Fall 2011 Syllabus -- Critical Theory B -- Technoscience and Environmental Justice

Fridays, 9-11.45 AM, Studio 18 Chestnut
Instructor: Dale Carrico; dcarrico@sfai.edu; ndaleca@gmail.com
Course Site: http://planetarythinkingsfai.blogspot.com/

Provisional Grade Breakdown: Att/Part 25%; Precis 15%; In-Class Report 15%; Final Exam: 45%

Provisional Schedule of Classes

Week One | January 24 | Introductions

Week Two | January 31 | An Inconvenient Truth

Week Three | February 7 | Green Idols and Precursors

Curtis White, The Idols of Environmentalism
John Muir, Save the Redwoods
Aldo Leopold, The Land Ethic
Aldo Leopold, Thinking Like a Mountain
Margaret Atwood, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, 50 Years On
Bill McKibben, Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

Week Four | February 14 | Deep Ecology and Deep Economy

Arne Naess, The Shallow and the Deep
Arne Naess and George Sessions, Deep Ecology Platform
Bill McKibben, Reversal of Fortune
E. F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful
Murray Bookchin, Social Ecology Versus Deep Ecology

Week Five | February 21 | Ecosocialism

An Ecosocialist Manifesto by Joel Kovel and Michael Lowy
Joel Kovel, Why Ecosocialism Today?
John Bellamy Foster, The Four Laws of Ecology and the Four Anti-Ecological Laws of Capitalism
Naomi Klein, Climate Rage
Alyssa Battistoni, Toward Cyborg Socialism
James Boyle, Enclosing the Genome

Week Six | February 28 | Eco-feminism

Cathleen McGuire and Colleen McGuire, Ecofeminist Visions
Rosemary Radford Reuther, Ecofeminism
Catherine Keller, Dark Vibrations: Ecofeminism and the Democracy of Creation
Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands, Unnatural Passions: Notes Toward a Queer Ecology
Democracy Now! An Hour With Vandana Shiva
Week Seven | March 7 | Environmental Justice Critique

The Rio Declaration
The Johannesburg Declaration
Environmental Protection Agency: Environmental Justice Equals Healthy, Sustainable, and Equitable Communities Ludovic Blain, Ain't I An Environmentalist?
Robert D. Bullard, Ph.D., Poverty, Pollution, and Environmental Racism
Rachel Schragis, Is Climate Apartheid Inevitable? Lisa Campbell Salazar, National Parks and Environmental Racism

Week Eight | March 14 | Green Urbanity

Mike Davis, Slum Ecology
Mike Davis and Anthony Fontenot Twenty-five Questions about the Murder of the Big Easy
Mike Davis, Sinister Paradise: Does the Road to the Future End at Dubai?
Stewart Brand, How Slums Can Save the Planet
Fred Pearce, Greenwash: The Dream of the First Eco-City Was Built on a Fiction
WikiHow: How to Start Guerrilla Gardening
Raj Patel, Saving the World with Che, Mao, and Carrots
Wendy Koch, Green Living Thrives in Communes, Eco-Villages
LEED
Global Eco Village Network
Architecture for Humanity

Week Nine | March 17-21 | Spring Break

Week Ten | March 28 | From Agriculture to Polyculture

John Zerzan, Agriculture
John Zerzan, Why Primitivism?
Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry, A 50-Year Farm Bill
Ted Nace, Breadbasket of Democracy
Seeds of Resistance
Dale Allen Pfeiffer, Eating Fossil Fuels
Al Gore, Introduction to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring
Permaculture Design Principles, Online Interactive Presentation
Permaculture Design Course Video
Farming With Nature Video
Introduction to Permaculture: Concepts and Resources, Online Compendium

Week Eleven | November 1 | Natural Capitalism and Greenwashing

Paul Hawken: Natural Capitalism
A Roadmap for Natural Capitalism, Amory Lovins, Hunter Lovins, Paul Hawken
OpenPolitics Critiques of Paul Hawken and Natural Capitalism
Wayne Norman and Chris MacDonald, Getting to the Bottom of the "Triple Bottom Line"
Jane and Michael Hoffman, How Greenwashing Works
Greenpeace: Greenwashing
Greenwashing Index
New Scientist: Carry on Polluting

Week Twelve | April 11 | Futurology Against Ecology

Marc Stiegler, The Gentle Seduction
Bruce Sterling, Viridian Design Speech
Bruce Sterling, Manifesto of January 3, 2000
Bruce Sterling, Viridian Principles
Bruce Sterling, Last Viridian Note
The Guardian: What Is Geoengineering? Lisa Hymas, We Need Birth Control, Not Geoengineering
Time Magazine on Geoengineering
Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, The California Ideology
Jedediah Purdy The God of the Digerati

Week Thirteen | April 25 | Green Eats

John Vidal, Ten Ways Vegetarianism Can Save the Planet
Kathy Freston, Vegetarian Is the New Prius
Krissah Thompson, Michelle Obama Plays Referee in the Food Tug-of-War
Clara Jeffrey, Michael Pollan Fixes Dinner
Jim Hightower, Food Industry Is Now Calling Junk Food Healthy
Marc Abrahams, Food for Thought
Saul Landau, Reagan and Bottled Water
14 Questions that Could Save Your Life and the Planet
Just Food, Food Justice

Week Fourteen | May 2 | Extracting Ourselves From Extraction

Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency
Scientific American Peak Everything: An Interactive Look At How Much of Everything Is Left.
Chris Vernon, Agriculture Meets Peak Oil
Michael T. Klare, The Coming Resource Wars
Michael T. Klare, The Third Carbon Age
Chris Arsenault, Risk of Water Wars Rises with Scarcity
Kate Kelland, Antibiotics Overuse Threatens Medicine

Week Fifteen | May 9 | Toxic World and Green Ethos

2013: World's Top Ten Toxic Threats
Top Ten Anthropogenic Disasters
Gayatri Spivak, on Planetarity Bruno Latour, Tsiteso Modernize or to Ecologize? That’s the Question George Lakoff, How We Talk About the Environment Has Everything to Do With Whether We Will Save It

GENERAL OBJECTIVES:

1. Interrogate the discourses of "nature," as registers of materiality, worldliness, scientificity, wilderness, sublimity, insecurity, grace, and consider the ways in which these different (sometimes outright contradictory) registers function in argument and in identification as supplements, complements, resolutions, dissolutions, contraries, paradoxes, and so on.

2. Survey a host of "green" discourses, from transcendentalism, deep ecology, social ecology, urban gardening and green cities, permaculture, to eco-feminism, eco-socialism, environmental justice critique, natural capitalism, anti-civilizational discourse and anarcho-luddism -- identify both continuities and discontinuities in their assumptions, aspirations, figurations, frames, gestures.

3. Consider "environmentalisms" as more than argumentative claims, but as sites of subculture and style, identification and dis-identification, practices of education, agitation, and organization stratified by race, sex-gender, class, nationality.

4. Treat "greenness" as a site through which to think more generally about relations of theory and practice, political engagement, critical thinking, and art practices, as well as to think about political engagement and efficacy under contemporary conditions.

5. Acquaint students with hundreds of "Keywords" connected to various Green practices, theories, communities, strategies (eg, abrasion, biomimesis, cradle-to-cradle, downcycling, externality, financialization, greenwashing, etc.).

6. Embed these discourses within an STS (science and technology studies) framework, emphasizing publicity/historicity of objects/subjects, actor-network formulations of actant/associate agency, and strong critique (via Arendt, Latour, and Haraway) of triumphalist-emancipatory narratives of technoscientific-sociopolitical progress.

Peer Editing Worksheet

A good peer edit is not an itemized list of broad impressions, problems, or compliments, but should represent a sustained and sympathetic argumentative engagement with the text you are reading. Editors, you should provide comments in the form of a short essay that clearly answers all or most of the following
questions:

1. What is your own name?

2. What is the name of the paper's author?

3. What is the title of the paper?

4. Did the paper satisfy the expectations raised in its title? **

5. In your own words, state what you think to be the thesis of the paper in one or two sentences.**

6. Was this thesis expressed clearly in the paper itself?

7. Is this a strong thesis?

8. Why or why not?

9. Can you imagine an intelligent opposition to this thesis?

10. What might this be?

11. Does the author remain true to this thesis through the paper? **

12. Were there important terms that needed stronger or clearer definitions? **

13. If yes, what were they?

14. Did the author use quotations from the text effectively to justify and illustrate their interpretations?

15. Did the author anticipate relevant objections to their various claims? **

16. Name an objection that either should have been addressed or which warranted a deeper exploration than the paper presently provides.

17. Did the author’s address of possible objections contribute to the strength of the case the paper is making, or distract from
that case as you understood it?

18. Comment on the papers line of argument (its overall clarity, the smoothness of its transitions and substantiations, the order in which it developed its points, etc.). **

19. Comment on the papers prose (style, grammar, sentence construction, punctuation, etc.).

20. What qualities did you like best about the paper? **

21. What is the single most important aspect of the paper that the author should work on before handing it in?

Things to consider as you read the comments of your editors:

1. What were the problems or concerns that most preoccupied you about your paper before beginning this peer editing process?

2. Were those concerns addressed by your editors? [If not, demand that they are.]

3. For each editor, which comments were most helpful to you?

4. Which comments would be more helpful if they were clarified or amplified somewhat? [Ask for clarifications or examples or suggestions on these issues.]

You should note that these are the questions which guide my own readings of your papers, and that my marginal comments and concluding discussion will tend to register my preoccupation with these same questions.

**These are questions you should make a habit of asking of any text at all that you are reading critically.

Weekend Writing

How are the papers going so far? Have you made recourse to the thesis workshop worksheet for your second papers? Are you finding it easier or harder to engage in a writing process that is more solitary? Are any of you working together this weekend? Is the reading of Maus providing a break in the tension or are the demands piling up? How are you doing, what are you thinking about?

Weekend Forum

Which of the three Aristotelian rhetorical registers -- logos, pathos, ethos -- seems to you the most essential one for King in making his case in the "Letter from the Birmingham City Jail"? Why do you think so? How does it change your understanding of his argument to read it against the grain of this sense, that is to say, what do you find you notice or read differently if you try instead to imagine the Letter as one that foregrounds an Aristotelian register that initially seems to you the least important or conspicuous one? Also, there are real questions about the audience for King's piece -- addressed to "fellow clergymen," but released to a readership much wider than that geographically and socially from the beginning -- to whom is King making his case, and how does he seem to anticipate multiple readerships, and what impact does this have on the consistency of his argument? Do you think that you are in any sense a member of King's intended readership? How might America's canonization and, in a real sense, our domestication of the historical figure of King both enabled and disabled our reading of this essay?

Thesis Workshop Worksheet

Thesis Workshop Worksheet
A thesis is a claim. It is a statement of the thing your paper is trying to show your own readers about a text you have read. Very often, the claim will be simple enough to express in a single sentence, and it will usually appear early on in the paper to give your readers a clear sense of the project of your paper. A good thesis is a claim that is strong. For our purposes, the best way to define a strong claim is to say it is a claim for which you can imagine an intelligent opposition. It is a claim that you actually feel you need to argue for, rather than a very obvious sort of claim or a report of your own reactions to a text (which you don't have to argue for at all). Remember, when you are producing a reading about a complex literary text like a novel, a poem, or a film the object of your argument will be to illuminate the text, to draw attention to some aspect of the work you think that the text is accomplishing. Once you have determined the detail or problem or element in a text that you want to draw your reader's attention to and argue about, your opposition will likely consist of those who would focus elsewhere because they don't grasp the importance of your focus, or who would draw different conclusions than you do from your own focus. The thesis names your paper's task, its project, its object, its focus. As you write your papers, it is a very good idea to ask yourself these questions from time to time: Does this quotation, does this argument, does this paragraph directly support my thesis in some way? If it doesn't you should probably delete it, because this likely means you have gotten off track. If you are drawn repeatedly away from what you have chosen as your thesis, ask yourself whether or not this signals that you really want to argue for some different thesis.
EXERCISE ONE:
Part A. BRAINSTORM. Take fifteen minutes or so and write down fifteen to twenty claims you can make about your chosen text. Don't worry about whether these claims are "deep" or whether they are "interesting," just write down claims that you think are true about the text and be as clear and specific as you can manage.
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Thesis Workshop Worksheet (Continued)

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PART B. In small groups of two to three peers:
One. EDIT! Once the time is up, take fifteen minutes or so to share your claims with one another. Determine together which, if any, of your claims are not really about the text at all. For example, eliminate claims that say the text is "good," or "correct," or "effective" -- since these are really claims about the way you react to the text rather than claims about the text demanding argumentative support. Also eliminate claims that say the text is "wrong," or "incorrect," or "ineffective" since, again, these are really claims about you, or they are claims that will lead you to discuss some more general or tangential topic rather than remaining focused on the text itself. How many claims are you left with?
Two. ORGANIZE! Now, take another fifteen minutes or so to discuss the claims that remain. Do some of the claims seem conspicuously more interesting or more important than the others? Do some of the claims really say the same thing in different ways? Do these comparisons suggest ways to re-phrase claims to capture your intentions more forcefully? Do some of the claims make or rely on observations that might function well as support for other claims? Have other, more forceful, claims occurred to you as you have engaged in this process? Do some of the claims suggest lines of argument and support that seem more promising to you than others? This process of elimination, honing, ordering should leave each of you with three or so strong claims.  
Thesis Workshop Worksheet (Continued)
EXERCISE TWO:
PART A. You should now each have a two or three candidate claims for a thesis remaining (some of you may have similar claims by now). Now, for each of these possible thesis claims come up with the strongest or most obvious opposition to each thesis. For example, what would the opposite claim be to the one you are making? Or, might there be an element or detail in the text that initially seems to contradict the thrust of your claim? Devote ten minutes or so to this.
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PART B. Read over these oppositions. Of course, you are likely to disagree with these claims since they are opposed to the ones you want to make yourself -- but can you imagine anyone actually making these oppositional claims about the text you have read? Be honest with each other about this, it is important. Take twenty minutes or so to make these determinations and discuss them.
If the opposition you have come up with seems vague or unintelligent or highly implausible this probably indicates that you need to sharpen up your own initial thesis. Is there a version of your thesis that is more focused and specific that retains the spirit of your claim but which provokes a more interesting opposition? What is it? What is its opposition?
If, on the contrary, the opposition you have written suddenly seems more compelling than the thesis itself this probably indicates that the stakes of your project, or possibly your whole take on the text itself, is different than you initially thought it was. Perhaps what you thought of as opposition to your thesis actually provides you with a stronger thesis and a new direction for your own paper. What is the strongest or most opposition to the new thesis you have adopted?

PART C. Now, quickly identify the best, strongest, most argumentatively promising thesis that results from this process for you personally, as well as what you take to be its most provocative opposition. Then in your groups, help one another identify two key details or elements in the text to which you could direct a reader's attention in an effort to support your individual theses, and also one detail or element you might use to circumvent its opposition (include page numbers). Take twenty minutes or so to do this.

1. (support)

2. (support)

3. (support)

4. (opposition)

A Time to Break Silence

Celebrating the Real King.

Complete text and audio of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s A Time to Break Silence.

Weekend Forum

How do you know what Socrates means? Does Socrates mean it when he proposes that he should be honored with a feast in punishment for his crimes? Does he mean it when he proposes Athens will suffer more from their verdict than he will? Does he mean it when he says he knows nothing? What does it even mean to know you know nothing? Does he know that the unexamined life is not worth living? How does he know that, if he does? How does he know that nobody can knowingly harm another? If a sophist accepts fees, what does it mean when Socrates accepts the contributions of his students to pay in penalty to Athens as he does? Is Socrates really even defending himself? What else might he be up to? Was Socrates wrong to withdraw from public life for fear that public life would kill him since his pedagogical practice has condemned him to death anyway, or did his pedagogical practice give the lie to his pretense that he had withdrawn from public life when all is said and done? If he corrupted the youth of Athens in conversing with them, is he corrupting the rest of Athens in defending himself as he does?

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Writing a Precis and Co-Facilitating Discussion

One of the key assignments for our course will be your co-facilitation of class discussion of one of the assigned texts. This assignment also requires that you generate and post onto our blog a précis of the text you are taking responsibility for in advance of our discussion of it. Think of this precis as a basic paraphrase of the argumentative content of a text.

What follows is intended to provide a broad and informal guide for the writing of your precis, consisting of questions you should actually always be asking of any serious text as you are reading it, and usually again after you have finished reading it. I don't want you to treat this as an ironclad template, but as a rough approach to producing a precis. For one thing, a truly fine and useful précis need not necessarily ask every one of these questions, but will often rather focus in on just a few especially relevant ones.

A precis should try to answer fairly basic questions such as:

1. What, in your own words, is the basic gist of the argument?

2. To what audience is the text pitched primarily? (What makes you think so? Do you see yourself as part of that intended audience, and how does your answer impact your reading of the argument?)

3. What do you think are the argument's stakes in general? To what end is the argument made?

a. To call assumptions into question?
b. To change convictions?
c. To alter conduct?
d. To find acceptable compromises between contending positions?

4. Does it have an explicit thesis? If not, could you provide one in your own words for it?

5. What are the reasons and evidence offered up in the argument to support what you take to be its primary end? What crucial or questionable warrants (unstated assumptions the argument takes to be shared by its audience, often general attitudes of a political, moral, social, cultural nature) does the argument seem to depend on? Are any of these reasons, evidences, or warrants questionable in your view? Do they support one another or introduce tensions under closer scrutiny?

6. Does the argument explicitly anticipate any objections? Does it qualify itself in ways that suggest implicit anticipation of objections? Does it circumvent or respond to objections in a revealing, unexpected, or satisfying way, do you think? Does it miss any glaring objections in your view?

7. What, if any, kind of argumentative work is being done by metaphors and other figurative language in the piece? Do the metaphors collaborate to paint a consistent picture, or do they clash with one another? What impact does this have on their argumentative force?

8. Are there key terms in the piece that seem to have idiosyncratic definitions, or whose usages seem to change over the course of the argument?

As you see, a piece that interrogates a text from these angles of view might yield something like a general book report or something more like a close reading, but one that focuses on the argumentative force of a text.

For the purposes of our class, a precis succeeds if it manages

(1) to convey the basic flavor of the argument and
(2) provides a good point of departure for a class discussion.

The Four Habits of Argumentative Writing

In this course you will be producing argumentative writing based on close textual readings. What follows are four general habits of attention and writing practice, guidelines I will want you to apply to your writing this term. These guidelines will also loom large in your peer editing practices and also in our grading of your work. If you can incorporate these four practices into your future reading and writing you will have gone a long way toward mastering the task of producing a competent argumentative paper for just about any discipline in the humanities that would ask you for one. Taking these habits truly to heart also helps foster the critical temper indispensable for good citizenship in functioning democracies in a world of diverse and contentious stakeholders with urgent shared problems.

A First Habit

An argumentative paper will have a thesis. A thesis is a claim. It is a statement of the thing your paper is trying to show. Very often, the claim will be straightforward enough to express in a single sentence or so, and it will usually appear early on in the paper to give your readers a clear sense of your paper's project. A thesis should always be a claim that is strong. A strong claim is a claim for which you can imagine an intelligent opposition. It is a claim that you feel the need to argue for. Remember, when you are producing a reading about a complex literary text like a novel, a poem, or a film the object of your argument will be to illuminate the text, to draw attention to some aspect of the work the text is accomplishing. Once you have determined the dimension or element in a text that you want to argue about, your opposition might consist of those who would focus elsewhere or who would draw different conclusions from your own focus. Your thesis is your paper's spine, your paper's task. As you write your papers, it is a good idea to ask yourself the question, from time to time, Does this quotation, does this argument, does this paragraph support my thesis in some way? If it doesn’t, delete it. If you are drawn repeatedly away from what you have chosen as your thesis, ask yourself whether or not this signals that you really want to argue for some different thesis.

A Second Habit

You should define your central terms, especially the ones you may be using in an idiosyncratic way. If a term repeatedly bears weight in your argument definitely define it. Your definitions can be casual ones, they don’t have to sound like dictionary definitions. And it is crucial that once you have defined a term you will stick to the meaning you have assigned it yourself. Even if you decide it is unnecessary to define a term explicitly, you should always be prepared to do so yourself for any term you use in your paper and you should always be able to show that your use of that term remains consistent. Never simply assume that your readers fully know what you mean or fully know what you are talking about. Never hesitate to explain yourself for fear of belaboring the obvious. Clarity never appears unintelligent.

A Third Habit

You should support your claims about the text with actual quotations from the text itself. In this course you will always be analyzing texts (broadly defined) and whatever text you are working on should probably be a major presence on nearly every page of your papers. A page without quotations is often a page that has lost track of its point, or one that is stuck in abstract generalizations. This doesn't mean that your paper should consist of mostly huge block quotes. On the contrary, a block quote is usually a quote that needs to be broken up and read more closely and carefully. If you see fit to include a lengthy quotation filled with provocative details, I will expect you to contextualize and discuss all of those details. If you are unprepared to do this, or fear that doing so will introduce digressions from your argument, this signals that you should be more selective about the quotations to which you are calling attention. In your final papers you will also be drawing on other texts. These texts should provide personal, social, historical, theoretical, topical, formal, generic contexts for your arguments, but your focus will remain on a text that you are reading closely, and these contextualizations should serve that close reading not detract from it.

A Fourth Habit

You should anticipate objections to your thesis. In some ways this is the most difficult habit to master. Remember that even the most solid case for a viewpoint is vulnerable to dismissal by the suggestion of an apparently powerful counterexample. That is why you should anticipate problems, criticisms, counterexamples, and deal with them before they arise, and deal with them on your own terms. If you cannot imagine a sensible and relevant objection to your line of argument it means either that you are not looking hard enough or that your claim is not strong enough.

Syllabus for Rhetoric 1B: "Argument Against Violence and As Violence"

University of California at Berkeley, Department of Rhetoric
Summer Session D, 2011; Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday 3-5.30pm, 79 Dwinelle, July 5-August 12

Instructor: Dale Carrico dcarrico@sfai.edu, Office Hours, before and after class.

Course Blog: http://arguere.blogspot.com/

Provisional Calculation of Final Grade:

Attendance/Participation/In-Class Assignments: 15%; First (Diagnostic) Essay, 2-3pp.: 10%; Co-facilitation and Online Precis, 2-3pp: 10% ; Second Essay 5-6pp.: 20%; Peer Editing: 10%; Final Report, 2-3pp.: 5%; Final Essay, 9-10pp.: 30%

Course Description:

This is a course in critical reading and argumentative writing. More specifically, this course will teach you how to write a research essay in the form of an argument based on textual close readings. We will work on the elements of such an argument early on in the term. But from the beginning of the course to the end our efforts will not be confined to the reading and writing of arguments from a rhetorical vantage, but also to an extended meditation on rhetoric conceived as a space for the nonviolent adjudication of disputes. We will think about persuasion not only as practices that would repudiate violence, but as practices haunted by violence, complicit in violence, responsive to violence, and responsible for violence as well. The texts with which we will be grappling provide us with exemplary arguments and incite us to generate arguments of our own. We will be examining texts that range widely in form -- a Platonic dialogue, a play, a manifesto, an open letter, essays and editorials, a novel, a graphic novel, a film. Over the course of our discussions and through a series of written assignments and workshop exercises you will slowly accumulate useful strategies for reading and writing arguments. By the end of the term you will have mastered the skills it takes to produce a first-rate research paper, and to prove it to me you'll produce one.

Provisional Schedule of Meetings

July

Week One

5 Administrivial Introductions; Arguere; Argument Defined (a claim supported by reasons and evidence); Conviction Persuasion-Interrogation-Reconciliation

6 Personal Introductions, 2-3mins; Logos-Pathos-Ethos; Logical-Tropological-Topical; Literal-Figural

7 Plato, Apology; 2-3pp. Diagnostic Essay Due; Four Habits of Argumentative Writing

Week Two

12 Euripides, "Hecuba"; Ink-Shedding Exercise

13 Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence; Toulmin Schema, "Rising to the Occasion of Our Death," Toulmin Exercise

14 King, "Letter from the Birmingham City Jail"; Rogerian Synthesis.

Week Three

19 Spiegelman, Maus I; Thesis Workshop; Hand in Drafts of Second Paper for Peer Editors.

20 Spiegelman, Maus II.

21 Peer Editing Workshop for Second Paper; Discussion of Peer-Editing and Review of Writing Workshops and Handouts to This Point.

Week Four

26 Butler, Kindred; Second Paper Due, 5-6pp.

27 Butler, Kindred; Thesis Workshop

28 Roy, "War Is Peace"; Hedges, "Evidence of Things Not Seen"

August

Week Five

2 Gandhi, "Swaraj"

3 Fanon, "Concerning Violence"

4 Arendt, "On Violence," "Must Eichmann Hang?"

Week Six

9 Screening and Discussion of Cronenberg, dir. "A History of Violence," Hand in Drafts of Final Paper for Peer Editors

10 Peer Editing for Final Paper

11 Concluding Remarks on Violence, Figurative Language, and Rhetoric; Course Evaluations; Final Report Due, 2-3pp.; Final Paper Due, 9-10pp.

Third Prompt, Section One of the Final

3. The very first words of the novel Kindred describe the loss of
Dana's arm. Octavia Butler subsequently wrote of Dana's loss, "I couldn't
let her come back whole."

What do you take to be the significance of Dana's loss? What is the
significance of the necessity of this loss to what you take to be
Butler's project in Kindred? How does the mysteriousness that
surrounds the depiction of this loss -- its specific cause, the mechanism
through which it occurs, its various implications, and so on -- contribute
(if it does) to the expression of this significance?

Two Early Prompts for the Take-Home Final

1. Make and defend any strong claim you like about director David Cronenberg's film "A History of Violence," but you must substantiate that claim primarily through a close reading either of the opening sequence of the film or the closing sequence of the film (around the dinner table). Your essay should include a plausible case as to why the opening or closing scene is especially key or exemplary for the film as a whole for whatever it is you are illuminating through your reading of it.

2. In Chapter 5 of Part One of Art Spiegelman's Maus, the living narrator-protagonist of a comic-within-the-comic accuses his Mother -- who has committed suicide -- of murdering him, while with his last word the (same?)
narrator-protagonist concludes Part One by accusing his father of being a murderer as well, this time for destroying his dead Mother's diary.

Here are some questions to think about. Any of these questions might provide the basis for a fine thesis.

In what sense might the completion of the book that is Maus come to substitute for the diary that was destroyed? In what ways do these books substitute for the lives they memorialize? In light of your answers to these questions, what is the significance of the tombstone which constitutes Maus's last image? Just what is it that is captured in the testimony that is Maus? What is captured (differently?) in the photographs that are reproduced throughout the narrative? What is lost? What is recaptured that was lost? Who survives?

Focus on just one of these dimensions of Maus, survival,
memorialization, testimony, or representation, and make a strong claim
that you substantiate through a close reading of at least one of the
moments in the text alluded to above and including at least one moment
that is not included above.

Arendt

Oh, yeah, sorry about that. A couple of you have found links to the piece for next Thursday. The chapters in Arendt's books On Violence and Crises of the Republic also entitled "Reflections on Violence" were expanded and adapted from the piece published first in the Review. It's the shorter earlier piece that I've assigned, links to which have been posted by your diligent colleagues. See you Thursday.

Crucial Image Included in Some But Not All Editions of Maus

Answer Key for Rhetorical Figures, Syllogisms

From the section workshop on rhetorical figures (10/6)

Note: I eliminated the examples that were covered in Eryk’s post, with the single exception of example 1, to which we add a few possible answers.

What did you expect when you unbound the gag that had muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises? Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed down to the ground were raised again, you would find adoration in their eyes? J. P. Sartre [Rhetorical Question, Assonance (bowed down to the ground), Metaphor or Metonymy – we weren’t sure how to read the gag in the first question]

Your Mom’s so fat, she could eat the internet. [Hyperbole; the jury is out, but we may also be in the territory of oxymoron and paradox when we consider that one might “eat the internet”]

War: not so good, actually. [Litotes]

Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know. [Chiasmus]

If we don’t hang together, we shall hang separately. [This is actually a zeugma, but for our purposes we shall treat it as an instance of chiasmus.]

Dead in the middle of Little Italy, little did we know that we riddled two middle men who didn’t do diddly. [Assonance, Alliteration]

The average person thinks he isn’t. [Ellipsis: the missing term is “average.”]

I can’t tell you how many times he’s distorted the truth. [Occultatio]

Check out my new wheels. [Synecdoche: the whole car is represented by its part, the wheels. And yes, this part is plural. Tough.]

You have to be cruel to be kind. [Paradox]

The iron curtain has lifted. [Metaphor]

I’m a cheerful pessimist. [Oxymoron]

Nice pants. [Irony]

Squish. [Onomatopoeia]

Ah, the sweet smell of success. [Alliteration]

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird…it’s a plane…it’s Superman! [Auxesis]

I’ve told you a million times! [Hyperbole]

He’s a man of the cloth. [Metonymy; cases were also made in class for mere Metaphor]

Einstein wasn’t a bad mathematician. [Litotes]

Without laws, we can have no freedom. [Paradox]

Beware, my lord, of jealousy!
It is a green-ey’d monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on. [Prosopopoeia]

But we glory also in tribulations, knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience trial; and trial hope; and hope confoundeth not, because the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost, who is given to us. [Auxesis]

If practice makes perfect, and no one’s perfect, then why practice? [Rhetorical Question]

Veni, vidi, vici. [Isocolon, Alliteration, Assonance]

Those who fail to prepare are preparing to fail. [Chiasmus]


...And from the section workshop on logical arguments (10/13)

Part 1: Translate enthymemes into major and minor premises and conclusions, without concern for validity or soundness. Some of the following enthymemes were translated in more than one way by our class, and reasonably so; I include only one of the possible answers here in the interest of brevity.

MjP = Major Premise. MnP = Minor Premise. C = Conclusion.

Iraq is a threat to our national security because it possesses vast quantities of enriched uranium.
MjP: All countries that possess vast quantities of uranium are a threat to our national security. MnP: Iraq possesses vast quantities of enriched uranium. C: Iraq is a threat to our national security.

Given John McCain’s health, it isn’t advisable to vote for him. (We translated this a number of ways. Here is one of the options we came up with.)
MjP: If a candidate is in poor health, it is not advisable to vote for him. MnP: John McCain is in poor health. C: It is not advisable to vote for him.

Due to the vulgarity of their lyrics, it’s doubtful that the band has any depth.
MjP: Bands with vulgar lyrics have no depth. MnP: The band has vulgar lyrics. C: The band has no depth.

In the absence of sufficient evidence, the defendant is to be dismissed.
MjP: If there is not enough evidence, the defendant is to be dismissed. MnP: There is not enough evidence. C: The defendant is to be dismissed.

Hugo Chavez admires Fidel Castro, so we can guess what he’d like to do as the head of state of Venezuela.
MjP: If one head of state admires another head of state, he will seek to emulate that other head of state. MnP: Hugo Chavez admires Fidel Castro. C: Hugo Chavez wants to emulate Fidel Castro.

Part 2: Translate the following arguments into syllogisms, taking note of validity of form.

You’ve got to be kidding me, right? I can tell by the look on your face. You made the whole thing up!
MjP: If you have that look on your face, you are lying. MnP: You have that look on your face. C: You’re lying! Valid, Modus Ponens.

Since this is his first year on the job, John can’t be put in charge.
MjP: All people who are put in charge should have more than a year’s experience. MnP: John doesn’t have more than a year’s experience. C: John shouldn’t be put in charge. Valid, Modus Tolens.

All people with things to hide plead the fifth. Tom pleads the Fifth. Tom must have something to hide. This one is already in its syllogistic form, more or less: Major and Minor Premise, followed by conclusion. It is Invalid; its fallacy is that of affirming the consequent.

If the Yankees won yesterday’s game, they are champions. The Yankees won yesterday’s game. Well, there ya go!
MjP: If the Yankees won yesterday’s game, they are champions. MnP: The Yankees won yesterday’s game. C (implied): The Yankees are the champions. Valid, Modus Ponens.

“There is no law against composing music when one has no ideas whatsoever. The music of Wagner, therefore, is perfectly legal!” (Mark Twain)
MjP: If one has no ideas, one’s music is legal. MnP: Wagner has no ideas. C: Wagner’s music is legal. Valid, Modus Ponens.

Aisha went to a fabulous liberal arts college, so clearly she’s very bright.
MjP: All people who go to fabulous liberal arts colleges are very bright. MnP: Aisha went to a fabulous liberal arts college. C: Aisha is very bright. Valid, Modus Ponens.

Whenever Kristen gets angry, her left eye begins to twitch. Look! It’s twitching! She must be really pissed!
MjP: If Kristen is angry, her left eye twitches. MnP: Kristen’s left eye is twitching. C: Kristen is angry. Invalid, Affirming the Consequent.

"Answer Key" Figures of Speech

[NOTE: As promised, an "answer key," or really more of a guideline. After a brief consultation with Dale, it was pointed out to me that some of these are quite good examples of figures of speech we do not cover in this class. Insofar as we restrict ourselves to having to rely on the 20 or so we learned, rather than the 65 that were required as part of the Rennaissance curriculum on rhetoric, below are suggestions for likeliest candidate(s). Be reassured, though, that the exam's format will facilitate having to choice between, say, paradox and irony or metonymy and synecdoche.]

i am a poster girl with no poster
"32 Flavors," Ani Difranco
[Paradox: roughly, she’s an x without x! yet the statement retains a definite provocative sense; it isn’t pure nonsense; I realize some may have put Antanclasis, but I’d say that’s subsidiary, or less compelling of an answer, to paradox in this example]

the Berlin Wall still runs down Main Street
“Subdivision,” Ani Difranco
[metonymy: contiguity of the physical and social act of separating, dividing: i.e. East from West or Socialist from Capitalist for “Berlin Wall” and black from white or rich from poor, with respect to “Main Street”]

Envy is the ulcer of the soul. [metaphor]
Socrates

I am not young enough to know everything.
-Oscar Wilde
[paradox or irony? undecided.]

Who got tha power
This be my question
Tha mass of tha few in this torn nation?
Tha priest tha book or tha congregation?
Tha politricks who rob and hold down your zone?
Or those who give tha thieves tha key to their homes?
Tha pig who's free to murder one Shucklak
Or survivors who make a move and murder one back?
"Mic Check" Rage Against the Machine
[Rhetorical Question(s) throughout; but also Metaphor (i.e. pig), Synecdoche (i.e. the “priest” or “book” as a species for the genus Religion or Authority, etc.), enallage (i.e. this be my question…), etc. and plenty more.]

So I grip tha cannon like Fanon an pass tha shells to my classmates
"Year of the Boomerang" Rage Against the Machine
[catachresis with respect to the use of the term “shells” (i.e. weaponry) in an unfamiliar, or un-usual, context, namely, that of the classroom and education rather than, say, an artillery unit or combat zone. I realize some may have said assonance for ‘cannon’ and ‘Fanon’, which isn’t technically wrong… ]

Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery. -Malcolm X
[auxesis]

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. [irony.]
-Oscar Wilde

the sun is setting on the century [metaphor]
“To the Teeth,” Ani Difranco

Be sincere; be brief; be seated. [illiteration & isocolon, for our purposes]
-Franklin D. Roosevelt

Thou shouldst eat to live; not live to eat. [chiasmus, for our purposes]
Socrates

We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.
-Franklin D. Roosevelt [chiasmus, for our purposes]

Don't be afraid to see what you see. [antanaclasis]
-Ronald Reagan

In heaven all the interesting people are missing. [irony]
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music. [isocolon, as it’s medium, and oxymoron, as the overall point with respect to the notion of ‘military justice’]
-Groucho Marx

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt [“that you’re a fool.” would finish the statement; thus, ellipsis]
-Abraham Lincoln

I think it would be a good idea. [ellipsis & irony]
-Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization

If I treat you kindly does it mean that I'm weak? [rhetorical question]
“Forgive Them Father,” Lauryn Hill

“Herb is the healing of a nation, alcohol is the destruction [of a nation]” [ellipsis]
Bob Marley

Homer no function beer well without. [enallage]
-Homer Simpson

“Good grief!” [oxymoron]
-Charlie Brown

Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it. [paradox: the last step is really only the first step!?... contradiction that retains meaning, tells a truth of some sort]
-Pascal

Said of a scratch: Look at this wound! [hyperbole]

Said of an amputated leg.: "It's just a flesh wound" [litotes… and, yes, it strongly resembles irony, which is not surprising: litotes is often employed to produce irony]
—Monty Python and the Holy Grail

It would be unseemly of me to speculate about Senator Obama’s ties to 60s radical Mr. Ayer, nor would it be useful to dwell, as so many others have, on the extremist beliefs of his spiritual mentor, the Reverend Wright…
[occultatio]

There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls. [prosopopoeia, animating the inanimate, namely, the moon]
-George Carlin

I tended to place my wife under a pedestal. [irony, for our purposes]
-Woody Allen

And tha riot be tha rhyme of tha unheard [enallage, if nothing else]
"Calm Like a Bomb" Rage Against the Machine

I cannot live without books. [hyperbole]
-Thomas Jefferson

Circumstances rule men and not men rule circumstances. [chiasmus, for our purposes]
Euripides

What then did you expect when you unbound the gag that had muted those black mouths? That they would chant your praises? Did you think that when those heads that our fathers had forcibly bowed down to the ground were raised again, you would find adoration in their eyes? "Black Orpheus," Jean-Paul Sartre
[rhetorical question]

you had an army of suits behind you [I’d say: metaphor for ‘army’, substituting for a given collection of agents, metonymy for ‘suits’.. as contiguity of ‘suits’, the body/corps/corpus, standing in for corporate attorneys and executives… ]
"Napoleon," Ani Difranco

We made a difference. We made the city stronger, we made the city freer, and we left her in good hands. All in all, not bad, not bad at all. [litotes]
-Ronald Reagan, Farewell Address to the Nation, January 20, 1989)

What a pity that youth must be wasted on the young. [paradox or irony? or both?]
-George Bernard Shaw

yes, it's part of a pair
there on the bow of noah's ark
the most prestigious couple
just kickin back parked
against a perfectly blue sky
on a morning beatific
in its indian summer breeze
on the day that america
fell to its knees
"Self Evident" Ani Difranco, referring to the events of September 11, 2001 [prosopopoeia]

I must be cruel only to be kind. [paradox: I must be x in order to be not x! yet it has meaning…]
-Shakespeare, Hamlet

The last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope. [irony]
Karl Marx

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. [assonance, for our purposes]
Benjamin Franklin

friendly fire [oxymoron]

"Give us this day our daily bread." [synecdoche, “bread” as species of genus “food” or “nourishment”]
-- Matthew 6:11

They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?
--Fidel Castro [rhetorical question, if nothing else]

We know the road to freedom has always been stalked by death. [prosopopoeia]
--Angela Davis

Graduate student instructor [yes, exactly…]

The Democrats have unfortunately become so enamored and beholden to Wall Street that we are not functioning to defend the economic interest of the broad base of the American people. This is an outrage. This was democracy’s Black Friday.
-Dennis Kucinich, referring to the bailout legislation [metonymy for Wall Street as well as for Black Friday]

Why would I highlight Governor Palin’s lack of foreign diplomacy experience, or her questionable knowledge of economic principles, if the true nature of my talk today is… [occultatio]

The buzzing of innumerable bees. [onomatapoeia]

Recorded Lectures

Hello,

My hosting service is working again! I've been able to upload all of the lectures to date and will be linking to them below; you should be able to stream or download them directly from here. I will also keep the xdrive account open and up to date for anyone who is accessing them there.

1. 09/02/08 - Aristotelian Rhetoric
   
2. 09/04/08 - Hecuba
   
3. 09/09/08 - Four Habits of Argumentative Writing
   
4. 09/11/08 - Kant
   
5. 09/16/08 - Pragmatic Analysis
   
6. 09/18/08 - Letter from Birmingham Jail
   
7. 09/23/08 - Rogerian Synthesis
   
8. 09/25/08 - Toulmin Schema
   
9. 09/30/08 - Declaration of Independence
   
10. 10/02/08 - Schemes and Tropes
    
11. 10/07/08 - Logical Syllogism
    

Recorded Lectures

I have found a way to upload the recordings! Thanks to a suggestion I have opened an xdrive account and am now hosting the lectures there. However, in order to access them I will need to add your email to a "share list;" so, if you're interested, I will add any email addresses that arrive at:

rhetoric10@thebookish.net

to this list.

Hopefully this time the hosting site will continue to operate!

Ernesto

Key Rogerian Ideas

Just to be sure you've got these down...

I. Carl Rogers's Principles of Communication:

1. Threat hinders communication. (When a person feels threatened by what another person is saying or writing, however correct it may be, she or he is apt to stop listening or reading in order to protect the ego and reduce anxiety.)
2. Making strong statements of opinion stimulates an audience to respond with strong opinions. Once people have expressed such opinions they are more likely to be interested in defending them than in discussing them.
3. Biased language increased threat while neutral language reduces it.
4. One reduces threat and increases the chance at communication with someone by demonstrating that one understands, or is actively striving to understand, that person's point of view.
5. One improves communication by establishing an atmosphere of trust.

II. Rogerian Rule for Negotiation:

"Each person can speak up for himself only after he has first restated the ideas and feelings of the previous speaker, and to that speaker's satisfaction."

III Typical Stages in Rogerian Synthesis (in a version of Young, Becker, and Pike 's formulation):

1. An introduction to a problem and a demonstration that the opponent's position is understood.
2. A statement of the contexts in which the opponent's position may be valid.
3. A statement of the writer's position, including the contexts in which it is valid.
4. A statement of how the opponent's position would benefit were it to adopt elements of the writer's position. If the writer can show that the positions complement each other, that each supplies what the other lacks, so much the better.

Hope that's helpful. d

Recorded Lecture for 09/09

09/09/08 - Four Habits of Argumentative Writing