Gates Open: Thank You for Re-Imagination

A special thanks to Matt for "opening" the gates of our imagination for this blog.

Writing Across Communities
Writing the World Symposium
Paper Proposal
April 18 – 20, 2012

“The Old Canonites v. the New Colonies: Détente through a Pragmatic Theory of Writing Pedagogy”
Proposed by Kate Baca
Master’s Program – Rhetoric and Writing
University of New Mexico

Since the mid-to-late 1990s, there has been a move in the American academy to distance undergraduate composition from a literature-based essay focus. Emphasizing variations on Aristotle’s rhetoric in a neo-topoi, genre-based pedagogy, the “New English” composition classroom has been burnished of literature. It purports to teach critical thinking through critical writing emphasizing its essential nature as a tool in service to civic awareness and engagement. This is admirable and desirable both from a political perspective and an economic one. Higher education should mint a productive and principled polis, and if it is funded by tax dollars, so should it produce a national product. But the move is equivocal. Old lights, such as Richard Rorty, have argued separately and eloquently for a reinvestment in humanism and “Great Books.” They warn of the dangers that lurk when critical thought is separated from the wisdom, beauty-for-its-own-sake, social pride and error – even hegemony - that are captured in literature. For them, new writing that is disconnected from old writing is bereft of its heritage. Without tradition and context it can inspire neither allegiance to nor reform of the status quo.

Ironically, rhetoric – as a teaching strategy - is at the crux of this impasse. Rhetoric is both a hallmark of the new colonies camp and a symptom of its inability to close the deal in the pedagogical debate with the old canonites. Walter Beale’s A Pragmatic Theory of Rhetoric maps the way to an understanding of these thinkers as far more Platonic than pragmatic, and it exposes the reasons for the impasse between the camps as well as suggesting a methodology for spanning it. Beale offers a hermeneutic approach to texts that draws heavily on rhetoric in the Sophistic tradition. It assumes, as did the Sophists, that rhetoric is irrevocably tied to varying, contingent realities, and that understanding this dynamic, and identifying the reality any given discourse act proceeds from and reflects is critical to its meaning. This hermeneutic is also pragmatic for the same reasons. It seeks to demonstrate that texts are a manifold affair, that rhetoric is not perforce formalistic a la Aristotle or worthless without foundation a la Plato. It is one of man’s measuring sticks a la Protagoras.

A pragmatic approach to writing would redefine great books and welcome them to the workshop. We should not follow Eagleton’s rejection of traditionally revered writing because it arises out of values specific to an over-class. Neither should we revere or elevate writing without also examining why we should and whether we should continue to do so. Learning to write should stretch reality and comfort and commitment and demand engagement with alienation, disquiet and second thoughts. It should also build emotional muscle, the capacity for hope, and energetic engagement. Rorty had his Proust, but today’s freshman may better have Andrea Gibson and we, as teachers, should be facilitating such relationships. The ability to passionately form and hold convictions while understanding their contingent nature is the essence of a Sophistic, pragmatic view of civic responsibility and writing, as its voice, should follow suit.

Hello, World!

Just a notification to all our authors to cover their hair and eyes: Betting on the Universe has officially gone public.

update

Greetings Class,

Mom is doing great. She is mostly back to her normal sarcastic self. her articulation is back to mostly normal, though she is a bit fuzzy still from all the medications. She has gotten up and walked today, and is eating, rather than being IV fed (though the food is somewhere between liquid and solid still: soups, jello, pudding, etc.)

My write-up is turning out very good so far, and I think this will make an excellent project for the course. I am hoping to be in class next week, but I will keep you all informed.

Thank you for those who have kept us in your thoughts.

--Richard

“This is a Love Movement” Dr. Cornel West on Occupy Wall Street Movement

A status update and comments made by a friend and colleague of mine:

You know things are bad when a young person from a middle class and privileged family is as uncertain of their economic future as a young person from a poor family.

When a black kid from the Bronx doesn’t live the American dream something is wrong with that kid. He must be lazy or dysfunctional. When a privileged non-minority doesn’t live the American dream, something must be wrong with America. I don’t think so.

When you turn a blind eye to the suffering of your neighbor don’t be surprised when the suffering creeps across the yard. The social and political system in this country that contributed to the suffering of the underclass for decades was allowed by the privileged who wanted to maintain the status quo. Now that same greedy machine is biting the middle class in the ass. I think it is too late for the blame game. The damage is done. I only hope we can all learn an important lesson: The social woes of the underprivileged are the social woes of EVERYBODY. We are all connected.

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. ~John F. Kennedy

Richard’s status update after attending a General Assembly in Albuquerque:

Irony in action: At the Occupy Albuquerque movement this evening, after getting kicked off of Yale Park and discussing steps to take, an individual walked by and called the protesters "Idiots". The word "idiot" is descended from the Greek word, Idios, which means private person, or individual. This specifically relates to anyone who was not part of the Polis, or the political workings of Athens. The protesters were in a group, in the midst of a highly democratic decision-making process (voting on proposals) actively using their First Amendment Rights to freedom of assembly. So who's the Idiot? I love irony. :)

I think I might have been waiting for this movement for my whole life. From the outset, the occupy movement reminded me of King’s movement for the poor that never really happened. I’ve also thought often of Langston Hughes’ A Dream Deferred. Actually tons of stuff has gone through my head since I first heard about the Occupy Movement, so I am going to throw some of that together.

Two quotes of Martin Luther King Jr. that I love and have used as a signature line on emails:

“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

And

"When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."

I reposted this picture on facebook. I feel it’s pretty clear who is actually protesting the power and who is not.

Ani Difranco’s song Fuel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMX8QPP9t-U

Who are the police supposed to serve and protect?

Paraphrasing Brian:The homeless have been “occupying” Albuquerque for quite awhile. If you put signs in their hands, then it’s a problem.

And here are a couple of videos:College humor: We Are the 1%

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrQiGBpHVCc

Video made in support of OWS by moveon.org http://front.moveon.org/this-powerful-clip-is-exactly-why-we-support-occupywallstreet/#.TqcG2DpGEGQ.facebook

Dr. Cornel West participating in a people’s trial of Goldman Sachs. I really like this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgvgHQMV6Mc

We made the front page of the Valencia County News Bulletin.

In this picture are my sons Jason and Jarryn and my husband Jim.

Rough Weekend

Greetings Class,

I had informed Dr. Kells about this weekend, but I wanted to post a brief summary of events.

My mom had open-heart surgery on Friday. Everything seemed to have gone well, but about an hour after I left for the evening, I got a call that she had gone into cardiac arrest. Panic ensued. They were able to stabilize her, but they had to go in a second time to do so and repair the damage. The graft on her heart tore slightly where it connected. Luckily a nurse was in the room when she went into arrest, so there was no delay in response time.

She is doing well now. She is off the breathing tube, responsive, and even smiling a little. She still is not talking, but she had a tube down her throat for 48 hours.

I will most likely not be in class Wednesday, and I plan on, once I am a little more removed, doing a brief write-up on the whole experience in the vein of our class.

I hope everyone's weekend has been much much more boring than mine has.

--Richard

Insider/Outsider Practices: Denise Chavez is a real Chola

So I lost all of my documents a few days ago when my computer crashed and I’ve had to re-write all of these blogs. In a way I’m glad that happened. After last night’s class and Deb’s presentation on Bennet I am seeing Denise Chavez’s work through a different lens. Denise Chavez is from Las Cruces, NM. She is a Nueva Mexicana in the truest sense. Espírtu of the Southwest and a good La Llorona fearing mujer. A product of her landscape, Chavez takes the stage and commands the audience’s attention with the forceful presence of the Organ Mountains. During her performance at the Rudolfo and Patricia Anaya Lecture Series, Chavez stressed the importance of belonging to the land from which we came. She told stories about growing up in New Mexico and she read a piece reminiscent of Jimmy Santiago-Baca. It’s hard to write about Denise Chavez’s because it is so embedded and situated in being a Chicana from New Mexico. Every aspect of her screams New Mexican but that quality is indefinable. I remember last semester in ENG 540 I was tasked with presenting Martín and Meditations. Since we had been talking about insider/outsider practices I thought it would be an opportune moment to deconstruct and imagine how an insider might read that text as opposed to an outsider. This presentation failed tremendously because it was nearly impossible for an outsider to ‘imagine’ being an ‘insider.’ The experience, socialization, historical/political context, linguistic knowledge, code-switching strategies, and everything else involved in being an insider is so vastly complex that an outsider cannot access or acquire the persona of an insider by merely trying to ‘imagine’ what it may be like and if they did try to artificially enact insider practices the exercise becomes reductive. To complicate this even further, if knowledge is always contingent and rhetoric is always situated in some knowledge framework then the linguistic and social practices of an insider discourse community, like that of the South Valley or Southern New Mexico, rely on the a shifting knowledge. What I mean is if we shape knowledge and knowledge shapes us (a dialectical process) and we communicate based on this shifting structure then even insider discourse communities are not static but always changing. How is it ever possible for an outsider to acquire insider practices if those practices are ever-changing? This is what I see in Denise Chavez’s work. It would be easy to say that she uses New Mexican insider cliché’s like references to green chile, mariachi music, baptisms, el chupacabra (or el chups as his friends like to call him), and low-riders but Chavez is referring to these uniquely New Mexican traditions in ways that only insiders can appreciate. However, this quality, this insider use of traditional aspects of being New Mexican, is hard to define. I think perhaps a good way to illustrate this is Deb’s explanation of Bennett’s ‘vibrant matter.’ Our traditions, our unique New Mexican-ness, the artifacts that make the people from here New Mexican are our vibrant matter. Chavez knows this and uses these artifacts to generate meaning and connections to our land. We New Mexicans are part of an ecology, we thrive on ritual, and the non-human aspects of our culture (our environment, our traditions, our chola y cholo –ness, our “mira you know what I mean, or no, vato-hombre y que?) are just as important as the human ones. The vibrant matter is generative and foundational to who we are.