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explore the holes that were left behind by the “instability and
insecurity” of that old, traditional paradigm. This was, it is
said by those like Hairston, the beginning of the Post-Modern
Age of composition and rhetoric.
It would seem that the field of composition and rhetoric –
the pedagogy, the methods, the scholarship, the research –
became occupied, almost obsessed, with all that was “Post-“ in
that thusly emerged Post-Modern epoch. Even if not necessarily
in name, then in perspective and attitude: “Post-
Structuralism,” “Cultural Studies,” “Critical Literacy,” “Post-
Process.” Although there are definite distinctions in both
intentions and genealogy between these schools of literary
theory – and schools of rhetorical theory – and although I would
never propose that they are simply genres and subgenres and so
forth for novelty’s sake alone, they all owe their beginnings,
in one way or another, to that very same seminal Post-Modern
spirit and, because of that, they are all brimming with that
very same Uncertainty, whether they refer to it as such or not,
as I alluded to in my first chapter. But my real purpose here
is neither to depict their emergence in the field of composition
and rhetoric nor to delineate their individual histories
thereafter. Because of that, if I should lump them together
indiscriminatingly beneath that “Post-Modern” umbrella, I will
apologize well in advance.
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