Hello, all.
I was recently handed down a collection of scholarly journals about composition studies by Devan Cook, a teacher and mentor of mine who retired (a bitter, bittersweet gift!). I was unbelievably humbled by this gift and promised that I would cherish them—this blog is an attempt to honor that promise.
This blog is really an excuse to assuage some of my current fears. Because I am no longer taking classes, I fear my brain is going mushy, growing more and more waterlogged by my day-to-day duties as a teacher and Writing Center AD. And since I’ve completed my program, I haven’t had much of a chance to write, and I fear that writing may very well be a skill that might get rusty. And, worst yet, I fear my voice—the writer’s voice I toiled to develop—might dry up as a side effect of teacher/administrator burnout. Ultimately, though, this blog is chance for me to do something I haven’t done in a while—to commit to something, to really tackle a project—for myself. And while this is a project I am undertaking for selfish reasons, I hope it serves another purpose, as a "thank you" to all of my teachers from grad school who have inspired me to want to keep learning, even long after our classes ended. (Too mushy? Okay, enough of that…)
So, here’s my plan: I hope to read and write about an article from one of these journals every day. (Okay, I fully intend on reading and writing nearly every day, or hopefully some days, or perhaps just as often as I can.) Some days this blog will be my excuse to read an article that’s been on my to-do list for some time. Other days I intend on playing article roulette, selecting an article to read by randomly pulling a journal off of my shelf. I can’t say as of yet what the responses will look like, what exactly their purpose will be, or how they might shift over time. I might just end up posting pictures of my dogs.
Well, here it is folks, my maiden post…
Enjoy or ignore!
Best,
mk
Article 1:
Fredal, James. “Rhetoric and Bullshit.” College English 73.3 (2011): 243-259. Print.
For those who know me, this choice for a first article to read for my new blog will probably seem quite obvious: “Rhetoric and Bullshit” certainly caught my eye as I skimmed through my newly acquired journals, as I’m sure it caught yours. It should also be of no surprise that my favorite Hemingway quote is, “The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector.” I would argue that that this kind of shit-detector is absolutely a crucial tool for any composition instructor. (And this is not to say that students go out of their way to bullshit us—though some do—but I find it’s more common that students are bullshitting themselves through their essays, and we must be able to identify their bullshit so that we may help them to better understand how to avoid it themselves.)
I have also grown increasingly interested in rhetoric over the past year since Clyde has been around. Rhetoric, of course, has garnered a bad rap—that rhetoric is really just bullshit (and, to some extent, I can see where that perception comes from). Fredal relies on the previous work of Harry Frankfurt to start fleshing out the definition of bullshit. Frankfurt says that bullshit is “what results when speakers conceal from their audience a lack of concern for the truth” (qtd. In Fredal 244). Fredal doesn’t fully agree with all of Frankfurt’s assertions, however, because there are many factors to consider when considering a writer or speaker’s intention regarding the truth. At one point during my reading of this article I began to question Fredal’s own intention. Here’s the beginning of a sentence that left me wondering:
“Like bullshitter bullshit, bullshit bullshit focuses on one important element of the bullshit phenomenon…” (249).
Was Fredal bullshitting us in this article??? I ultimately decided not because of Fredal’s final point of defining the difference between rhetoric and bullshit:
If bullshit is one-sided discourse, and arises in encounters characterized by the perception of arrogance and insult, then rhetoric must be defined as discourse that affords due regard to all participants in an encounter and all perspectives in a dialogue or discourse, particularly the non-dominant positions most likely to go unheard. […] Rhetoric ought to be defined with reference to the affordance of due attention and regard to all participants in an encounter, all perspectives in an exchange, all side of an issue. (257)
Fredal clarifies for me that rhetoric is not just about the “art or science of persuasive discourse” (256), which was my previous understanding. I like this new definition, I suppose, because it will help me better explain the purpose of argument to my students, who often think that argument is about picking a fight as opposed to recognizing and contemplating all sides of an issue (and even acknowledging where the opposing side has a good point).
Final thoughts about rhetoric and bullshit: Fredal’s discussion definitely encourages me to continue exploring rhetoric. I have always considered myself a natural rhetorician because of my ability to size up people and situations and adapt accordingly, and now I’d like to be more conscientious about it. At the same time, I also recognize that being a rhetorician can only get you so far. There are times in life when you need to be a bullshitter. (Small talk with strangers and family members is a bullshitting strategy I could improve on!)
As I was wrapping up this first post, I was flipping through the TV channels. I chuckled to myself as I came across the season premiere of “The Bachelorette”. Speaking of bullshit and the lack of concern for the truth…!
More tomorrow (and I hope it's not bullshit...)
mk
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