Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository

Abstract of the Dissertation
The Uncertainty of Certainty: Exploring a Dialectic
by
Leon Marcelo
Doctor of Philosophy
in
English
Stony Brook University
2011
The fostering of a dialectic between Certainty and Uncertainty
and the perspectives of reality and “truth” that each engenders
is necessary for writing and the teaching of writing. This
necessity arises from the fact that a privileging of either
extreme, at the expense of the other, is antithetical to work
for the progress of not simply the teaching of writing but of
the greater society and culture to which it would serve.
Whether the pursuit of Certainty that culminated in latenineteenth-
and early-twentieth-century America in the birth of
“Current-Traditional Rhetoric” or, conversely, the pursuit of
Uncertainty that spread throughout academia during the “Post-
Modern” era, either choice is detrimental to those who would
strive for that progress within academic writing instruction and
beyond. In the end, both possibilities serve the continuation
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