More Keynote Woes
The death of conferences really must be just around the corner. The time, expense, and concentrated levels of disappointment are reaching all-time highs, even for conferences that are considered the “good ones” like ISSA, RSA, and such.
One of the reasons is quality control. I saw a paper and presentation by a Chinese Ph.D. student that had more interesting depth and comparative work in it than the day 2 keynote, which seemed to want to cover the same subject – cultural differences in argumentation theory. Quality control is really something that conferences should take seriously as conference travel money evaporates. I’d estimate we are only a couple of years away from conference presentation not mattering for tenure as departments re-evaluate their tenure standards. And with the breadth and ease of digital publishing – such as YouTube and Substack, not to mention Vimeo and other professional video sites, why not just have a conference that way? You eliminate all the people who want to travel for free somewhere and give a lukewarm paper they thought about at the airport bar, and you only get those who are interested in the topic of your talk. But this might be a different post – I recognize a lot of the trouble with conferences are the same trouble that debate tourmaents have and it would be interesting to make a post about that.
Anyway, back to ISSA, which was now about a month ago, give or take, and I’ve been mulling over my feelings about the day 2 keynote. Spoiler alert: The day 2 keynote was so disappointing I skipped day 3.
I am a big fan of Christopher Tindale’s work. I assign his book Rhetorical Argumentation in pretty much every Argumentation course I’ve ever taught. I love his discussion of the Universal Audience in several places (including that book, but I’d argue it’s not his best treatment of the topic). So his keynote – it’s scattered, undergraduate introductory course vibes, and his dismissal of rhetoric wholesale – really can’t be summed up with the word “dissapointing.”
About halfway through the keynote, Tindale declared that “Nobody cares about rhetoric.” He certainly doesn’t – his lecture was the most disorganized and disjointed presentation I’ve seen, really tanking what could have been a transformative and educational topic. If anyone, he should care about rhetoric!
The talk was backward – structurally so – it should have started with the Chang Zu stuff about the “fish debate.” and then gone from there into his interesting recent work on the linguistic restrictions of the word that translates to “argument” in many languages. This really would have been “The Secret Lives of Arguments” or whatever the title specifically was. Instead, we started linearly, and at a level suitable for an undergraduate reading list on how argumentation has been thought about by various theorists. It was a review nobody in the room needed. What happened to the Universal Audience? Perhaps this was the easy mistake to make that when you are addressing a specific audience you are addressing the universal audience, but those specifics are only universal concerns to the vanguard. Still, why would Argument (1) and Argument (2) (O’Keefe) be something that we need to spend 5 or 6 minutes on?
The point of the lecture was a good one – that there are linguistic and cultural restrictions on the term “argument” in its various linguistic appearances that cannot be overcome with even the best philosophical tools. But then to strangely dismiss rhetoric wholesale, and then end with a powerful, potentially revolutionary question: Is Chang Zhu making an argument in a way that we, as an organization, or as scholars, could say something good/interesting/valuable about? – was really just upsetting to me. I wonder if I was the only one thinking that way.
Rhetoric’s value – which no other field can claim in my view – is to be able to help you take what is interesting, valuable, and mind-blowing to you and communicate that feeling, that state, that perspective to others – many others – who you don’t know very well or even at all and get them to appreciate or even take on your perspective or values. Dismissing it can have rhetorical value, or get a laugh, when you do it directly in a room full of philosophers – however dismissing it in how you articulate your argument, point, or reasons why you find something necessary, valuable, or meaningful is extremely dangerous. You’ve lost that chance to reach those people forever. Even if you do a good job later, that moment is gone.
Perhaps it’s time to retire the keynote, or only offer it to promising younger scholars. Everyone flocks to the well-known scholar panels anyway. If organizations like ISSA are really serious about reaching new, vibrant audiences – such as their really good initiative to have a conference in China as soon as possible, then perhaps innovating the keynote should be on the list too. Many conferences don’t even have them anymore. NCA just has the evening Arnold lecture, which isn’t so much a keynote as it is a showcase of the best scholars addressing pressing questions for the field. Maybe that is one thing NCA does right?