Degrees of Separation-Degrees of Verisimilitude

I have to admit that my blog post this week is a little bifurcated. With that said I will do my best to address both the assignment and the readings, albeit somewhat awkwardly. I found the database assignment to be an insightful experience. As I mentioned in class this type of work is what I frequently encountered in social science research. I do, however,  have concerns in regards to its applications in a theoretical/ philosophical context. To be clear I mean  by “this type” of investigations one’s that calls for  statistical evaluation that yield conclusions drawn from patterns observed in the data- just for an offhand reference lets call it statistical analysis. I don’t mean to devolve into a pedantic discussion of which methods “belongs” where; especially now when it seems that inter-disciplinary modes of research are becoming the new normal.  What concerns me is predominantly the loss of exactness and meaning. Take my undergraduate thesis. I evaluated the impact of  major presidential addresses on public opinion in order to ascertain the amount of political capital the president could self-generate.  To arrive at a conclusion the only choice I had was to use a statistical evaluation of public opinion as it was stimulated by  major presidential speeches. 

Granted, someone could critique my methodology and my statistical models (I could have done this or that better), but ultimately what I could NOT do was ask every single American citizen how the president’s speech changed their opinion on him (the president) and the issue addressed. This is perhaps “the” dilemma when one studies large groups of subjects in the social sciences, we can not ask everyone. So methods of inquires are established to approximate the answer as best as possible, conceding a certain loss of information and meaning in the process in the hopes that if the methodology is just right, it will at least get the particular pieces of information sought after. When I am interrogating a text, however, such as Giambattista Vico’s New Science, I CAN simply ask him, figuratively, how he feels about a particular issue. In other words, I don’t have to accept the loss of meaning that I do when I set up a statistical evaluation.  I can just consult the text from beginning to end and pick up every piece of denotation and connotation. To perform a statistical analysis on such a text seems to add degrees of separation that may do more harm than good. However, and this is a big however, if we use these statistical evaluations alongside thorough readings of the text, we can perhaps throw all my concerns into the waste-basket. 

Algorithms, Meta-data and Prefiguring Existentialism

First, I want to use the space that I have here to express what time would not allow for in class. As everyone knows, our assignment was to familiarize ourselves with three technologies that were designed to enhance our research capabilities. I raised a few objections in class, noting that certain kinds of externalities accompany technologies of any sort. In his Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger considers, among other things, the possibility that while each technology uncovers things that were not seen--a revealing--they also cover over things that were seen--a concealing. The heart of this assignment, for me, was to utilize these tools in order to know what they could reveal and possibly conceal. So, as I am considering the tools before us (Internet Archive, Alex and Google NGram Viewer), I am also extrapolating or reading these technologies into the future.

Revealing
I am often dumbfounded by the pervasive technologies available to us in almost every situation and context. Sure, there is validity in analyzing IA, Alex and NGram with a view towards optimization. With that critical lens, we see what might be done to improve the technology itself, which is useful. When, however, that is the only lens we use, this becomes problematic. I will give a brief but personal example.

Instruments plus Knowledge-Making as a Holistic Art of Balance in Vico

Vico, to me, seems to believe that knowledge should be holistic. I must be careful when I use that term. Holistic implies “the whole.” If I did not further specify, the term would be too general to use here, but in this case, I am specifically wondering if Vico thinks that a more “whole” version of human knowledge is the same thing as a fusion of current measurement-based “study methods” (which he wants to improve upon, since he thinks they are, in ways, “inferior ” to more ancient methods (Vico 866)) and the antique corpus of knowledge and knowledge-making practices (which promote argumentation) we no longer have (866), which he wants to remember (and re-implement).

Not just this, but I think he is advocating a balance (which means we use both practices when we ought, in order to learn as we ought, and not inordinately) between the two because he believes that if you lend yourself too much to one you're incapable of adequately addressing the other: "We should be careful to avoid that the growth of common sense” (which he says steers eloquence) “be stifled in them by a habit of advanced speculative criticism”(which Vico seems to think stems out of  modern methods of study)… (868).

Dead Ends, Dejection, and Death: The Tunnel Vision of Seeking Absolute Truth

When I first read the exploratory assignment for this week, I was excited to see that we would be experimenting with a number of different digital tools. Having recently read about the Google Ngram viewer, I was particularly interested to experiment with this tool. However, much like Jenn describes in her post, I was troubled by the results I achieved through using this tool for this purpose (what purpose? I'm still not certain, and that's likely part of the problem). After creating my first graph for the five search terms, I felt both over- and underwhelmed. On the one hand, the sharp peaks and troughs of each line seemed significant, but on the other hand, I couldn’t determine what the lines were trying to tell me. Comparing each brightly colored line to the others felt like a good starting place to me, but then I realized that all I was seeing was the popularity of one term over another for a particular set of years. Could I interpret this data? I felt like I should be able to, but each time I tried to cross-reference the peak of one term in a particular year with the texts we read over the last two weeks, I found myself unable to see connections or draw conclusions. Attributing the spike in the usage of “language” to the work of Bacon seemed specious, at best. As much as I wanted to use the tool as a way of seeing the texts differently, I ultimately found myself unable to do so. Jason and Kyle’s presentation of the terms under the time span of a particular author definitely helped me to understand that organizing and presenting the data differently could have better facilitated my interpretations, although I still remain skeptical of being able to attribute peaks and troughs in usage to the work of one author, especially without any knowledge of the texts included in Google’s results.

Technological Enlightenment

As someone who tends to embrace technology wholeheartedly, this week’s exploratory assignment (and in particular, working with Kyle) complicated my relationship with the intersection of technology and text. One thing I hadn’t noticed until Kyle pointed it out to me was the way in which I sometimes anthropomorphised the technology using terms like “Alex provides” and “Alex suggests” or “Alex demonstrates,” when adding in content for our exploratory. 

Throughout that process, I had managed to (as I tend to do) allow the technology to become transparent, and overlook the agency of the user when interacting with it. Perhaps my brain has been rewired by my Chromebook, so I’ve gotten used to and fond of the idea of working within the constraints of certain technologies to discover accessible means of incorporating technology into my teaching, but I found it interesting in this case that I was so easily able to view the functions of Alex as a way of providing for me, removing my own agency in the process. The tools we utilized this week put the onus on us to make their output into something useful, which I pieced together more and more as we went through the Internet Archive and the Google Ngram, both of which seemed far more dependent on the end-user to put something in and get something of use back out. 

Who's to Blame?

This week's tasks were two-fold: a straddling last and this week's texts with the resource exploratory and reading additional materials. I'd like to discuss first--before I engage with the resources or texts--about how my patterns of learning and understanding were disrupted by the resource assignment this week. I realize that this exercise was supposed to either better my understanding of the texts involved in ways I couldn't have achieved before or simply expose me to various methods of reading and types of interpretation. However, this focus on Wollstonecraft and Bacon led to my mental distance from Vico, Campbell, Grassi, and Kant, and I don't feel as if I could engage with these texts as I have done with others in the past. I fear this has caused what could potentially be a continuous need to play "catch up" or to revisit "old" texts without paying the proper attention to the current ones. Our work in class together helps me to unpack these texts, and while our discussions confuse me greatly, I also (generally) develop a better sense of what I've read and what I think about what I've read.

Confessions aside, this experiment, as Sarah and I called it, was somewhat helpful in providing me with another way of reading a text, one that I'm not sure works for me but nevertheless. I didn't, however, have the urge to count the "hits" of a term like most of the other groups did. I wonder why that is--possibly because I don't necessarily attribute value to quantity (kind of an oxymoron-esque term). This sort of follows with various author's assertions about quality over quantity--using one word instead of several implies intellect and the understanding of the true essence of words (Erasmus [I believe] and Locke, among others). What matters to me is the definition of that term and the context in which it was used. Perhaps then what I'm more concerned with is the author's argument and not how they use(d) the words. That was the point of this assignment, however, so I gave it my best.

Anticipation and Apprehension: A Two Part Experience With Concordances, Databases & Ontologies.

Part I

To be entirely transparent, the task at hand appeared rather daunting when I first navigated the assignment details. In the midst of this anticipation I chose to begin composing my thoughts in a two part manner. The first part is being composed before the digital research task begins while the second part will be composed upon completion of the exercise in effort to embrace the experience entirely. 

The first thought that came to mind was a paper I read recently from the Quarterly Journal of Speech ("Whither Research?" 19.4 (1933): 552-561). William Norwood Brigance opens by retelling an attack on criticism made by Woodrow Wilson. Wilson reportedly denounced the way English departments "count the words...note the changes...and run their illusions" (Brigance 552). Furthermore, Brigance recalls Wilson's accusation that literary critics "do not reflect...they label...their minds are not stages, but museums; nothing is done there, but very curious and valuable collections are kept there" (553). In this rather vicious attack Brigance entertains the assertion that there has been a trend in criticism to this classification and counting of sentences (554) however, we should move forward from this method. 

I provide this information at the prelude to this project and to provide context for this task. My recent exposure to this type of topical word searching is predominantly negative, however, I am optimistic that this first-hand experience will alter my perception of the task. 

Reading and Ethics

I enjoyed this week’s exploratory (at least the research aspect; figuring out how to synthesize and present the information was not so great). For the exploratory, I predominantly used the Internet Archive, although I tinkered with Alex and Google nGram. The Internet Archive felt familiar to me, since I have used indexes and concordances to search texts before. Looking back now, I think that some of my approach was also derived from previous experiences with Systematic Theology. First I went through and compiled all of the quotes into a Word document, and then I read all of them, to see if I could trace a theme, and see how Vico was defining the terms “science, reason, and passions,” and how he was using them. I then synthesized what I saw, but I still tried to maintain any tensions or ambiguities that existed. What is ironic about this kind of reading is that it is simultaneously distant and close. It is distant because I’m not reading the text immersed from one page to the next – I am looking at overarching themes. However, in order to see those themes, I have to closely read the passages that might be pertinent, snippets plucked from the whole.

What made me uncomfortable about reading Vico’s The New Science in this manner is that I did not first read the text in its entirety. Although I recognize that my interpretation of the text is not necessarily what Vico intended his readers to see (and can we ever know what he intended?), I feel like I might have done Vico (or his ideas) an injustice by not placing the sections that I was drawing out within the larger context of his work as a whole. This feeling made me think about the ethics of reading in general. In a sense, when we read we are taking someone else’s words and making them our own. But, it could be argued, every element of our sense experiences are simultaneously external to ourselves (and perhaps belong to others), and they are also internal, because once they are perceived they are interpreted and become part of our thoughts and memories – they in fact become part of who we are.

Context, Online Tools, and Epistemology

This week’s exploratory was without a doubt the most difficult for me conceptually.   Although I understood each of the tools, I struggled to make sense of them in relationship to each other and to the context of the course.  Although it seems that many of you were able to embrace the seeming lack of context to create insightful and productive texts, I struggled to do so.   It is a little bit embarrassing to admit, but I struggled hard.  For me, this project – and even the sentences that I just typed about this project – became about the binary of context and lack of context.  I perceived both the online tools and the data they produced as being without context.  The Alex concordance presented me with 500-word excerpts of Wollstonecraft and Bacon.  These excerpts appeared outside the context of the texts.  They were listed on a separate page in numbered, non-textual manner, and I could not access the text from that page.  The tool, for me, became an agent that removed the words from the text and left me with just the words; however, I wasn’t left with enough words – or rather with words from enough texts – to make what I felt was a defendable claim about the text or the words.  As a result, I felt untethered.   I was, of course, not untethered.  It was simply that my thinking about the exploratory, the online tools, and the data they produced was shaped by an unproductive binary between context and lack thereof that kept me from seeing that I was the context.   

Knowledge and Knowledge Creation (Campbell and Database Tools)

The third exploratory and our class discussion helped me think more about knowledge creation, particularly how the authors think knowledge is created. In this post, then, my purposes are twofold. First, I want to show how I see the concept of knowledge creation complicated in Campbell (I could make this assertion about Vico too, but because I am going to do an analysis of several kinds of knowledge creation - and this is a post rather than a seminar paper - I will concentrate on just one author.) Second, I want to elucidate how the databases helped me think about knowledge that we create with and from texts.

(Purpose 1) Campbell had complex understanding of knowledge creation.

Campbell does not emphasize any one kind of knowledge creation. Instead, he creates a complex network of different kinds of knowledge creation, including situated knowledge, embodied knowledge, communal knowledge, experiential knowledge and rational knowledge. (Note: I want to acknowledge that these knowledges are not necessarily completely separate. My intention in naming and separating the knowledges is to use the knowledges as a vehicle for my exploration.) Below, I will start each section with a definition in order to add context to how I understand and will be using each knowledge. (Another note: I recognize that I use very simplified definitions; however, they give me a starting point.) Then, I will illustrate how Campbell alludes to each knowledge. (Yet another note: I use ideas, propositions and knowledge as synonyms. While ideas and/or facts are not necessarily knowledge, I am going to work under the assumption that ideas and/or facts can become knowledge or can be evidence of knowledge.)

Arguing About Arguing for Argument’s Sake

This week’s readings felt like a crash course in context; its inevitability, its variability, and its crucial role in shaping any theory surrounding argument.  The Dissoi Logoi, the various authors referencing Aspasia, and Perelman & O.T. all appear to me most connected in that they each address the key role of context in matters of value judgment, especially in social and specifically (and most commonly) legal matters.  The Dissoi Logoi’s collection of “opposing arguments” which juxtapose two abstract qualities and first argue that they are one in the same and then that they are fundamentally different, serve to illustrate the opposing core beliefs which are at the root of all argumentation: a conviction that there exists a priori truth as well as abstract qualities such as justice and virtue and the opposing conviction that truth and by extension virtue do not exist independently of situations but rather are informed by them.  The anonymous author proclaims that “... all arguments are about everything that is” which can be taken as a reference to the still alive and well debate over the nature of truth and reality at the center of all argumentation (B & H 54).  

Seventeen centuries later, P & O.T. were working to revive the classical tradition of rhetoric and to redeem the reputation of informal reasoning, or argumentation, as they saw it as the only means of approaching a consensus of values necessary in pursuit of social justice.  

Affect and Agency: Complicating the Web

As one might expect after reading my post last week, my interest in approaching Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca this week was in their construction of audience. I set this concern aside as Jason and I began discussing possible ways to organize our schema. We considered making a map, kicked around the idea of using a networking schema, and ultimately came to rest on the construction of web because, as we state in our explanatory prose piece, P and O-T claim that “nonformal argument consists…of a web formed from all the arguments and all the reasons that combine to achieve the desire result” (1396). A web seemed like the best approach, not only because they specifically use that metaphor in their own text, but also because we were interested in showing movement and non-hierarchical relationships between each “node” on the web.

We were satisfied with our design until it came time to place the orator on the web.

We Are What We Are Not

When forming our schema this week, we began with the image of a tree in order to demonstrate the way in which ideas have a root thought and then continue to grow upwards with branches in multiple directions and be influenced by the external factors (such as Condit’s “lightning bolt” critique). I found it most interesting as the tree schema began to grow that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca seemed to frame their argument by beginning with establishing what they are not. I found this interesting first fruits for our tree. However, after reflecting on this idea for a few days it became clear. Where do ideas begin if not from what they are not? An oddly worded question yes but even in experiencing discourse like Dissoi Logoi, the author begins his (or her) statements with what others say as a means of presenting an argument he does not ascribe to and follows it with his (or her) own understanding of good, bad, shameful, just and so forth. 

           

Signposts and Revival

Perhaps I am just going to have to get use to the idea that in order to “find” myself , in terms of understanding what rhetorical theorists are talking about, I need to first allow myself to feel “lost” for a while. This week’s reading from Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca’s The New Rhetoric was a case in point. Before I continue into a discussion of what I think Perelman is advancing in New Rhetoric, let me first raise the phenomena of what reading Perelman (or anyone) under the framework of the schemata assignment does. Having something like the schemata assignment tasked to you before you begin your reading a material places your mind in a mode of alertness and anticipation. You are looking out for key points that will aide you when it comes time to put pen to paper. I find that after I am done with a reading it is these key points that stand at the forefront of my thinking on the material, and thus, they are what most strongly inform my reasoning. When my group divided the labor for our schemata (which we undertook in the form of a concept map) it became my job to look for the links between Perelman’s theory and other rhetorical theorists. So, not surprisingly, when I turned the last page on our excerpt of The New Rhetoric and I looked at the notes I made and the connections I drew I said to myself: “my goodness this is all just about digging up Aristotle!” I have come to take Perelman’s work to be simultaneously an effort to refocus Aristotelian Rhetoric to the forefront of intellectual attention, and a “surgery”, if you will, to redress a perceived ineptitude in how Aristotle’s work on the subject has been passed down through history.

Genetic Not Generic Arguments

There are many threads that I wish I could address in this post, but I will try to keep them to a minimum. I want to begin with an important point that Condit does not address in her piece. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's normative project is to recover and expand upon rhetoric's sphere of influence. In their own words, they put forward a "theory and practice of argumentation [that]...accord argumentation a place and importance they in no wise possess in a more dogmatic vision of the universe" (p. 1376). Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca state that:

We combat uncompromising and irreducible philosophical oppositions presented by all kinds of absolutism: dualisms of reason and imagination, of knowledge and opinion, of irrefutable self-evidence and deceptive will, of a universally accepted objectivity and an incommunicable subjectivity, of a reality binding on everybody and values that are purely individual (p. 1376).

Of course, Condit bursts their bubble of grandiosity and naivety by pointing out that Perelman re-instantiates or reaffirms the dogmatic linguistic biases that precluded women from entering into dialogue with texts.

Perelman, Condit, Quintilian, and the Rhetor's Well-Roundedness

Being a visual learner, creating a schema (and being exposed to others’ schemas) helped me contextualize Perelman’s ideas within a historical framework, something I found especially useful because I think it is important to understand the “cause and effect” aspect of theory development. Knowing how Aristotle influenced Perelman, and how Perelman influenced Condit, et cetera, helps me see development of rhetoric in the long run, as a time spectrum.

Jennifer writes that “Perelman was Aristotle in the spirit of Barthes… Perelman pulls focus, at least in part, away from the orator and more towards the audience.” I think this is very smart because the concept of “audience” is pivotal in terms of Perelman’s rhetorical structure, especially since he draws attention to this idea of the “presence,” which is comprised of whatever the rhetor picks out from among the audiences’ already established facts, beliefs, structures, etc. (1395) and weaves together in an attempt to foster “adherence” (1376). Perelman states that men gain adherence to varying degrees and that you’ll only know that degree if you seek it (page); in saying this, I believe he, in a way, poses rhetoric as a kind of practice as well as art, but assigns to it a gravity that hadn’t been present since before the Renaissance.

Redefining or Revitalizing Rhetoric and Audience

            One of the most important concepts that I’ve gleaned from Olbrect and Perelman with The New Rhetoric, the anonymous author of Dissoi Logoi, and from Aristotle’s On Rhetoric that is there are no absolute truths and fool-patterns of speech that will always work. That is to say, a rhetor’s audience is always changing and that there is no formula or message that will work unquestionably.

             As Perelman says, “We must recognize that the appeal to reason must be identified not as an appeal to a single truth but instead as an appeal for the adherence of an audience” (1393). In other words, the universal audience is an idealistic, completely false dream; there are only particular audiences, which can differ based on the adherences they already have to a given topic. Anyone who has ever taught a class will intimately know that there are no universal audiences: what will work for one class will not necessarily work for another. This is because different students or audiences bring different experiences, thoughts, abilities, languages, and beliefs—different adherences—to the rhetorical table. 

Knowledge and the Straw Man

In reading and creating the schema for The New Rhetoric, I thought about knowledge in two different ways.

1. While reading, I kept going back to one of Jenn’s questions from last week.  In reference to Aristotle, she asks, “Is there a separation between persuasion and creating knowledge?”  I asked the same question of Perelman because his argumentation style - while seemingly allowing the audience more agency and control over the orator’s rhetoric – ultimately mimics Aristotle’s style.  The orator considers the audience’s objects of agreement and uses those to encourage the audience to adhere to the orator’s thesis (1393).  Unlike with Bitzer, the rhetorical act for Perelman (and Aristotle, I would argue) is not solely for encouraging action.  “The new rhetoric, like the old, seeks to persuade or convince, to obtain an adherence which may be theoretical to start with, although it may eventually be manifested through a disposition to act” (1391).  The beginning point of persuasion, Perelman implies, is affecting the audience on a “theoretical” level.  In The New Rhetoric, P and OT use the phrase “theoretical knowledge” (1377).  Carrying this over, then, one’s understanding of the theoretical can equate to one’s knowledge (though one could argue that the theoretical may only be one type of knowledge). If this is true, the orator is affecting (creating, changing, deleting?) the audience’s knowledge through persuasive means.  This implies that, for Perelman, persuasion and affecting theoretical (at least) knowledge are synonymous.

Lost in Space

Last Friday, I was sitting on my couch, reviewing Perelman and thinking nervously about schema.  Per Dr. Graban’s blog post, a schema is a visual representation of how things are organized in relationship to one another.  That seemed to make sense until I starting thinking about Perelman and wondering how I was going to make one schema that represented the complexities of both Perelman’s work and its context. 

Perelman’s work is situated historically, as he positions himself in relation to Aristotle, to Descartes, and to many other theorists.  The New Rhetoric is both influenced by and influences a rhetorical tradition that is divided into both thematic and historical periods – just like our anthology and may others like it (the table of contents of which may, itself, represent a kind of schema).  Perelman’s work is also situated socially.  His attempt to provide the legal profession with a system of argumentation that governs value has the potential for serious social repercussions.  As Condit discusses, Perelman’s essay can be situated in relation to class and gender, as the essay stands as a representation of elitist and sexist language (97).  Within the work itself, Perelman’s system of argumentation can be situated in relationship to dialectic.  The essay’s breakdown of various objects of agreement lends itself to a discussion of how those objects relate to both orator and audience.  

Pleasure, Audience, and Moral Relativism (each considered somewhat separately)

This week I have a string of thoughts that do not collectively amount to an argument, but they are the topics that I felt most interested in exploring. 

1) Dr. Graban argues in her thorough schema of Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca’s theory of argumentation that the authors agree with Pascal on the superiority of “the art of pleasing” over “the art of convincing” (1403), and she then associates pleasing with informal reasoning and convincing with formal logic. This argument made me reconsider Condit’s critique; perhaps Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca do not so thoroughly “repress” emotion as Condit seems to claim (Condit’s use of repress, see 98). Pleasure is an emotion, and by arguing for the selection of arguments that the rhetor believes will be the most effective in causing the audience’s adherence (which perhaps can be understood as the audience’s pleasure in agreeing with the rhetor), rather than for the selection of arguments solely on the basis of “logic,” Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca are affirming the emotional aspects of rhetoric. 

That being said, I still think that Condit’s critique was appropriate, since Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca did not choose to actively explore the affective aspects of rhetoric, particularly in proportion to their discussion of types of/approaches to argumentation, which might lead people to conclude that emotions do not play a role in rhetoric.

Dissoi Logoi, Disruptive Deconstruction, and Booyah Achieved

One of the few coherent thoughts I seemed to be able to muster for last week’s blog related to Aristotle’s Topics, and my question of whether or not his version of how to argue was necessarily a good thing as it seemed to assume it was okay to bend the rules as long as you win. Considering on page 210 Aristotle’s willingness to offer the idea that...

If the written law tells against our case, clearly we must appeal to the universal law, and insist on its greater equity and justice.

... I was a bit thrown off. In many ways, I’m reminded of the antics of Joel McHale’s character from Community, Jeff Winger, a lawyer forced to earn his degree from a community college when his law firm discovers his degree was actually fake. In the pilot episode, Jeff tries to get an acquaintance of his at the school to provide him with answers to his Spanish test to avoid studying since Jeff was able to, in his former life as a lawyer, have Professor Duncan cleared of a DUI charge. The exchange I found interesting I’ve highlighted in the image I put together below:

Click the image to enlarge

The Challenge of the a priori

I arrive to this conversation late – but earnestly– and thank you for not minding that I participate.

For my first post, a pedagogical demonstration seems salient, if only because I am working through some of these same topics with my undergraduate students in ENG 4020 Rhetorical Theory and Practice.

Last week, we read “The Death of the Author” (Barthes, 1968) and “What Is An Author?” (Foucault, 1969) in the context of our unit on Agent/cy. The discussion surrounding these texts often and predictably inspires an impassioned defense of what students have come to understand as the writer, and whom they usually conflate with Barthes’ and Foucault’s Author, in spite of the marked differences between Barthes’ Author and Foucault’s Author; between Barthes’ Author and scriptor; and between Barthes’ scriptor and their own notions of writer. After several sessions of recursive explanation, we finally arrive – as a class – at the profound realization that our defenses for the role of writer (whether that role is actual, imagined, or historically situated) are inherently post-structuralist. They assume an attitude towards text that accounts for standpoint and positioning, and they assume that we assign some agency to the text – to the discourse itself. 

[Erin’s post lucidly shares a similar realization in noting that Barthes’ reader is “the space on which all quotations that make up a writing are inscribed” (147), i.e., in realizing the reader as a critical and epistemic destination.]

Rhetoric as a house? And applying Barthes' ideas to visual rhetoric?

     One thing I took away from our first weekly was that Aristotle and Quintilian, despite existing in significantly different political (and thus, rhetorical) climes, seem to share similarly formulaic approaches toward the study of rhetoric. Both are seeking relatively solid definitions of ideas and terms, and because of this, their writing seems fairly straightforward and digestible; is this because they are pioneers working in a foundational stage of the study of rhetoric?

     This is going to seem like a random turn, but in my mind, I associate them with the character George Monroe (Kevin Kline) from the movie Life as a House. Monroe, who is dying a drawn-out death from cancer, works every day on the top of a cliff trying to build a house for a family that is not his own.  He puts one beam up after the other until he has a basic edifice; and then, when he becomes particularly weak, he attracts help from his friends and family, and they all work together toward finishing what will become, one day, a beautiful, completed home.

Reflective Mapping (A Foundation)

Full disclosure: the ancients and I have never gotten along. It’s not that I can’t read texts that immediately relate to the beeps and boops of computers and videogames I find so soothing in my own scholarship or research, but rather because I find myself in a persistent struggle to make sense of how these texts which seem so embedded in context relate to my experiences here and now as a teacher and scholar of rhetoric and composition. For every important and intriguing line to me, a dozen more seem so hopelessly embedded in context that it becomes difficult for me to focus as I read on what is or is not important. This is probably much more a criticism of my own twitchy tendencies when I read than anything else, mind you, but I nonetheless find this persistent tension when I read ancient texts (or really, any that are not from the latter 20th century); how does this embedded text that feels so divorced from my reality relate to me, my students, or my studies? Despite some disconnects in format, I found the trace exceptionally rewarding this last week for precisely that reason: by applying a terministic screen to my reading of Aristotle and Quintilian, I was able to identify passages of interest far more easily than would have otherwise been possible for me as a reader. Also, while the process of mapping or schematizing may have fell short of the intended goals of the trace, I found it helpful to see the ways in which these texts differed. Specifically, the focus on genre in Aristotle, and the focus on Style in Quintilian.

ReCooperating Audience Agency

During our discussion of the rhetorical situation as theorized in Bitzer, Vatz, and Biesecker, agency seemed to be a recurring--and slippery--concept. Following the discussion, we put forward the questions, What is an agent in rhetorical situation? How do we theorize agency? Though we did not explicitly address these questions during our discussion of Aristotle, Quintilian and Barthes, I think these questions are important to consider in relation to rhetor and audience. For the purposes of this post, I’ll use the following definition of agency from the OED: “Action or intervention producing a particular effect; means, instrumentality, mediation.”

Megan K. asks two questions in her post that work well as a starting point for thinking about agency. Of Aristotle’s text, she writes, “In that view, a rhetor is not persuading his audience in order to help them see Truth; rather, the rhetor persuades the audience to believe what he wants them to believe, be it truth or not.  So, for Aristotle, are manipulation and persuasion the same?”  

Derivative Iterations of the Author-God or Those Damnable Bebe's Kids

During Tuesday’s class session, I poorly referenced Dr. Stacy Wolf’s wonderful article (1), wherein she addresses some of the challenges of teaching post-modern concepts to a thoroughly post-modern group of students. Here is an excerpt from that piece:

More importantly for this essay, as I later figured out, Savran’s motivation for writing “Toward a Historiography of the Popular” and his imagined adversarial reader completely baffled my students. More precisely, it was entirely illegible as an argument at all. The essay didn’t speak to them because their cultural hierarchies are different than Savran’s or mine. They don’t live in a world in which high art is better than pop culture. They have grown up being thoroughly postmodern, moving easily among media in a culture that privileges what John Seabrook calls the “nobrow”: the mind-bogglingly active shifting of cultural categories of value and worth, both commercially and intellectually. Later in the semester, they were furious to learn that musical theatre critics and scholars love Stephen Sondheim and hate Andrew Lloyd Webber. They dutifully researched the debates—and found them interesting—but disagreed thoroughly. They analyzed Phantom of the Opera with as much respect and seriousness as Sunday in the Park with George.

Week 1: Aristotle and Barthes go to Dinner.

     Upon tackling the trace of Aristotle and Quintilian along the scope of ethos I began to wonder how Roland Barthes' argument about the death of the author would interact with the weight that Aristotle places on the ethos of the Rhetor. In class we touched on this conversation when we assessed our Aristotelian questions against Barthes' argument. Which of the questions we are left with after a close, critical reading of Aristotle on ethos are actually dethroned when Barthes enters the scene? The role of the Rhetor for Aristotle is a high moral calling, is the role of the Author such a high assignment for Barthes? Does the character of the Author matter for Barthes in the way it is so critical for Aristotle?
   

Week 1: The Purpose of Language and Motivation of the Sciptor

The concept I most grappled with while reading and discussing Aristotle and Quintilian (and, eventually, Barthes) was the purpose of language.  (Note: For the purpose of this post, I am going to conflate rhetoric and language.)  Thinking about the purpose of language for each of the authors also helped me clarify and rephrase a question I asked on Tuesday.

For Aristotle, language is used to persuade.  To take Jenn's analysis, Aristotle's rhetor begins with an accepted (at least accepted by a particular audience) truth and builds on the truth to persuade the audience to accept a new, adapted truth.  Aristotle's persuasion, then, seems very similar to manipulation, particularly if we take the view that Aristotle's definition of truth is fluid (see Kendall and my exploratory for an argument of this view).  In that view, a rhetor is not persuading his audience in order to help them see Truth; rather, the rhetor persuades the audience to believe what he wants them to believe, be it truth or not.  So, for Aristotle, are manipulation and persuasion the same?

Week 1: Classification, Mystification, and Revelation; or, Too Many "Tions" for One Post

                Since class on Tuesday I have realized the inadequacy of my performance on the trace assignment (and not just because Jason and I chose to make a map…). I use the word inadequate because through my own short-sightedness I became lost in the details and failed to see how Dr. Graban’s questions related to some of the larger questions that I should have been asking myself; I became what I both dislike and admire in Quintilian and Aristotle: a classifier. Worse, I became a classifier without a purpose.

                The overarching questions that I should have been asking are, “What is ‘genre’? And what do Quintilian and Aristotle express (explicitly or implicitly) about this topic?” These questions seem obviously implied by the more specific questions that I was assigned to address, but they are what I neglected to keep at the forefront in my trace, and they are what I wish to examine in this brief space.

Week 1: Persuasion and the Creation of Knowledge

For the trace assignment, my group – myself, Ashley, and Megan R. – focused on the audience and the rhetor.  Before beginning my actual argument, I would like to echo Ashley’s comment that the table format was simultaneously helpful and problematic. While it did help me put Aristotle and Quintilian in conversation with each other, the table also made distinctions between categories and texts where there may not have needed to be any.  In foregrounding the relationship between Rhetoric and Institutes of Oratory, the table obscured slightly the relationships between the books and chapters within each text.  For our next trace, I may rethink slightly the format of the table in relationship to the questions being asked.

Week 1 CBP: Confused and Enlightened

My group and I decided, in order to create a deeper understanding for the reader of our ethos and pathos trace, to break the questions up into a table. At first, this seemed like a very easy way to understand and present this information. However due to the break down of the questions we made, I noticed that the categories are very similar in scope, and it was hard to answer them without sounding repetitive. Some of the ideas in Aristotle and Quintilian have very subtle differences within each article, and categorizing and drawing harsher lines in my understanding of the texts complicated the thought process for me. I can only hope that my attempt at recognizing and harnessing those subtleties came through in the explanations.

It seemed as if sometimes it was hard to discern where one idea ended and another began, within my writing and in Aristotle's work. For example, it was difficult for me to explain and pick examples that demonstrated both the construction of ethos and pathos as art and various strategies of those arts. I suppose and hope that the subtle differences in diction allowed me to dig deeper and have a more nuanced understanding of how those two categories (developing art and its strategies) relate and how they differ.