Open Spaces--Toward a New Composition

Open Spaces—Toward a New Composition

I want to write for a moment on Joseph Harris' call at the end of his chapter on Community in his book A Teaching Subject for "a public space where students can begin to form their own voices as writers and intellectuals" (116). Harris seems to advocate the metaphor of public space rather than community for the shared context for communicating and learning in a composition class. He seems to distrust the term community because it connotes a club or false utopia. In Harris' call for public space, I hear my own heuristic for a New Composition—the Rhetorical Forum.

I was particularly interested in Harris' reference to work done by John Swales on discourse communities. Here are some of the characteristics of Swales ideas:
--the discursive "forum" is a shared common space
--one-to-one communication follows some protocols (whether externally imposed or internally generated). Swales sees it as reduced to providing information and feedback, but the nature of the interaction need not only be limited to these.
--forum is not a community, must be some common goal toward which the group is working (or could it also be a common interest).
--It is a free, voluntary gathering of individuals with shared goals and interests, not so much forced together as chosen to associate with on another

Harris envisions a "community of strangers," a civitas, a public forum and gathering place that is not so much about entering the academic community as learning to position oneself and interact (he likes the word "wrangle") within this "city," this public space. This notion of public space is VERY similar to the description of a "rhetorical forum" talked about by Thomas Farrell: "a rhetorical 'forum' is a more or less formal location, where types of reasoning and argumentation are practiced. …an encounter setting sufficiently durable to serve as a recurring 'gathering place' for discourse. As such, the forum provides a space for multiple expressed positions to encounter one another" (88). Or as Harris would say, "wrangle" with one another. Farrell's primary argument in his article "Practicing the Arts of Rhetoric" (which is a summary of his book Norms of Rhetorical Culture) is that "rhetoric derives its materials from the real conditions of civic life, the appearances of our cultural world. At the same time, this activity makes room for disputation about the meaning, implications, directions, and value of cultural appearances" (80). Let's dig into this passage in terms of our discussion. A rhetorical forum constitutes just such a public space or gathering place that by its nature participates in civic concerns and codes of civil behavior. Cursing, nudity, or racist comments are not tolerated in this kind of context. And that is the key—the rhetorical forum constitutes a public context, a context that is wider than our classroom. The nature of this forum also is discursive—discussion, debate, dialogue, dispute, collaboration. It is a "talking" forum. But more than that, as Swales says it must be a forum that has some purpose, some mission behind its talk. What might that purpose be for a rhetorical forum?—ah, Farrell tells us: the disputation about the meaning, implications, direction, and value of cultural appearances and civic life. Should we get out of Iraq? What are the ethics of being able to purchase a morning after pill at the drug store without a prescription? Why do so few youth vote? What could be done to get more youth to vote? These are just a few examples of these "public" topics, but the topics could be more traditional. Why does Hamlet hesitate? As a rhetorical forum, the communication would follow certain codes and conventions that would be in part created simply by the context of the space, but also by the rules imposed and generated upon the space.

Farrell talks about two interesting qualities of a rhetorical forum. The first is that those interacting within the space begin to both adopt and use the "norms" of discourse and social knowledge to enter the discussion in meaningful ways. I hate to use the example, but radio talk shows are excellent examples of rhetorical forums. This nature of norms can easily be seen if you switch between different shows—say between a political talk show like Rush Limbaugh and a sports talk show like Jim Rome. You will hear the participants not only speaking in "normative" ways that fit with the conventions of that forum but also using various forms of social knowledge (common places) in their arguments. The "blogosphere" has the connotation of a rhetorical forum, disjointed and entwined, organic and untamed. The second special quality of a rhetorical forum Farrell talks about is that within the "two-sided argument, the running controversy, the ritual that becomes a crisis" (85) that those engaged in the forum practice rhetoric and must learn and enact practical wisdom (phronesis). This practical wisdom is learned through experience, through engagement with the forum where the participant sees and learns what works and what doesn't, what gains attention and what doesn't.

Here's my dream. I would like to establish a "rhetorical forum" for freshman composition that is an internet space. It would be a special space for college students from across the country, whether in a class or not in a class. I would envision the space as a key part of both freshman composition I and II. How would we make this work? What would be the interface? How would we make it amenable to new media texts? As well as print-texts that may have document design elements? How would we set up a finely balanced open and closed space—a place where students could freely communicate but it would still stay within what is appropriate for college and maintain its purpose as educational? How could it be a space where composition teachers from across the country would want to make it part of their class too? How could different teacher agendas/curriculums merge, in part? Could a teacher's main goal to be to guide and facilitate the learning of his or her students in this rhetorical forum, but she could also be the main moderator of a section of the forum on a particular book or issue where the participants in that section of the forum could be from across the country with only one student from that teachers class. Hah! Could a student generate a forum and a teacher join in as a co-facilitator? Could teachers participating in this space begin to offer various sessions or lessons available to the whole forum community as well as her students? How to edit? Using MovieMaker? How to do MLA Documentation? How would attention be focused in this forum (since attention is the key commodity in the information economy)? Would there be a main page with certain selected posts/writings and then the breakout forums which might also have some selected posts? How does YouTube select what shows on its main page? Could there be some "algorithm" that floats certain writings to the top? What might that algorithm be? How could this forum become a place where students felt like they were engaging in discourse that truly might have some significance on the cultural/social/political topic they are discussing? How might the environment lead to collaborative writing and documents?

This dream of a rhetorical forum is one key component of what I call New Composition. To make this dream a reality, though, will take a combination of deep thinking of how this forum would work as well as innovative thinking about the technical interface for making it happen, and then how these ideas for the forum will work with the interface. If you are interested in joining me in exploring these possibilities, let me know. And lets get started.

Farrell, Joseph. "Practicing the Arts of Rhetoric: Tradition and Invention." Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader. Ed. John Jouis Lucaites, Celeste Condit, Sally Caudill. New York: Guilford Press, 1999. 79-100.