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.