We are in the midst of hiring, and it’s a lot of work. It seems like all my time has evaporated between this and trying to make some very new approaches to teaching (which aren’t satisfying). The approaches to teaching I’m trying are based on a deep distrust of my intuitive ways of approaching the classroom. At least I’m gaining some confidence in pedagogy this backward-ass way. An example of this is that I suspected students would be more animated and engaged if they had quizzes. The students last semester in my one terrible class who did nothing, seemed to be unmoored in a very literal way, unable to propel themselves through the class in any way, literal playthings of the waves (the other), spinning out. The imposition of quizzes and other such devices I thought to be “lazy teaching” have stimulated my new class, but they come with a heavy dose of indignation – but beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to student motivation, can they? More to come as the experiments continue. The best classes I’ve had this semester are the ones where I only have a topic in mind, haven’t prepped that much, and roll with the comments. These seem to be moving the needle, against what I feel should be happening logically.

Recent conversations have me thinking about one of my old projects – defining the anti-institutional, anti-establishment professor. The first question is: Can it be done? I think of Gramsci’s writings about institutional intellectuals and their limits. They cannot turn on the institutions that gave them the legitimacy (the confidence) to offer systemic (dialectical) critique. Recent random and unconnected conversations about rhetoric have led me to think this is possible.

First is the conversation with an old student about the function of rhetoric within contemporary Marxist ideas. In this conversation, rhetoric seemed to have no grounding (which I think is appropriate; it has no method, no substance [See Burke, Grammar of Motives])other than what we posit for it. That positing requires a kind of strange confidence or perhaps the abandonment of these institutional or establishment norms of what a scholarly field must have. The issue was the discussion of class, which is difficult for many people to accept. Still, perhaps that is because we try to argue for class as an extant thing, not the result of the perspective of dialectical analysis.

The second was offhand remarks in a meeting indicating the Dean expressed the opinion that the students “do not know what rhetoric is.” I agree, for I, too do not know what it is. This doesn’t mean that I cannot teach it, extol its virtues, use it for analytical purposes, investigate it, use it as a means of investigation, ad nauseum. This is another way that the norms of the institution/establishment creep into a place they should not be. These norms are convenient for the institution; they are a massive limit on what we can do/say/become by interacting with rhetoric, which remains ephemeral. The practice of defining rhetoric (or argument) is a great one not because we get it right but because we have to defend it and show that our definition is a good one, even though the objections are evergreen – one would always have to face up to the commitments one is making without intent when putting forward a definition of rhetoric or argument. This is rhetoric.

Likewise, we can take the position (unpopular as it is) that rhetoric and argument are perspectives that pop discourse into various configurations with consequences, rules, appropriate moves, etc. If you call a discourse an argument, it must meet specific obligations. If you call it a discussion, those obligations might evaporate. So, the next level is to claim the rhetorical perspective allows one to take the discourse of any field and blur it in such a way. For example, psychology is a perspective, and biology is a perspective, they can both engage with certain phenomena, but in the end, we get to determine which perspective is the one we want for that particular phenomenon at that particular time and context.

A third: I received a major revision decision on a piece I wrote quite a while ago about debating, where a reviewer suggested that I take a more “rhetorical perspective” in the piece. This is striking to me as I thought I was doing that. This suggests that one can never rhetoric enough. That there is always more space to do rhetoric. But what does this reader want me to do? What is it to “rhetoric more” in an essay? Perhaps it means to forward the arbitrary connections made essential? Maybe it means emphasizing the unreal/very real nature of perspective (That which we call debate becomes solid)? Perhaps it means to show that judgment is always open and alive, only closed when rhetoric (always open and alive) convinces us that it’s over. I’m not quite sure, but I haven’t re-read my essay yet since I just got the decision a day ago.

I’m wondering now whether or not this commitment – the anti-institutional/establishment professor is my solution to the panic that often takes over many rhetoric professors and scholars, so much so that they try to be “something other” – they claim to be political scholars, film scholars, they go get law degrees, they seek out political and other identities by the bucketful simply because they cannot accept the paradox of substance. There’s so much panic among rhetoricians to become other, reminding me of Gadamer’s warning that the humanities need to stop desperately clinging to social science’s values and assessment tools. We should embrace non-understanding, but I wonder if that is possible from an anti-institutional perspective. I think that the relationship must be explored next. Desperate grasping for a solid identity is related to being unmoored. Sailing requires replacing the idea of being on solid grounding with the pitch and roll of the sea.

For now, I’m quite happy to have the same conversation again and again with communication students: What is rhetoric? What is argumentation? These questions are evergreen. Perhaps I shouldn’t say that anymore. Maybe the questions are escape routes from the truth constituted by the dialectical relationship between study and the university. It’s constituting, like any system of reason, more than it should, and if it remains unexamined, we lose more than we gain. Now that I’m at the end of this short writing, I’m starting to think there might be a better term or identity for this issue, but it might take a while to generate or find it. Nautical metaphors? Back to cooking? Nothing seems to be satisfactory right now, but isn’t that my argument in this writing?