Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures

James A. Berlin

Description

Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures is James Berlin's most comprehensive effort to refigure the field of English Studies. Here, in his last book, Berlin both historically situates and recovers for today the tools and insights of rhetoric-displaced and marginalized, he argues, by the allegedly disinterested study of aesthetic texts in the college English department. Berlin sees rhetoric as offering a unique perspective on the current disciplinary crisis, complementing the challenging perspectives offered by postmodern literary theory and cultural studies.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• Books
• Reading

Informations

• Publié par: Parlor Press, LLC
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781602354371
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Lauer Series in Rhetoric and Composition honors the contributions Janice Lauer Hutton has made to the emergence of Rhetoric and Composition as a disciplinary study. It publishes scholarship that carries on Professor Lauer’s varied work in the history of written rhetoric, disciplinarity in composition studies, contemporary pedagogical theory, and written literacy theory and research.


Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures
Refiguring College English Studies
James A. Berlin
Afterword by
Janice M. Lauer
Response Essays by
Linda Brodkey, Patricia Harkin, Susan Miller,
John Trimbur, and Victor J. Vitanza

Parlor Press
West Lafayette, Indiana
www.parlorpress.com

Originally published in 1996 by the National Council of Teachers of English as part of the Refiguring English Studies series.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to JAC for permission to reprint the following works: Linda Brodkey, “Remembering Writing Pedagogy,” JAC 17 (1997): 489-93; Patricia Harkin, “ Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures as an Articulation Project,” JAC 17 (1997): 494-97; Susan Miller, “Technologies of Self?-Formation,” JAC 17 (1997): 497-500; John Trimbur, “Berlin’s Citizen and First World Rhetoric,” JAC 17 (1997): 500-2; Victor J. Vitanza, “Aesthetics, Party Lines,” JAC 17 (1997): 503-5.
Parlor Press LLC, West Lafayette, Indiana 47906
© 2003 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 Control Number: 2003102885
Berlin, James A., 1942-1994
Rhetorics, poetics, and cultures : refiguring college English studies /
(Lauer Series in Rhetoric and Composition)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. English philology-Study and teaching (Higher)-United States. 2. English language-Rhetoric-Study and teaching-United States. 3. Poetics-Study and teaching (Higher)-United States. 4. Language and culture-United States. 5. Pluralism (Social sciences). I. Title. II. Series.
ISBN 0-9724772-8-4 (Paper)
ISBN 0-9724772-9-2 (Cloth)
Parlor Press, LLC is an independent publisher of scholarly and trade titles in print and multimedia formats. This book is also available in cloth, as well as in Acrobat eBook Reader and Night Kitchen (TK3) formats, from Parlor Press on the WWW at http://www.parlorpress.com. For submission information or to find out about Parlor Press publications, write to Parlor Press, 816 Robinson St., West Lafayette, Indiana, 47906, or e-mail [e-mail].


Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I Historical Background
Building the Boundaries of English Studies
Where Do English Departments Really Come From?
II The Postmodern Predicament
Postmodernism, the College Curriculum, and English Studies
Postmodernism in the Academy
Social-Epistemic Rhetoric, Ideology, and English Studies
III Students and Teachers
English Studies: Surveying the Classroom
Into the Classroom
IV Department Directions
Sample Programs and Research
A Closing Word
Afterword
Janice M. Lauer
Jim Berlin’s Last Work
Remembering Writing Pedagogy
Linda Brodkey
Rhetorics, Poetics and Cultures as an Articulation Project
Patricia Harkin
Technologies of Self?-Formation
Susan Miller
Berlin’s Citizen and First World Rhetoric
John Trimbur
Aesthetics, Party Lines
Victor J. Vitanza
Works Cited
Index to the Print Edition
About the Author


Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the Purdue Center for Humanistic Study for a semester’s support and Purdue University for a sabbatical semester, both of which came at crucial times in the work on this manuscript. I would also like to thank the universities that encouraged me in this project by inviting me to share parts of it with them.
The manuscript has profited from a number of critical readings. I would especially thank Patricia Bizzell, James Cruise, Lester Faigley, Geraldine Friedman, Janice Lauer, Vincent Leitch, Alan McKenzie, George Moberg, and James Porter. I also thank the anonymous readers for NCTE, who offered detailed comments on the text, and Steve North, for continued editorial and personal support.
Finally, I want to thank my sons, Dan and Christopher, and my wife, Sam, for sharing with me the best gifts that life has to offer.
Parts of this manuscript have appeared elsewhere in different forms: “Rhetoric, Poetic, and Culture: Contested Boundaries in English Stud ies,” The Politics of Writing Instruction: Postsecondary, eds. Richard H. Bullock, John Trimbur, and Charles I. Schuster (Portsmouth, NH: Boynton /Cook-Heinemann, 1991); “Composition Studies and Cultural Studies: Collapsing the Boundaries,” Into the Field: Sites of Composition Studies, ed. Anne Ruggles Gere (New York: Modern Language Associa tion, 1993); “Freirean Pedagogy in the U.S.: A Response,” (Inter)views: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Rhetoric and Literacy, eds. Gary A. Olson and Irene Gale (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991); “Composition and Cultural Studies,” Composition and Resistance, eds. C. Mark Hurlbert and Michael Blitz (Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook- Heinemann, 1991); “Literacy, Pedagogy, and English Studies: Postmodern Connections,” Critical Literacy: Politics, Praxis, and the Postmodern, eds. Colin Lankshear and Peter L. McLaren (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993); “Poststructuralism, Cultural Studies, and the Compo sition Classroom: Postmodern Theory in Practice,” Rhetoric Review 11.1 (1992): 16-33.



Introduction

English studies is in crisis. Indeed, virtually no feature of the discipline can be considered beyond dispute. At issue are the very elements that constitute the categories of poetic and rhetoric, the activities involved in their production and interpretation, their relationship to each other, and their relative place in graduate and undergraduate work. The turmoil within English studies is of course encouraged by the public attention it now receives. Rarely has the ideological role of English in the political life of the nation been so openly discussed. Within the past few years, for example, both Time and Newsweek have covered department disagree ments over the literary canon in long pieces on “political correctness,” while public and commercial television networks have broadcast de bates on the condition of literary studies for a national audience. The furor over the political content of a required first-year composition course at the University of Texas at Austin received extensive coverage in the media.
As Paul Berman points out in his introduction to Debating P.C.: The Controversy over Political Correctness on College Campuses (1992), consid erable agreement exists on all sides about the intellectual and political currents that have nurtured these disputes. (The response of the dispu tants to these currents is quite another matter.) Their circuit began with the upheaval of French philosophy in the early work of such figures as Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, and Pierre Bourdieu. This speculation encouraged new perspectives and new languages for considering the human sciences, developments often collectively labeled the “postmodern.” Closer to home, the implications of this thought were manifested more practically in what has come to be called “identity poli tics.” As Berman explains, these were “the movements for women’s rights, for gay and lesbian liberation, for various ethnic revivals, and for black nationalism (which had different origins but was related nonethe less)” (11). The result of both impulses has been a general assault on some of the most cherished concepts of liberal humanism, concepts that have guided study in the humanities in the modern university since its formation at the turn of the century.
Berman’s account is instructive. He fails to mention, however, that the events he describes have been accompanied by major changes in the work activities and demographic makeup of the society for which col lege students are preparing. In other words, the intellectual and politi cal disruptions that Berman outlines are closely related to major inter national economic and social changes that must be considered in under standing the humanities today.
This book is a response to the current crisis in the discipline. It at tempts to take into account both the intellectual and political issues at stake in the operations of English studies and the relation of these issues to economic and social transformations. It is, above all, committed to a historical perspective, analyzing the role college English departments have played in the curricula of the past and present and drawing up a set of recommendations for the future. This introduction presents an outline of the path pursued in the study.
First, however, I want to explore in some detail the position from which I enter the debate. I offer my claims about English studies from the point of view of someone situated in the rhetoric division of the department. I am convinced that this perspective offers lessons about the current dis ciplinary crisis that are difficult, although assuredly not impossible, to obtain elsewhere. My decision to take this stance is inspired by my study of two great moments in the history of rhetoric—Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E. and the United States during