As promised, I am pasting here a snapshot of yesterday's board, reflecting our quick but engaged discussion of how Vatz and Biesecker proposed that we might complicate Bitzer's theory of "rhetorical situation." From my vantage point, the most interesting realizations occurred in your own notes and/or in our small and large-group discussions; however, this image may help you to remember our framework.
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| [photo credit A. May -- click to enlarge] |
I think we determined together that Bitzer seemed less interested in the process(es) by which discourse is created and more interested in the nature of those contexts in which speakers and writers might feel compelled to create. That is a particular nuance of Bitzer's meta-theory, and it can help us to differentiate between his and other similar meta-theories. At the same time, that may be why some of us felt discontent by the end of his discussion (i.e., we wanted more on process). As we considered what ideas had shifted, changed, or stayed the same between vols. 1, 6, and 22 of Philosophy & Rhetoric, it seems we began to realize other alternatives to "situation" as the foundation for rhetorical theory and practice.
In other words, by noting the particular concepts that Vatz and Biesecker either sought to define more robustly or sought to destabilize, it seems we discovered their preferences for epistemology, morality, agency, and history as alternative theoretical foundations to "situation." For example, by promoting "consensual symbolism" as the principal idea underlying any rhetorical situation (Vatz 160), Vatz illuminates what he sees as a principal weakness in Bitzer's theory: it places knowledge-making in the outcome or the event, and thus cannot effect real change in an audience's moralistic tendencies, which were already formed. In response, Vatz promotes an idea of rhetoric as the realization of antecedent (rather than subsequent) truths, values, principles, or beliefs:
[M]eaning is not discovered in situations, but created by rhetors. (Vatz 157)
Consequently, by promoting differance as a framework in which to realize Vatz's compliance with Bitzer's "sovereign, rational subject" (Biesecker 123), Biesecker is ultimately arguing for a more complicated rhetorical agent that operates historically and collectively:
All symbolic action marks an intervention and an imposition--a deferral of and differencing between the historically produced discursive field--whose own authority is historically produced, and thus, provisional. (Biesecker 120)
She asks us to get beyond the "common presumption that fixed essences encounter variable circumstances" (Biesecker 123), to embrace "rhetorical situation" as contingency (or articulation), and to understand "audience" as historically emergent (126).
As you can see, we only scratched the surface on this discussion, so I hope and expect that you'll return to these texts on your own in the coming weeks, to get a fuller sense as the semester unfolds of rhetoric's various and potential meta-theories.
Finally, as you complete your traces for next week's class, I offer you a space for preparation. Please take advantage of this shared grid by populating it with your findings--i.e., sentences, short paragraphs, quoted snippets, key passages, etc. We will use this as one of our discussion tools next class, so the more you complete ahead of time, the more useful our class time will be.
Remember that you are not merely looking for explicit mentions of your tracing concept; rather, you are using the concept to help you read for implicit meanings throughout the text. Let the questions guide you, and be sure to note when/wherever the text presents disagreement or dilemmas about your tracing concept.
See you next week,
-Dr. Graban
