Robert's Response

[Robert Greco]

#382

“Rhetoric and Composition is not alone, then in trying to work with what Wegenstein argues is a historically situated—mediated—sense that we are fragmented between a perceiving and a perceived body, between a potentially expressive mediating body and a body that exists only in mediation by others.” Wysocki, 13
I’ll try not to post on this every week, but Wysocki’s work—particularly this quotation—again made me think of my teaching. I’m teaching two sections of John Jay’s composition II course, which attempts to teach students the rhetorical skills they need to be able to decipher, and hopefully, engage in writing across the curriculum. Wysocki’s summative comment about expressive and mediated bodies reminded me of a challenge that arose in my classroom this week. My students seem to see themselves as having a “normal self,” a way they think, act, and feel when they feel no pressure for pretension. So, for example, when they go on a job interview (their example), then they feel that they are acting rhetorically because a situation has required them to modulate their behavior. What stands out to me when they explain this is that they don’t see their “normal,” “natural” behavior as constructed in any way, rhetorically or otherwise.
 
Wysocki prompted me to reflect on this because her framing of the fragmented sense of the body speaks to my students’ understanding of their own rhetorically constructed nature. In some ways, the perceiving, internal self of my students is so strong in this dynamic, that they see it as a natural, unpretentious construction, a representation of absolute Truth—a self unblemished by the machinations of the outside world. Teaching rhetoric, this position poses a fundamental problem: when they see rhetoric as only a tool for control or manipulation, as only applying in cases of the aberrant or the highly structured, then teaching them to apply the principles of rhetorical reading and analysis to the everyday objects of their daily lives becomes increasingly difficult.
At first, I thought of this condition as a form of naiveté, a simple and understandable failure to identify the ways in which their lives had been formed and constructed. Culture exerts a powerful tendency to make the designed seem natural, after all. However, Wysocki pushes me to think of this not only in terms of their lack of awareness or experience, but also in the context of a tension between the self as perceiver and the self as perceived. I won’t argue that this tension is a zero sum game, but I must consider if I am asking them to sacrifice a part of their identity when I ask them to examine the ways in which they are constructed. I can’t help but think that I am shifting them to an object position, the opposite of my desire as a writing teacher. So I tentatively conclude, with the intention to think further on this, that I should expose them not to the one or the other, but to the tension itself. My goal ought not to be to help them see themselves as constructed but as an important and dynamic part of a continuum, where their assertions and desires operate in concert with the machinations of culture. A tall order, and my next class is in about 30 hours. . . .

[Anonymous]

#385

Robert– I’m really glad you are posting on your teaching.  I feel the central Elbow/Bartholomae debate between creating writers and academics within your teaching quandary here.  You want to encourage your students to become confident writers at the same time you want them to understand and be more aware of the complex forces that shape them from outside. (So maybe you want to do more than just prep them for WAC?)  You worry that they are seeing rhetoric as sophistry.  I guess I’d see rhetoric as the solution:  as your students continue to develop their sense of themselves as rhetors in a broader sense in their everyday lives, they may also begin to see the complexities of forces that are shaping them.  Does that fragment their identities?  Hmmm.  I don’t know.  I guess I tend to see it as empowering them.  Is that too simple?  –Sean

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