone.  Is all that purposeful talking or are we hooked on them like sex addicts chasing sex?  Potentially, all this intercourse (!) could be positive for our students, ever mindful of audience on some level.
    When Goffman downplays the legitimacy of TV audiences, calling them merely “vicarious” because they cannot interact in real time, I feel the writer does his own theory a disservice.  His article is truncated at best if his intentions are limited to speaking.  Certainly this is exactly the scope of his paper, but, for our purposes, his thoughts merit broader application for the classroom, which begs our re-imagining the his points for the written word.  If he calls the TV audience vicarious, this is only one step better than those out of earshot, relegated, as he says to “unratified” listening.  For the student writer, considering audience means considering the ratified as well as the unratified, that is, if we’re willing to truly lead them down that rabbit hole.  As general communicators, this notion of the unratified raises the sobering subject of uninvited readers taking in social media -- like this blog! -- though, the more we know about government surveillance, the more likely it is that the uninvited invite themselves on a regular basis.
    Kershbaum raises the thorny issue of feeling like a failure in communication when our audience rejects, not only what we’re saying, but who we are as agents.  He refers to Hockenberry’s misadventure with a woman who rejected the way he represented himself as disabled: “I did not realize I was part of her own confrontation with the experience of disability.”  At first, his urge is to foist his agency upon his audience: “...I am John!...You must deal with me as I think of myself.”  (58) At length, he sees that communication is not so simple.  This again complicates things for our students.  Just when they were settling into a solid understanding of the writer/audience relationship, the author defines rhetorical agency as “a negotiation in which individuals do not have full control of their own identity.” (60)  Like Kershbaum, students are apt to find this disturbing at first, but it may be useful as a pre-lesson to peer review work, where some students are often dismayed by their peers’ apparent misinterpretations.  Ultimately, language and meaning are never neutral, but are socially constructed.  As a teacher, I need to take this as a caution as well, when reading a student paper, not to jump to conclusions about the content in writing simply because, initially, it represents “facts” differently than I’d preconceived them.
    Cooper offers a similar lesson, namely not to presume that we have the answers, though I feel she shoots herself in the foot by using Obama as the personification of this concept.  Cooper’s perspective of refraining from a rush to decision can be richly instructive for student brainstorming and, again, for me to keep myself open to options in the classroom.  I like the way she makes her point by citing Cass Sunstein, a close friend of Obama in law school, who says of her pal, Barack, “with Obama, it’s like Learned Hand when he said, ‘The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.’” This is a spirit worth emulating, from the science lab to the English class to the floor of Congress.  For young writers, it forces them back to seriously re-consider their opponent’s counterpoints, an essential step for successful argumentation.  In the case of the president, however, especially now, as this former anti-war candidate marches into battle while flatly ignoring the polls that overwhelmingly decry such bloodshed, it’s truly difficult to imagine a character who has turned his back on Cooper’s idea of open-minded dialog more than Barack Obama.