James A. Berlin and Social-Epistemic Rhetorics

Victor J. Vitanza

Description

The field of rhetoric and composition has, at last, received a long-lost message delivered in the form of Victor J. Vitanza’s seminar on James A. Berlin. In this book that is an untext on Berlin’s work and its impact on the field, Vitanza acquaints us with Berlin by virtue of many Berlins, in multiplicity, and via the figure of an “excluded third” that wants to deliver to us a new message that was undelivered from Berlin to us, and from Vitanza to Berlin, after Berlin’s untimely death in 1994. A seminar on a seminar on the teaching of writing . . . it is teaching all the way down. They met at the historical NEH seminar at Carnegie Mellon in 1978. Their friendship and rhetorical dialogues spanned only sixteen years, but Vitanza continues the conversation through the seminar, through this book (rife with reflections and, yes, homework for his readers), and through our reception of it. It is up to us now to carry it forward. As Vitanza writes, “I would prefer not to not think that what remains unsaid stays undelivered.”

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Disciplines
• Language Arts
• Rhetoric

Informations

• Publié par: Parlor Press, LLC
• Date de parution: 16 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781643172224
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

James A. Berlin


James A. Berlin and Social-Epistemic Rhetorics

A Seminar
Victor J. Vitanza
Parlor Press
Anderson, South Carolina
www.parlorpress.com


Parlor Press LLC, Anderson, South Carolina, 29621
© 2021 by Parlor Press
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
S A N: 2 5 4 - 8 8 7 9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Vitanza, Victor J., author.
Title: James A. Berlin and social-epistemic rhetorics : a seminar / Victor J. Vitanza.
Description: Anderson, South Carolina : Parlor Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: "Rhetoric and composition have, at last, received a long-lost message in the form of Victor J. Vitanza's seminar at the University of Texas at Austin, on James A. Berlin, who developed methods to critique the socially constructed, politically charged reality of classrooms and culture"-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021026611 (print) | LCCN 2021026612 (ebook) | ISBN 9781643172200 (paperback) | ISBN 9781643172217 (pdf) | ISBN 9781643172224 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: English language--Rhetoric--Study and teaching--United States. | Academic writing--Study and teaching--United States. | English language--Rhetoric--Study and teaching--Authorship. | Composition
(Language arts)--Study and teaching. | Rhetoric--Study and teaching--Research--Methodology. | Berlin, James A.--Influence. | LCGFT: Lectures.
Classification: LCC PE1405.U6 V48 2021 (print) | LCC PE1405.U6 (ebook) | DDC 808--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021026611
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021026612
978-1-64317-220-0 (paperback)
978-1-64317-221-7 (pdf)
978-1-64317-222-4 (epub)
2 3 4 5
Book design by David Blakesley.
Printed on acid-free paper.
Parlor Press, LLC is an independent publisher of scholarly and trade titles in print and multimedia formats. This book is available in paperback and ebook formats from Parlor Press on the World Wide Web at http://www.parlorpress.com or through online and brick-and-mortar bookstores. For submission information or to find out about Parlor Press publications, write to Parlor Press, 3015 Brackenberry Drive, Anderson, South Carolina, 29621, or email [e-mail].


Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Week #1
Week #2
Week #3
Week #4
Week #5
Week #6
Week #7
Week #8
Week #9
Week #10
Week #11
Weeks #12–13
Weeks #14–15
Appendices


For Jim and our students


Foreword
The “IT” of It All
W hen “IT” happened, I was teaching, conducting a seminar on rhetoric with a large group of humanities students. One of the students had brought copies of the NYTimes Magazine article on Jacques Derrida. We spent the opening moments of the seminar reading aloud from it. There’s a particular passage that sticks, will ever stick, in my mind. The article, if it has a topoi, is “the experience of the impossible,” That is, the experience of death. In the article Derrida thinks outlaid about death, his death. He says: “It is true that I’m obsessed with death. I am at every minute attentive to the possibility that in the following hour I will be dead and the person I am with will say, ‘I was just in the room with I’m, and he is dead.’”
About fifteen minutes later, my wife, Toni, knocked on the door of the seminar room where I was ruminating on the topos life is a “tissue of contingencies” (I was thinking out loud about Richard Rorty’s phrase in contingency, irony, and solidarity). I opened that door and Toni called me outside to the hall. She told me that Janice Lauer had requested that she find me immediately to let me know what? That JB had died of a heart attack.
I lost “it.” Now, I must find it again. But how and where? Opening. . . . You step out of a room. . . . A message is delivered. . . . You return to the room, and yet you don’t. And you say, I said, to my class, that I could not continue. I explained that I was just in my life with a friend, and now he is dead.
It will have taken me a long, long time to wrestle with this angel, left, far left unsaid. After all, you and I both know, all too well, that impossibility will by necessity remain, even if said, will remain undelivered. In a sense—but I hope not in all senses, undelivered. I would prefer not to not think that what remains unsaid stays undelivered.
In these situations that we find ourselves thrown into, by chance? We (should I simply say “I”) need to try to get our (my) bearings. Both public and private.

Public and private : In a piece of epideictic discourse that Jim had most recently written about the journal and me, he says: “PRE/TEXT is a forum where we can all get together to disagree, establishing relationships, as V.V. and I have done, on mutual and heartfelt disrespect. (I could never be troubled to argue with a position or person I did not genuinely dislike at least part of the time. It is out of scorn that worthwhile differences are discovered. Without rancor there is no rose.)”
—/\/\/\ Published in PRE/TEXT Vol. 14 1–2


Introduction
Seminar on James A. Berlin, Rhetoric as Social-Epistemic, Offered Fall 1998 and Again Fall 2001 at University of Texas at Arlington
T he two Seminars I am recalling will focus on what is called social-epistemic rhetoric as it was developed primarily by James A. Berlin. (Simply defined, a social-epistemic rhetoric is one that has as its epistemology a view that reality is socially-constructed and that has as its politics a radical socialist set of agendas.)
We will read Berlin’s three books and numerous articles as well as work done by others in support of (Patricia Bizzell, John Trimbur, etc.) and in critical response to this rhetoric (Linda Flower, Peter Elbow, etc.). To study the works of Berlin is to study the field of composition from the mid-eighties to the present day.
Berlin’s Topologies thoroughly and perpetually re-mapped the field and, therefore, determined what could be said and not said about composition theories and pedagogies; what could be thought about textbooks in the field and what could not be thought; what could be seen as ethically and politically acceptable reasons for teaching literacy and what could not.
About the plotting of the syllabus: I have arranged our study of James A. Berlin from four incremental perspectives: His constantly revised Theories and Topologies of Composition Studies, Histories/historiographies of Rhetoric and Composition; and his views on Composition Studies, Ideology, and Cultural Studies (The Social-Epistemic Paths); and his Final, Posthumous Statements.
I begin the syllabus by way of the historical context of the NEH seminar, in which JB was introduced to rhetoric/composition. (I was not only an observer but also a participant myself in this seminar.) Moreover, in the plotting of the weekly syllabus, I have referred to what I call two major articles.
Please understand that these articles are in my judgment “major.” Other people would, of course, plot and unfold the syllabus differently, with perhaps other articles, focuses, and emphases.
Seminar participants will be expected to write 10 one-page, single-spaced position papers specifically based on the readings; and will be expected to write one thoroughly researched paper for publication. (The topic must be approved by the instructor.) The one-page papers are to exhibit a careful understanding of JB’s arguments and an interrogation of them. These will be published on the Hyper News site and then responded to by seminar participants and any other public subscriber to the seminar and the list.
* Students and interested people could subscribe to Berlin-L — Helen Foster, Michelle Ballif, Ron Hugar, Diane Davis, Matthew Levy, Collin Brooke Janice Lauer, Cynthia Haynes, Michelle Sidler, Paul Kei Matsuda, Robert Inkster, David Rieder, Alan Taylor, Tom Rickert, Jenny Bay, Kara Robinson, Byron Hawk, Victor J. Vitanza.
Texts
Berlin, James A. Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring College English Studies . Paper. NCTE.
—. Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900–1985 . Paper. NCTE.
—. Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century American Colleges . Paper. NCTE.
And numerous articles. Additional books may be required reading.
Syllabus, Short Form
First Week: Introduction to Course , detailing what will be covered in the seminar and how it will be covered, etc.
We will spend some time—though ever so briefly—establishing an ‘academic’ context with which JB ‘thought about’ writing instruction. This context was primarily established for him while participating in a nine-month NEH seminar at Carnegie-Mellon University (1978–1979) with Richard Young. Specifically, we will examine some of the initial conceptual starting places that JB studied: Daniel Fogarty’s notion of “Current-Traditional Rhetoric” (CTR), James Kinneavy’s theories (rather, topologies) of discourse, and Young’s topology of writing theory/instruction.
I will distribute selections from: Daniel Fogarty’s Roots for a New Rhetoric . New York: Teachers College, Columbia U, 1959. I will briefly discuss several other articles that you will have read for next week, including my introductory article on JB in Twentieth-Century Rhetorics and Rhetoricians .
Lecture/Discussion Notes, Week #1
Continuing to establish the academic context, we will discuss the following two articles that JB first wrote while an NEH Fellow and published shortly thereafter (with Robert P. Inkster): “Current-Traditional Rhetoric: Paradigm and Practice.” Freshman English News 8.3 (Winter 1980): 1–4, 13–14.
“Richard Whately and Current-Traditional Rhetoric.” College English 42 (September 1980):