The takeaways from this course are really divided into two
areas for me: Problematizing the ideas I already had about rhetoric and
expanding my view of rhetoric. These are, of course, related. In many classes
the goal is simply to expand a knowledge base with the idea that more knowledge
means greater intellect. But more can probably be gained from questioning the
beliefs (or “facts”) that we already possess. Sometimes the best way to call
these beliefs into question is by expanding our knowledge base and then
synthesizing. For me—especially since I have had the opportunity to take 733
and 603 simultaneously—733 has been a place to synthesize. That’s where I
learned the most.
First,
the expansion. On the most basic level I ended up reading more the Rhetorical
Tradition than I did as an MA student. But instead of looking at “pieces of
rhetoric” we also began to explore systems of rhetoric and how they come to
define the larger tradition. (The book, The Rhetorical Tradition, was not discussed,
but rather acted as a warehouse of texts in my MA program.) I also developed a
better sense of writing technologies (most notably language and writing) and
how they came to shape not just culture, but also thought processes. The
differentiation of speech and writing and their complicated relationship came
to light a little better. I also have a fuller sense of history. One of the
recurring themes about RT that became apparent in our classroom critiques is
that it is a person-based text. History as a class (and the last one I took was
as an undergrad) is usually event based. So, in looking at these historical
figures, I gained another dimension of the construct we call history.
Then
came the problems. The systems of knowledge really bugged me at first—the whole
idea that we are operating inside this ideology and can’t get out of it. I
guess this is why the RT began to bother me so much: because as a text it
really came to exemplify how we create these ideas and then make institutions
that reinforce these ideas and turn them into ideologies. My interest in
libraries and the Dewey Decimal Classification comes from this vein. I also
began to note some of the discrepancies or exclusions from history, causing me
to question how history is formed and how it operates as a system itself. The
usual components of history—events, people, and politics—began to crystallize
as rhetorical. (Think of the suffrage movement in history versus how it is
approached in RT.) Add the writing technologies into the mix and I began to
appreciate the seemingly less significant movements in the history of rhetoric
like letter writing or the use of silence.
That’s
more than 2-3 things and nothing that really zeros in on a takeaway. (And thus
is my focus this semester.) How about this as my big takeaway: Our goal as
teachers should not be to stuff the students’ heads with “new” information like
logos, ethos, kairos and whatever other Greek words we can rustle up. Instead,
maybe we can better teach by slowly expanding the students’ world in ways that
challenge their beliefs. We need to be interdisciplinary. (We’ve seen what a
rift in the humanities can do in the long term.) We also need to design
assignments that challenge students’ perceptions of writing. First, we need to
make writing relevant by giving it venue, audience, and kairotic purpose. Secondly,
we need to broaden our notions of rhetoric in the first-year classroom. Why do
we assign papers? Speeches, videos, system design, and metadata are the
rhetorics we should be concerned with now. I saw
this article about one of Kurt Vonnegut’s writing assignments and it struck
me as particularly useful. (Then it struck me that he was doing this nearly
five decades ago.) We should be looking at texts, yes, but we also need to acknowledge
the tools and the methods of production.
