ISMLL Warren 245: The Race Game

Upon reading this essay and all its research, its quotes, its jargon and its stance on the racial issue in literary theory, all I have say is duh. What I mean by duh is that, to me, it seems obvious what he is speaking of: the idea of what role race plays in literary theory and the emphasis it should and does take. He quotes Du Bois, he quotes men and women of African American descent, but he never really comes out and argues his premise: “I seek to account for and critique the appeal of race to literary critics over the past two decades and to suggest reasons we ought to modify or resist aspects of that appeal” (Warren 245). Instead, he lists, chronologically, how the current version of the debate started with Henry Louis Gates Jr.

What he hints at, but never actually says, is that the current debate over race has to do with extremities. What I mean by this is that at one point the prevailing thought in academia was that race is a fact of biology and since facts are facts, there was no use in arguing about it. But once that view changed and race was seen as a “social construction,” the pendulum swung the other way and academia began to focus solely on the race element (Warren 245). So the pendulum swing never has centered and continues to yo-yo as the realm of academia has given race cart blanche in the realm of study. I think by negating this aspect Warren places the race debacle in a lack of social context: the pendulum swing only occurred after African American scholarship was deemed viable: i.e. the journal Modernism/Modernity first two published volumes were race themed.

Warren also does not account for how his argument fits or is a link to this debacle. As he is arguing for the modification of race in literary criticism, he is playing into the same mess he is critiquing. This irony is surprisingly left out of his argument. His argument uses page after page of evidence to support his call to modify the current state of race in literary criticism yet he fails to see how it plays right back into that same. Does his critique apply to him? Why Doesn’t he account for it? No. And so the debate continues.

TSIS. Ting together a paper

Fantastically simple and obvious as it sounds, it amazes me that writing so that there is such a thing as interconnectedness in my writing would be a given. But I keep forgetting that this book is an elementary overview of the how to’s and the why’s of a cogent argument.

I think that most of us in this class have been taught or learned these tricks from trial and error. The thing is I never a formal declaration in front me showing the step by step process which would make my writing better. It’s nice to put a proverbial face on the things I’ve been doing. I never thought about how I was accomplishing a well thought out argument, if it was that to begin with, it was just that I did it.

TSIS "So what? Who Cares?"

Graff and Birkenstein border on redundancy chapter seven’s “who cares” and the “so what” factor. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that every chapter not only has these elements somewhere imbedded within them, but they devote a whole chapter to the subject. But why does this? It can’t be a random thing.

I’ve been trying to figure out why and it occurred to me that without “who cares” and “so what” my academic papers would be, at best, verbose, esoteric, glorified newspaper articles that one would find in an encyclopedia. It seems that the premises found in chapter seven is what gives academic writing the girth and meaning akin to poetry and fiction. The difference being, I believe, that the function of poetry and fiction is to say something about the human condition, say something about life, to relay a story, allowing the reader, largely, to come up with how that is accomplished. While academic writing is more transparent and is largely grounded in how and why the analytical elements of fiction and poetry work, how they apply to this what-ever thing I’m applying it too. This is the only way I could make sense of why they keep skirting these premises.

Yes/No/Okay, But

Honestly, this chapter made me laugh out loud like a Christopher Moore book. “Yes/No/Okay, But” attached a definition, a “thing,” I do in my writing. See, I have this cloud that always surrounds my writing, something I got from one of my first English classes: Always write like your reader doesn’t know. Taking this to heart, I have a tendency to over-explain everything in my paper which doesn’t allow the reader to participate. This makes the paper long-winded, pompous, and patronizing which overshadows the thesis of the work. My style of writing comes off like a self-important, congratulatory exercise meant to bolster my self confidence at the expense of the reader. When in reality it is nothing more than an attempt to stay true an adage of a former instructor.
With the templates and the tools they lay out, I can see clear, easy ways to show how I agree or disagree with the established premise, how to construct my arguments better and ultimately use my writing to persuade, not to use it to didactically condescend.

Advantages and Disadvantages to Browsing 46-98

Although Mann presents a few premises to exacerbate his point, I can't help but wonder what his motives are in doing so. It seems to me that he is a researcher from the pre-computer days when tactile, physical searching through book stacks was not only the best way, but the only way. Although admitting the computer seraches are quicker and can be more effective, the advantage of "discovery by serendipity or recognition" is far more valuable than the efficiency of the computer search (49). What he's done here is to the advantage of of the computer search, the way he does not prefer, and turned into an advantage for his favored means of gathering information.

Having statements like"when you search the library catalog, you are not searching the full texts of the actual books; you are searching only catalog records of the books" it seems as though Mann is making an argument for the tactile in that a computer will only give out information it has been programed into it (48). Obviously this does not allow for serendipitous spontaneity he has based his premise on.

Jarratt's Metacognition ISMLL 73-139

My first real exposure to rhetoric came from my English 306 class, Expository Writing. In that class we were presented with two books, Paul Johnson’s A History of the American People and Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. What we look at was how both books, contemporaries of each other, told of the same people, the same historical events, of the American people. The difference being in how each book relates the story. Since they were both “right” in the sense that accuracy was not in question, it became a quest to figure out why they chose to relate their stories in such a way. What I learned is that by emphasizing one aspect, and down playing another, the story of American people is told a certain way: Johnson’s story emphasizing the tradition party line while Zinn’s approach shows a more Marxist, Colonialist view. So in my beginnings with rhetoric it was imperative to discover the “what” and the “why’s” of the argument, but also the how; the “so what” factor.

Because my brain works so differently—mostly laboring laterally—after reading Susan C. Jarratt’s Rhetoric, the notion hit me to look at her article for the rhetoric she is employing to describe rhetoric. Right from the beginning she establishes that “a standard definition [of] rhetoric concerns itself with the ways human beings use speech to influence one another’s attitudes and behavior” (Jarratt 75). In an article that uses rhetoric to describe rhetoric must be, at best, metacognitive. Essentially, it is using itself to describe a concept it is employing. This convoluted argument takes what is seemingly a very dry subject matter, something that initially seems not to have a “so what” element, and places it within article itself; essentially allowing the argument to look upon itself for the very rhetorical elements it is describing. Very cool.

TheySay/I Say 1-38 The "So What" Factor

One of the biggest problems plaguing my writing throughout my adademic career is not the topics, but about the "So What Factor." I define the "So What Factor," or swf, as the small yet essential element that asnwers, 'why should anyone care about this?' It is the reason why I wrote the paper, made the argument; it is the impetus. The swf makes the writing into a piece rhetoric rather than a listing of why's and whynot's, do's and don'ts, and especially not to show your dexterity with vocabulary. Without swf, what my writing attains is simply an eruditive exercise. Simply put, swf gives my writing a point. Not only does this "keep the audience engaged," but it gives me a point of reference: something I can keep returning to throughout the paper.

The way the Graff and Birkenstein's layout of the swf in the first paragraph of the first chapter calls to mind that this is self-refering piece: the give instructions of how to do it and compliment it by doing it themselves. By pointing out the foibles of not doing using the swf, they succussfully prove the point. The whole construction and use gives further credence and weight to the swf argument.