rhetoric has a reputation for being nothing but lies and empty words. it's one of the things i try to emphasize in the classroom -that this is what we associate with the term, although this use is fading, but that it isn't true. dr. P likes to say rhetoric is like the force, and it's your decision which side of that war to be on.
this may be the case. but i've said in another blog i keep that maybe that argument isn't good enough. the sophists got kind of a gleeful kick out of saying truth is subjective and that rhetoric is neutral. and some days, i get a kick out of that too.
but today i read this.
and it scares the hell out of me. because i got one of his mailers. and i've said about a dozen times in classes in the last week that it's not our job to fact-check with project 3. using statistics is a logos appeal even if they're lies. the presidential debates proved that. some candidates lied/misspoke more than others, but damn. there were a lot of numbers being thrown around that the audience had to more or less take on faith. and chances are good that when the candidates couldn't agree on a number, the people watching believed the candidate from whatever party they identify with. how many people go read a fact-checker's report? especially if they like what they heard?
as i said, i got one of the bridge mailers last weekend while i was in cleveland. i came home to this slick appeal to deny the bridge. and if i were a different person, it would be persuasive. he makes appeals to logic and emotion, asking don't i want the state/city to spend money on police, teachers, roads, etc, rather than this bridge, when he (ethos humanitarian appeal) is willing to build this bridge? it's good. i like teachers, police, firefighters, roads, etc. i would love to have consistent lighting driving through my city. i'd love never to pop another tire on a pothole i didn't see. i'd love never ever again to narrowly miss a manhole with a missing cover. i believe with my whole heart that education is a public good, and i'd like to see detroit students get the same sort of technology, teachers, and supplies that their counterparts at places like DCDS get.
so it's persuasive as hell.
it's also mostly lies, or kindof-lies. (i don't say this because of my political convictions, which i'll lay out on the table. i think capitalism is a heartless, fundamentally flawed system, and the longer we pretend it isn't the longer it takes for us to search either a) for an alternative or b) for a way to make capitalism work without doing so much damage. i'm not picky about which one we get.) yeah, it makes my skin crawl to think of a single individual OWNING and thus CONTROLLING a bridge between two countries. sure. but that doesn't change the fact that it's not exactly true. this doesn't really cost the city a damn thing. canada foots the bill, and they keep the tolls (on this bridge only) until our half is paid off, at which point we (canada and the US) start splitting the tolls. call me crazy, but that sounds like a good deal. but he's planted the idea that it will be michigan money. and it's possible enough people will believe it. and the fact that it's based on lies, or spin, or whatever you want to call it, doesn't make it less persuasive.
aristotle said that rhetoric (a technique) was insufficient without practical wisdom to guide its use. augustine exhorted his readers to study rhetoric but let god guide them in the use of it. quintillian said rhetoric should be the art of the good man speaking well. it's not coincidence that he put the good man part first.
we teach good research methods in class, and we fact-check, and we run papers through safe assign. but i'm not sure how well the message gets across that this is bigger than academic honesty, and Doing The Work Yourself. the greeks believed it was important to study rhetoric in order to speak well, yes. but they also believed that a man who didn't study rhetoric, who couldn't recognize when his emotions were being appealed to, and weigh that in his mind, would be vulnerable to those who wanted to take advantage of him. famously, in one of plato's dialogues, a man brags that because he speaks well, he can convince people he knows more about what's good for them than their own doctors. it sounds laughable when we read it, but it really isn't. this kind of thing happens all the time.
we vote in a week. we decide the future of this country in a week. i want to believe we will elect the good person speaking well. but my fear is that we will elect whoever had the loudest voice, or told us what we most wanted to hear, or who spent the most money. and really, all of this is bound up, or ought to be, in those classroom discussions about good research, and accurate sources, and Doing The Work Yourself.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Monday, October 29, 2012
sample outline for advice from a princess
this post refers to two of the three videos from this series:
Their Argument(s): Movies like Beauty and the Beast and Snow White are about love conquering all, and how good will triumph.
My Argument: Although they seem harmless on the surface, I argue that Disney movies like Beauty and the Beast and Snow White send harmful messages to young girls and reinforce negative cultural ideas about women.
Topics supporting my argument: (The movies...)
Their Argument(s): Movies like Beauty and the Beast and Snow White are about love conquering all, and how good will triumph.
My Argument: Although they seem harmless on the surface, I argue that Disney movies like Beauty and the Beast and Snow White send harmful messages to young girls and reinforce negative cultural ideas about women.
Topics supporting my argument: (The movies...)
- Show women engaging in unsafe behavior
- Show women in abusive/oppressive situations
- Reinforce ideas about physical beauty being the only value women have.
- Unsafe situations:
- Snow wandering around, going into strange houses, talking to strange women.
- When she does these things, she seems to have no notion of how unsafe they are, and is incapable of rescuing herself.
- Abusive situations:
- Belle held captive by the Beast
- He threatens to starve her
- He is violent and frightening.
- (In Snow White she is forced to be the housekeeper in her own home, and then to a bunch of strange men.)
- Physical beauty:
- B&TB is "about" how we should look past the surface
- But Belle is beautiful (the movie tells us repeatedly)
- Her beauty is why Beast keeps her, and *then* he sees her kindness. For him, she sees his kindness first.
- Physical beauty 2:
- Good looks "save" Snow.
- The huntsman who can't bring himself to kill her.
- The dwarfs take her in.
- The prince kisses her awake.
- Beauty is so important to women it's worth killing over: the queen is so jealous of another women being prettier that she's willing to have her murdered over it.
Saturday, October 6, 2012
genres of graduate work
This is, I apologize, unfinished. But you get the general idea. And I substituted the QE preface for my prospectus, because the prospectus is 6 pages long, which is outside the parameters of our P2 assignment.
#1
Qualifying Exam Preface
I propose a qualifying examination in the field of rhetoric and composition, with a concentration on rhetorical theory. In particular, I will be arranging my study of rhetorical theory around treatments of the concept of techne. Techne is traditionally defined as having to do with production, and is often paired with or contrasted to phronesis, which deals with doing rather than making. My emphasis for the examination will be on critical/literary theory, with a significant portion of the texts dealing with questions of politics and/or labor. In a post-Fordist world, labor is increasingly concerned with doing, as production jobs vanish and more and more workers find themselves in service and communication jobs. As joint components of this study, therefore, techne and labor complement one another.
The courses I have taken which prepare me for this emphasis include Eng 7034 (Globalization) with Dr. Chandra, and Eng 7065 (Writing Machines) with Dr. Pruchnic.
#2
WRITERS: Virtuosity and the Work of Writing
In his 2004 Grammar of the Multitude, Paolo Virno describes post-Fordist working conditions using the virtuoso, the figure who stands in contrast to the traditional manufacturing sector worker. For the virtuoso, the performance is the product, and to put the virtuoso to work is to put to work our capacity for communication and cooperation. Although Virno refers to this in particular as the virtuosity of the speaker, the communication and cooperation that the post-Fordist economy puts to work are just as much about the virtuosity of those who communicate with sound, images, or the written word. Moreover, his use of pianist Glenn Gould as his primary example of virtuosity suggests a certain conscious facility with the skills being utilized in the performance. My objective in this paper is to examine Virno’s virtuoso with an eye not toward the speaker or the pianist, but toward the writer and more particularly the writer as worker. A number of workers, especially in the information and service economies, would appear to fulfill Virno’s explicit qualifications for the virtuoso, but lack the conscious facility of the concert musician. These workers seem to stand, if not in contrast to the virtuoso, at least to the side of it. To what extent do Virno’s theories of virtuosity apply to them? Perhaps more importantly, do Virno’s hopes that ‘servile’ virtuosity can be turned a more actively resistant form apply to those whose work centers around the production of written communication?
Every now and again, when I tell someone I'm getting a PhD in rhetoric, they'll say "So, you like to write, huh?" To me, this feels like asking Kobe Bryant if he likes to shoot hoops sometimes. And yet, it's a common moment - like the time my mom referred to my 200-page dissertation as "That paper you've got to write." The dissertation, though, is a mainstream concept, and even if the people around me can't always appreciate the difficulties of it, they at least have some notion of what it is. The real challenge has been explaining the *other* types of writing to the people in my life. Before I decided to go to graduate school, it was just papers. Simple. Uncomplicated papers. The moment I began to fill out applications though, I found myself writing Personal Statements, Teaching Philosophies, Letters of Intent, precis, proposals, abstracts, exam prefaces, qualifying examinations, the prospectus, multiple syllabi, (more) seminar papers, paper proposals, conferences papers, etc. This doesn't even touch the writing you do that you're hoping to get someone to publish. To say that someone in this line of work "likes writing," is obviously not saying enough about how crucial writing is to both our academic careers and our senses of self.
Some of the genres listed above become familiar as old friends to a graduate student moving through the program, whereas others will only need to be tackled once. All of them, though, will be somewhat puzzling and intimidating the first time they're encountered, because even though many of them would seem to be trying to accomplish the same purpose, there are crucial distinctions in audience, tone, placement of the author, format, etc. For this discussion of writing genres at the graduate level, I have chosen two pieces that while doing similar work, do it in very different ways: the QE preface, and a conference paper proposal (or abstract).
The preface and the proposal, on the surface, are both previewing a forthcoming piece of scholarly writing. Both are intended to explain to an audience exactly what they can expect from a text which exists somewhere in the future -in the case of the preface, the examination essay or essays the student will eventually write, and in the case of the proposal, a 10-12 minute presentation to be delivered at a conference. Another feature that both genres share is their dependence on an audience of judges, people with the power to accept or reject the writing being previewed. Although these judges aren't identical (one is a committee of instructors as the university, the other a committee of faculty members from numerous institutions but connected to the conference), both sets of judges are made up of academics, who will judge the author of the pieces as a fellow scholar.
There are, however, crucial difference, even with regard to this audience. For one thing, in the case of the preface, the committee will include the writer's advisor or director, who will be "on her side" when it comes time to judge. With the proposal, the audience is made up of strangers, who have no reason to care one way or another. Etc...
P: Tone. Both are scholarly, and both are required to justify the work. The preface at the end suggests why the topics are relevant ones for the modern world, and similarly the proposal asks questions about the state of teaching today.
P: Tone: But also, there are differences. The preface is statements. This is important. This is the impact of these changes. These categories of texts do make sense together. The proposal, on the other hand, asks questions. The tone is less one of confidence and more one of exploration. It's a tease. I'm going to answer these provocative questions -don't you want to see how?
P: Both pieces require the author to build an ethos -to prove themselves- but do it in different ways. The preface includes references to coursework the student did to prepare them for the exam they wish to take. The proposal includes references to theorists. Both show the author has "done the legwork" but in different ways.
P: Conclusion.
#1
Qualifying Exam Preface
I propose a qualifying examination in the field of rhetoric and composition, with a concentration on rhetorical theory. In particular, I will be arranging my study of rhetorical theory around treatments of the concept of techne. Techne is traditionally defined as having to do with production, and is often paired with or contrasted to phronesis, which deals with doing rather than making. My emphasis for the examination will be on critical/literary theory, with a significant portion of the texts dealing with questions of politics and/or labor. In a post-Fordist world, labor is increasingly concerned with doing, as production jobs vanish and more and more workers find themselves in service and communication jobs. As joint components of this study, therefore, techne and labor complement one another.
The courses I have taken which prepare me for this emphasis include Eng 7034 (Globalization) with Dr. Chandra, and Eng 7065 (Writing Machines) with Dr. Pruchnic.
#2
WRITERS: Virtuosity and the Work of Writing
In his 2004 Grammar of the Multitude, Paolo Virno describes post-Fordist working conditions using the virtuoso, the figure who stands in contrast to the traditional manufacturing sector worker. For the virtuoso, the performance is the product, and to put the virtuoso to work is to put to work our capacity for communication and cooperation. Although Virno refers to this in particular as the virtuosity of the speaker, the communication and cooperation that the post-Fordist economy puts to work are just as much about the virtuosity of those who communicate with sound, images, or the written word. Moreover, his use of pianist Glenn Gould as his primary example of virtuosity suggests a certain conscious facility with the skills being utilized in the performance. My objective in this paper is to examine Virno’s virtuoso with an eye not toward the speaker or the pianist, but toward the writer and more particularly the writer as worker. A number of workers, especially in the information and service economies, would appear to fulfill Virno’s explicit qualifications for the virtuoso, but lack the conscious facility of the concert musician. These workers seem to stand, if not in contrast to the virtuoso, at least to the side of it. To what extent do Virno’s theories of virtuosity apply to them? Perhaps more importantly, do Virno’s hopes that ‘servile’ virtuosity can be turned a more actively resistant form apply to those whose work centers around the production of written communication?
Every now and again, when I tell someone I'm getting a PhD in rhetoric, they'll say "So, you like to write, huh?" To me, this feels like asking Kobe Bryant if he likes to shoot hoops sometimes. And yet, it's a common moment - like the time my mom referred to my 200-page dissertation as "That paper you've got to write." The dissertation, though, is a mainstream concept, and even if the people around me can't always appreciate the difficulties of it, they at least have some notion of what it is. The real challenge has been explaining the *other* types of writing to the people in my life. Before I decided to go to graduate school, it was just papers. Simple. Uncomplicated papers. The moment I began to fill out applications though, I found myself writing Personal Statements, Teaching Philosophies, Letters of Intent, precis, proposals, abstracts, exam prefaces, qualifying examinations, the prospectus, multiple syllabi, (more) seminar papers, paper proposals, conferences papers, etc. This doesn't even touch the writing you do that you're hoping to get someone to publish. To say that someone in this line of work "likes writing," is obviously not saying enough about how crucial writing is to both our academic careers and our senses of self.
Some of the genres listed above become familiar as old friends to a graduate student moving through the program, whereas others will only need to be tackled once. All of them, though, will be somewhat puzzling and intimidating the first time they're encountered, because even though many of them would seem to be trying to accomplish the same purpose, there are crucial distinctions in audience, tone, placement of the author, format, etc. For this discussion of writing genres at the graduate level, I have chosen two pieces that while doing similar work, do it in very different ways: the QE preface, and a conference paper proposal (or abstract).
The preface and the proposal, on the surface, are both previewing a forthcoming piece of scholarly writing. Both are intended to explain to an audience exactly what they can expect from a text which exists somewhere in the future -in the case of the preface, the examination essay or essays the student will eventually write, and in the case of the proposal, a 10-12 minute presentation to be delivered at a conference. Another feature that both genres share is their dependence on an audience of judges, people with the power to accept or reject the writing being previewed. Although these judges aren't identical (one is a committee of instructors as the university, the other a committee of faculty members from numerous institutions but connected to the conference), both sets of judges are made up of academics, who will judge the author of the pieces as a fellow scholar.
There are, however, crucial difference, even with regard to this audience. For one thing, in the case of the preface, the committee will include the writer's advisor or director, who will be "on her side" when it comes time to judge. With the proposal, the audience is made up of strangers, who have no reason to care one way or another. Etc...
P: Tone. Both are scholarly, and both are required to justify the work. The preface at the end suggests why the topics are relevant ones for the modern world, and similarly the proposal asks questions about the state of teaching today.
P: Tone: But also, there are differences. The preface is statements. This is important. This is the impact of these changes. These categories of texts do make sense together. The proposal, on the other hand, asks questions. The tone is less one of confidence and more one of exploration. It's a tease. I'm going to answer these provocative questions -don't you want to see how?
P: Both pieces require the author to build an ethos -to prove themselves- but do it in different ways. The preface includes references to coursework the student did to prepare them for the exam they wish to take. The proposal includes references to theorists. Both show the author has "done the legwork" but in different ways.
P: Conclusion.
Friday, October 5, 2012
plans and situated actions
i went running tonight in spite of the rain. normally i run on treadmills, because by the time i was 19 i'd already busted my knee twice, and every year about this time it reminds me that no matter how young you are, permanent damage is still permanent. but i spent the day getting caught up on grading and emails, and reading 80s composition theory for a conference paper, and i needed out.
i often use exercise as part of my writing/reading/grading process. i grade 2 papers, then do pushups. i promise myself a run if i read one more chapter. the breaks help keep me sane, and i think they help me process material. i come back to a paper i'm not sure what to say about with a clearer head after 10 pushups. i've planned classes on the treadmill, or untangled arguments while lifting weights. the thing many writers forget, and that less experienced writers have trouble believing, is that writing is a physical, situated thing. i often find that students write one way in class, and another way on papers they did at home. they write yet another way in a collaborative setting. if you've always sat down with music, and panicked your way through a paper - get up. go somewhere else. see if you write better with the buzz of starbucks in the background. see if you write better with pen and paper or with a keyboard. turn the music off, or on. shake things up. if you always sit in the same place, doing the same things, it's too likely that you'll keep writing the same way.
the point, though, is that while i was running i thought of two genres i might put together to work up a sample of the genre analysis for project 2. one is an abstract for a conference paper, and the other is the prospectus i had to write for my, well, prospectus exam.
before i even think about an analysis of these two pieces, though, i feel like it's worth saying something about how i wrote them. they were both completely new genres for me. i had learned to write a paper abstract as an undergraduate, and that sounded...kind of like a conference abstract. same word, right? so i wrote one of those the first time. it got accepted, but as i grew more experienced, and started seeing abstracts written by my peers, i realized i hadn't quite done it correctly. usually an abstract like i wrote takes place *after* a paper is written, and summarizes the argument for a prospective reader. that abstract lets them know whether it's worth their time to read your article. the kind of abstract i was *supposed* to be writing doesn't summarize the argument. instead it hints at the main questions of the paper, and suggests the importance of the argument that eventually will get made. it's a vague promise.
and just about the time i thought i'd got the hang of the whole abstract thing, i showed Dr. M my abstract for the Thomas Watson paper, back in May. he took a pen to it, and immediately started crossing things out "don't use the virtuoso and the techne frame here, keep it simple...don't invoke this many theorists -you sound insecure..." etc. it was a bit of a shock, but a reminder i probably needed that i'm still learning how this works. i'm still making the transition from self-conscious, apologetic student to confident peer.
the prospectus, again, was something i'd never written before. it's a short description of your dissertation, which you first defend in an exam, and then file with the department and the graduate school. what i knew going into it was 1. most of the people who will ever read it know nothing about your field, and 2. these lunatics wanted me to summarize a 200-page argument i hadn't even started writing yet?! so i did what i normally do under these circumstances. i collected 5 or 6 of them from people who'd already written one, and i modeled mine on theirs. the prospectus values being very clear (because the 4 people on your committee will exam you on it) but not too technical (remember all those OTHER people who know nothing about your field who are going to read it?). so i wrote a draft, which immediately seemed stupid to me. too short, too vague, too uninteresting. i let my fellow student, MLM, read it and suggest changes. i made them, and then emailed the draft to Dr. M. who promptly changed everything back to more or less the way it was before MLM got his hands on it, and told me to submit it (he was dead on when he said i'm still insecure, or maybe i'd have trusted my original draft).
the point here is that anytime you're writing in a new genre, there's a certain amount of anxiety. it's like going to a party where you don't know anyone. that's normal. so is the trial and error of not getting it quite right the first time, which is why we think of writing as a process, something that happens over a series of steps. but maybe the biggest takeaway is that the first step for writing in a new genre is finding samples of that genre and examining them with the panic of someone whose academic career is riding on the outcome. this can't be done in a vacuum.
i already *knew* this, but apparently i needed to be getting hit in the face with cold rain before i thought about how useful it might be to articulate those experiences and say it explicitly. thank you, lupe fiasco, for your part in this epiphany.
i often use exercise as part of my writing/reading/grading process. i grade 2 papers, then do pushups. i promise myself a run if i read one more chapter. the breaks help keep me sane, and i think they help me process material. i come back to a paper i'm not sure what to say about with a clearer head after 10 pushups. i've planned classes on the treadmill, or untangled arguments while lifting weights. the thing many writers forget, and that less experienced writers have trouble believing, is that writing is a physical, situated thing. i often find that students write one way in class, and another way on papers they did at home. they write yet another way in a collaborative setting. if you've always sat down with music, and panicked your way through a paper - get up. go somewhere else. see if you write better with the buzz of starbucks in the background. see if you write better with pen and paper or with a keyboard. turn the music off, or on. shake things up. if you always sit in the same place, doing the same things, it's too likely that you'll keep writing the same way.
the point, though, is that while i was running i thought of two genres i might put together to work up a sample of the genre analysis for project 2. one is an abstract for a conference paper, and the other is the prospectus i had to write for my, well, prospectus exam.
before i even think about an analysis of these two pieces, though, i feel like it's worth saying something about how i wrote them. they were both completely new genres for me. i had learned to write a paper abstract as an undergraduate, and that sounded...kind of like a conference abstract. same word, right? so i wrote one of those the first time. it got accepted, but as i grew more experienced, and started seeing abstracts written by my peers, i realized i hadn't quite done it correctly. usually an abstract like i wrote takes place *after* a paper is written, and summarizes the argument for a prospective reader. that abstract lets them know whether it's worth their time to read your article. the kind of abstract i was *supposed* to be writing doesn't summarize the argument. instead it hints at the main questions of the paper, and suggests the importance of the argument that eventually will get made. it's a vague promise.
and just about the time i thought i'd got the hang of the whole abstract thing, i showed Dr. M my abstract for the Thomas Watson paper, back in May. he took a pen to it, and immediately started crossing things out "don't use the virtuoso and the techne frame here, keep it simple...don't invoke this many theorists -you sound insecure..." etc. it was a bit of a shock, but a reminder i probably needed that i'm still learning how this works. i'm still making the transition from self-conscious, apologetic student to confident peer.
the prospectus, again, was something i'd never written before. it's a short description of your dissertation, which you first defend in an exam, and then file with the department and the graduate school. what i knew going into it was 1. most of the people who will ever read it know nothing about your field, and 2. these lunatics wanted me to summarize a 200-page argument i hadn't even started writing yet?! so i did what i normally do under these circumstances. i collected 5 or 6 of them from people who'd already written one, and i modeled mine on theirs. the prospectus values being very clear (because the 4 people on your committee will exam you on it) but not too technical (remember all those OTHER people who know nothing about your field who are going to read it?). so i wrote a draft, which immediately seemed stupid to me. too short, too vague, too uninteresting. i let my fellow student, MLM, read it and suggest changes. i made them, and then emailed the draft to Dr. M. who promptly changed everything back to more or less the way it was before MLM got his hands on it, and told me to submit it (he was dead on when he said i'm still insecure, or maybe i'd have trusted my original draft).
the point here is that anytime you're writing in a new genre, there's a certain amount of anxiety. it's like going to a party where you don't know anyone. that's normal. so is the trial and error of not getting it quite right the first time, which is why we think of writing as a process, something that happens over a series of steps. but maybe the biggest takeaway is that the first step for writing in a new genre is finding samples of that genre and examining them with the panic of someone whose academic career is riding on the outcome. this can't be done in a vacuum.
i already *knew* this, but apparently i needed to be getting hit in the face with cold rain before i thought about how useful it might be to articulate those experiences and say it explicitly. thank you, lupe fiasco, for your part in this epiphany.
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