The Court of Composition Studies

“The court of composition studies consists of scholars who are both knowledgeable about the range of existing research and contributing to one or the other types of inquiry about written discourse. They evaluate the quality of research and substantive reasons that support new work, guided by the degree of relationship between the work and the field’s ideals and score of unresolved problems. They also take into consideration man’s accumulated experience in all cultures and historical periods.”

Janice Lauer, from "Composition Studies: Dappled Discipline"

The Heretical Socrates in Plato's "Phaedrus"

I want to share some memorable quotes by Plato's Socrates in Phaedrus, which should make us continue asking if Plato was our friend or foe:

"If you have a natural ability for rhetoric, you will become a famous rhetorician, provide you supplement your ability with knowledge and practice. To the extent that you lack any one of them, to that extent you will be less than perfect."

"...those who now write Arts of Rhetoric...are cunning people; they hide the fact that they know very well everything about the soul. Well, then, until they being to speak and write in this way, we mustn't allow ourselves to be convinced that they write on the basis of the art."

"...one who intends to be an able rhetorician has no need to know the truth about the things that are just or good or yet about the people who are such either by nature or upbringing. No one in a lawcourt, you see, cares at all about the truth of such matters. They only care about what is convincing. This is called 'the likely,' and that is what a man who intends to speak according to art should concentrate on....Whatever you say, you should pursue what is likely and leave the truth aside: the whole art consists in cleaving to that throughout your speech."

Socrates, Phaedrus

(Photo Courtesy of Pinacotheca Philosophica)

What's Left "Old School" Writing?

I created a LiveJournal account recently in hopes of using it to study for comps; however, I’ve rarely used it since I’ve been taking notes and writing by hand—the “old school” way. LiveJournal doesn’t really appeal to me anymore because journals seem to be more about intimacy and remains a tool which serves to give an individual the right to enjoy and secure their privacy.

So what benefits have I received by writing long hand? Lots of hand cramps! There is a lot of pain but also endurance. As I write numerous notes, ideas and fragments for evidence from readings, I’m struggling with my poor left hand, who hasn’t given up on me yet. Yes, I’m a Southpaw. All throughout my years as a student in public schooling, I struggled with desks designed for right handed students. Talk about being isolated!

Even though I choose to struggle with my left hand, I always have a sense of accomplishment writing by hand. I feel free with my ideas and a blank page. I can scratch, draw and erase. I can do and undo. I can see all of my notes and drafts as a journey toward that last draft. Because of this sense of freedom, I now write in my journal by hand. I draw and paint. I’ve even used a black marker to scratch out portions that I want out forever. I censure myself. I revise myself. All of this writing is coming from my instrumental hand which cannot function the same way in typing. Writing using a laptop is nothing like playing the piano. It’s not artistic like writing by hand. Yet, writing by hand is more troublesome. It’s more disruptive. It’s an act of hard work…stemming from the physical not technological.

So, at this point, I have written all of my papers by hand. I am writing for comps by hand. I write in my diary by hand. I guess you could call me “a Southpaw on overdrive.” Writing cannot surface by punching those stubborn keys on the board, it has to come through those fingers in unison working to shape that letter, word, image giving me some voice that I sometimes worry is dangerously formulaic. The audience is too close when I am in front of a laptop or computer screen. I can evict the audience when I am in front of that blank page. I can just ask as many questions and complicate things as much as I want while my hand dances across the page. When did I come to this realization? Hmmm…let me think…I guess when I started writing in a journal shortly after entering college.

Please don’t think that I want to romanticize or idealize writing in a journal. Journals often stress me out with those dictating lines across each page. Those lines want to direct me too much. I want them erased so I can write in slant or draw backwards. In other words, they cut into my creativity. But not creativity in terms of creative writing, creativity in terms of drafting an essay or term paper. This has nothing to do with psychology; it has to do with ritual.

There may be no lines on LiveJournal but the final product, after being posted, shows up in neat and linear lines for an audience. My writing is put into a linear box with lines that don’t understand the messiness of all my thoughts. Same goes for eblogger (thanks for the rigid margins, y’all!)

So with more thoughts, come more blank pages. With more blank pages, my left paw keeps going…energized….with hand soreness and all.

Hasta la proxima.

Quote of the Day

"Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him?"

-- Chuang-tzu

A Critical Lens on Michael Moore's "Sicko"

I went to see Michael Moore’s latest film “Sicko,” which I was rather hesitant to see. First let me say that when I watch a documentary, I’m always interested in the approach the filmmaker takes in presenting her/his argument. I’ve certainly been critical of Morgan Spurlock’s “Super Size Me,” which I’ve taught in composition courses, where students study and write using theories by Toulmin and Bitzer. With that said, I either have Burke’s Pentad or Bitzer’s Rhetorical Situation ready to serve as a critical lens when watching documentaries.

In his last two films, Moore has created a trend of presenting what I call “messy arguments” that have created a multitude of assumptions even before the grounds for his claim start to unfold. By the end of film, I've experienced a sense of being lost in an argument whose assumptions left me out in the cold. In this way, “Bowling for Columbine” and “Farenheit 911” left me disoriented. With this previous reaction, I was ready to be critical of Moore a third time.

Without revealing too much about the film, I must say that while watching, I kept thinking of Toulmin’s theory about “casuistry” and his discussion of the locked binary between absolutism and relativism. I kept asking whether Moore was falling within the category of relativism or if insurance companies would use casuistry as a means by which to ground their claim to deny health care to particular individuals. I also kept thinking about the displacement of logical appeals in favor of so much pathos driven evidence.

Students often think that I am out of my mind for distancing myself from the pathos. But I figure that if Moore presented a strong logical appeal, he would displace much of that self-invented ethos of being humorous instead of being critical. Or can you be critical while being parodic? This is the same question that I initially presented after watching Spurlock’s film.

Audience members were certainly not laughing during "Sicko." The exception was a Latino couple, two elder folks, who applauded after the film. Yet, the rest of the audience members didn’t move as the credits rolled. Was it shock? Disappointment? Disapproval? It was then that I was more interested in observing reactions by fellow audience members in the theater than entertaining the questions I had for Moore.

Moore has certainly presented an exigence, but I wonder how much of that logical appeal is forsaken in favor of evidence so driven to pull emotional strings? Maybe this is a question for the classroom.

As far as Toulmin’s theory of casuistry, I’m left wondering how that theory has become obsolete in Moore’s presentation of his (weak/strong?) argument. Where was the counterargument? In France? Among the British?

Enough questions! Go see the film for yourselves…but don’t forget that critical lens!

Hasta la proxima!

Composition Studies and Postcolonial Studies in Dialogue

With postcolonial theory in mind, I have to make the following recommendation: Crossing Borderlands: Composition and Postcolonial Studies (Lunsford and Ouzgane, eds, 2004), a collection that aims to put composition studies and postcolonial studies into conversation about issues such as writing, pedagogy, race, transnationalism, and literacy. I actually wrote a review of it but cannot find it! Argh! I'm still searching for the document though. As soon as I find it, I'll post.

In the meantime, check out contributions by Gary A. Olson, Susan C. Jarratt, Jaime Armin Mejia, C. Jan Swearingen and Lunsford's republished interview with "la jefa" Gloria E. Anzaldua.

Rhetoric and Postcolonial Theory: Reading Dr. Raka Shome

One of the final readings in my summer course on contemporary rhetorical theory was Raka Shome's "Postcolonial Interventions in the Rhetorical Canon: An 'Other' View" which argues that rhetorical studies can undergo a paradigm shift as a discipline only until it considers a postcolonial framework. The essay was first published in Communication Theory (1), 40-59, and later published in Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader (1998), Guilford Press.

I conducted an online research on Dr. Shome and found the following bibliography, plus a brief biography . Shome has joined Bhabha, Said and Spivak as a seminal postcolonial theorist.

Shome is a critical scholar in my work on examining the intersection of postmodern theory and postcolonial theory.

Check out Shome's other published works:

Shome, R. (2006). "Transnational Feminism and Communication Studies" Communication Review.

Shome, R (2006). "Rethinking the diaspora: Call centers, India, and new technologies of hybridity." International Journal of Cultural Studies, 9(1), 105-124

Shome, R (2006) "Interdisciplinary research and globalization." Communication Review, 9, 1-36.

Shome, R. (2006). "Challenges of international women of color in higher education in the US: The complicated "rights" of belonging in globalization". In Omar Swartz (Eds.) Communication and Social Justice, Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbraum Inc.

Shome, R (2003). "Space matters: The power and practice of space". Communication Theory, 13(1), 39-56.

Shome, R. & Hegde, R. (2002). "Culture, communication, and the challenge of globalization". Critical Studies in Media Communication, 17(2), 172-189.

Shome, R. & Hegde, R (2002). "Postcolonial Approaches to Communication: Charting the terrain, engaging the intersections". Communication Theory, 12(3), 249-270.

Hegde R & Shome, R. (2002). "Postcolonial scholarship: Of productions and directions. An interview with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak". Communication Theory, 12(3), 271-286.

Shome, R. (2001). "White femininity and the discourse of the nation. Re/membering Princess Diana". Feminist Media Studies, 1(3), 323-342.

Shome, R. (2000). "Outing whiteness". Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 17(3), 366-371.

Shome, R. (2000). "Media and colonialism: Race, rape, and "Englishness" in The Jewel in the Crown". International and Intercultural Communication Annual, 23, 135-157.

Shome, R (1999). "Whiteness and the politics of location: Postcolonial reflections". in T. K. Nakayama & J. Martin (Eds.) (pp. 107-128) Whiteness and the Communication of Social Identity Oakland, CA: Sage Publications.

Shome, R (1999). "A response to Bill Starsota’s 'On the intersection of rhetoric and intercultural communication'". Intercultural and International Communication Annual, 22, 157-162.

Shome, R (1998). “Caught in the term ‘postcolonial: Why the “postcolonial” still matters". Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 15(2), 203-212.

Shome, R (1996). "Race and popular cinema: The rhetorical strategies of whiteness in 'City of Joy'". Communication Quarterly, 44(4), 502-518.

Shome, R (1996). "Postcolonial interventions in the rhetorical canon: An 'other' view". Communication Theory (1), 40-59. [Reprinted in C. Condit & J. Lucaites (Eds.) Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader (1998), NY, Guilford Press].

Co-Guest Editorship (with Hegde, R. & Grossberg, L.) Special Journal Issue "Postcolonial Approaches to communication." Communication Theory, August 2002.

Food and Memory

"All my life I have been trying to write my family's story. It hasn't been easy, not because I can't remember, but because I can't forget."

Denise Chavez, from Taco Testimony: Meditations on Family, Food and Culture

I'll Miss You, Anita

Anita, a fierce writer and fellow doctoral student, is leaving El Paso with her family tomorrow to venture into a new chapter in their lives. Thanks for all your warmth, kindness and hospitality! Much love, luck and hugs! Hope to see you all again!

Anita, you've inspired me so much! I'll miss you tremendously sistah!

Your Lovin' "X" 4 Life

Writing as Collaborative

“I believe that all writing is collaborative. No matter what you’re doing, even if you’re sitting by yourself at your computer you’re collaborating with somebody, something you’ve read, or some voices you’ve got in your head, or your friends, or something, there’s some kind of collaboration going on.”

Andrea Lunsford, in "How I Write" Interview

I wanted to share the following link to Andrea Lunsford's course titled "Gender and the History of Rhetoric" at Stanford. You can download the syllabus and check out some very interesting reading assignments. For example, students are asked to read combinations such as Frederick Douglass' "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and My Bondage and My Freedom" with Nietzsche's "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense”.

Interesting, verdad? My most radical move was writing a short paper comparing Nietzsche's "On Truth" and Sarah Grimke's "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman". That was beyond radical!

In Memory of Robert Connors

I've been perusing Wikipedia lately and read entries for noted rhet/comp scholars such as Patricia Bizzell, Victor Vitanza, and James A. Berlin (the Berlin entry needs lots of work). However, I couldn't find one on Robert Connors who, of course, remains a seminal scholar in the field. In addition to his work, I've been drawn to the ways in which Connors has been remembered by his fellow peers after his passing. These tributes would make an excellent starting point for creating a Wikipedia entry, right?

Now, it would be great if I had a co-writer/co-contributor during the fall semester so we could put together an entry for Connors. Any volunteers?

In the meantime, check out Ede and Lunsford's collection of Connors' essays.

Hasta la proxima!

Language and the Radical Space of the Margin

In the contemporary rhetorical theory course I'm currently taking, we are studying the work of bell hooks, whose essay "Choosing the Margin as a Space of Radical Openness" features the following passage that illuminates Burke's idea of language as symbolic action.

"Language is also a place of struggle. We are wedded in language, have our being in words. Language is also a place of struggle. Dare I speak to oppressed and oppressor in the same voice? Dare I speak to you in a language that will move beyond the boundaries of domination--a language that will not bind you, fence you in, or hold you? Language is also a place of struggle. The oppressed struggle in language to recover ourselves, to reconcile, to reunite, to renew. Our words are not without meaning, they are an action, a resistance. Language is also a place of struggle."

bell hooks, from "Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics" (1990)

Quote of the Day

Last week, I stumbled upon the following quote, which was posted outside a history professor's door. I think it is noteworthy because of its unique use of the word "must".

Check it out:

"Students of history must never forget that human memory is inevitably imprecise, and it is not uncommon for the past to be retrieved in ways that serve present purposes."

James Carroll (2002)

Quote of the Day

"Intellectuals are now biding their time because there is no more real dialogue, nor any real discussion. Each person is doing his or her own thing, attached to his or her research or to a group."

~ Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007)

Remembering Frida Kahlo (1907-54)

On Friday, a museum in Mexico City will feature a collection of photographs, letters and personal items belonging to Mexicana painter & icon Frida Kahlo, which is part of a 100th anniversary celebration of Kahlo's birth. These items, along with those belonging to her husband Diego Rivera, Mexicano muralist, will be on public display after 50 years of being kept private.

No doubt that Frida will always be remembered.

For those of you intersted in Frida's writings, check out:



"Escrituras de Frida Kahlo" Raquel Tibol, ed.

A Tribute to Nina Simone (1933-2003)

A YouTube suscriber by the name of "julieoliverio" created this beautiful and loving tribute to the great Nina Simone, whose cover of "Here Comes the Sun" is 10x better than the original. I love listening to the song when I'm feeling down.



"Here Comes the Sun" is featured in "The Essential Nina Simone, Vol. 2"

Derrida's Fear in/of Writing

Check out a clip from the 2002 film about Derrida, who talks about the act that keeps most of us alive.

(Who knew the degree of anxiety, fear and caution that possesses Derrida when writing?)

Memory and Horror (Worth Watching?)

This clip of "Memory"--starring Billy Zane (yeah, that guy from "Titanic")--makes the movie look frightening at the beginning but then descends into looking like a "TV Movie of the Week".

But I guess I'll watch it when I'm really, really bored. He he.

Anyways, check it out.

Viewer Discretion is Advised. Entendido?

"Memorias del Silencio" Proyecto

I commend the following project for their outstanding and brilliant effort for our local communidad. Check it out.

"Memorias del Silencio: Footprints of the Borderland"

"The project Memorias del Silencio is the result of a collaboration between El Paso Community College, Community Education Program and BorderSenses. The objective of the project has been to offer creative writing workshops to GED courses for migrant farm workers and their families, with the idea of improving their writing and written skills. The writings that have emerged from these workshops, have been published in two volumes of the book Memorias del Silencio: Footprints of the Borderland. Besides generating new opportunities and a space for the voices of this sector of society, the project Memorias del Silencio wants to show the condition of immigrants who arrive to the United States to work in the fields."

Gloria E. Anzaldua on Writing Teoria

"What is considered theory in the dominant academic community is not necessarily what counts as theory for women-of-color. Theory produces effects that change people and the way they perceive the world. Thus we need teorías that will enable us to interpret what happens in the world, that will explain how and why we relate to certain people in specific ways, that will reflect what goes on between inner, outer and peripheral 'I's within a person and between the personal 'I's and the collective 'we' of our ethnic communities. Necesitamos teorías that will rewrite history using race, class, gender and ethnicity as categories of analysis, theories that cross borders, that blur boundaries-new kinds of theories with new theorizing methods. We need theories that will points out ways to maneuver between our particular experiences and the necessity of forming our own categories and theoretical models for the patterns we uncover. We need theories that examine the implications of situations and look at what's behind them. And we need to find practical application for those theories. We need to de-academize theory and to connect the community to the academy. 'High' theory does not translate well when one's intention is to communicate to masses of people made up of different audiences. We need to give up the notion that there is a 'correct' way to write theory."

Gloria E. Anzaldua, from Making Face, Making Soul: Haciendo Caras

Memory, Copia and Literacy: Remembering Malcolm X

As I've stated in a previous post, I've always been interested in how certain rhetors remember how they came to literacy. The following is an excerpt from Malcolm X's autobiografia, which is the basis of a web page I'm currently working on that combines rhetoric, memory and tecnologia. Also, this excerpt is part of a project on "Copia" which, of course, will feature Erasmus. Enjoy.

I saw that the best thing I could do was get hold of a dictionary—to study, to learn some words. I was lucky enough to reason also that I should try to improve my penmanship. It was sad. I couldn’t event write in a straight line. It was both ideas together that moved me to request a dictionary along with some tablets and pencils from the Norfolk Prison Colony school.

I spent two days just riffling uncertainly through the dictionary’s pages. I’d never realized so many words existed! I didn’t know which words I needed to learn. Finally, just to start some kind of action, I began copying.

In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I copied into my tablet everything printed on that first page, down to the punctuation marks.

I believe it took me a day. Then, aloud, I read back, to myself, everything I’d written on the tablet. Over and over, aloud, to myself, I read my own handwriting.

I woke up the next morning, thinking about those words—immensely proud to realize that not only had I written so much at one time, but I’d written words that I never knew were in the world. Moreover, with a little effort, I also could remember what many of these words meant. I reviewed the words whose meanings I didn’t remember. Funny thing, from the dictionary first page right now, that “aardvark” springs to my mind. The dictionary had a picture of it, a long-tailed, long-eared, burrowing African mammal, which lives off termites caught by sticking out its tongue as an anteater does for ants.

I was so fascinated that I went on—I copied that dictionary’s next page. And the same experience came when I studied that. With every succeeding page, I also learned of people and places and events from history. Actually the dictionary is like a miniature encyclopedia. Finally the dictionary’s A section had filled a whole tablet—and I went on to the B’s. That was the way I started copying what eventually became the entire dictionary. It went a lot faster after so much practice helped me to pick up handwriting speed. Between what I wrote in my tablet, and writing letters, during the rest of my time in prison I would guess I wrote a million words.

from The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley. New York: Ballentine, 1964.

R.I.P.-- Nazik al-Malaika, exiled Iraqi poet

Nazik al-Malaika, an exiled Iraqi poet, died in Cairo on June 27. Read the article by The New York Times and some of her poems in translation.

Que en paz descanse.

Chaim Perelman and Memoria

I’ve always been interested in how theorists use memory as a rhetorical tool from which to generate thought in their works.

The following is an example from Chaim Perelman’s “The New Rhetoric: A Theory of Practical Reasoning”:

“The last two years of secondary education in Belgium used to be called traditionally ‘Poetry’ and ‘Rhetoric.’ I still remember that, over forty years ago, I had to study the ‘Elements of Rhetoric’ for a final high-school examination, and I learned more or less by the contents of a small manual, the first part of which concerned the syllogism and the second the figures of style. Later, in the university, I took a course of logic which covered, among other things, the analysis of the syllogism. I then learned that logic is a formal discipline that studies the structure of hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Since then I have often wondered what a link a professor of rhetoric could possibly discover between the syllogism and the figures of style with their exotic names that are so difficult to remember”( 57).

Perelman uses memory as means to generate a discussion about our favorite topic: the good ‘ol tension between rhetoric and philosophy. Actually, this is the first paragraph from the excerpt of “The New Rhetoric,” which remains seminal in its aim to redefine rhetoric as a theory of argumentation that aims to center the role and function of audience.

I keep wondering why Perelman believes that the “exotic names” of the figures of style are “so difficult to remember” considering that their strangeness would make them even more memorable, right? I’m also intrigued by how this remembrance is linked to other excerpts by other theorists who recall their formal education and the methods by which they learned something, whether it be writing, language, logic, poetry or rhetoric.

What exactly about our formal education stays with us through the act of remembrance? How do we articulate this educational training and how is it relative to our training in theory and our work in theorizing?

Hmm….I like these questions. More later…

Hasta la proxima.

Currently listening to...

Coldplay, "XY" ("Talk" is the best song in the world! Eat your heart out U2!)