(No part of this reinterview may be published elsewhere without written permission from victor j. vitanza and
lynda haas.) --Full Copyright notice at end of each file, starting with haas1 file.
The PreText Conversations held a Re/In/View with Lynda Haas, beginning July, 1997. The subject of the reinvw is/was her article
"The Daughter's Seduction; or, Writing with the Rhetors,"
forthcoming in PRE/TEXT 15: 3-4.
Hey All, Okay, I decided it's time for me to jump into the fray:) In some ways, the "what is language" is less interesting for me than "what happens to language." Susan is right. We can find specialized discourse in all areas. I teach Bus. writing, and my students are always speaking jargon--as am I even when I teach. Similarly, I have noticed the press beginning to talk about "Newtspeak"--something most of us have been aware of for quite some time. Yet, what happens to language. Now, there's a grab. I just finished John Schilb's article on "Traveling Theory" where he attacks Elaine Maimon for her (mis)use of Stanley Fish's "interpretive theories." John wants to point out, via Said's "Traveling Theory," that users of theory should be sensitive to the particular context from where the theory originated. John has a conservative take (at least that is how I take it), but I think he raises an interesting point. I think that a more interesting discussion of this, though not addressed to comp, is Deleuze in *Kafka as Minor Literature*. In *Kafka* Deleuze celebrates the territorialization, reterritiorialization, and eventual deterritorialization of langauge. Since reading Deleuze and Schilb, I have really started to pay attention to how the "specialized" language of composition is often "reterritorialized" and sometimes "deterritorialized" language (in the case of Victor, at least) of other disciplines and other discourses, including business. (In the case of the later, the first time I ever heard about Total Quality Management was from my comp director in the late 80s who was asking the grad students to think of their students as "clients" and "customers"). What interests me is not that we have specialized langauge (everyone does it, including business) or that our specialized langauge comes from other discourses (that seems a given too) but rather how this langauge changes meaning--how it becomes reterritorialized and, maybe, even de-terrritorialized through those who parody and make "phun" of it. In this way, it becomes interesting how "business" jargon creeps into the academy and how academic jargon is approriated by non-academics. In fact, in regard to the later, I have started to hear more non-academics use the verb "deconstruct." Just the other day, I saw some aging pop muscian--I think it was Eddie Van Halen--talking about how his music "deconstructed" the music of generations before him. Of course, Eddie probably did not have Derrida in mind, but even Derrida cannot police his own langauge and the way that it travels from person to person. Of course, I could take John's position, but this seem untenable since the discourses where we appropriate our "specialized languages" have often appropriated their "specialized language" from somewhere else. Anyway, there is my two "sense" m. todd harper.
now this has been a tres bon chat. i've wanted to inject rhetoric / publix into the mix for a while now, but my summer 306 students have been keeping me pre/occupado. one of their assignments is to call a local talk radio show and (gasp) make a claim and (dooblay gasp) support that claim. it's keeping us ALL up nights. in any queso....
todd's comments about deleuze and the i don't know exactly what is wrong with me, but the distinction between special and general topoi continues to have great explanatory power for me when considering all things WAC and beyond. victor waits for the third; i swirl in the infinite negative, the accomplished nihilism, knowing that the third won't come unless i make it, and after i/we make it, we're right back where we were before the turd ascended: nil. finally, another dance of the infinite negative, academic versus public (speechies often have it "expert" versus "public") seems to get us nowhere a'tall. let's see academic/expert and public not as antitheses but as gradations (thus i subsitute geometry: i know: forgive me): there are markers of public discourse in academic discourses (eg, EXPERTS DISAGREE EVEN HERE IN THIS BOWER OF BLISS) and as mtodd pointed out, expert talk makes its way into various publics. i've lost my harmonica, albert, ie, i've lost the various posts that talk about "The Public," so i will spare you my rant re that. because i cannot hope to turn again.... so i say and this is what i've been wanting to say more than anything (in addition to "this has been a great chat"): ONWORD--goyz and birls, firsts, seconds and thirds--INTO THE TURD SOPHISTIC
Hey Rosa and y'all: Here's one to consider: To what degree is rhet/comp about policing language? It strikes(!) me that this "Academic/Public; Ethereal World/Real World" discussion is a staple of rhet/comp discussions--in fact, I know of another list that is involved in the same discussion. What I find surprising (though less so on this list than on others) is the amount of policing rhet/comp pholks want to do with language. This word is academik, this words publik, this word belongs to this community, this word belongs to that. Continuingggg with a thread from my last post, I am surprised by how threatened people in rhet/comp get when pholks want to transgress the rules by not using the appropriate word in the appropriate context or when pholks de*territorialize the language altogether by making *phun* of it. My two *sense* m. todd harper
I just wanted to add to my last post that I make my critique of rhet/comp poleeeczing language as someone within the discipline and wanting to make my career publishing in it. Nonetheless, I *am* a*mazed at the amount of discussion which goes into categorizing language. This isn't to say that many in rhet/comp don't challenge these distinctions (I think many on this list actively challenge these taxonomies). However, I think the latter group is sometimes few and far between. My two senses todd
>From VV: "...the more and more i follow our discussion about academic writing(s) and the value of teaching students academic writing(s), the more and more i think there is a fundamental flaw in the notion about What the public would want us to do." >From me: Many apologies for being so silent all week; I was supposed to give a 15 minute presentation at a Sales and Marketing meeting about the production of a Multimedia Sales CD Rom I've been babysitting, and I got sucked into a three day affair. While sitting and listening to Sales and Marketing folk, I thought about our discussions here-how is academic training useful, how is academic writing useful-more to our point, how is rhetorical training and writing useful? Do they need to be useful? What does the public want? VV, I'm ready to get into that "want" discussion you and I had a few weeks back now-I've been thinking on it. What does the public want? What do we want? What do you want? What do I want? Everybody wants. Everybody wants to hear certain things. Every presenter at our sales and marketing meeting wanted something particular--had an agenda (whether they'd thought it out logically or not). Having been in R/C and having learned what I learned about rhetoric, I can't sit and listen to ANYONE without wondering about their rhetoric. Wondering-"how are they hoping I'll respond to this?" Wondering if they even thought about their rhetoric, or if they think they are speaking "plain english." That wondering--Being able to (sometimes) sort out agendas, words and the wants, is the most useful tool I have in the corporate world. That's how R/C is useful to me now-in fact, just like Covino says in his book (not in these words, necessarily)-students who learn to be sophists have the best tools for making it in the business world. Maybe others in the corporate world wouldn't agree with me, maybe I only see things this way because of who I am and where I've been-but I think the people who "make it" (like Susan's sharks) are the ones (as she said) who know very well how to interpret all different kinds of rhetoric. Oh, for sure, some make it who never even thought about it-some think about it without knowing they're thinking about it-some are just more intuitive than others. Some just come to work every day and then go home to sleep so they can come to work tomorrow. I could sit an analyze the corporate rhetoric all around me for the next lifetime-but if I don't use the knowledge I deduce from that analysis, it won't profit me much. I could be the most self-analytical, reflective person in the company and still be at the bottom of the ladder. So there's more magic to it than just analyzing-there has to be some kind of propelling action as a result. What that action would be is unformed, unsayable-because it would be different in every rhetorical situation. For instance, Linsey (who's posted recently) works in a different department-the rhetoric and the agendas there are totally different than they are in mine. Same company, very different work situation, very different rhetoric. They're all different. We can't really talk about "the public" or "the corporate world" as some kind of unified entity, any more than we can talk about "academics" as such. But...if one of the things you "want" is to prepare your students to be sophists in the corporate world, then you have to teach them, not only to be sophists-but also something of what to expect in the corporate world. Corporations have cultures. If you want your students to be analytical about culture, they have to know something about culture, right? Maybe the flaw, vv, is not so much about what the public wants, but about what the public is. I think R/C has its own cocoon and that's comfortable (and as I write that I'm aware that I'm putting all R/Cers into one category and that's not the way it is). At least, when my world was R/C, I experienced the cocoon. In my article, I quoted Sharon Crowley, who said that R/Cers always seemed to be talking to the same people, and they all knew each other. She wanted to talk outside the cocoon. I replied that I didn't want to talk outside of the cocoon just then, I wanted to talk to the family. Now I'm not in the family anymore. I truly do walk outside the gates. And working on the outside, in "the corporate world," is very different from how it is explained when you're inside. It's exciting and boring and different and the same and stimulating and frustrating and... it's a lot of things. But it's definitely more than how it's described in "technical writing" textbooks. Other disciplines-like business or law or engineering or medical studies-they often have people who went outside the academic cocoon to do their job come back to the academy and teach students....they have students go as interns into the "real world" before they graduate. And when they write "academic writing" the end-in-sight (the "real world" occupation that the students are after) is never out-of-sight. R/C is so much more nebulous than that. Maybe that's why talking about this is such a hairy subject?
Gotta work,
Hmmm... for years I kept a version of that same story posted on my office wall, but with the ACADEMIC hierarchy rather than CORPORATE in the joke ... Peter Sands
This is one of the many "joke" emails that has been circulating around our company. If you've never seen it, I thought you'd enjoy:
> HOW IT ALL BEGAN:
Hi, LWHYnda, victor;s account (sophist) at uta is down now and he asked me to post a message saying ... What a great post after three days of waiting and wanting.... and that you are ... a woman (shakespEAR said, "wench") of Xcellent discourse and datcourse. v shall return.
best,
FYI, v
- ---------- Forwarded message ----------
Novelist William S. Burroughs dies at 83 Burroughs August 2, 1997 Web posted at: 11:51 p.m. EDT (0351 GMT) Burroughs died at 6:50 p.m. in Lawrence, Kansas, at Lawrence Memorial Hospital, about 24 hours after suffering a heart attack, said Ira Silverberg, his longtime New York publicist. "The passing of William Burroughs leaves us with few great American writers. His presence in the American literary landscape was unparalleled," Silverberg said. Published in 1959, "The Naked Lunch" used unconventional writing Published in 1959, "The Naked Lunch" used unconventional writing techniques to depict an underground world fighting a technological society that was self-destructing. "The Naked Lunch" was both praised as literary genius and dismissed as indecipherable garbage, because Burroughs wrote it without standard narrative prose, used abrupt transitions, placed the chapters in random order and wrote in a stream-of-consciousness style. The book also was the subject of a precedent-setting obscenity trial, because of its violence and explicit sex. Publishers eventually won an appeal in Boston, and the book was published in the United States in 1962.
website ____________________________ "Naked Lunch," which prompted author Norman Mailer to say Burroughs was possibly the most talented writer in America, made Burroughs famous as a spokesman for the Beat Generation. Used cut-ups method of organizing writing Burroughs continued his unconventional style by using a technique called cut-ups in subsequent books, including "The Soft Machine" (1961), "The Ticket that Exploded" (1962) and "Nova Express" (1964). Cut-ups involved random cutting and pasting and folding into his own writing quotations from other authors, newspapers and other media. After moving to New York City, Burroughs developed a heroin addiction and was a junkie for about 15 years. During this period he lived in Texas, New Orleans, Mexico City, South America, Northern Africa, Paris and London. He did little writing at the time, but his experiences were the fodder for many of his books. He married a German-Jewish refugee, but only to enable the woman to emigrate to the United States. They were divorced in 1946. The same year, Burroughs entered into a common-law marriage with Joan Vollmer. In later years, Burroughs acknowledged he was homosexual and said Vollmer was the only woman with whom he ever had a serious relationship. Writer charged with manslaughter in wife's death Burroughs' life was changed forever in 1951 when, after a day of drinking and drugs, he accidentally shot and killed Vollmer in Mexico. Burroughs, who always had a penchant for guns, said he was trying to shoot a glass off his wife's head and instead shot her in the forehead. In a biography published in 1982, "Literary Outlaw," Burroughs said that shooting led to his becoming a serious writer. "I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan's death, and to a realization of the extent to which this event has motivated and formulated my writing. I live with the constant threat of possession, and a constant need to escape from possession, from Control. "So the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit and maneuvered me into a lifelong struggle, in which I have had no choice except to write my way out." Burroughs was charged with the equivalent of involuntary manslaughter and fled Mexico. The couple had a son, Bill Jr., in 1947. He was an alcoholic and drug addict who died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1981. Musicians influenced by his work Burroughs essentially disappeared from the literary scene while living in London in the early 1970s. His influence began to grow again when, at poet Allen Ginsberg's urging, he returned to New York City in 1974. Shortly after his return, Burroughs met James Grauerholz, who became his secretary and began renewing Burroughs' career by scheduling readings across the country and in Europe. Burroughs continued to influence artists and musicians through the hippies of the 1960s and the punks of the 1970s. Musicians such as David Bowie, Lou Reed and Patti Smith have cited Burroughs as an important influence. "He gave them techniques to get inside the dark side of the mind," said Morris Dickstein, who wrote a book on the 1960s called "Gates of Eden." "He explored the fantastic, the irrational, so he freed them from a pretty rational form of literary narration." Burroughs began using drugs again and Grauerholz, who went to school at the University of Kansas, persuaded Burroughs to move to Lawrence, Kansas, in 1981. Burroughs began to write more conventional narratives after his move to Kansas, including "Place of the Dead Roads," in 1984, and "The Western Lands," in 1987. He also began a second career as a visual artist, as well as writing screenplays, appearing in films ("Drugstore Cowboy" and "Twister"), writing an opera text, and even appearing in a Nike television ad. "In the last few years, he became a figure that people looked up to as "In the last few years, he became a figure that people looked up to as a pioneer of the avant garde," said Dickstein. "He became an elder statesman for a lot of people."
"The basic unit of technology is not the bit, but the body." --William Burroughs
>"The basic unit of technology is not the bit, but the body." Print this, Victor! If you dare. Fred Kemp
VVell, Fred, Hi! Long time! This list is not moderated in that everything is immediately published ("printed"). So no "dare"s are necessary. Would you please explain "one of the darker pillars" ... "theory elitism"? especially in the light of the present, or previous, reinvw(s)? I don't ask the question as a challenge, but as my wanting to know what's on your mind. Again, please let me (or us) know. Let me say to you and others that I am really not interested in our getting into one of these discussions that will only repeat the theory vs. practice topos or the common folk vs. the elitists topos. If people want to talk about that, that's cool; it simply does not interest me as usually discussed. If there is something that has not been said here about it, however, then let's hear it. But once ever again, I would like to know how the issue that you raise (once you have explained it further) applies, say, to our discussion with Lynda, who, btw, sent in the quote from Burroughs.
Again thanks for your note,
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