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.