The Blessings of Literary Theory in Teaching Composition

One of the debates that I had with myself in attempting college level instruction for the first time (I am teaching the "College Prep English" course, our unofficial AP Lit/Comp course), was the benefits that literary theory provides students in learning the art of college level analytical composition.

My wife told me early on in the process of formulating my curriculum for the year that I should be sure to include literary theory as a portion of the class, and that I should do it early. Being enrolled at the time in the introductory Grad school theory class and encountering anew the pleasures and challenges of our major theoretical thinkers, I was surprised at her adamant suggestion. However, after some thought I agreed to give it a try, figuring that Literary theory couldn't hurt and I could always adjust.

She was absolutely write. And I'm not certain why it hadn't registered with me before the benefits this could provide. What had become second nature to me through undergraduate and now graduate training, namely that there are multiple set perspectives from which academics traditionally approach literature most of which can be employed to provide a legitimate reading of any given text, was (of course) news to my students (prisoners of the "correct interpretation" myth) and helped immensely in what has proven to be the most demanding aspect of my course for them - knowing what to write about when the teacher refuses to tell you.

What I had forgotten, or failed to realize, was that a basic knowledge of theory provides instant topics for analysis. I keep a small tool chest of basic analytic options that I can whip out at anytime that something new and striking doesn't just jump out at me as I go through a given text. I know that there are always several old tropes I can fall back on that will provide academically sound analytical work. My students didn't have this tool chest, and what's more were terrified by the cutting of the given topic umbilical cord. When I refused to budge on that point (leading guided brainstorming sessions of possible topics rather than providing even examples or lists) they soon found that the theories I was exposing them to could provide the scaffolding they needed to come up with topics on their own. Why it is that this was not immediately and painfully obvious I'm not certain I can say, but it has proven an invaluable tool to me as a teacher, and far more importantly, to my students as writers.

Eagleton One More Time (Although I doubt anyone will read this...)

I apologize as it appears that I was bothered far more by Eagleton's comments on Mormonism than I realized, and it led to my hijacking the conversation somewhat this evening. That wasn't my intention, and I did not consciously take the snubs as a reason to hate Eagleton or After Theory. My primary argument with the text (as I said in my first blog and won't rehash in any detail here) was that Eagleton oversimplifies the argument in favor of a truth that will allow for the kind of moral judgments that he is calling for.

I actually applaud his position on a majority of the issues he presented. There was a moment in class where Dr. Eskew asked how it is that Eagleton divided truth, and we only partially addressed this question before moving on (which was quite possibly my fault, although I don't remember). I think that the truth Eagleton describes as the false "absolute truth," the straw man set up for knocking down by enemies of the idea of truth, is a moral truth that is completely free of any situational conditions. When he says truth is neither timeless nor non-historical it does not mean that there are not some things that are always true, it means rather that as he says later "Principles can be flexible and still be principles" (144). I think that Eagleton rightly recognizes that principles are always contingent. The Bible does say "Thou shalt not kill," but it also orders the wholesale destruction of communities: every man, woman, child, and all the animals besides. Is it inconsistent? Although I can understand the tendency to say it is (and many have said so, many far smarter than me), I don't think so. I think it is an example of the contingency of principles that Eagleton is pointing out separates truth from the supposed timeless, non-historical "truth" that he attacks as a false version of a concept that he sees as essential. I think that's the divide. All ethics/morality is situational. The application of principles is always contingent, the right thing to do inevitably depends on the situation. This is why our law allows an exception for violence, even lethal force, if it can be established that the action taken was in self-defense. The situation merits the consideration rather than a blind application of an "absolute" principle. I think that's the division of truth brought up in the text, and, for that matter in class.

In my haste to defend the Church while separating myself from elements of the culture that has grown up around it in Utah, I gave a wrong impression. First of all, I stereotyped those members of the Church that are from Utah. Unfortunately it's a bit of a habit in the Church to refer to Utah Mormons in much the fashion I did. I loved my time at BYU. It was the right place for me. I never felt dominated in thought or action by the professors there. However, there was a sufficient contingent of the student body, normally locals from within the state, that had been among like minded folks for so long that they had begun to stretch the beliefs of the Church to take in their own completely separate political positions. Because they saw their own political beliefs as God's will, there was a shut-up and get in line mentality among this minority of students at the institution. I should not have generalized about Utah in that fashion. It was childish, and motivated partly out of fear that I would be painted with that same brush because I was so vigorously "defending the faith." I certainly never intended to imply by speaking of the hard right "Ayn Rand" style position of this group that it was reflective of the Church itself, or of its policies or doctrines in any way. The members of the church and the organization itself certainly deserve the reputation they have been given for "taking care of their own" as it was put in class. I hope that nothing I said would lead anyone to conclude that I feel the Church has somehow abdicated the responsibility to care for the poor, or even that the minority whose views/mentality I did single out for criticism were necessarily averse to helping out personally or as a church. Such was not my intention as nothing could be further from the truth.

Agreeing and Disagreeing with Terry Eagleton

I jumped into this text knowing a couple of things about Eagleton: (1) he is a marxist, (2) the last piece we read by him was just this side of unintelligible. That said, I was pleasantly surprised to find the blurbs on the book to be accurate: Eagleton is both articulate (something the other article was surely not. Intelligent: absolutely; Articulate: absolutely not) and witty.

(I suppose writing must be like abstract art, demonstrate that you are able to communicate in the medium so that Joe average can understand you for a long enough time and you then get blanket permission to be incredibly obtuse and impenetrable in any further attempts at communication with the public. Ah well. But I digress...)

I have posted several times this semester on the fate of knowledge in the late twentieth/early twenty-first century. I maintain my argument developed in a previous post that the accepting of any givens in this intellectual climate is an act of faith, as there are no longer universal givens to which we can appeal even at a cultural level. Renee, in replying to my previous post suggested that it can be a form of intellectual laziness to reject truth as it allows one to sit back and refuse to do any heavy lifting intellectually or morally ("if not everyone's take on reality carried equal validity--well, just how many apple carts would that upset? At very least, many individuals would need to make some substantial changes--this would involve getting up off their butts [figurative and literal]"). Relativism, in this view would be the equivalent of ditching one's homework, or refusing to take responsibility for one's actions/life by abdicating all decision making on the grounds that all choices are absolutely equal and it is impossible to determine between them. How much rage can be generated over a crimes or injustices of any kind and how hypocritical is any form of law or restriction if we truly believe that there is no truth, that there are no absolutes?

I agree with Eagleton's arguments in favor of truth, and with Renee's about the intellectual laziness underlying relativism. When Eagleton said that "Principles can be flexible and still be principles" (144) I wanted to stand up and cheer. (Incidentally, I think if you injected that thought into the brains of those "serving" in Washington, most of their heads would explode.)

Unfortunately for Eagleton, comparing arguments about the truth of physical statements (There is a tiger in the room, for example) with arguments about truth and other abstract ideals is comparing apples and oranges. Given our limited knowledge of Reality and the mind's shaping power in creating the world we perceive, one has to make certain assumptions that Eagleton takes for granted before one is even able to have the discussion he wants. Eagleton is able to make these arguments and they appeal - indeed, they seem ultimately logical - to those who agree that there is some center around which the world functions.

It isn't necessary to agree on that center, or even to have an entirely clear idea of what that center is, only the agreement that there is one is necessary. If it is there, than there is truth (at least of a kind) and we can then move to discussing its nature. In comparing Marxism to postmodernism and post-structuralism (or at least in comparing Eagleton's marxism to these theories) one discovers that Marxism has far more in common with traditional, idealistic thought than it does with these modern "theories." Marxism assumes a center - history, i.e. class struggle - and attributes everything at (varying removes) to the effects of this conflict. This is far closer to putting the Gospel at the center of one's world view than it is to accepting a centerless, relative world. In fact, the de-centered reality posited by post-structuralism and postmodernism is anathema to Marxism, because if history isn't the center (or if it is one of many centers, or if there is no center, or the center is unknowable) than not only their argument but their world collapses.

The point? At the risk of beating a dead horse the systematic destruction of all of the pillars of epistemology on which our culture was built by the extreme ends of rationalism and postmodern/post-structuralist thought makes the choosing of any center arbitrary. Without a center there are no givens, everything is truly in freeplay. As Eagleton's argument assumes a number of unvoiced givens, it requires a center to make sense.

Nothing has yet replaced these traditional ideals and values as unifying elements in this brave new world. Instead as Eagleton notes, we are left with freedom alone to guide us, and we find that threatening, because in our experience on this planet anything goes generally means a whole lot of bad stuff happens. So we cast about in search of something to cling to, something that will make this existence tolerable. Or alternately, we ignore the implications of the thought shaping the world around us.

Before we can accept Eagleton's arguments as common sense and move toward any of the reforms he implicitly calls for we must discover givens that we can share (Eagleton posits several here: truth, virtue, species-nature, love [agape], not to mention good old history/class struggle) at least enough to create a common world where we're able to talk to each other and begin the process of developing that "consensual morality" that President Obama talked about on the very first day of class. Only once we have discovered the value in greater unity as a goal, and stopped fetishizing change and difference for their own sake, will we even be able to get large numbers of people sufficiently together to begin the conversation that Eagleton demands in this text. We must literally restore a common reality (at least to a greater extent than we now have one) before we can move forward in any significant way.

What if it's ALL constructed?

As I have most enjoyed looking at our two "Posts" this semester (Postmodernism and Post-Structuralism) I was fascinated by the following quote from page 139 of Barry's "Lesbian/gay criticism"chapter: "all identities, including gender identities, are 'a kind of impersonation and approximation...a kind of imitation for which there is no original.' As the text goes on to point out, if this "anti-essentialist" line is taken to its logical conclusion, "identity [is seen] as a a series of masks, roles, and potentialities, a kind of amalgam of everything which is provisional, contingent, and improvisatory" (140). If that is the case, than these identity based theories of culture and literature seem to be baseless...of course if Postmodernism and Poststructuralism are right, everything is meaningless, as there is not and cannot be a center, and even the idea of meaning as we have traditionally understood it is impossible because nothing is fixed.

So whither then the identity based politics and theoretical approaches we've encountered so very many times throughout our varied associations with literature in schools of whatever level? If this is true they would seem an inadequate way of facing the world, much less trying to understand it. An interesting point is made by Barry, which I am embarrassed to say I hadn't thought of, because it seems so obvious after the fact (that's how smart people work though, right? They challenge us by making new and complex ideas seem obvious and straight forward...if only I could do that....), that the opposite of identity politics is class politics. Duh! The opposite of the individual is the group, the opposite of individualism is collectivism, and the opposite of identity politics is group or class politics.

However, by the nature of the argument - one pulling on poststructuralist and postmodernist thought to demonstrate the failure of dualities - the idea of class politics as a replacement must also be questioned. Interesting. If we don't have identity or class politics (because the failure of one half of the duality must mean the failure of both if this self/other dichotomy is interdependent as Barry indicates [139]) what are left with? Would we stop beating each other over the head with meaningless labels and try to accomplish something? Heaven forbid.

The great result of the twentieth century's pursuit of theoretical knowledge is to prove over and over again that such knowledge is impossible, because, according to our greatest modern thinkers, we have no comfortable, accepted epistemological basis from which to know or understand anything, nor can we. Everything, including sexuality etc., is in post-structuralist freeplay, nothing is real: "everything is a model or an image, all is surface without depth; this is the hyperreal" (Barry 86). If followed to its logical extreme, modern thought cuts us all off from each other, denies our existence (If there is no individuality, no free-will, however limited, we don't exist at all, we are merely manifestations of outside forces. And, if nothing is real, and then what is doing the constructing of these identities that we don't actually have?), and leaves us with no possibility for proving otherwise, because modern thought invalidates all means of knowing. Reducing any claim to knowledge to an act of faith that must first arbitrarily choose its own givens and overcome postmodern/poststructuralist doubt over the very existence of reality itself.

Pathetically late without excuse!

I have to admit that arriving at the end of the introductory piece in which Greenblatt asserts his essentially Marxist premises and then being tantalized by the beginning of chapter two in which he actually employs the ideas of new-historical co-reading as discussed in Barry (172) was disappointing, that was the aspect I was interested in...but I digress.

Greenblatt spends the first chapter revealing the clear ties to Marxism that underly New-Historicism:

1. There can be no appeals to genius as the sole origin of the energies of great art.

2. There can be no motiveless creation....

6. There can be no art without social energy.... (12)

"The theater is manifestly the product of collective intentions" (4).

"The theater manifestly addresses its audience as a collectivity" (5).

"There is no escape from contingency" (3).

"They are signs of the inescapability of a historical process, a structured negotiation and exchange..."(6).

These as well as the emphasis on the transference and exchange of social energy as the purpose of artistic endeavor, and the emphasis on the practicality of nearly everyone involved in theatrical production, and the constant reference to the controlling influence of political factors on artistic creation, all reflect a distinctly Marxist tie.

It is left to us then to distinguish why it is we read this piece when it seems so clearly repetitive. And that must be that the emphasis on history qua history and not only on history as process. while the understanding of history (with the insistence on exchange, different forms of capital, and political control of artistic production) seems pointedly Marxist, it is not a general reading of economic factors reflected in the text, but a grounding of the text very specifically and independently in the history of its time in a dialectical manner. Greenblatt emphasizes that there is a co-creation between the history and the art. The Play creating the audience as the audience helps create the play.

Therefore, to my reading, I would conclude that the ties between history (class struggle) and art are (while not "vulgar" and strictly deterministic of the entire nature of any given piece) at least a lot closer than our previous Marxists (Hello, Eagleton) allowed for, and seems to stretch to encompass some of Biordieu's various forms of capital with perhaps a new one in this social energy...I'm not entirely sure what it is. I mean, art is the product, the effect of social energy, but while energia was defined I was never satisfied that I understood what was meant by social energy.

Ah well, given the speed with which it is written and the lack of time to read it over I am forced to assume the incoherence of this piece, but I'm now - perhaps even more than last week - out of time.

Beware the Thought Police

I am at pains to determine whether Bourdieu approves of the things he is saying/doing or if he (like a good descriptive grammarian) is merely describing what he sees of society.

For example: he continually discusses the language of women, particularly women who are part of various dominated linguistic competencies as "docile," "submissive," etc. and often refers to the sexual division of labor, which seems obviously (even here) to be a product of society. However, I'm having difficulty determining if the position of women as he describes them is due to society and the sexual division of labor, or if he sees these character traits that he attributes to them as somehow natural.

Again, the language arts instructor (and by implication the literature instructor/student/producer - which, is by implication all of us as students specializing in literature and literary theory, composition and rhetoric, and or creative writing) is labeled quite clearly as at least the unwitting tool if not the agent of the dominant forces in society (see pages 48 - 49 for the education system in general and, grammarians in particular, pages 55 - 56 for "training" and its implicitly unequal distribution among various classes/competencies, and pages 59 - 61 for the effect/role of not just literature, but the very idea of literary language as a conservative force opposed to popular speech). In fact Bourdieu names "the schoolmaster" a "maitre de penser" or "master[re:teacher] of thinking" whose primary function is to socialize the students to linguistic norms and therefore - how would one say it? - thought norms: "'In teaching the same clear, fixed language to children who know it only very vaguely or who even speak various dialects or patois, he is already inclining them quite naturally to see and feel things in the same way; and he works to build the common consciousness of the nation'" (Davy as qtd. in Bourdieu 49).

Bourdieu makes a compelling case for the symbolic violence inherent in such a situation. In another location (one I cannot find in the text at the moment - alas, the dangers of reading without a pencil!) he refers to the education process inculcating the dominant linguistic form or official language, as a way of killing the mode of expression of those whose linguistic competence is other than the dominant form. And he is right. He indicates that the teacher of language is primarily a socializing influence, working to enforce the strictures of a dead language (in that it is a variant of the living language that exists only in artificiality) in order to banish the undesirable elements of the various varieties (dialects, patois, "popular speech") which are arbitrarily deemed unacceptable by those in the power to determine the strictures of official language. He points to the tying of the linguistic market to the labor market in that the requirements for acceptance into the higher levels of the labor market are limited to those who demonstrate academic (and thus linguistic) proficiency. Thus the educational agenda (re: socializing agenda) is pursued under the guise of promoting the future economic opportunities of those being educated. He even refers to trying to promote the speaking of a given language or style at home in the interests of the children's welfare.

Given his effective and stringent critique of language as a form of capital and of linguistic capital as a good unequally distributed and of the public schools as tools in perpetuating the domination of those with the highest linguistic competencies, what are the alternatives?

I am about halfway through the text and Bourdieu has got me fired up for the presentation of some alternative (other than an anarchic existence in which nationhood is dropped so as not to oppress anyone by enforcing/creating the necessary uniform manner of communication for any basic type of unity) to the status quo, but at this point there isn't any, and in the appendix to part I, it seems that as teachers, the "cult of virility" of the lower classes ensures that we cannot reach them and provide them with the linguistic competencies to advance their situation even if we wanted to.

I guess I'm looking for some practical application of the ideas that would offer an alternative to the status quo. As far as I can see, Bourdieu seems to be indicating that this situation is inherent in the nation state as it exists. Does that mean that we have to achieve utopian anarchy before we can apply these ideas in a constructive fashion? Some hope, please!

Hooooo boy this is late...

I actually really enjoyed Benjamin's article. As a student/teacher of acting/Drama, and therefore someone tremendously involved with theater and film as art, this was fascinating.

Although not explicitly stated, Benjamin's argument seems to be that film is not art in the traditional sense because the stuff of which that art is created, the performance of the actors, the setting filmed by the camera etc. is all being reproduced by the camera, and we experience it (the film) only as the camera allows us to do so. In essence, caught off from the aura of the performance the film, as a reproduction of the performance cannot be authentic and therefore cannot be a work of art as art is currently defined.

Of course, this is all implied because Benjamin says explicitly that whether or not film is art is not the point, not even the question, but a distraction from the more important issues at hand. Still, it is the question that has attracted my attention because much of the argument is based on the assumption that film is what he describes: an extraordinary reproduction of the performances of the actors through technology.

However, this is not true. While it reveals fascinating things about the relationship of art to authenticity, and while it lays firm ground for the effects of politicizing art (although I found the leaps at the end from film to Dada and Dada to Fascism/War to be a bit of a stretch, taken, as they are so quickly after such a slowly, laboriously developed argument about film and the relationship between art and mechanical reproductions), it fails to account for the film as a whole, as a created work. What he describes a mechanical reproduction of a series of performances by the actors is simply the raw footage. While there is a nod to the editing/cutting process it is insufficiently discussed. The role of the director in creating a film out of this raw material is to piece together from the reproductions of the performance of the actors a coherent whole (whether or not the plot is coherent is irrelevant, the film itself must cohere in some fashion). In the process actors of great skill do essentially imput their aura, their essence. Their is a reason that a given film is a Spielberg film, a Tim Burton film, etc. Because it is the director who is ultimately the artist behind the film. He/she to an extent, even creates the performance of the actors because he/she controls how we see them, what we see of them etc. It's why director's cuts etc. of films exist: the film is not created in the shooting of raw footage, that is where raw materials are gathered for the creation of the film in the editing room. I would argue that to those who know how to "read" film (and I am not terribly skilled at it, but have witnessed those who really are doing so) there is an aura/essence to a film as a whole in exactly the same way there is in other pieces of art. It's the aura/essence of the director. The actor feeds raw materials, and no two films by a director will have exactly the same aura/essence as another, but you can watch a given director's ouvre and there is a continuance in something intangible that is identifiable to the actor who produces it.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Incidentally did the very idea of aura and essence feel platonic and "idealist" to anyone else?

And furthermore, what happens to the argument about film in an age where we have DVD, DVR etc. and can pause and attend to any portion of the film that we please? What effect does that have on Benjamin's argument?

Theory on/of intransigence: Deconstructionism, Modern questioning of Epistemology, and the disappearance of unity...

After last night's class discussion I came to an interesting conclusion that I feel applies the theories we've been discussing (more in philosophical than a literary sense, but we're studying the theories right?) and can perhaps explain in part the intransigence on some of the issues that are fundamental to the various theories. I also personally had revealed the assumptions underlying a position that I had previously considered simply "logical" and frankly obvious once considered. I was wrong, for others it is neither logical nor obvious and I believe this explains it.

Simply because it was the catalyst for this idea in my mind, I will address a portion of last night's feminism discussion, and abortion in particular. I am not attempting to convince anyone, or shift anyone's position. I am simply laying out my position in order to show what I think was an interesting application of the theories we've been studied to each other, and to our own epistemologies and the very ability to know.

Modern science/thought/philosophy has systematically used the western rational perspective to disassemble the constructs on which western thought has been built. Beginning with the rejection of religion in the secular rational world view as at best unknowable, and at worst a delusion (witness Richard Dawkins, recently labeled Darwin's Rottweiler in parody of the current Pope [nicknamed God's Rottweiler as a cardinal] for his aggressive proselytizing of the atheist position). This of course begins with the movement to empiricism in the enlightenment and is nothing new, although several hundred years further developed. It follows with attacks on other western epistemologies until with deconstructionism we use rationality to discredit language and rationality itself. The current cultural condition then is that described by deconstructionists and post-modernists: the center is not the center, there is in fact no center for the culture to base itself around (unless paradoxically the fact that the center is not the center is the center...it makes my head hurt) and we find ourselves, as it were, in a huge train station, each individual on their own train with some or all trains constantly in motion and no agreed upon fixed point of reference from which to determine anything. Therefore, nothing is, or can be certain.

It is the portion of the condition of being each on our own train that I wish to discuss further and tie to last night's discussion. The structuralists and poststrutcuralists along with other modern thinkers/philosophers have posited that our minds, indeed our very language, is the - or at least A - causal agent behind our perceived realities. (I will be referring to Reality, capital R, as signifying whatever actually exists out there in its totality; reality, lower case r, can be assumed to refer from here on to Reality as it is perceived by, or as it exists for, a given individual or group.) Therefore, cut off as we are from Reality, with only language, (a fallible medium) or perhaps logic (logically an even more fallible medium[I love the paradox and irony in that statement]) to allow us any connection with others, we literally exist in individual realities. And, in the strictest sense, no one's reality corresponds exactly to anyone else's. Now there are degrees of overlap within individual realities to the extent which two given individuals overlap in their thinking. Where ever their thinking diverges, their realities will diverge. As systems of thought that share this shaping power constitutive of individual realities I include religions under the broader banner of theories. Thus stretching theory slightly to be any system of thought that constitutes a shaping world view that attempts to explain/account for the world (not the physical earth, but the human created world).

The power of theory as we are studying it in this course, in which, each of the theories is essentially constitutive of a world view or paradigm, is this: Our thoughts create our individual realities by ordering our perceptions. Because these paradigms have the power (because new knowledge has the power) to shape and even transform our thoughts they literally create/re-create our realities to the extent that we embrace new ones.

Think for example of some powerful new piece of knowledge. In Reality, (if Reality exists; I am positing that it does, it is one of the givens required for my particular theory here to exist) that piece of knowledge was always there, just waiting for you to discover it. However, as far as your own reality is concerned, that knowledge did not exist until you learned it and when you did learn it, the reality in which you live was changed. For example: you meet someone new on campus. You do not recall having ever seen them before. For you, that person did not exist before this moment as you had no knowledge of them. They were not a part of reality as it exists for you. However, once you meet them, know who they are and become aware of their presence on campus you tend to see them every where, right? (not always, but often true in my experience...it that can be projected at all to your reality dear reader) Now, where as before they did not exist, they may seem to be everywhere. Was not that person, in Reality, there all the time? However, in your reality, in Reality as created and perceived by your mind, they did not exist. Thus the interaction of our perceptions, our thoughts, and our knowledge create the reality we live in, and theories by giving shape to our perceptions, thoughts and knowledge, by framing or re-framing them create our realities in the manner described above.

With the modern/post-modern destruction of epistemologies, the removal of all centers in favor of truths and relativity, there is no way to know anything for certain without first choosing a center around which to order your thought. That decision by its very nature requires making fundamental assumptions about the world. They may be based on supposed "empirical" information or other evidence, but remember, once we enter the modern theoretical perspectives all knowledge and all methods of knowledge are suspect. Different theories accept different givens because accepting some givens is necessary to maintain any knowledge or agree with anyone about anything.

However, with no center that is agreed upon, and even individual understandings of a shared center across realities causing divergence in those most similar to one another, accepting any of these givens requires an act of faith. Or, to re-state, the acceptance of any world view requires the acceptance of fundamental principles that underlie it (Marxism - economic determinism [to varying degrees granted], Feminism - patriarchy and, apparently in the version discussed in class last night, being pro-choice, Religions - the existence of a deity/deities or some divine force,), fundamental principles without which you cannot be considered to have embraced said theory completely, or perhaps at all. That acceptance, given the destruction of all epistemologies, or at least their reduction to truths/relativity under modern theory/thought, requires an act of faith. By act of faith I mean that the acceptance of any given cannot be justified beforehand except by givens already accepted in an endless recursive cycle, so that the initial acceptance of a given by an individual is a figurative leap into the unknown.

Now after all of this discussion and theoretical argument to establish the existence of each of us within our own figurative trains in the endless train station from Barry's metaphor of post-modernsim, or rather to establish the existence of each of us literally within our own, individual realities, what's the point? What the heck does this have to do with intransigence? Much less last night's discussion? Well, the fact that we live in our own realities, realities devoid centers that can be accepted with anything less than an arbitrary decision/act of faith (remember we can't see the givens of a theory as justified until after we accept them as givens because all knowledge is suspect), is the reason we are so fragmented as a nation, a society, a culture, and a world. Issues that are important enough to touch directly on the givens that constitute our realities, or have very little separation from those givens, like abortion, for example, are things we are incapable of discussing "rationally" with someone whose reality doesn't overlap sufficiently with our own because what is logic to them will literally be absurdity (re: out of tune, contrary to the nature of reality) for us. Thus two entirely intelligent people of integrity, being entirely open with each other can fail to agree on the most fundamental questions, or even which given has primacy in determining one's decision.

I thought of all of this after our discussion of feminism, and abortion last night, when I discovered that what I thought was my nuanced, fair, and "obvious once you think about it" based neither on the given of freedom being a higher absolute good than life in all instances (a reductive statement I know, but an attempt to carry express the idea that freedom is worth dieing, for living for, and killing for, even removing life/potential life if necessary), nor the belief that life is an absolute good that trumps freedom in this instance (another reductive statement, but an attempt to convey the idea that in the instance of the existence of innocent life/the potential of innocent life choice [re: freedom] is trumped). Instead I had what, in my reality constitutes a logical alternative - limited legal abortion. The position that safe, legal abortion should be available in cases in which the choice of the mother was abrogated (rape/incest) or when her life is endangered by the pregnancy, but should in other cases be illegal. To my mind this logically balances the competing values of choice and life. However, assuming that what was logical in my reality would transfer to the reality of anyone operating from a different reality as logic rather than absurdity was fallacious and reflected a misidentification of the givens of my reality that are reflected in the decision.

Underlying my "logical" balancing act was a third given that won't transfer to a reality shaped by a feminism that includes the right to safe, legal abortion with no limits as a given. That given is a very old fashioned one, a belief in the sacred nature of the sex act, which to my mind justifies restrictions on when/with whom it can rightly be engaged in, and the validity of nature taking its course as a natural consequence of the decision to engage in intercourse. Now please, while this may sound quaint, or even be a source of irritation/anger to some, I don't expect you to agree with me, I'm just illustrating why it's so hard to come to agreement and theory's role in making it more difficult.

The disagreement over this issue in this particular discussion and the continuing large scale disagreement over this and many other seeming basic issues is due to the separate realities from which we are forced to argue by modern theory. The intransigence isn't due to the stupidity, ignorance, or evil nature of those arguing against us (whatever our side on any given issue) it is due to the absurdity of trying to discuss these issues across the gaps between realities.

A Feminist's Semiotic Playground...

Within Barry's summary of various feminist positions I found several ideas fascinating. One was the idea of language having "two aspects" (123) the symbolic and semiotic, from the work of Julia Kristeva. I found this idea, a repesentation of "Lacanian re-use of the notions" (123) of conscious and unconscious, fascinating. How true it is (as we saw in our discussion of post-structuralism) that as we consciously communicate in an ordered and rational way, there is always an undercurrent that works against us, that "emerg[es] into and disrupt[s] the 'conscious' or 'surface' meaning" (124). I'm not sure why, after encountering these ideas in only sightly different words from Derridas et al. I am now so intrigued, but this presentation jumped out at me. I was uncertain however, whether Kristeva and Cixous were claiming this semiotic aspect as a feminine aspect of a male medium, or if they were merely finding in its existence "s vital theater of possibilities, the value of which is to imagine alternatives to the world which we now have" (124). Barry does, just before the last quoted passage, label it "this visionary 'semiotic' female world" which would seem to indicate that is the case. Still, certainly it was something the women recognized they shared with other theorists both post-structuralist and psychoanalytic, and, as such open to everyone regardless of gender, right?

I wonder who they would characterize as making use of this semiotic language then? A single example is given: e. e. cummings, and I don't know anyone who plays with language quite like he does. Other examples seem to be other high modernists like Joyce and Woolf, maybe Faulkner (I haven't really read Faulkner so I'm stretching), perhaps some of Kerouac's more experimental work, although some of the beats' ideas about women are troubling in the context of applying feminist ideas. Still, I don't know that I would characterize many women writers that I have read as possessing this semiotic characteristic as I am struggling to understand it through the one example given. I mean Austen, the Brontes, George Elliott, even more modern writers such as Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, etc. don't seem to be playing with this semiotic aspect of language in the way she describes except in the sense that it is present in all of us. Are there a bunch of radical experimentalists out there that I'm not aware of?

* * *

An addendum to my original post...I just finished reading Toni Morrison's Jazz and reading an article focused on the identity of her very, very fluid and mysterious narrative "I" in that novel. I would have to revise what I said in including her in the list at the end of the above...In this novel at least there is that experimental form in the interplay of voices, and the mysteriousness of the narrator that I'd have to identify it as an example of the conscious use of the semiotic in the manner Kristeva/Barry seem to be discussing.

Jameson - or Glory Hallelujah, I have seen the Marxist Light!

Does the irony of Jameson's positioning of Marxism as the one, true lens through which we can see the world strike anyone else?

Just consider some of these quotes from the opening of "On Interpretation: Literature as a Socially Symbolic Act":

It (the text in question) conceives of the political perspective (re: Marxist perspective)...as the absolute horizon of all reading and all interpretation (181).

Our presupposition (for which no argument is made I might add) will be that only a genuine philosophy of history (re: Marxism again) is capable of respecting the specificity and radical difference of the social and cultural past while disclosing the solidarity of its polemics and passions, its forms, structures, experiences, and struggles, with those of the present day. . . .(182)

To imagine that...there already exists a realm of freedom (or by implication anything else that contradicts Marxism)...is only to strengthen the grip of Necessity over all such blind zones in which the individual subject seeks refuge, in pursuit of a purely individual, a merely psychological, project of salvation (183).

Perhaps I am way off base, but this sounds to me like the infamous opiate of the masses. Something to be "presupposed" as "absolute" and the "only" means of interpreting anything not written yesterday. Something that then is the only viable portal through which we can access history because any other point of entry requires a reconstitution of that history that is perverted by our own modern perspective and even our own language (181-182), a disease of interpretive fallacy to which the enlightened, "genuine" few (re: Marxists) are apparently conveniently immune (although we must "presuppose" this immunity as no explanation for it is given), and then, since the ideal is to be rejected in favor of the material (we must be rational after all, none of that icky faith stuff) (Barry 150), the material can only be interpreted through history, and "only Marxism can give us an adequate account of the essential mystery of the cultural past" well we should all just shut up and fall in line with this "absolute horizon" for a philosophy of life!

PPPPhhhhheeeeewwwwww. I accept that a Marxist perspective has some healthy critiques to make of a system based entirely on the idea that our individual greed can be harnessed for the good of all. I shudder at the idea of our economic system running freely without outside critique, as that is a sure fire recipe for disaster in any human system. But Jameson's broad, sweeping, take it on faith claims for Marxism as he opens this piece just don't pass the smell test. He's asking too much with no argument, no justification to back it up. I realize that he's simply establishing the ground work so that the rest of the text will make sense (at least I assume that must be what he's doing or it's far worse than I supposed), but even so, to presuppose that the view of the author is the only correct one...Welcome to the church of materialism/marxism.

I am supposed to believe, with all we know about the nature of text and the act of reading, that Marxism is free from the interpretive barriers to the past that everyone else encounters. That their pink glasses, donned before reading the past, doesn't color the light by which they see it? That they alone are not constructing (okay, reconstructing) the texts as they read them? I had a hard time even getting past this opening position statement.

Michel Foucault

To me this lecture excerpt seems to point toward the fragmentation of western society that has resulted from the uprising of various divergent minority views punching through what was formally a more united more cohesive cultural discourse, although one built on exclusion, what Foucault calls more mildly "functionalist coherence or formal systemisation" (130).

Foucault opens with reference to the increasing "vulnerability" of "institutions, practices, discourses" etc. which we find the seeming purpose of philosophy in the modern era. The destruction of Western episteme. Derridas last week turned this fragmenting modern perspective on language itself, something so fundamental that we literally cannot comprehend what it means to be without it. If language through which, as the structuralists suggest, we construct our world, is fragmented and incapable of expressing truth and meaning, and we have like good little post-structuralists overcome our desire for the transcendental signified, than what is left? I believe Focucault uses this lecture to answer that question.

And what he finds is the fragmented post-modern society. The "attempts to think in terms of a totality" have fragmented and fallen apart, philosophical totalities, religious totalities, economic totalities, even the "linguistic totality" of structuralism. In the gaps have risen his "subjugated knowledges of both types" (Paulo Freire, anyone?) as minorities and cultures outside the Euro-American cultural dominance are gaining greater voice and power in a decentralized world.

The second half of the essay is devoted to describing these new knowledges/powers. Instead of being globalizing philosophies like Capitalism, Marxism, structuralism, and even deconstructionism etc. they are localized knowledges/powers focused on specific groups of people rather than on humanity as a whole. I believe the genealogies term used is particularly indicative of the ethnic/cultural "isms" and splits that we see throughout current world society (if such an oxymoron can be tolerated).

Disneyland vs. the Simpsons...Post-Modernism

The focus on pastiche and parody in the short post-modernism article was fascinating. Certainly our own cultural preoccupation with these literary forms (the Office, other mockumentaries, the Simpsons, Family Guy, Southpark etc.) seems to embody the feedback loop where we jump from symbol to symbol to symbol without finding any underlying reality.

I was caught by the idea and implication of Disneyland as the symbol with no basis in reality. It symbolizes something that itself only exists in the minds of the people (if there, anymore).

I have noticed with my high school students, that many of them have been exposed to a vast quantity of Americana and cultural lore, but are unable to access it except through the ironic post-modern sensibility because they have no experience of the things themselves, experiencing them only through the send-ups they encounter in these various parody television shows/movies. This of course means they have no knowledge of the original, and more interestingly and inherently more post-modern, they don't even realize that what they are seeing is a parody of something else, and so think that many of these things originated in the vast flow of parodies parodying parodies of other parodies in layers so deep that the "truth" behind the shifting signs is lost.

In other words, I run into tons of students who believe the things these shows make fun of turned up for the first time in the very programs...most pure embodiment of the hyper reality the text discusses.

I also found myself hoisted on my own petard in discovering that my own respect for those who (like myself of course) combine a deep appreciation for/knowledge of both hi-culture and pop-culture is not some unique thing reserved for a special few, but instead a manifestation of the same string of thought that produces the ultra-jaded, ironic attitude that I so detest. Once again enlightenment and the expansion of knowledge throws light on hypocrisy. I don't know that I'll change at all, or even change my opinions, but at least I'm aware they're hypocritical!

Centerless Freeplay...Jacques Derridas' "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences"

Wow. I am depending on a few metaphors that I created reading the chapters in Barry on Structuralism and Post-Structuralism. In that reading, so as to get through the articles from last week without frying my brain, I adopted as quick and dirty substitute the idea of paradigm to replace structure.

Then, as I understand it, the structures these writers are referring to are various paradigms (according to these theories/theorists linguistic constructions by their very nature) not only for literature but for life, even reality, as a whole.

Jacques Derridas then (along with other Post-Structuralist) kicks the supports out from under the structures/paradigms, setting them all into motion against a moving background of other moving structures/paradigms. Interesting to me was the deconstructionist's own catch-22. Derridas saying (Ironic how easily the density of his text forces us into a Post-structuralist distrust of our own language and understanding, leaving a language full of conditional qualifiers not unlike his own article) that in this orgy of deconstructing all centers the post-structuralist "ought to extend his refusal to the concept and to the word sign itself" seems the equivalent of telling Descartes that he ought to deny his own existence despite the fact that he is there thinking (Derridas 117). However, just as Descartes sought to deny everything and so get to some starting point and found that he could not deny his own existence because something was there having these thoughts, Derridas admits the impossibility of denying "the concept and the word sign itself" (117).

It seems however, that having reached his Descartesian basic, the sign (as opposed to thought) he did not decide to then move forward proving other ideas, but rather insisted that since everything else can be denied, everything other than the mere existence of "the concept and the word sign itself" can and should be doubted. Or at least approached with caution (117).

Derridas does seem to wrestle further with this concept (and I would love to quote if I was referring to anything other than a vague holistic impression of a general argument, but I am not), stressing that it "ought to be abandoned" (117). For Derridas, the basis, the foundation he cannot deny is a frustration, a symbol of being trapped within a paradigm/structure and being unable to fully deconstruct it, analyse it, or even understand it, because one is incapable of viewing it from the outside.

In finishing, therefore, I would argue that while the deconstructionist is able to go around kicking holes in everyone else's linguistic/literary boats, he/she must disgustedly realize that their own boat is leaking badly and that they are, due to the catch-22 in which they find themselves, unable to bail effectively to keep from getting wet. To do so would require the ability to escape reality as constructed by language, to escape the necessity of the sign. This is after all "precisely what cannot be done" (117).

Deconstruction: Formalism's "Evil" Twin?

Barry points begins his section on Post-Structuralism with the obvious connections to Structuralism. The Post-Structuralists accept the Structuralists' claims about language but attack those beliefs with a philosopher's skepticism, so that where the Structuralist maintains a belief in language as a successful orderly system of communication, a truthful rendering of the world (to the extent it allows for truth), the post-structuralist disowns language as a valid vehicle for the communication of meaning entirely (Barry 62). Indeed in a textual reality (62) Nietzsche's statement "there are no facts, only interpretations" becomes literally true, as all texts are subject to interpretation in the very act of being read. Thus reality itself becomes not only difficult, but impossible to understand, subject to the interpretation of each individual just as a novel is.

Post-Structuralism then, as a reaction to and against Structuralism, is concerned in the long run with things that extend far beyond the text. Any literary criticism from a Post-structuralist is simply the means to an end not an end in itself. That end being the further proof of the impossibility of knowing the nature of our reality due to the slipperiness of language, the medium through which we perceive the world. The deconstruction aimed at in "applied post-structuralism" (68) is not the deconstruction of the text except as a means to a greater goal: the deconstruction of Western civilization itself, or at least of the Western world view (63).

However, in practice a deconstructive reading has far more to do with Formalism (liberal humanism) than Structuralism. While structuralism is focused on getting beyond the text as quickly as possible to larger patterns and shapes of meaning etc., Deconstruction turns to Derridas's famous statement that "there is nothing outside the text" (qtd. in Barry 66). While I grant that this is taken out of context (as Barry himself warns [66]), it sounds intriguingly formalist. In fact, I would argue that, approaching from extremely different vectors, Formalists and Post-Structuralists arrive at the same point: nothing matters but the text; it exists alone in a vacuum, or at least should be treated as if it does because of the impossibility of knowing what surrounds it. Barry goes on to state that a deconstructive reading (at least in the initial stages) "is very similar to ... more conventional forms of close reading" (71). In fact, it applies the same means and techniques to different ends. While Formalism "demonstrates an underlying unit" even in texts that are "fragmented and disunified," Deconstruction looks for disunity, showing that "what...looked like coherence and unity actually contains contradictions" (74). The interesting thing to me is that the two versions of close reading would seem to turn on the same points of emphasis within a piece. If we need any proof that we are finding what we look for, here it is! The Formalist, as formalism was taught to me, (and I grant here that I do not have the texts from that course, and while this idea could be inferred from Barry, it is not presented by him as such) looks especially for apparent contradictions in the text and explains them in such a way as to make them essential points in support of his or her reading of the piece. In effect arguing that the what are apparently the weak points of their argument are in fact key points in favor of the reading they are positing. Deconstruction would seem to focus on the same points: "contradictions/paradoxes; Shifts/Breaks in: Tone, Viewpoint, Tense, Time, Person, Attitude; Conflicts; Absences/Omissions; Linguistic Quirks; and Aporia" (70). Even at the second and third levels the Post-Structuralist essentially pursues an Anti-Formalist reading, using larger patterns and linguistic quirks within the text itself to prove its disunity (72-73).

So while Formalists argue "Hey now, slow down and look carefully, the poem doesn't really contradict itself here, in fact..."the Deconstructionist argues, "Come now. The author says that they're doing thus and so, but look right here...." If they were engaged in live debate the argument might take the form of "Apparent contradiction? It is a contradiction. It says right there..."

Deconstruction then is only tangentially in dialog with Structuralism. It is far more fundamentally in dialog with traditional formalism, attacking the tradition, and the intellectual basis which formalism seeks to preserve, and using its very own techniques to do so. Hence my post's title...Although, reconsidering, perhaps (since deconstruction is more like a mirror image, raising a left hand to formalism's right, and occasionally slipping into fun house distortion), if we accept its philosophical basis, it might have been titled "Formalism's Honest Twin..".

On Beyond Zebra! - Exploring the Wild, Woolly, World Outside the Text

If Cleanth Brooks acknowledges the value of non-formalist approaches to literature - as he repeatedly does: "There is no reason...why he should not turn away into biography and psychology. Such explorations are very much worth making" (Brooks 27), "The various imports of a given work may well be worth studying. ...But such work valuable and necessary as it may be" (28), "I did not and do not now mean to deny value to other literary studies such as the biographical, historical, those describing the cultural setting of the work, etc. They may prove necessary to an understanding of the text...(30), - than why can't he admit it's literary criticism?Even in the note from which the final quote is taken, he refers to non-formalist approaches as "literary studies" (30) and saves "'literary' criticism" (30) for the formalism that is the focus of the article. This smacks of the semantics of Quintillian: he may be good at speaking, and he may convince a lot of people, but if I don't approve of him he's not an orator. It seems childish to deny the title of literary criticsm to these studies whose value he professes to recognize, unless because the critic doth protest too much we are supposed to believe that he is being politically correct and covering a divisive belief that these other "literary studies" (30) do not in fact measure up. It is perhaps telling that he denies any of them the right to "determine literary value" (30) implicitly saving this key ability for formalist criticism.

In one instance I must agree with Brooks despite his qualifiedly ungenerous attitude toward any theoretical approach not his own. Theory does inherently move the reader on beyond zebra, to discover new, strange and wild creatures that one can only find by going beyond the text. Structuralism has as its object "not [the] literary works themselves but their intelligibility: the ways in which they make sense, the ways in which readers have made sense of them" (100). Indeed in Culler's and Peckham's articles, if I understand them correctly (which is apparently impossible to determine [Peckham 108]), semiotics/structuralism functions almost as a theory of theories, or a study of theories searching for all the various semiotic matrices that might shed light on a text, none of which can singly "be successfully used to controlt he interpretation of a work of even slight complexity" (Peckham 111). These matrices simply equate to the limits we, as readers, place on the signifiers in the text. That is, the critical lens with which we study it. As those limits stabilize the possible meanings of the signifiers in the text (108-109) they shape what the user of a particular matrix will find in the piece. One who wears rose colored glasses will see the world with a pink tinge, and, just so, a marxist will see the vestiges of power structures running throughout everything everywhere. Structuralism, theory of theories and system of systems, seems to be the study of why all these various colors of glasses are formed from the same text.

If the matrices discussed here are indeed the nearly limitless variety of critical approaches that can be taken to a text, and all are equally valid (again Peckham 108) perhaps we are spending more time in academic game playing with no real purpose or benefit than I thought. I will not deny theoretical approaches the title of literary criticism, simply because their concerns are not limited to the literary the way formalism is. I prefer John R. Trimble's implicit definition of criticsm from his text Writing With Style and found in the chapter entitled "How to Write a Critical Analysis." While Trimble presents a very formalist approach to analysis in his examples, his definition of the critic's job implies the definition of criticism to be work that helps an already knowledgable reader to better understand a given text. This broader definition embraces all of Brooks' "literary studies" on an equal footing. However, as we travel off beyond zebra into abstract realms of pure thought, I am left to ponder what I took to be Brooks' key question: What happens to the text we've left behind?

Erasmus, Luther, Augustine...and truth.

We have certainly found ourselves in a predicted connundrum through the study of rhetoric over the past few weeks. The pursuit of rhetorical excellence, and through a solution to problems and disputes through rhetoric leads by the admission or the charge of most of all of our writers (the majority admit it, Plato angrily asserts it, as do other more dogmatic writers) that we are "ever learning, and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth" (2 Tim. 3:7) While Paul made this assertion with the big T truth of the Christian gospel in mind, it nonetheless applies well to the repetitive, circular arguments in which we have immersed ourselves in both the texts and the class.

In another Pauline passage, one that has come up in class already, most of the writers we have studied and, I believe, all of us in class have admitted that "for now we see through a glass darkly" (1 Cor. 13:12). I have no problem with the idea that we, as human beings, have an extremely limited perception of the realities of existence, of the truths that I believe are somewhere out there. We are unable through our own searching and learning to reach any truth that we can have confidence in. There are two simple possibilities: either truth is available from a source outside reality as we are able to perceive/receive it, from the other side of Paul's dark glass, if you will, or there is no truth and we live in the meaningless, absurd universe of the existentialists. Neitszche can call me a coward if he pleases, and despise my weakness as a follower of Christ (as I am a Mormon and most "Christians" refuse to let me into their club, I am hesitant to adopt that title as my own), I refuse either out of hope or fear or pure obstinacy a purposeless, meaningless world.

I read a book recently by Neal Stephenson that hypothesized that human beings search for a narrative in which to fit themselves, a larger story they can be part of and the character framing this idea suggests this is part of the reason for religion's success, it provides a powerful narrative. Perhaps that is what drives me. While I have an absolute faith in my own position, (by which I mean that despite a lack of knowledge in the traditional, rational, scientific western sense I have a basic certainty of underlying principles) I like to think that I am closer to Erasmus, hesitant to assign myself any special knowledge ("Erasmus does not claim knowledge but has only questions and some tentatively held opinions" [Conley 123]) about the nature of the universe or truth beyond a few basic tenets of my faith.

Erasmus is perhaps the most appealing of the three, in that he argues as a scholar, despite defending a religious position. He does not claim to have some superior infallible knowledge of the meaning of scripture, or to be "adhering to the simple, pure, and natural meaning of the words" (Conley 123) as if any text, including the text of scritpure, could be read withtout interpretation as Luther's comment implies. Instead, Erasmus pursues the best of the Socratic position in arguing. He "does not claim knowledge," and "does not attempt to construct watertight proofs" (Conley 123). Instead he uses in utramque partem and argues his case by making both arguments, pointing out the probablities, and leaving the ultimate decision with the reader.

An aside here: the ability to argue both sides does not necessarily make one an amoral, unethical opportunist. Specifically using a presentation of both sides, arguing in utramque partem, to make your point doesn't either. It is too easy to point a finger and say oh, you just switch positions on any important issue when the wind blows and to yell "hypocrite." The best debaters, speakers, literary critics, and scholars in general take this approach to any problem even if they don't frame their argument in this fashion, learning both sides so that a decision can be reached, a side taken (if taking sides is necessary), or a third way found with the fullest possible knowledge of what is going on in the debate/discussion etc. It's not as simple as being a slimy lawyer with a gift for delivery.

Erasmus is clearly erudite and knowledgable in the best of both traditions, without losing either his faith or his scholar's edge. His rhetoric, which Conley describes as the "old humanist" at least once (I can't find it in exactly those words just now, but such a characterization is at least implied where old is understood to refer to a rhetorical theory and approach more in line with the classical tradition), is based on controversia and recognizing clearly the glass before his eyes makes no special claims for his arguments over anyone else's. He plays by traditional rules. I would like to think that I function as a scholar in a similar fashion, keeping my faith out of my academics, and arguing based upon the material at hand and with no claims to special knowledge from beyond.

I would assume (despite what assuming does) that Erasmus, in the modern world, would balance faith and skepticism, choosing faith where faith and science are apparently in conflict and waiting for a clearer view through the glass. I like to think that is how I handle any apparent conflicts that I encounter.

Luther, who is less spoken of because somewhat less relevant to our discussion, plays the game in an entirely different manner. He "asserted, and [would] still assert," leaving no room in his text for the reader's intellect to participate in the conscious creation of meanings or solutions. Instead he is ready to dictate to us from his enlightened position and help us escape our benighted understanding. Having read a portion of this argument before in which the reading focused on the argument itself rather than on the argument's rhetorical aspects, I can say that I was turned off by Luther's paternal condescension toward anyone who didn't agree with him.

Perhaps Luther should have read Augustine more fully before leaving his vocation as a Catholic monk. I wrongly expected to find Augustine more doctrinaire, closer to the lines of a Lutherian absolutism. What I found in Augustine's text was quite different. I emphasize the I because I am certain others will read Augustine differently. Granted that it would seem logical for someone with Augustine's background, but we finally have a rational resolution of the vir bonus dicendi peritus. Augustine makes no attempt to argue that an evil person cannot be rhetorically effective. In fact, he points to the potential effectiveness of a hypocrite arguing in favor of a "true" proposition (in this case the gospel) because of the naturally appealing nature of truth. However, he comes down on the side of the vir bonus dicendi peritus in his arguments for wisdom over eloquence, and the increased effectiveness of the good man whos life doesn't argue against him as he speaks. Wisely, there is no special moralizing power attached to rhetoric (as is vaguely hinted at in some of our other readings), nor is there any argument that something in the nature of either evil or rhetoric would prevent its use by someone whose morals Augustine wouldn't have approved of.

Of particular interest to me was his emphasis on the power of truth to appeal of its own accord regardless of the speaker. (Granted, my intereset assumes the possibility that truth of some sort is enough within our reach to have a statement about events that would be generally accepted as "true.") This would indicate that truth is truth regardless of who the presenter. Augustine's willingness to admit that someone batting for the other team might present truth as well, (an interpretation and stretching of the argument, but nothing in this excerpt seems to contradict it unless non-textual biases toward a religious position are allowed to take the place of textual evidence) that "they [might be] heard with profit" by believers is a refreshing stance that Luther could have adopted to his credit.

Once More Into the Breach

I was fascinated by the ending of this week's reading in Quintillian and Tacitus.

First, Quintillian and the Orator Perfectus. Quintillian demands a philosopher/rhetor, combining the two within his definition of orator, or a good man speaking well. He refuses the title to anyone who is dishonest, or otherwise immoral, seeming to rely on the reader's judgment that by definition such a person could not speak well. What seemed a ridiculously vague and naive definition, then becomes clearly an ideal, and a moral stance. And, frankly, makes a lot more sense than it did when I first encountered the idea out of context. For Quintillian, the orators of the current day have ceded much of their work to the philosophers, becoming content with the study of specific techniques of public speaking. As Phlodemu's critique of rhetoric makes clear (and as Quintillian is also at pains to clarify) the study of speech making alone does not produce the "good man speaking well," the statesmen etc. that is the professed goal of rhetorical training. In fact the training in eloquence (what many of the other writers seem to see as the whole or at least the primary focus of rhetoric) is a garnish on a person of immense education and training. One who is, in fact a philosopher. Interestingly, in Quinitillian's De Institutione Oratoria the philosopher seems to be an orator who quit just short of the top, where he/she might have gained the skill to make their knowledge of the truth of some practical value to themselves and the community of which they are a part. In other words, the true orator is both philosopher and rhetor, and, therefore by definition a good man speaking well. Notice which part comes first, as Quintillian emphasized. By implication then, the philosopher alone is a lazy, selfish person, one quite well educated and capable putting his/her gifts to good use but refusing to do so in any practical fashion. The accusation seems to be of a willful naivetee as to the philosopher's role in the community/state. The rhetor on the other hand fails in an even more basic manner, he/she has not done everything required to meet Quintillian's greater foundation, "the good man."

On a completely different tack, the account of Tacitus in the Dialogue on Orators is of great interest. He traces the need for great orators to the unsettled state of affairs in the government. He points to times of democracy (or at least some semblance of democracy or representative government) in the Greek city states and the old Roman republic as the times when rhetoric was most needed and at its most powerful. He attributes the fall in the power and glory of rhetoric to the stable government, even to the citizens' willingness to obey their rulers. The final section which delineates the lack of necessity for rhetoric in the peaceful days of the empire are almost frightening. They could equally be interpreted as the lowering of people's freedoms, and a corresponding lack of action in deliberative bodies, bereft of any power by all-powerful rulers. Rhetoric fades as the power of the individual to effect change through the convincing of others fades could be an equally powerful statement drawn from this text, but Tacitus prefers to see the blessings of stability. Certainly stable government is a blessing, and the peace that Rome enjoyed for long periods, must also have been deemed a blessing to its citizens. However, I am powerfully reminded that the pax romana was largely the result of the absolute destruction of any people or civilization with the potential to threaten or even vaguely annoy Rome. I will take troubled times and great orators over a peace consisting of the destruction of everyone but us any day.

The Problem With Letters

In an interesting aside at the end of the Phaedrus Socrates bends his wicked wit on the invention of letters themselves. Having already proved the evil of a rhetoric that does not base itself upon some knowledge of universals, of the good, he moves on to the dangers of letters.

These letters he says in his myth of Theuth "will create forgetfulness in your learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to external written characters and not remember of themselves." This he equates to "having the show of wisdom without the reality." This particular danger seems interesting. History has proven that the test of the educated person has continued to be the knowledge he or she is able to gain and make their own, having it "graven in [their] soul" as Socrates says a little later. Interestingly, there are those who contend that the internet will bring about the very revolution against the definition of knowledge that Socrates here predicts of books. Indeed I have heard it argued by prominent figures (not in education, but rather a business man if I remember correctly) that the definition of an educated person must change, that it cannot any longer be a question of the knowledge one carries around in their own minds, but rather the ability to parse and process the knowledge made available to us by the internet. Circles, circles...Socrates would cry. I don't believe that such a transition will ever take place because such a person has no basis on which (other than cold logic) to decide whether or not that information they are processing is true. Considering the number of times that truth is stranger than fiction, how can we count on a mind unfilled except with skill based knowledge to know truth? This would be, I think, Plato's concern; it is certainly mine.

While there may or may not be capital T truth out there as Plato believed - and if there is we certainly have imperfect access to it at best - I do believe there is objective little t truth. To dismiss truth as a fiction, or deny our ability to access it (which is the same thing in different wrapping) is dangerous indeed.

Socrates points to the danger of the man with the empty head who simply is a processor of information: Speeches, he says, have "the attitude of life." However, "if you want to know anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves."

This statement could easily be dismissed as part of tyrranical Plato's desire to control the unwashed masses' access to information. Save it for the few of us worthy of leaving the cave. If this were all there was to it I would agree and dismiss it, firmly. However, I don't think this knew version of the educated person is even possible. Without the undergirding of a basis of knowledge, there are no guideposts by which to interpret the deluge of information, the sea of data that is constantly, not only at our fingertips, but spilling at us, over us, into us as much as we'll let it. It becomes absolutely meaningless. Completely relative. As Plato's Socrates suggests it cannot answer for itself, and if no one is able to answer for it, if there are no guidposts in the background to measure the information against, just "skills" that would theoretically allow you to determine its value, than how is there any distinction between fact and falsehood? We are left either with some who know, and beomce the guide posts (in which case knowledge would give them ultimate, near godlike power), or we are left adrift, ever learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. If truth doesn't exist, that's no big deal. If it does, at all, in any sense, it is a horrible travesty.

Dialectic vs. Rhetoric...Hmmm...

While no one has ever accused Plato of worrying about equality or fairness for anyone other than his chosen philosopher kings, I was struck in Conley's presentation by what seemed the blatant hypocrisy of his stand against rhetoric.

Plato's arguments against the rhetoric of either sophist strain seem based upon the fact that neither considers truth as a goal worth pursuing. He rightly recognized both Gorgian and Protagoran rhetoric as a tool without a compass, usable for the promotion of any idea, or the argument of any side of an issue. However, what he fails to recognize is that his own preferred method of arriving at truth, dialectic, is equally a tool that can be used to further any argument the interlocutor desires. In fact, the limited gamesmanship of dialectic, narrowing options to either A or B, or, in rare cases, A, B, or C seems to create false dichotomies that are just as manipulative and potentially damaging as anything the Gorgians or Protagorans might have done. Of course the noble philosopher kings would not have done so, but then again, would not the noble, enlightened philosopher kings have used rhetoric to pursue and promote truth and the good life as well? I fail to see the difference.

Furthermore, as one moves along to Aristotle a further irony captured my attention. Granted I am applying Aristotle's definition of rhetoric and thus already distancing myself from Plato as Aristotle recognizes rhetoric as a tool that is not inherently im- or amoral, but nevertheless.... Aristotle defines rhetoric as perceiving all the available means of persuasion. As Plato admirably demonstrates in dialogue after dialogue, the skilled use of dialectic is a powerful means of persuasion. This would seem to place dialectic firmly in the rhetorical realm as a powerful rhetorical maneuver (if you can get your victim - er, opponent to play along). And yet the text and our featured thinkers seem to continue to distinguish between them. Is there a difference that I am not catching? (Granted dialectic requires two people, an interlocutor and someone to respond, but doesn't any act of persuasion require at least two people in similar roles?) It seems that to some extent, in distinguishing between the two so stringently we are splitting hairs in a great big match of my tool is better than yours.