July 17, 2008
Kopelson carnival - my first take
After a few months of traveling and dissertating and forgetting to blog about any of it, it seems fitting to re-enter the sphere as a participant in the carnival Derek opened last week on an article in the newest CCC: "Sp(l)itting Images; or Back to the Future of (Rhetoric and?) Composition" by Karen Kopelson.
Anytime I read an article that invokes the attitudes or ideas of graduate students, I find myself looking for my place in the continuum of those ideas. In this article, it's hard to see that I fit at all. Joe Harris's wonderful book A Teaching Subject was a primary inspiration for pursuing graduate work at all, but I did not come to Rhet/Comp as a disenchanted lit scholar. Like Brenda in the article, I chose this field for my PhD work precisely because I saw it as interdisciplinary in nature and because, like Brenda, I see it as "a great opportunity to engage any number of literary, theoretical, historical, and philosophical texts while resisting getting caught within a reductive 'specialty'..." (759). In short, I was interested in the field precisely because I am skeptical of narrow specialization as the defining hallmark of a scholar holding a Doctor of Philosophy degree.
Like some of the students quoted it the article, I found the content of some of my graduate courses did not match their catalog descriptions. Some part of my comprehensive exam process emerged from the sense attributed in the article to a student who "echo[ed] Mulderig and Swearingen" in her concern that she would have a degree in rhet/comp without ever taking a course in classical rhetoric. That wasn't my situation, but I did believe I needed a lot more of that history or even study of practices to honestly claim a degree in the field. Like Paul, I was asked to respond in my dissertation to why this topic is of interest to the field. While this is not precisely a "pedagogical" requirement, the discussion around that idea indicated that the pedagogical connection was at the heart of the request.
But like Clancy, I came to the field from a different path (though different from hers too). I always did like teaching, and did a fair amount of it in the financial services career I left to pursue it, but it wasn't just the teaching that drew me to rhet/comp. I'm also a writer, and like many writers, I enjoy literature, but I am always interested in how the literature is constructed and what the writer is doing as much as I am interested in the content.
I found some omissions in the analysis. First of all, the step away from "service" is taken as a given, as in it is a given that no one in the field of rhet/comp wants to be considered to be in a service discipline or activity. I don't mind one bit being in a "service" field. That is not to say that I believe I or anyone else in the field should shrink into the walls and take our marching orders from someone else, whether those someones are administrative or disciplinary. What I do mean is that investing time, energy, research and scholarship in developing my own skills with language across a range of communicative opportunities and being able to share that knowledge to enable students to communicate more effectively in what Harris referred to as "the discourse communities they already" or will choose to, inhabit, is a marvelous way to spend a life. To do so in an institution where effective communication is required of every student not only in every field of study but in the activities of life outside of and beyond their formal education is as rewarding a career as I could imagine.
The second omission I see in the analysis has to do with the nature of specialization, teaching, and interdisciplinarity. Kopelson cites Ellen Barton's comment about "one-way interdisciplinarity" in the discussion of the "import and apply" tendency of the discipline. I'd argue that it is precisely the specialization required for academic success as a scholar that prevents rhet/comp as a discipline from having its work imported by other disciplines. If the relationship is one way, might it be because it is easier for the generalist to adopt the particular than the other way around? And I understand that for some, scholarship is the more interesting part and teaching is the price paid for it, but that's not the case for me. I love both. I study composition as a means of professional development, because I get paid to teach. I research and study things I like and find interesting, in whatever subject, because I get paid by an institution that gives me both access to and time for these pursuits. I think we could end the question of what Zizek has to do with FYC for good if we as an entire field could embrace both.
That brings me to the conclusion, which Collin described as carrying the weight of "exhaustion." I understand why it is so hard to move from the charge Kopelson makes ("that we make a concerted, collective effort to release ourselves from the pattern reflected here") to the actual concerted, collective effort. The problem is that we don't agree, even yet, on who we are and what we do vis-a-vis the rest of the academic world. So I have an idea:
What if we "flipped the script" on that service notion. What if we embraced the idea and promoted the nature of our discipline as what it is: the center of a university education. Writing and rhetoric are central to the academic enterprise. We teach students how to do that, we analyze and critique the texts from which they learn other subjects, we contribute to public advocacy and engage social and political topics in meaningful discourse. That seems worth celebrating to me. So I think instead of shunning the service distinction, we might consider reconsidering what it could mean to really embrace that position.
Me and my crazy ideas. But it is a carnival, right?
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