Wrap-up

Jon Benda has been posting some incredibly helpful remarks on Lu's book and on his views about comparativism. Jon, keep it coming. I'm going to point to your remarks tomorrow in CCR 751, and I also emailed them to the class to read. The very issue you point to with Lu's book in your exams came up in our class. Brian brought in the review you cited for us to look at, so your response has been incredibly helpful.

Out in the 751 blogosphere, I see people posting away, putting up their revised social history manifestos. It's good to see where the thinking is--what is the same, what has changed, etc.

I thought I'd post a few of my own revised thoughts about teaching this class as part of my manifesto update. I taught this class for the first time in 1998, then 2000 (Jon's year), then 2007 (this fall). Teaching a class three times over about a ten year time period gives me a sense of how much of a changed landscape we are seeing with respect to social histories of rhetoric. There has been so much work with recovery and reclamation scholarship in relation to U.S. feminist rhetorics, African American rhetorics, Latino/a rhetorics, Native rhetorics, and also global rhetorics. Social histories of rhetoric provide a wider lens and address a wider array of rhetorical practices.

When I first started teaching 751, the course was conceived of as more a survey of social history within the bounds of 19th-20th century U.S. culture. Clark and Halloran's edited collection was a key text, and there were some texts out that detailed the social histories of women's rhetorics. There was a beginning discourse on American ethnic rhetorics and some rumblings about global rhetorics (mostly through comparative rhetorics). But the work on social histories of rhetoric was more about white-middle class activists and public figures--the same ethic we saw perpetuated in Clark and Halloran's collection, which is valuable for its inclusion of white men and white women's rhetorics, but marked in its complete omission of the rhetorics of peoples of color.

So I believe we have, in the last six years or so, seen a shift to "cultural rhetorics" in this area of inquiry that has been profound and heartening. The work of class members reflects this shift as well.

A couple of questions/issue emerged this term that I'd like to explore further:

--The critique of figure studies. At key points this term, questions were raised in class about the limits and constraints of figure studies (the focus on analyzing the rhetoric of a particular figure or individual in the history of rhetoric). I have mixed feelings about the critique of figure studies. Yes, figure studies can be limiting and constraining and can risk replicating the kind of monumentalizing history that Nietzsche counsels us to avoid. Yet there is something to be gained from the depth and richness of examining a life and a set of rhetorical works engaged by a specific person in relation to a larger cultural backdrop/community/organization. The key here seems to be context--how is a "figure" a cultural matrix and a site for intersecting and overlapping discourses.

--The question of how to study social histories. Should one study figures and communities and cultures comparatively or is a contextual, in-depth approach better? When is one better than the other? How do we study across communities as well as flesh out specific contexts? There is a tendency and a temptation to try to "sample" as many types of works and contexts as possible. What is the right balance between inclusion and the problem of creating the cultural rhetoric smorgasbord? I have asked the class to consider how they would teach a histories of rhetoric or social histories of rhetoric course, and I'd like to pursue that question further.

--The question of rhetorical methodologies. How are we inventing rhetorical methodologies to study these new--or, in some cases, well-established, but not traditionally included-- figures, communities, practices, and traditions? What does rhetorical analysis of a historical figure or community mean, exactly? How are we reinventing or reconfiguring the vocabulary and terminology of rhetorical studies to account for different rhetorical sites and practices? What lineages are we drawing upon for rhetorical analysis? Rhetorical theories by Aristotle, Burke? Cross-cultural inquiry? Conceptual inquiry? How do specific contexts and communities/cultures dictate their own terms and circumstances? This gets at the conversation we are having about the virtues and pitfalls of comparativism.

More later. . . I have other work to do, but I did want to get down some key questions that I think arose this semester that would be worth pursuing further.

I think Reva said it best when she remarked to Laurie on her blog that she'd like to see us do some debriefing over coffee so we can process where we've been and what we've done without the pressure of deadlines and projects taking us over. I'd like that to happen, too.

I think Reva's right, and I hope Trish's idea about an electronic space for our ongoing work might be another space/place to keep us going...