OK so back on the blog horse.

RSA has come and gone, and in the month since reflecting, of a sort, has been happening here.  All the work I saw there stimulated much thought and especially much thought about who we write for and what it is we hope to accomplish in our scholarship.  I say we--of course I mean me.

And for this blog's RSA panel, what of that?  We had, I thought, an excellent discussion.  As I recall, the key thing that emerged from the discussion was a real putting to the test of the idea that just because we are all doing historical work, that we are all doing the same thing.  I said at the panel that what was most interesting about the work of that 10 months or so (!) was that we never really came to any kind of agreement about what our key terms, philosophy, history, rhetoric, meant individually, much less in combination.  The discussion itself suggested that some of the divisions we've pointed out throughout this blog--namely intellectual history and 'on-the-ground' history--determine the way we think about what historical work is, how it operates in the field of rhetoric, and how it stands in relation to a philosophical history.  It was clear for instance that while the definition of rhetorical history as a history of rhetorical instruction (this general idea was discussed I think earlier in the blog, though at the RSA discussion was put specifically in terms of an article by Mike Leff and Richard Graff) could not adequately capture the work we were all doing. 

Thinking again on the idea of rhetoric as a(nti-)historical, and how that connects to an idea, perhaps more prevalent in comp/rhet than in comm (?) that the proper object of study for the historian of rhetoric is the history of rhetorical instruction.  I want to pin this on Sharon Crowley, though I may be off there--it more just strikes me as an idea that saturates.  But if indeed we take rhetoric as somehow operating in a different register (at the least) than history--if it is indeed an absolute continuity or solidity that sees itself outside of time, as Barthes suggests (or as I keep reading an earlier post of Christopher's as suggesting that Barthes suggests)--does that make more or less palatable the desire to somehow link up contemporary pedagogical concerns with historical precedent?  This is a move that's sort of (anecdotally at least) standard in comp/rhet, I think it's fair to say.  Susan Jarratt does this in the last chapter or two of Rereading the Sophists, and in a very sophisticated way.  Others do so in a more pro-forma way, perhaps as an effort to legitimize historical work, or make it relevant, or get it published.  But maybe there's a way to make this move more intellectually radical, perhaps by suggesting or emphasizing the very ahistorical nature of rhetoric?

ethics and pragmatism

OK--the drafty post below notwithstanding, here's the question:

As regards defintions of our 'historical' work from a disciplinary perspective, Brandon suggests a "probability-based relativist-pragmatic one: the better of two arguments, as interpreted by an audience, often becomes socially-constructed meaning and reinforces/determines the course of events."

the question:  how is this different than Machiavelli's pedagogical imperative--to show things "not as they ought to be, but as they are"?

Here at the 4Cs, seeing a history panel and other things, enjoying Louisville I would say.  Supposed to say something or include something from the Cs homepage when blogging from the conference, can't remember what so let's just say this statement serves that purpose, with apologies.  I'm thinking about Brandon's most recent post and also thinking about this project, this thinking about the philosophy of history of rhetoric, and maybe it's just being someplace surrounded by a combination of really amazing insights and always already empty jargon, and I'm wondering what it means to think about this question.  Rethinking, doubting, etc. 

Disciplining the Conversation?

This conversation is starting to steer us in the direction of our "marginal" disciplinary status.

I guess when making my claims on the status of a philosophy of history "in rhetoric" I was thinking more of a perspective than a discipline.  So when a Foucault or White deny/deconstruct German historicism, they are being "rhetorical" by my all-encompassing, linguistic-turn notion.

Continuing Controversy

To extend Brandon's previous post and the comments that follow it:  It appears we are begininning to make some fun and contentious claims.  Namely, that what we do as historians of rhetoric is somewhat boundless--that we can take any historical material and make it our own, and that our analyses hold weight even when they impinge on others's disciplinary territory.  Another claim is that the history of rhetoric, or just rhetoric, is anti-historical.  It resists any philosophy of history as classically understood.  It rejects progress, spirit, telos.  It is, I suppose, a sort of timeless continuity, eternal contingency.

We reject discipline.  We reject history.  Is that right?

Creating Controversy

The main "controversy" I see so far (or one I'll invent for discussion) might be a gap between those who are radically contextual and those who admit ideological motivation to what they're doing.

1: To explain, I think some of us are saying that we are trying to purposely rewrite history, to tell another tale than "History."  Our motivations are to break up old narratives, help the marginal folks in History gain some prominence (esp. against race/class/gender bias), or maybe as Gorgias said of his Encomium, amuse oursleves.  Do any of you all claim one of these specifically as your primary motivation?

2: Others of us claim to be focusing on an object and deriving any theory or approach we have from that object.  My guess is that everyone would at least claim some motivations to their work, at least for the sake of interest in the object they study.  However, they would prioritize the object first, and profess to hold no preconceived framework.  Are there some of you out there?

Despite my "Ode to Arendt," I usually profess #2 first and then back it up with #1if pressured to admit my historiographic biases.  What about the rest of you?

A Moment

There are many points of discussion that have emerged from our blog conversations so far. The following quotes drawn from posts indicate three that seem to me significant: 1, a distinction between rhetorical and other history; 2, an investigation of the relationship between rhetorical history and storytelling; 3, a fluidity of relationship between historical context (past present and future) and rhetorical history.

History and Fiction

Hi Everyone,

Late to the party, but excited to be here!

Recently, I’ve been grappling with the question of the relationship between rhetorical history and fiction.  More specifically, with how to extend my rhetorical analysis of a public controversy to a fictional representation of the event.  My dissertation research focuses on the transfer of water rights from Eastern California (a region called the Owens Valley) to the city of Los Angeles at the turn of the 20^th century.  From its earliest conception the Los Angeles Aqueduct project generated a fire-storm of persuasive discourse and action:  arguments about urban planning, water rights, irrigation and agriculture, the ethics of profit-taking, overt deception in the press, fictional and visual representations, and finally even guerilla action on the part of Owens Valley citizens.  Mary Austin, a local novelist, fictionalized the early struggle over the water transfer in her 1917 novel, The Ford.

As a historian of rhetoric, issues of methodology and recovery come into play for me here.  Nonfiction genres differ not only as acts of rhetorical production within a public controversy but also in the manners and methodologies we use to interpret them.  I turn to Austin’s own rhetorical understanding of fiction for my quotation for this blog entry, as I her theories on novel writing hold value for contemporary historians of rhetoric.  Reading her own interpretation of the rhetorical force of fiction alongside the novel itself can contribute to our understanding of what the novel says about rhetoric as well as what the novel accomplishes rhetorically.

A late post

I want to apologize for being so late about posting to this blog. I have enjoyed what everyone else has said and can see some interesting ideas formulating.

As I do not know most of you I am going to start with something of an introduction. My name is Paul Dahlgren and I am finishing my dissertation on the history of rhetoric at the University of California, Irvine. I have provided a description of that project at the end of this post on the off chance that anyone is interested.

I think like many scholars in our field, I have been motivated by an interest in disciplinary history. I am fascinated by Daniel’s post on discovering and working with a usable past for what and I am hoping you’ll read my post as in part a response to his.

My quotation is from Alain Badiou and will require some explanation:

“To be faithful to an event is to move within the situation that this event has supplemented, by thinking… the situation ‘according to’ the event. And this, of course—since the event was excluded by the regular laws of the situation—compels the subject to invent a new way of being and acting in the situation” (Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil 41-2).

This passage describes what Badiou calls elsewhere “fidelity to an event,” the process through which both the world itself and the subject within that world change. Put simply, for Badiou events are radical transformations in the state of the world (what he calls the situation) which happen for any number of reasons. They are, simply put, revolutions. This happens because something within the situation cannot be accounted for given the governing logic or ideology of the situation. By declaring one’s fidelity to an event, one commits oneself to transforming the situation so that what was not represented before becomes part of a new and presumable better world. To take an example, according to Badiou, a scientific revolution happens because people slowly notice that certain phenomenon cannot be accounted for and individuals need to radically transform the way science is preformed in order account for these phenomena. I realize that may or may not be the way science happens, but I hope it serves to clarify what is going on in the passage.

an entry on method

My apologies up front for the criminal lateness of this post.

I think my contributions to our actual presentation will likely deal with the relationship between philosophy(ies) of history and method, so I'm going to divert from the instructions and the theme of the previous posts to talk a bit about method. My quote is from the article "Hegel and Haiti" by Susan Buck-Morss, the article I handed out at our summer workshop, for those of you who were there. Simply (simplistically?) put, this article seeks to rehabilitate the highly unfashionable Hegelian idea of 'universal world history' (arguably the first modern 'philosophy' of history?) by showing that Hegel is not referring to a metaphysical entity when theorizing the 'master/slave' dialectic, but is instead inspired by the struggle for freedom in Haiti (the successful slave revolt against the French led by Toussaint Louverture) at the turn of the 19th century (1804, I think?). The quote:

"Hegel's moment of clarity of thought would need to be juxtaposed to others at the time...There are many examples of such clarity [of thought] and they belong to no side, no one group exclusively. What if every time that the consciousness of individuals surpassed the confines of present constellations of power in preceiving the concrete meaning of freedom, THIS were valued as a moment, however transitory of the realization of absolute spirit? What other silences would need to be broken? What UN-DISCIPLINED stories would be told?"

Continuing the theme on place

I don't have a quote that epitomizes what I am trying to say, so instead I'll describe my thinking and perhaps someone will be able to refer me to someone.

When Daniel asked who we'd offer up as a philosophy of history, I turn most naturally to Susan Jarratt and Rereading the Sophists.  She does three key things that are models for all of us now: she grapples with the practical problems of scant evidence; she speaks to the tradition from a revisionist perspective afforded by feminism and other voices of the margins; and she lets the Sophists speak to the current critical moment.  It's this last part that works so well for her study, because the Sophists, of course, anticipate all the post-structuralist questions that add the problem of language to the usual philosophic problems of the origins of knowledge, reality, and thought.  So in a way she writes such a memorable book because she chooses such an ideal subject in the first place.

Yet as much as she does for historians of rhetoric, she does leave it up to us to figure out what to do with our own respective times, places, and communities which we study.  And it is here that I am moved by Brandon's description of his own roots in the South, and the compelling and insistent way that the past forces itself into the present.  My parallel is that I'm writing about early national Philadelphia.  There are a number of ways the research has opened up personal resonance for me, but that's not what I am talking about here.  Instead, what I am trying to say about multilingualism in this period is supposed to work as a case study; I'm proposing a method that could be transplanted to any other place and time.  But the fact is that it's early America I'm talking about, which has so many symbolic and rhetorical meanings for us as a nation, and I can't seem to escape the fact that I _am_ making a historical argument, writing a new story, about how our country looked when it was new and therefore we have been wrong about our monolingual English origins.  So I'm writing a new story.  And it's _not_ transplantable because it's the soil that counts.  (horrific metaphor I know!)

Histories of what used to be called rhetoric

Hi. I apologize if this isn’t an appropriate entry for a blog, but given how late I am with it, I felt compelled to get something down.

In the published manuscript of his seminar on “L’ancienne rhétorique” [The old rhetoric], Roland Barthes suggested that rhetoric, a

“véritable empire, plus vaste et plus tenace que n’importe quel empire politique, par ses dimensions, par sa durée, déjoue le cadre même de la science et de la réflexion historiques, au point de mettre en cause l’histoire elle-même, telle du moins que nous sommes habitués à l’imaginer, à la manier, et d’obliger à concevoir ce qu’on a pu appeler ailleurs une histoire monumentale » (3: 530)