Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository

Postscript
As I claimed in the Introduction, while this work, on the
whole, has had its investigative gaze upon the past, because the
complications and confusions of the present cannot really be
known without knowing those of the past, it still has relevance
to the present conversation of the field and all that is
“current” and “new” to be found therein. The discourse
invigorating those “current” or “new” issues would be furthered
and deepened through an understanding of the field’s past.
Consequently, I would further claim, now, that the vanguard of
composition theory and research should be re-examined in terms
of the often-times, whether consciously done or not, forgotten
history of the field. Simply put, we as compositionists should
know our own history – or histories. All too often, portraits
of the past are rendered with Certainty’s bold strokes. Because
of this, much is lost or ignored. Nuances. Differences.
Uncertainties. If the past is not examined on its own terms,
all of this becomes painted over and, again, forgotten. The
field of composition and rhetoric and its very own past, in
particular as depicted by those historical taxonomies of which I
wrote before, are no different. All too often, those taxonomies
are the only source of knowledge of the past for would-be
compositionists. They don’t know what John Dewey or Peter
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