Modifying Traditions

While reading these two chapters, I repeatedly felt as though the authors were writing with the intention of pushing back against the restrictions caused by traditions, while not rejecting traditions themselves per se.  For instance, their choice to employ almost-informal key phrases (such as ‘tacking in’ and tacking out’) as well as first names in reference to themselves surely reflects the wish incorporate personality and experience into academic writing...which is somewhat unconventional.  

Critical imagination and strategic contemplation perhaps work to similar purposes.  Within the fifth chapter, it is written that critical imagination (or CI) “mandates that researchers engage their topics in multiple ways, using dialectic and dialogic approaches and imagining ways in which historical subjects might have left traces of a stream in places where we may not have looked, looked closely enough, or may have overlooked” (79).  Modifying traditions is necessary for the acquisition of new or lost information.

Concerning stategic contemplation, the authors come out and admit that it's a bit of a departure from academic norms; for instance, they explain that “whole notion of making the time and space to sit and think or to talk about doing so as a normal part of scholarly methodologies has seemed unintelligible” (86).  Now that they've pointed it out, this fact does seem odd.  After all, it’s usually viewed as helpful for authors of prose and poetry to slow down and reflect upon their work before completing it.  Why isn’t this attitude likewise applied to academics? 

In class, we’ve been discussing the role of narration in rhetoric, and how older rhetorical texts are generally prone to feature less while more recent pieces often contain more.  Since strategic contemplation also calls for relating one’s life experiences to those of another person, I’d venture that the authors of Feminist Rhetorical Practices certainly approve of narration as a means of cutting past artificial restrictions as well.    

Novel Applications

            The chapters in Feminist Rhetorical Practices did a nice job summarizing what we have been working toward all semester in this course.  While their ideas of “tacking in” and “tacking out” provided readers with the necessary groundwork for understanding the rest of their theories.  I thought their more important analyses came in chapter six, which is essentially an extension of five. The following quote got me thinking about the current rhetorical landscape and Royster and Kirsch’s argument there has been a huge shift in subjects addressed.  The text reads, “ [the] process of paying attention, of being mindful, of attending to the subtle, intuitive, not-so-obvious parts of research has the capacity to yield rich rewards.  It allows scholars to observe and notice, to listen and hear voices often neglected or silenced, and to notice more overtly their own responses to what they are seeing, reading, reflecting on, and encountering during their research processes” (85).  Would we as scholars have the same questions, making the same observations within rhetorical, compositional and literary studies if not for this infusion of diverse thought processes?  It is an interesting assertion, though I’m not entirely sure these research practices are entirely new, but rather specifically relevant.  I feel like I make most of the moves Royster and Kirsch suggest in my weekly blog posts in this and other classes, by applying modern situations to the more fundamental theories of rhetoric.  I feel like such comparison brings out a lot of the subtleties brought up in these authors’ depiction of critical imagination as well as strategic contemplation.  I understand the importance of reviving old ideals to understand they were being elucidated through a certain lens and perhaps uncover other attitudes and ideas of the time.  To understand that these were not the only claims, but the only claims being made is an important insight these authors have provided us.  Again, I don’t necessarily consider this any sort of revelation, more a building on a rhetorical archetype, but this particular interpretation helps to specifically identify what we have been doing from the get go with our rhetoricians.  Perhaps having this knowledge will allow us to go even more in depth, into the minds and lifestyles of those responsible for the creation of our evolving modern ideals.

Picking What We Research

Listening in class the other day to the different projects, all I could think about was how vastly varied our interests are. Royster and Kirsch state, "the key questions are how do these features of the researcher's sense of self inform the topic the researcher studies, the research questions she asks (and does not ask), the data she collects (and does not collect), the interpretations she offers (and does not consider), and so on. In other words, we are suggesting that identity plays a much-larger role in research than we have considered at this point" (95). This makes a lot of sense looking at the works we have read so far, Fredrick Douglass was interlinked in what he was writing about, as was Christen de Pizan. The work of those rhetoricians is completely linked to their identity, so what we take them from is completely linked to ours.

My interest in authority comes from my experiences growing up as short, and as a girl, as well as Catholic. All three of things have equally shaped my own characteristics as well as what I like to research. My ethos is regularly diminished because of these three categories, and the compensation, the tokenism, that takes place to reverse preconceived notions is always present. In looking back over my life the rhetorical canon of memory becomes increasingly important to the Royster and Kirsch's idea of "critical imagination." Although I can never hold onto exact conversations, I use imagination to recreate those memories, and than I critically put them to use in self-reflecting on my identity and how it shapes my interests as a researcher. In Jackie's Reflection she states, "I had a research agenda" (81). The word "agenda" stood out to me because it implies a problem that needs addressing. Perhaps the real connection between identity and research questions is what problems we personally feel like need to be addressed, whether we have lived through them or they have made us uncomfortable.

Tracking with Tacking

Looking at these readings I am still having a bit of an issue with "tacking in and tacking out".  My mind wants to read these as Tracking, which leads me to a whole new set of phrases and how I interpret the readings.

That being said, what I want to focus on is the part of critical imagination.  This is where I imagine, I guess the pun is intended, the meat of any story comes out.  As Gesa points out, it goes beyond the traditional journals and writings.

What I see is that critical imagination allows for, not just rhetoricians, but all writers to take a leap forward with their writing.  It's not a pure regurgitation of fact, or a recitation of what has been written, but a comprehension and expression of that what writers choose to express.

To be able to make that critical leap is what is going to separate writing and great writing.  Again, this is purely my opinion, at this point, but what I think that critical imagination will allow writers to do is make those connections, and allow them to explore the various points in which we (they) play with the words and form them into the groups that we (they) do.

Jacqueline makes a very nice statement by saying that it allows students to think more viscerally about what they are writing. 

A new (to me) way to study

It took me awhile to wrap my head around the idea of strategic contemplation. It's a completely new (or at least a new take) as research method for me. Whenever I think research, I usually think it on the science side—hard data based on experiments based on previous data from previous experiments, and so on. That said, within any research there has to be a synthesis of the findings, extrapolations of what its impact could be or how it will contribute to the field of study. Strategic contemplation seems to take this synthesis just one step further.

My next argument was going to be that both critical imagination and strategic contemplation are completely based on inference, and therefore mean less than the 'facts'. But any study is inference—we think we have it figured out, and then we are proved wrong. This is true in any (academic or not) field. I think this is where the strength of strategic contemplation and critical imagination lies—the strategies accept that there are no set-in-stone facts, and that study is an ever evolving and changing activity. And by accepting that condition, they open the field to literally anything, which has to help whatever it is you are studying. You let go of any conditions, preconceptions, or hopes you have of specific finding or outcome, and see what comes up. That approach seems like it could turn up some pretty interesting results.

Oh no... Kelly's posting way past his bedtime again...

Dialectic = logical argumentation
Dialogic = of dialogue

I see those two words individually and am fine, but seeing them together, my mind wants to do something horrible to me... I see "dialect" and "logic" and then they become transposed and I become inverted, and all sense of meaning warps into some odd universe where the answer to everything is 42.

OK, that's an exaggeration.

My point is that language is silly. It's a silly little thing we can play with, like a toy. We can hide poetry practically anywhere, causing someone else to stumble and trip over a mental tongue trying to taste the meaty details of an argument; is it savory? Sweet? Or mildly bitter? We can dialecticise dialogical clusters of words and say something important like, "The examples of scholarship we have showcased above serve to illustrate the point that life is material, not abstract, such that we have come to see the importance of fleshing out our use of the phrase lived/embodied experience as an extremely powerful concept" (95). But we know that flesh is no concept. It is a thing that can be felt, but that flesh dead decades or centuries ago cannot, so the fact that it once was covering meat and bone that mobilized an "embodied experience" is a concept we have to use our imagination to re-experience, re-feel, re-touch, flesh out and illustrate in a way that honors her/him/them and the life they lived and discussed within their rhetorical situation.

That's my take on Strategic Contemplation.

And Critical Imagination... I learned humility on page 77. "[S]cholars grappled earnestly with the complex challenges of engaging with historical figures whom they do not necessarily admire or admire fully." I read that and then Ramus laughed in my face and said, "Ha! Who's the jerk now?" I felt bad, but then stopped doing that. It's difficult not to allow personal feelings (when I'm being judgmental) to get in the way of learning what someone like Ramus has to teach. And I know better. In fifth grade, I had a teacher named Mrs. Bujak. She was a mean old nasty French woman who threw erasers with a goal to cause physical pain. I never saw her stand in the rain, 'cause I was sure she'd melt. She made me be the student editor of the school newspaper. She didn't even ask me if I wanted to be it, she just said I was it and so I was. I had to stay after school. I had to write stuff, more than the other kids. She was mean. I'll never forget her. To this day, I don't know why, but she believed in me. I learned back then that personal feelings can too easily get in the way seeing the truth in things. It wasn't until I realized how much I enjoyed being the student editor (I don't even remember doing anything, just that I loved doing it) that I realized she wasn't being mean at all.

Anyway, the point of that last bit of rambling was to say that I tend to let my judgments of the author dictate what I take from their work. If I don't like them, I disagree. Slap my hand! That's no way to learn. It's just not dia-logical. :)

Whoa.

I think I just made a break through on how I read. I don't know how I can tie this into rhetoric exactly, but it happened while reading the assigned readings for Tuesday.

So, we're finally out of the old, harder to read rhetoricians, and I was expecting to pick up Jackie and Gesa and be able to follow their train of thought in a much easier fashion. Modern rhetoric = easier to read, right? Wrong. It's not for lack of concentration, or interest (because feminist rhetoric is an interesting subject to me), but I found myself having to read passages and single sentences over and over again. I literally couldn't focus my mind. Until I hit this passage:

"Desser identifies the tensions between the missonary women expressed in their desire to connect with the students they taught and the larger community into which they moved (made evident by their efforts to learn the Hawaiian language, for example)  at the same time they continued to believe in the superiority of the English language and of Christian values, beliefs, and moral codes" (77).

And instantly, an image of a uppity women in white gowns and severe buns teaching in a schoolroom in Hawaii jumped into my head. I didn't have to read the passage over again; I knew exactly what had just happened. And it hit me - my largest problem with academic writing is that I'm a visual learner - and I cannot come up with a picture in my head for what is happening while I read an academic text. Suddenly, the reason that I found texts like Phaedrus and works by Frederick Douglass so easy to read is because I always had a clear picture in my head of what was happening while I read, painted by their text - something that I have not been able to do with almost any of the other texts this entire semester.

*head implodes*

I need to find a different way to approach these readings instead of beating my head against a wall. That is going to have to be my main focus with the rest of the readings this semester, I believe.