Same Obsessed Me

This is perhaps the most influential book on my thinking, which I picked up as an undergraduate from the Texas A&M bookstore. That copy is not this copy. That copy is full of highlighter, pencil marks, and several colors of pen. I let a student borrow it for the winter break. This one is one I found for sale at the Syracuse University library, when they had a shelf of books for 1 or 2 dollars right near the main entryway. I wonder if that shelf is still there.

The New Rhetoric is dismissed out of hand by contemporary rhetoricians mostly because it feels old. It’s slow. It has a lot of antiquated examples. It’s not really something that we are used to reading in my field. Most of the time, attention is on the latest political speech or Netflix special – and definitely not on a book that maps out a better way to think about arguing in the social spheres of life.

I wonder though if the book could be redone. Or reupholstered. Or needs a new frame. Not sure what the metaphor is here – the book does from time to time feel like it needs a flush and fill.

Although the aspects of life where we argue are well chosen: Politics, Philosophy, and Literature, there’s a real difficulty in getting the points they want you to get simply because we are not up on what’s circulating among French-speakers in terms of books in the 1950s. Part of me feels the examples are drawn about 50-50 from what’s being read now and what any good French culture school student would have been exposed to in high school or if they had attended university for a bit.

This doesn’t help us with the book – the examples are a bit too far out there. So I’ve always wondered if it could be re-written with some contemporary examples. I’ve also wondered if it could use a new translation. I don’t read French so I’m not sure how good the translation is (or how necessary a new one would be).

Or someone could write the New New Rhetoric, and just update all the things that Chaim and Lucie are saying. There’s a lot in the book that has remained untouched by most American rhetoric scholars and would be more investigated if it was made a bit more accessible.

So here are my ideas with the book:

An Example Companion Guide: This would read like David Harvey’s great books on reading Capital, something you could take a look at to help you understand what’s being said in contemporary terms in each section of the book.

A more modern English rendering: Take the translation we have now and update it to contemporary American usage of English. This book is written with the French “reading public” in mind and the translation seems a bit musty at times. Might be better to reword the English and note that it’s not really a high-fidelity translation.

A graphic novel: This is mostly just an excuse for me to buy manga-making software  or Visual Novel maker or something ridiculous. But it might not be a bad idea to try to create something graphic about this book to highlight some of the most important parts of their theory. It’s being done with very oversimplistic and harmful renderings of fallacies and evidence and things like that, so maybe this would be a good counter? Definitely outside of my wheelhouse and comfort zone, but isn’t that what audience adaptation is?

A “How to Debate” Guide: Aimed at undergraduates, a book about how to construct and deploy arguments without getting frustrated or upset would be a good contribution across the university. This might be the easiest of the projects here.

I’m slowly drafting a lecture series for YouTube about The New Rhetoric so hopefully I can start filming that in the new year. As for now I’ll keep reading and taking notes.