Traveling Rhetoric Through Chaotic Transit

     The experience of schematizing Rhetorical Theory and Practice brought an ambiance of power, control, discovery, and invention. The creative sovereignty afforded to the hands of the schematizer imposed a drunken ecstasy on the physical space on which we composed for with each swift line of the pen we, in essence, made a connection. I say made with every weight afforded to it possible insofar as we were physically drawing, creating, and making a connection from one concept, author, theory, to another concept, author, and/or theory. By setting each author/concept free from the chains of chronology, we the schematizers, claimed the power to portray an image of connections made organically from our own positions and perspectives.
     From the origin point of our course we began on the ground, so to speak, with metaconcepts and theories. Even the decision to lay a starting point was a complex one insofar as that act alone meant we were choosing an origin. The tension I felt engrained in my rhetorical soul with this issue of establishing an origin lies in theories of invention that I have found myself recently. I found an explicit description of this theory in Barbara Biesecker's of Historicity, Rhetoric: The Archive as Scene of Invention and in Deborah Hawhee's Perspectives on Rhetorical Invention. In her article, Biesecker names the Archive as a scene of "double invention,"(124) and challenges our ideas of the archive as a "literal substitute for the reality of the past"(125). These concepts struck a cord for me this semester in particular due to my immense immersion in archival work. This has been my first experience in the Archive, literally and digitally, and I have certainly found my own frustrations. I find that I leave with more questions than I went in with because it is as if we expect the archive to be the living memory of those past in through which we can access that person long after their death. However, this is not the case. The Archive is pieces, details, and elements of a person or place, not the person or place in literal reproduction and herein lies the issue of the gaps. What do we do with the gaps in information? When years are missing from the archive, how do we reduce our uncertainty as a researcher and inquirer? It is a gift to experience the past in this way, yes it is not a complete past, a whole past, not a literal reproduction of that person's life and memory. The archivist must make choices, categorize, and contextualize the artifacts, documents, and elements at his or her disposal to create the ambiance; he must invent the archive. In this invention however, the archivist is finding and discovering that which already exists as well as creating something out of it.
     This concept of invention as both a creative process and and a means of discovery is referred to by Deborah Hawhee as "invention in the middle" (17). Hawhee establishes this idea through the Greek language middle voice. This tense lies outside of what we know in the English language as the active and passive voice. If a verb is in the middle, it is translated as being done both by and to someone, for example if I see in the middle voice, I am both seeing and being seen. For invention to lie in the middle it becomes a process in which we both create and are being created by knowledge. Herein lies the perspective by which I see and understand Rhetoric. As I come to know Rhetoric as a theory, practice, concept, essence, and lifestyle I am constantly simultaneously discovering and creating what Rhetoric is. These ideas have no beginning and no end, there is no time which I first began to know Rhetoric for Rhetoric has always been a part of me.
    Oftentimes in creating our schema of Rhetorical Theory and Practice by means of our semester's readings we returned to the desire to come upon a means of knowing all things at once, therefore eliminating the anxiety of an origin point. For as we know and come to know we are always building upon that which we previously knew. In this idea we found tensions because it eliminated the ability to know something independently of influences. After some reflection however, I found this to be a beautiful anxiety. In this way we discover, learn, craft, and create knowledge in our own unique minds and souls at the mercy of the influence of destiny. Knowledge is not independent of influences and we cannot divorce what we already know from what we come to know, but in that way we travel in chaotic transit through the realm of discovery, learning and growing as we live and breathe. In the end our schema looked like chaos, but what a glorious chaos it was, no beginning, no end, no higher nor lower, no point of wonder not point of anxiety, simply an ambiance of Rhetoric seen through the eyes of three scholars, three students, three thinkers, three wonderers trying to make sense of this world all the while it makes sense of us.