Negotiating Race

Race is always a problem. Especially in the United States and particulary in the academic world. It's a slippery subject.

Todd Taylor's essay 'The Persistance of Difference in Networked Classrooms" discusses the idea of "non-negotiable difference" focusing on African-American students and literary education, asking the question "whether or not difference... can ever be resolved or negotiated." Taylor goes on to recount the "widely debated assertion that a white person in America cannot ever genuinely understand the experience of being black in this country and that as progressive as a white person may be, he or she can never get beyond at least subconscious racist thought and action."

Taylor's analysis of race and difference is focused on the usage of computers in the composition classroom and how this "non-negotiable differences" can be accounted for and taken into consideration when teaching writing. Taylor concludes that educators must not let racial "presumptions dominate perspectives" and that teachers "need to consider individuals as individuals who defy tight demographic or cultural grouping".

Taylor's seemingly well-informed and logical position somewhat defuses the race bomb. But reading the article leads my attention to a basic observation and critique of CSUP's English M.A. program regarding the low number students of color in the program.

Identifying New Trends in Rhetoric

In his essay "Recovering the Lost Art of Researching the History of Rhetoric", Richard Leo Enos poses the argument that rhetorical studies must struggle towards an activist function in order to be of relevance as an academic discipline.

Enos points out that while the interdisciplinary nature of rhetoric ensures that there will be a continued interest and attention to rhetoric, the actual art of researching the history of rhetoric has been and is dangerously close to being lost.

Enos, argueing that there is a need for historical scholarship in the field and that this methodolgy is often neglected, cites Barnett Baskerville who asserts that "there is a need for scholars who can record accurately and artistically the history of our art as it relates to more general history, to delineate its place and contributions to the cultural history of the nation."

There is something about studying a history of rhetoric that is exciting in the same way that playing with firecrackers is. Something might blow up.

Rhetoric is a living, breathing beast.
Or maybe rhetoric is the music which calms the beast?
Do you have to have a PhD in rhetorical studies to be a superior orator and rhetorician?
History shows otherwise.
The history of rhetoric reveals it to be organic.

What will be the contributions of the dark unheard human masses to the historical tree of rhetoric?

Is there rhetoric in a long desperate wail?

I keep thinking about a point Dr. D makes in class: "Make everything count."

The tie between the oral and the written tradition is one of the great beauties and achievements in human history. It is also one of the great mysteries, there are elements of alchemy in the process of reading and writing.

We can trace currents of thought and a history of rhetoric in the European tradition at least as far back as when the Greeks transferred there history and poetry from oral emory to written artifact. Since then many others have contributed to the evolution of human rhetoric.

We can identify moments in history where the powers of rhetoric where in display.

People are always coming up with new arguments to engage political forces that shape the environments we live in.

Political history is a history of rhetoric.

Matches only start fires; the potential history of rhetoric can set people free.

Lehrnenfreit

Gordon Rohman and Albert Wlecke in their essay Pre-writing; Models for Concept Formation in Writing argue that "the primary badness of writing is not incorrect grammar or inelegant expression; it is rather a matter of stale perspective, cliche response."

In the ideal classroom there are mutual expectations between the instructor and the students about levels of commitment, responsibility, professionalism, respect, competence, etc. that must be met to achieve the full educational potential in the classroom setting.

In real classrooms these expectations always exist, and are satisfied to varying degrees by both educator and pupil.

In the ideal classroom there is a harmony of motivation that is shared by teacher and student, the motivation to achieve and excell to the highest standard possible.

In reality, it is undeniably that there is a point at which the goals and the agenda of master and student diverse. An educator would like their students to perform at an optimal level all the time. It is inevitable that students will not always be completely accepting of this educator wishful policy of maximum exertion and achievement in the classroom.

Magical moments in education occur when a happy medium is met between educator and student and usually involve moments where the practice of honing academic skills sparks a clear interest in a subject beyond its facility in the classroom.

A pedagogical theory that offers the freedom of opportunity for students to follow these streaks of enlightened learning when they occur inside the otherwise traditionally structured classroom is most promising if English composition classes hope to avoid the "stale cliche"-ness that Rohman and Wlecke admonish in their essay on pre-writing.

A good educator kindles the creative and intellectual spark of the interested student.

Historic Justice and the Rule of Law

Chaim Perelman brings up some very interesting points in his essay "The Social Contexts of Argumentation" relating to how humankind has come to be governed by rules of law. Perelman writes: "it is easy to understand that argumentation should sometimes be favored, sometimes banned and often regulated by those who hold power or authority in society."

From this thought it follows logically that not all arguments are destined to be heard, and that it is possible that some of the best arguments will lose out due to forces of social control that dictate who and what arguments are legitimate.

The power of words is nowhere more evident than in the world of law and order, where legal statutes existing in written form leap from the page to influence the concrete real world and to affect and impact humans' material lives.

In legal situations the power of words makes itself very apparent with words directly affecting peoples' lives. Laws are after all just words, but in our civilized age no one can question the power and importance of the written laws that bind and divide human society.

Perelman explains how "precedent plays a quite primary role in argumentation, the rationalityof which is linked with the observance of the rule of justice, which demands equal treatment for similar situations." As Perelman tells us, "the rule of justice thus appears as the constituent principle of historic reason."

It is a given that over the timeline modern history, there exist many injustices which have been doled out by one nation upon another and by governments upon their own people, the realities of criminal acts of government and state relations will perhaps never cease to exist. In fact, it might be said that human history is shaped as much by the heinous and criminal acts of rulers and governments as it is by good and just actions of ruling powers.

It's a sobering thought to consider how policies which constitute present systems of law and order could have possibly been influenced by negative turns of historic reason. Do unjust laws yet exist?

Rhetorical Darkness

Was there rhetoric in America before Columbus?

Seems like a stupid question, but what strikes me about the timeline of the study of rhetoric is the eurocentric nature of the entire thing. I understand that we are in a world where Western culture and thought is the dominant power, but if rhetoric is such a key element of human social interaction, it follows that people from the dark continents of Africa, Asia, and the Americas also practice and utilize those same elements of rhetoric subscribed to by the towers of the art we are learn from and are taught in the American university.

When our whirlwind tour of the history of the world swept through the Middle Ages (previously called the Dark Ages) of European history, I was reminded of the fact that that era coincided with the rise and spread of Islam. Religion has always been a practical and very serious forum where the arts of the rhetor prove to be especially useful and valuable.

All religions make appeals to the those people who would be true believers (or even sometime subscribers). Islam is not the only major religion of the world in the rhetorical (and often very real) war for the souls of men; Oriental religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism also offer powerful appeals to the ethos, pathos, and logos of the human masses.

Furthermore, in all the corners of the world that humankind has called home indigenous peoples established levels of law and order that sufficed through history. The soil of Africa, Asia, and the Americas has supported empires which practiced advanced forms of government.

In this light, American academic rhetorical studies seem a bit neglectful in sticking to the rhetorical guns of the West.