Goodbye, You Crazy Fool

My major problem with the readings from last week stemmed from the binding theme of the book: interactions with the public. When interacting with the public, some of the writers acted like an astranged wanderer who happened upon unattended egg and was trying to decide if it should hatch it or eat it. In reading some of their pieces, you could hear the author replaying the moment they told their fathers that they are going to spend 4-7 years getting a PhD in Rhetoric. Like voting for Adlai Stevenson wasn't enough to piss off their parents (that was maybe an unfair shot at age, I realize that most of those writers, if they were ever alive at time, were probably not old enough to vote).

What I like about Mathieu is her understanding that we need tactics when interweaving academic work with public discourse, but we also do need to act we discovered fire either. She seems to make that apparent of the first page:

"Writing instruction conceived this way goes beyond notions of academic competence to encompass discursive projects in many areas of community life. This public turn in composition studies more generally asks teachers to connect the writing that students and they themselves do with 'real world' texts, events, or exigencies." (1)

Now, in my time teaching writing I learned two things:

1. I hate teaching writing, and I will hopefully never do it again.

2. Writing instruction is one of the most important commodities in a society.

My contempt for writing instructions begins with people who we read for last week. They always come across as overly Romantic. Like their professors made them read too much Emerson. So when they start talking about the pragmatic side of writing instruction in relationship to public discourse, they act like they are inventing the wheel. In fact, you can make the argument that Emerson, while very romantic in his syntax, had a vivid understanding of the political climate in which his texts were operating. Even he was engaging the public without tripping over his feet.

I never wanted say this because I never wanted to sound like my Father, but this shit is common sense. Of course student are going to apply the communication skills we give them beyond the academy (a very short part of their professional lives). Most of these students are going to be living and working in the public when they leave. Why does the acadamy have to be considered a bubble they step into for 4 years.

I think that is why I am leaving the academy.

As I was reading tactics of hope, I was appalled by what the English professor from the story starting on 122 did. This proves that "when institutional priorities intersect with community needs, people can get hurt. Projects can lead to bitterness and disillusionment" (122). The professor only thought about his own needs and desires and basically USED Jane's organization. I was pisssssed off. This guy just makes academics look like horrible people in general.

This is only one example of a community engagement project gone horribly, horribly wrong, and I'm sure there are others, but I'm glad that Jane did not discount working with a university forever. I wouldn't have blamed her if she did.

However, this, again, reminded me a lot of my experiences with the COE because it seems that we only think of our needs (we meaning the students). We used our "community partners" to fulfill our own needs without even really focusing on what the schools needed. At the same time, there is an institutional problem because we were never taught how to address the schools' needs. We then wrote about these students and "profited" (through good grades) from our work with them. I like to think that I brought something to them, but in the case of my first "service learning" experience, I'm not really sure that they did. Maybe I helped a few kids from getting cuts from the metal edge on the aluminum foil box, but I'm not really sure I made a lasting impact on their academic lives.

Even in my more advanced field work, when I was with a class for an entire year, two to three times a week, I was usually only focused on how this work was going to benefit me, and I admit, as much as I loved the students in that class, I did it to complete an assignment. I think that's a huge problem with service learning programs. Complete the required hours and write a paper and get a good grade. Done. There's no chance to build a relationship with the partners, and those relationships are so important.

I think that the COE (and the University in general) should do a major overhaul of the service learning programs. That way, we can actually bring hope to our community partners instead of just bringing some sort of literacy that we believe is superior to their own literacies.

As I was reading through Tactics of Hope, I began mulling over some thoughts about community literacy and service learning. The main idea/concern that kept running through my mind revolved around questioning why most of what we have read involving community literacy is situated as “us” going out to “them.” Or, as we discussed in class last week, rhetoric as academic discipline—where the scholar is the agent, but acting in a space in which he or she is not native. Then, I began questioning why the majority of scholarship I’ve read on the subject (both in class and on my own) situates community literacy in communities/publics of low socio-economic statuses.

This makes me wonder what community literacy looks like in a more upscale (and possibly) stable community. Like, I’m imagining community literacy enacted to help serve the Potter Park Zoo (where I currently volunteer). Perhaps that type of work simply doesn’t have the same hotness factor as does working with women’s shelters and soup kitchens? Or perhaps working with those we perceive as equals is such a totally different dynamic that it’s considered boring? Or maybe, just maybe, as selfish researchers, we have to do something, anything, that will allow us to perceive ourselves as giving something back?

I’m not being facetious here; this is an actual line of inquiry in my mind. Why is it that the bulk of what we see focuses on “bad” neighborhoods, “unfortunate” circumstances, and on those perceived as somehow “less than?” I suppose if I were to look at this in a less cynical way, I could imagine that, as privileged academics, we may feel the responsibility to use our powers for good and not for evil, and that, for some reason, we feel we can do the most good in areas populated by “underprivileged” people.

My fear, in writing this, is that Jeff will answer this question in, like, one sentence. Interesting, right? Seriously, at the beginning of the semester, I would have wanted Jeff to give a quick and definitive answer. But now? Since my goal in this class has shifted from “getting all the answers” to “generating good questions,” I’ll be seriously disappointed if this line of questioning sucks.

On a side note, I picked up Paul Loeb’s Soul of a Citizen at C’s this year (for only $2.00!!!), and I was thrilled to see Mathieu reference it on page 47. It’s on my summer reading list…

Lots more to say, but not enough time in which to say it…

Outreach=Out There

As a person who works for Outreach and Engagement—obviously we do the type of community outreach work that Mathieu is writing about. And I am sort of offended (in a naïve sort of way) about how she feels about community engagement work through Universities and how she feels that Universities exploit and ultimately do not help the communities they are “serving”. However, I also recognize that she is in fact right about a lot of her views and I have seen first-hand how researchers don’t really care if they help the community they simply want grant money and data to get more grant money.

The University Outreach and Engagement department website says that they “foster a reciprocal and mutually beneficial relationship between the University and the Public.” Then in the next paragraph they say that “outreach and engagement provides university scholars with new information for publications.” Perhaps the extent to which each study or research project is “mutually beneficial” depends on the researcher and the type of project. I like to think that when I am a grant writer or a principal investigator on a community project my work will truly be mutually beneficial (or maybe my view is a little too romantic and I need to acquire a little bit of healthy cynicism). I would think that this type of work HAS TO be mutually beneficial or else we wouldn’t be able to continue doing it.

Looking at the UOE website a little further I think that we do our best. We appear to be helping communities with the projects that we do. Maybe it would be beneficial to do a study on whether or not the community wants us to help 

My brain is convulsing...

I
Jarratt quotes Bruner as saying, “one way we can do the public work of rhetoric is by mapping the distance between history and memory, understanding how far those imaginaries are from historical fact, and with what consequence.” My questions here are partially fueled up by the work I did in Malea’s class last semester and partially by the readings done for this class early on in the semester: First of all, how can we consider history as “fact,” and are “facts” always true. I believe that if we call “facts” into question, then this whole argument becomes upset. Now, from this reading, I see that Bruner is discussing “large-scale public memories of war,” so it seems that we are talking about perception vs. fact. Hmmm…this brings up all sorts of questions and ideas…

II
Reading Cintron’s piece was a bit depressing. (God, I hope he doesn’t happen to stumble upon this blog posting…) As he de-essentializes democracy, and calls into question the very meaning of democracy. When he states “’democracy’” is a concept open to inquiry, a rhetoric whose substance and meaning are opaque until the motives behind its deployment are understood,” my brain kind of shuddered. Not because I disagree with him, or think his ideas evil, but, rather, because being able to use the word “democracy and all its attendant terms as “quintessential topoi that exhibit sufficient malleability to mobilize the most disparate collective desires and actions,” makes things a bit more handleable. On the other hand, if we continue with wrong/faulty assumptions about a situation/challenge/idea/etc., then we can never ask the right questions, thus disallowing valid and workable solutions.

For example, Cintron states: “Perceived need or real need, perceived fear or real fear—when people feel subject to these lacks, they assume that material conditions are the causes of their woe, and from that base rhetors search for the available arguments that have the power to win what is needed or defeat what is feared.” Honestly, this totally freaks me out. Umm…yes, I do assume that material conditions are the causes of my (and others’) woe. It would be so much easier to just blame it on the lack itself…but, I realize that it is much deeper than that. What about the substance (Locke) of that material condition…it cannot be itself, so there is definitely a reason for the material condition. I suppose that is what I’m interested in finding/researching, and then discovering answers to in my own work: what ideologies/assumptions/political philosophies are causing/contributing to that material lack and how can rhetoric be utilized to cause changes.

Rhetoric FTW!

Then and now, the measure of rhetoric’s responsibility to and involvement in public and political life has always been a question of distance. How close do we get to political discourse when it is consumed with violence? How close do we get when solutions to social injustice transcend the limits of scholarly discourse and criticism? How close do we get when the interlocutor is our neighbor, and that neighbor is in trouble? (Coogan and Ackerman, 4)


In the Novella by Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness, a man by the name of Marlow is hired to search for Kurtz, a English captain lost in the African Jungle: the heart of darkness. His dying words: The Horror. The Horror. Kurtz was the standard Victorian hero: running off to savage lands with only a hunting rifle and sweet Handlebar Mustache only to become a god to what ever less-than-holy race he encountered (he was actually considered a god in the novel). What he discovered in the darkness was too much for him to handle, and it eventually claimed his life.

Why does Coogan and Ackerman remind me of Kurtz. Kurtz is to Coogan and Ackerman as the Heart of Darkness is to the public. Why is that every encounter that I have with Rhetoric talking about the public goes something like The Heart of Darkness. Rhetoricians seem to go all Victorian on us and act like were hunting lions on the African steppes. Come on man. Like the public is something that has to be colonized and controlled before it can be helped.

I have to credit where credit is due. Miller at least takes a somewhat sensible approach:


I do not mean here to dismiss rhetoric as a sham art or to reject it in favor of some other, better description of our communicative dilemmas. I mean, rather, to honor the dangers and powers of rhetoric, which the ancients well understood and which our enthusiasm about the revival of rhetoric may sometimes lead us to forget. We cannot, as Garsten says, avoid the “twin dangers” of pandering and manipulation that arise from the nature of rhetoric itself (2).[i] Some theorists have encouraged us to reconceive rhetoric as a cooperative rather than an adversarial art, Booth prominent among them. At the same time, he confesses his own failures and inabilities in attempting to practice the cooperative listening-rhetoric he preaches. (16)

In this case, sensible doen't seem to be helping anyone. I feel like there standing over a glass jar and looking down at something they don't know quite how to deal with but they feel they have to help any way. Coogan and Ackerman seem only to be able to enter that jar under the pretense of some cultural protest. In that sense, I'm starting to see why 1960 and 70s became a resurgent period for Rhetoric studies.

I'm not saying that Rhetoric can't be valuable to the public (Once we find it that is. Dewey's concept never rang so true at it does with Rhetoric's efforts to do so). I think our program is proof of that. But when we approach the public like Cicero addressed the Forum, we are playing a game of power and not a game of agency.

FTW!

Ramblings...

I will be honest, I read the readings this week only one time and I feel that I didn't read them very closely--however I am going got go with my initial impression on this one and hope that it isn't too far off. I feel like these readings were very theoretical.. I feel like it (community based work)shouldn’t be complicated this much. The intro talks about taking rhetorical work "public" and "doing rhetoric" but really what they are doing is complicating things and imposing their views and believes onto everyone else. "communities can benefit" blah. As if we (rhetoricians) have all the answers.

I realize that theoretical interpretations are important---even when the topic is seemingly simple and straight forward---I guess I just didn't like the way this book chose to go about it.

~~Stray thought~~~ Perhaps it is important to pose a theoretical interpretation of community based work at a time like this when the field is so new and people are just starting to pin down exactly what community literacy is and how to do that work or what is considered to be community literacy work? I don't know.

I guess I prefer to see the who, what, why, when, where, and how of the community literacy work (or any work for that matter)rather than the theoretical background and influence of such work. However this has proved to be a weakness of mine---so this is a not always a good thing.

There were a few things I liked about the readings---the Space to Work in Public Life was interesting. Except for the part where they said "Cleary, these communities can benefit from the increased attention of rhetoricians in pursuit of democratic ideals" and then continued to qualify that with "but rhetoric can also benefit from community partnerships premised on negotiated search for the common good." Yes. Because it is that simple.

I apologize for my ramblings... its 5:30 in the morning :)