Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository
Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository
heart of Western religion and Western science and medicine. They are all cut from the same cloth. And that proverbial cloth bears the mark of Certainty: the need for it; the search for it; the fear of not having it. It is all there: the extreme privileging of all that is normal and uniform and familiar and docile because of its guarantee of the perpetuation and propagation of order, control, and authority and, to all of it, uncertainty was anathema, like the black-skinned natives at that heart of Conrad’s … Darkness to Marlow and the rest of the other white ivory merchants in Africa. The America of the nineteenth century was teeming with this same perspective, this “epistemology inevitable and unavoidable,” and it suffused through every strata of American society and culture. With this being so, is the rise of Current-Traditional Rhetoric during that same nineteenth century truly a simple “coincidence”? As an answer, or at least my answer, I would recall James Berlin’s characterization of writing instructors’ place in the classroom sanctioned by Current-Traditional rhetoric as “the caretakers of the English tongue, and more important, the gatekeepers on the road to good things in life, as defined by the professional class” (72). Building upon what Berlin has claimed, I now offer Crowley’s description of Current-Traditional rhetoric and its role, its purpose, in nineteenth century education in America: 76
In its institutionalized form - freshman composition - current-traditional writing instruction served the academy as a useful mud fence, guarding it from the unsupervised and uncontained sprawl of self-initiated analytical or critical student discourse. As Plato complained thousands of years ago, written discourses have the habit of floating all over the place and of getting into the wrong hands unless some means of control is established over who can write and who will be read [...]. Current-traditional rhetoric was the control developed within the academy. When students were instructed in it, all concerned could rest assured that few students would produce writing that demanded to be read and heeded. (153) With this role as “useful mud fence,” Current-Traditional rhetoric would seem to have had a definite purpose wholly outside of “writing,” Crowley’s explanation of which I offered earlier, but to which I would return for the purpose of underscoring her meaning: [L]ate nineteenth-century attempts to standardize composition instruction may have sprung from motives other than that of relieving composition teachers from some of the burden of paper grading. [L]anguage arts instruction was efficiently (because silently) geared to include those whose manners and class it reflected. Those whose manners were not middle-class either adapted or were excluded. […] The formal standards […] imposed on student writers reflected ethical and social values fully as much as intellectual ones. A discourse marked by unity, coherence, and emphasis, stringently construed, would of necessity reflect a strong sense of limitations, of what was possible, as well as a grasp of the proper relations of things in the universe. (137-8) From Berlin and Crowley’s criticisms, it would seem that Current-Traditional rhetoric was not simply about writing, but, much more so, about thinking: correct and proper thinking. And so, with that said, I would ask the question again: is the rise 77
- Page 33 and 34: a vehement belief in “writing wit
- Page 35 and 36: philosophies of teaching. In his bo
- Page 37 and 38: until sometime later - after confro
- Page 39 and 40: eginnings of humanity itself. In th
- Page 41 and 42: conversation and, in its place, pag
- Page 43 and 44: [W]hat happened to rhetoric in Amer
- Page 45 and 46: cannot be discussed because they ar
- Page 47 and 48: States of America in the 1800s for
- Page 49 and 50: making and doing” (6). And for De
- Page 51 and 52: “Allegory of the Cave.” It took
- Page 53 and 54: not a denigration of Christianity,
- Page 55 and 56: severe, black or white: either foll
- Page 57 and 58: easoning behind those words. Early
- Page 59 and 60: transcendent reality and thus satis
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- Page 63 and 64: eality that the faithful were allow
- Page 65 and 66: with which all other societies were
- Page 67 and 68: field of composition was not, as Co
- Page 69 and 70: ecause of its “epistemological su
- Page 71 and 72: proclamation “Cogito Ergo Sum,”
- Page 73 and 74: This power of modern Western scienc
- Page 75 and 76: under the aegis of Western medicine
- Page 77 and 78: the masters of nature ... Instead o
- Page 79 and 80: and, during this time, “assimilat
- Page 81 and 82: as in specific political, ideologic
- Page 83: Darkness. For Said, it was in the p
- Page 87 and 88: III. Before I continue any further,
- Page 89 and 90: It is an unavoidable fact of life.
- Page 91 and 92: Tarnas refers to those “contradic
- Page 93 and 94: news” of such pervasive and overw
- Page 95 and 96: when writers shrink from that uncer
- Page 97 and 98: Uncertainty and the prolonging of U
- Page 99 and 100: falling away to such a “shift”
- Page 101 and 102: Rhetoric. She would root that “sh
- Page 103 and 104: For my real purpose here then, it i
- Page 105 and 106: Although Hairston is writing about
- Page 107 and 108: of them, I was enlightened. I was p
- Page 109 and 110: All experiences, even the scientifi
- Page 111 and 112: the tendency of that reality to mak
- Page 113 and 114: asking the same question: What had
- Page 115 and 116: and “truth” simply ends where i
- Page 117 and 118: silence we have so often deplored [
- Page 119 and 120: attempting to make room for the exc
- Page 121 and 122: said, I would pose another question
- Page 123 and 124: From [a theoretical] point of view,
- Page 125 and 126: It was this “technical rhetoric
- Page 127 and 128: synonym for doing or making as in
- Page 129 and 130: former I will not really pay much a
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heart of Western religion and Western science and medicine.<br />
They are all cut from the same cloth. And that proverbial cloth<br />
bears the mark of Certainty: the need for it; the search for<br />
it; the fear of not having it. It is all there: the extreme<br />
privileging of all that is normal and uniform and familiar and<br />
docile because of its guarantee of the perpetuation and<br />
propagation of order, control, and authority and, to all of it,<br />
uncertainty was anathema, like the black-skinned natives at that<br />
heart of Conrad’s … Darkness to Marlow and the rest of the other<br />
white ivory merchants in Africa. The America of the nineteenth<br />
century was teeming with this same perspective, this<br />
“epistemology inevitable and unavoidable,” and it suffused<br />
through every strata of American society and culture.<br />
With this being so, is the rise of Current-Traditional<br />
Rhetoric during that same nineteenth century truly a simple<br />
“coincidence”? As an answer, or at least my answer, I would<br />
recall James Berlin’s characterization of writing instructors’<br />
place in the classroom sanctioned by Current-Traditional<br />
rhetoric as “the caretakers of the English tongue, and more<br />
important, the gatekeepers on the road to good things in life,<br />
as defined by the professional class” (72). Building upon what<br />
Berlin has claimed, I now offer Crowley’s description of<br />
Current-Traditional rhetoric and its role, its purpose, in<br />
nineteenth century education in America:<br />
76
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