Category: tPA 2

What it’s not

Jeff2 Comments

What it’s not

Aristotle is really clear in delineating the properties which may be used to describe something in Topics. The motive behind Topics is to identify the constituent parts of an argument. Arguments are derived from propositions that have both a subject and a predicate. If the predicate is interchangeable with the subject, then the proposition is a definition, otherwise it is a property. These properties are enumerated as quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, activity, and passivity.

Having a variety of ESL students in both of my classes, I think it will be a good idea to review many of the descriptive words used to list these properties. I hate flowery description, myself, and there are usually more than enough properties for any given subject to provide a good description without resorting to them. That’s my biggest fear about teaching beginning composition— the “writerly” types who want to load up every page with a bunch of fru-fru nonsense. It’s always best to start with the literal, before you try to start building up chops. Literal description begins with simple properties. The first step towards knowledge begins with arriving at propositions such as these. However, in order to evaluate statements, properties must be compared with the subject to test their scope, their similarity, and their differences from the subject.

It occurred to me last night that it is easy to get stumped when trying to describe something— watching my students scratch their heads when I asked them to make a list of things about themselves to share with the rest of the class made me wonder about ways to overcome that mental-block. I decided that the best strategy I could think of to describe something when you run out of things to say regarding what it is— is to start enumerating the things that it is not.

To that end, I’ve decided to use this fragment of writing by Tom Robbins to illustrate one way of overcoming that block. It also serves as a nice bridge between the literal and the metaphoric, the territory I’ll be exploring next week. It’s always a challenge to come up with ideas for texts that aren’t hard— I like things that are hard, a fascination that not many college freshmen share. Hopefully, this won’t be too challenging to start out with.

Continue reading “What it’s not” →

Comp I

Jeff2 Comments

Something Old

I was struggling most of last week trying to figure out how I might approach teaching Composition I. It came together today, on the first day of class. Strange how these things work. I was intrigued by Kiraki’s approach of using deliberatory and mediatory essays in Comp. I. One advantage is that it provides an easy way of introducing research as an invention strategy. However, the disadvantage is that first year students need to spend a lot of time on confidence building and using such complex targets takes away from the time you have to deal with the practical matters of style and diction. I wanted to incorporate some of her approach, but not all of it.

The problem is that arcing toward true negotiating skills requires the development of chops that first year writers usually don’t have— it would take a while to get there. I devised a plan, using five rather than the usual four essays assigned in Comp I:

  1. Descriptive essay
  2. Narrative essay
  3. Encomium
  4. Comparative essay
  5. Deliberative essay

When I was lecturing today, I backwards-engineered a great rationale for it. I like modeling the arc of a class against a classical method— in the case of Composition II I use the Ciceronian six-part essay, spending weeks on each of the sections. However, since the emphasis in Comp I is not usually on argument, that just didn’t seem right. Instead, I decided that my arc would be across the three branches of rhetoric— forensic, epideictic, and deliberative. Trying to give a short course in the history of rhetoric as a discipline today, it all began to make even more sense.

Not many first year comp teachers start with Corax and Tisias, but I did. The birth of rhetoric can be traced to the courtroom— the first trials by jury in Sicily in the fifth century BC caused a need for common people to be able to argue their case in front of their peers. Corax and Tisias set up schools to train them. The first rhetoric was courtroom rhetoric, and it was largely focused on the preservation of property in the present. A descriptive essay is classified as forensic because of its similarly present-directed argument. This is what it is— or isn’t. As the teachers (Sophists) spread further, the power of language to move people to political action became clear. One of the surest ways to move people was to stir them up over ancient battles and such, praising their heroes or blaming their enemies. Rhetoric begins to look back, telling stories of praise or blame. Stories are situated in the past— hence, the ability to write a narrative essay combines a talent for present description with the ability to arrange time in a coherent fashion. The most highly developed form of it is really the encomium— epideictic rhetoric in the public square.

To write a good encomium for something requires some research in order to really sing the full praises of your subject, but it isn’t totally essential. I can ease into it there— but as Aristotle enters the equation, the ability to compare things certainly means doing your homework. I want to do the comparative essay on a political topic, and ask them to be dispassionate about it. A deliberative essay should build on the comparison between two courses of action, so I’ll allow them to revise the fourth essay substantially into the fifth— I know how hard it is for first year students to be dispassionate about anything. But the ability to compare two positions is the essential stepping stone to deliberation on future action, and I think that is a nice note to close on— a sort of Isocratian landing spot for the whole class.

What I find the most fun about this is that it matches the historical development of rhetoric so closely— it begins with a need, moves into a fluffier sort of writing, and ends with a concerted look at future action. I love this stuff.

Chicago Daily News

Jeff3 Comments
Image of a wounded soldier making a toy tank at Fort Sheridan Hospital in Fort Sheridan, Illinois— 1919

Photographs from the Chicago Daily News 1909-1933 is a way cool site:

This collection comprises over 55,000 images of urban life captured on glass plate negatives between 1902 and 1933 by photographers employed by the Chicago Daily News, then one of Chicago’s leading newspapers. The photographs illustrate the enormous variety of topics and events covered in the newspaper, although only about twenty percent of the images in the collection were published in the newspaper. Most of the photographs were taken in Chicago, Illinois, or in nearby towns, parks, or athletic fields. In addition to many Chicagoans, the images include politicians, actors, and other prominent people who stopped in Chicago during their travels and individual athletes and sports teams who came to Chicago. Also included are photographs illustrating the operations of the Chicago Daily News itself and pictures taken on occasional out-of-town trips by the Daily News’s photographers to important events, such as the inauguration of presidents in Washington, D.C.

Puzzled America

Jeff

Puzzled America

I read about half of Puzzled America (1935) by Sherwood Anderson today. It is an amazing bridge between 1919’s Winesburg Ohio and 1940’s Home Town. Several commentators I’ve read see Home Town as a sellout of sorts— a caving in to collectivism when Anderson had previously celebrated individualism and eccentricity in Winesburg Ohio. The book is an early example of “creative nonfiction,” and it bridges the conceptual gap. In the short personal oral histories in the book, Anderson clearly relates the changing face of America in the 1930s. In the story called “TVA” Anderson celebrates power:

There is wealth in the land which these people have tried to live. It is a new kind of wealth, the wealth of modern man, of the modern world. It is wealth in the form of energy.

Power— the coinage of the modern world!

There is plenty of power— the private companies have only got a little of it so far— flowing silently away, along the Tennessee, along the rivers that come down out of the hills to make the Tennessee.

Long ago, I’m told, army engineers went through these hills. They drew up a kind of plan, having in mind the use of all this wasted power in case of war, power to be harnessed, to make munitions, to kill men.

There came a World War and the building of the Wilson Dam at Muscle Shoals. That is where the Tennessee, in its wanderings, dips down into northern Alabama, thrusts down into the land of cotton. It is something to be seen. All good Americans should go and see it. If the Russians had it there would be parades, special editions of illustrated magazines got out and distributed by the government.

There it is, however, completely magnificent. You go down, by elevator, some ten stories, under the earth, under the roaring river, and walk out into great light clean rooms. There is a song, the song of great motors. You are stirred. Something in you— the mechanically minded American in you begins to sing. Everything is so huge, so suggestive of power and at the same time so delicate. You walk about muttering.

“No wonder the Russians wanted our engineers, “ you say to yourself.

The great motors sing on, each motor as large as a city room. There is a proud kind of rebirth of Americanism in you.

“Some of our boys did this,” you say to yourself, throwing out your chest. (58-9)

I find the narrative strategy here— placing the reader in the scene— to be quite interesting. But there is the note of caution, as the world gears up for another World War that this power is meant to produce bullets to kill people. That’s a nice touch— it plays on the patriotic sentiment while sliding in through the back door a note that this power was not initially designed to be beneficent. It says something about America, while it clubs you with patriotism.

The real shift in Anderson’s attitude about American individualism shines through in a subsequent story, “Tough Babes in the Woods.” In a conversation with one of the hill people, Anderson relates the contradiction between industry and individualism:

“This is off the record. Some may think I am a Socialist or a Bolshevik.”

Men’s minds pushing, somewhat timidly, into a new social view of physical America. How are they to tell the story to that lean mountain man? Let us say that he owns his few poor hillside acres. Who is to tell him, “Thou shalt not?”? The right to go on plowing, where plowing is sheer land destruction— the traditional right of the American individualist, big or little.

“It’s mine.”

“It’s mine.” (73)

Captions

Jeff
Walker Evans, Hale County Alabama, 1936

Aristotle on Captioning

I was reading Aristotle’s Topics, and was struck by his puzzling over the correct use of phrases:

Sometimes a phrase is used neither homonymously, nor yet metaphorically, nor yet literally, as when the law is said to be the measure or image of things that are by nature just. Such phrases are worse than metaphor; for metaphor does make what it signifies to some extent familiar because of the likeness involved (for those who use metaphor do so always in view of some likeness), whereas this kind of thing makes nothing familiar, (for there is no likeness in virtue of which the law is a measure or image nor is the law ordinarily so called). So then, if a man says that the law is literally a measure or an image, he speaks falsely; for an image is something produced by imitation, and this is not found in the case of the law. If on the other hand, he does not mean the term literally, it is clear that he has used an obscure expression and one that is worse than any sort of metaphorical expression.

Moreover, see if from the expression used the account of the contrary is not clear; for definitions that have been correctly rendered also indicate their contraries as well. Or, again, see if, when it is merely stated by itself, it is not evident what it defines— just as in the works of old painters, unless there were an inscription, the figures used be unrecognizable.

The core values of Aristotle’s conception of metaphor are conflicted— as Paul Ricoeur has noted— he uses a model of metaphor as resemblance in Poetics and here, in Topics, but is not nearly so stringent about it in Rhetoric. But it is interesting to me that he invest a great deal in the power of a caption to clarify an image. I think the confusion reflected in this passage plays itself out well in the development of documentary photography in the 1930s.

Aristotle is concerned about obscure expression— is a picture without a caption more confusing? Not if it is metaphoric or literal— if its reference is clearly one or the other, then it seems unnecessary. But what if the usage isn’t so clear? It seems that according to Aristotle, without the caption there is no way to interpret the image.

I am reminded of the two extremes of the photographic books I’m considering— Doris Ulman’s 1933 collaboration with Julia Peterkin, Roll Jordan, Roll uses no captions; neither does Walker Evans and James Agee’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. The strange thing is that Ulman’s photographs are meant to be clearly metaphoric— whereas Evans work is neither literal or metaphoric. Evan’s photographs fall into the strange zone that Aristotle is writing about here. Are his photographs obscure because of this? I think that is a point to ponder.

The cause for Evans’ avoidance of captioning was to avoid the rhetorical posturing in the interim works. However, what is the cost? Is it obscurity?

A Milton Flashback

Jeff1 Comment

A Milton Flashback

I was going through some old mail and stumbled on a link to an article in the NY Times decrying teaching Milton’s Samson Agonistes— Is Teaching Milton Unsafe at Any Speed? The core argument is that the poem celebrates terrorism, or rather, that Stanley Fish’s reading of Milton accentuates the fundamentalism involved. According to the Times:

Liberals, he [Fish] says, believe in objectivity, disinterested consideration of evidence, procedural safeguards for justice and above all in the primacy of rationality. “Milton,” he argues, “believes none of those things.”

On September 11, 2001 I was preparing my notes for a seminar on Milton on the twelfth. I was supposed to teach “Lycidas,” a pastoral elegy. “Lycidas” is a flexing of his poetic muscles that neatly avoids the problem of fame by passing judgment on the worthiness of fame not to men, but to God. Its strategy of deferral is interesting, because Milton compares the fallen poet he laments (who he barely knew) to Orpheus. Though Orpheus could charm a stone through his rhetoric, it still didn’t keep him from being torn apart by the Maenads. I feel sorry for poor Milton.

Presenting an elegy on that day seemed so right. And it is a powerful elegy at that, one of the finest in my opinion. A few weeks later, oddly enough, I presented Samson Agonistes. Thoroughout the poem Milton undercuts Samson for his past deeds, and he is in torment that parallels that of Job. In the end, he tears down the temple based on the voice of the lord that he alone hears. Of course, Milton no doubt chose this subject because he was involved in defending Cromwell, and felt himself in a similarly embattled position. To teach a play that involves such single minded devotion to a God seemed really important in the light of September 11th. Right or wrong, who can really say. I haven’t had any conversations with God lately to judge by. Strike the poem from the canon? It seems as likely that we might neatly snip out the story from the Bible.

Milton consistently defers authority to God. I wonder if that might be the firmest lesson involved. Personally, I can’t see following any god that commands you to slaughter innocents. Obviously, Milton’s God condoned that sort of behavior— and he wasn’t Islamic. Does that mean I ask myself “What would Milton Do” just because I read and love his poems? Now that’s a really stupid question. Milton never claims any authority for himself, only for his God— and it really turned out badly both for him and the innocent victims. There is a lesson in there somewhere.

I was only sitting in on this seminar. I felt like I had missed something in my undergraduate career by not spending more time with Milton. I was glad I did, and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. What better way to understand the actions of some outraged fundamentalists than by reading another fundamentalist?

I’ll Take My Stand (1)

Jeff

I’ll Take My Stand

The opening “Statement of Principles” by the group of twelve Southern writers brought together in I’ll Take My Stand, first printed in 1930 in limited quantity, bears close scrutiny by anyone interested in the argument over the role of the humanities in education. While it takes as its organizing trope the conflict of “Agrarian versus Industrial” it is easily recast into a modern frame by considering it in the light of the continuing debate over traditional versus vocational education. However, the rhetoric is easily pigeonholed as region-specific or time-specific. The resistance to industry reflected in these historic essays draws deeply at the well of the humanities, and the introduction seems incredibly cognizant of the wider implications— the book breaks the bounds of an anachronistic luddite artifact of a culture long since passed. Indeed, it seems prudent to examine the definition of “Industrialism” offered here:

Industrialism is the economic organization of the collective American society. It means the decision of society to invest its economic resources in the applied sciences. (x)

If the book is a battle cry against this movement in America, then like the first civil war, the South surely lost. However, the introduction speaks to an anxiety which in its own way anticipates deconstruction:

The word science has acquired a certain sanctitude. It is out of order to quarrel with science in the abstract, or even with the applied sciences when their applications are made subject to criticism and intelligence. The capitalization of the applied sciences has now become extravagant and uncritical; it has enslaved our human energies to a degree now clearly felt to be burdensome. The apologists of industrialism do not like to meet this charge directly; so they often take refuge in saying that they are devoted simply to science! They are really devoted to the applied sciences and to practical production. Therefore, it is necessary to employ a certain skepticism even at the expense of the Cult of Science, and to say, it is an Americanism, which look innocent and disinterested, but really is not either. (x-xi)

Curious distinctions are at work here— first, the identification of a schism between abstract and applied science. This is still true. Funding for pure research is hard to come by. It’s the economic focus that defines America— so by definition “science” in a real sense is hardly disinterested or innocent. Though carpal-tunnel is more of a threat in most modern professions than black lung, nothing much has been changed when it comes to the “burdensome” nature of applied science. The Southern answer to the problem of casting off that burden is leisure, and I must say I like that answer. The penalty of the endless work/leisure explosion is proposed as a two-edged sword:

Turning to consumption, as the grand end which justifies the evil of modern labor, we find that we have been deceived. We have more time in which to consume, and many more products to be consumed. But the tempo of our labors communicates itself to our satisfactions, and these also become brutal and hurried. The constitution of the natural man probably does not permit him to shorten his labor-time and enlarge his consuming-time indefinitely. He has to pay the penalty in satiety and aimlessness. The modern man has lost his sense of vocation. (xlii)

I can’t help but think of the way that the tempo of vocational education has entered into the humanities— hundred year spans are taught with a few choice predigested words which support the current critical trends, and there is precious little time for reflection. The best of teachers though do take the time to attempt the expression of the soul of literature and history— that yesterday indeed has and does invest itself in today. But I had to put myself under the magnifying glass when it comes to my own consumptive patterns.

I am a voracious consumer— not of status symbols, modern conveniences, etc., but of information. In the consumption of information, there is no satiety or aimlessness. The consumption of information is indeed a vocation. I find myself far more drawn to that than agrarian pursuits. The current trend in reading I’ll Take My Stand is to read it as metaphoric. I think this is a good thing; the appeal to tradition that it represents is heartfelt and erroneous. But the appeal for a critical appraisal of technology in light of what it displaces is important, even today in an information rather than commodity driven economy.

More to come, I’m sure.

Audience Analysis

Jeff

Reading the audience

I was thinking about the first time I encountered “audience analysis” in school. It was my second writing class— persuasive writing. The instructor had the class bring several popular magazines to class so that we might guess what the “target audience” for these publications were. The easy way to do it is to look at the advertisements. Trends were easy to spot, with little actual reading involved.

Watching the History Channel this morning, I was enlightened by the troubled story of the M-16. I didn’t realize that it was created by a man with the surname of “Stoner” and built by the Armalite Rifle Company. Who watches this stuff? Non-stop stories of new and better ways of killing each other. Ah, maybe the ads provide a clue. The first ad was for the Q-Ray Bracelet. Perhaps the same people drawn to weaponry as a talisman of power are also drawn to mystical ionic ray bracelets that relieve all pain. The commercials found on these cable stations seem to have a big overlap with a publication that the instructor made some guesses about in that persuasive writing class— The National Enquirer.

The general consensus of the class was that the audience for supermarket tabloids is women with less than a sixth-grade education. I wonder how the History Channel’s marketing reps sell to these companies? Ozzy Osbourne is a big fan— perhaps there is a connection between ritual healing and ritual destruction? The question of audience is complex though, because the station does have many quality programs besides the constant barrage of war pornography. TV advertising is not nearly as monolithic as print advertising. Next to the ads for diabetes test equipment, teenagers cavort with day-glow cell phones. But there is an overwhelming tone of machismo to the bulk of the History Channel’s programming, so I really do wonder at the presence of the miracle bracelet. Do guys really buy this stuff?

But I wonder more about the statistics that Ampersand posted about our so-called “representative” government. I wonder if the typical member of Congress wears a Q-Ray bracelet to match their M-16? With all the talismanic saber-rattling these days, it would make a lot of sense.