As I have fallen behind in most things over the past few weeks, I will try to synthesize a few thoughts here, primarily in the spirit of acknowledging where I think our discussions have taken us (and where I think your second exploratory took you), and secondarily to mention a few things I've considered after the fact.
Before I forget: While Amy Devitt offered a comprehensive summary of "genre" -- rehearsing its definitions from work to text to situation to ecology -- there are some other terms related to last week's discussion that we never did take up in our class time (e.g., structuralism, dialogic, discourse, langue vs. parole). I include a link here to our collective whiteboard notes from the past two class sessions, with some definitions I have offered gratis and a bit off-the-cuff. For anyone still grappling with heteroglossia, I can offer you a somewhat quirky example of how I distinguish it from other polyvocal phenomena. (Really, this is one of a genre of mediated performances that demonstrate heteroglossia as a kind of rhetorical critique. You probably know of others. Enjoy.)
Wisdom and Genre as Embodied Art/Practice
You all did a bang-up job with our impromptu and earnest trace of Vico's On the Study Methods of Our Time, as we contended with (false) binaries to try to account for his views on language, signification, and genre -- at least, as they presented in his text. While we worked in our panhistorical matrix last class, you rightly noted a large gap in the chronology of our readings, and some of this is due to my omission of the Medieval arts, and some of it is due to my omission of discussions of elocution and gesture. In light of those omissions, it might interest you to know that some post-Enlightenment work on genre was delivered through the study of particular performative arts, and Gilbert Austin's "chironomia" is one such art. (See B/H 889-897 for images and excerpts ... )
I mention this to suggest the possibility that Vico's attention to senses communes and style could have eventually found an outlet in physical phenomena (maybe even in slam poetry!?) -- and moreover that senses communes and style could have developed together as phenomena. Obviously, I cannot make any historical-causal claims, so I'll just offer this as thematic speculation, but I think it adds something to our discussion of Bakhtin.
Here's the connection as I see it:
- In discussion, several of you pointed out that Vico challenged his readers to turn their attention to "certain [Ancient] arts which we almost totally neglect" (B/H 865), to compare the "study methods of two epochs," and advocate for a kind of well-rounded trajectory of study methods, tempering eloquence with reason, and invoking passion through "materialistic means" (B/H 873). He even proposed something like physical education that would help the student "synthesize[] in himself a whole university" (B/H 875). Finally, there was this: "What is eloquence, in effect, but wisdom, ornately and copiously delivered in words appropriate to the common opinion of mankind?" (B/H 877) Clearly for Vico -- and perhaps somewhat ahead of his time (?) -- wisdom was an embodied art/practice.
- At the same time, several of you grappled with Bakhtin's particular concerns about genre, and his particular definitions of utterance, thinking perhaps that he devalued words. I think we discovered that, for Bakhtin, genres do not exist merely in language (words) but in communication (discourse) (B/H 1227). What if we were to assume that genre, for Bakhtin, was also an embodied art/practice? How might that enable us to explain -- in different terms -- what makes some texts seem so powerful (like Nikki Finney's "Left")? I see a kind of performativity all throughout Bakhtin's essay, hinting at genre's embodiment in various spheres of human activity (B/H 1229), although I'm keenly aware that it isn't quite the same kind of embodiment as Vico's.
Just food for thought for us ...
Rhetoric and/as Ideology
In preparation for Thursday's class, I have excerpted Jim Crosswhite's "Deep Rhetoric II." Please read pages 64-87 and 104-05. You are absolutely welcome to read the entire chapter, but the gist of our discussion will focus on those pages as Crosswhite defines "ideology," helps us understand its relationship to rhetoric, and walks us through how he thinks P&O-T did some foundational ideological work. The part of the chapter we are skipping is the part where he extends this discussion into other sub- and extra-disciplinary areas, and to other specific theorists. I think you'll find his chapter to be useful, thoughtful, insightful, but of course, itself steeped in a certain ideology.
I recommend reading Richards first, then Crosswhite, then Burke.
If you have time to read Ochieng, you will be enriched. However, I fear I will have to make that essay optional, and it slightly kills me to do so. (Omedi's work is brilliant and fairly significant in terms of complicating any stark division between "eastern" and "western" ideologies, but I have a feeling we won't have time to discuss it in conjunction with the other pieces.) I'll leave this decision up to you; I'll come prepared to discuss his essay if anyone has read it, but I'll officially make it optional reading for the week.
Here are some links we may view as part of our discussion:
- Mapping Stereotypes Project (by alphadesigner)
- Joe Rosenthal's Flag Raising at Iwo Jima (2/23/45)
- Blind Men and the Elephant (J. Godfrey Saxe's translation of Eastern Parable)
Here is the space in which we will work.
See you all very soon,
-Dr. Graban
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