Even though I've been a rhetoric major for three years now, I still can't really conceptualize anything I do as rhetorical in the way that the authors we read talk about rhetoric as a kind of formula for convincing people to do things. When I write, I don't think about specific technique as much as I think about the actual experience of reading a text; I use strategies that I remember from my own reading, strategies that worked on me, but I rarely adapt the ones I learn about in rhetoric classes. I still cannot for the life of me remember what an enthymeme is and why or whether it's distinct from a syllogism. I have secretly never been able to tell the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning; I know one involves a logical jump and one, I guess, doesn't, but the problem with describing an argument that way is that you can make that statement mean anything you want. This is the core of rhetoric for me -- I can only take actual situations (rhetorical situations?) and work with them. I'm bad with structured activities, like weekly blogs or the Aristotelian exercises Dr. Davis assigned us when I took one of my very first rhetoric classes, 321: Foundations, with her as a sophomore. I'm good with prompts in the form of questions, because I can answer the question, but if someone gives me a sheet of paper and says "write a vituperation" I stare at it for fifteen minutes. I have to make up a fake problem in my head to make it work.
I don't know what Damasio or any of the authors we read this semester would have to say about that. It kind of seems like I can't write if I don't feel anything about the subject, but I don't actually experience much emotion when I consider a prompt unless it's something that seems designed deliberately to annoy, like when my high school biology professors assigned half the class to defend evolution and half the class (including me) to defend creationism. Then, I was angry because I felt passionate about creationism being unscientific (IT WAS A BIOLOGY CLASS. BIOLOGY.) but also because it was going to be a really impossible paper to write; there aren't a lot of scientific proofs for creationism. The stuff we get assigned in here, on the other hand, even though I talk about feminism almost nonstop, I don't feel a lot about -- not consciously.
It was that way when I was writing my Celina Jaitley PETA visual analysis. I didn't think I was feeling much about the subject, but I kept watching my tone go up and up and my paper get longer and longer. I didn't feel angry; it just kind of felt like I was having fun.
Can an affect be intense without the emotion registering consciously? Or are emotions that change us, even if we're not conscious of them, not affects at all -- because we experience the emotion, even if we don't know about it? But I still didn't feel angry when I was writing about Celina Jaitley. The closest I felt was the pleasantness of getting on a roll with writing, the skin-jumpy feeling of nervous energy.
The worse assignments are the one where I can't get myself into that space of pleasantness that I associate with writing rapidly. My enargeia felt like pulling teeth. All the blogs I've been writing feel like pulling teeth. There's no problem to solve involved in "respond to this reading" unless I felt something (organically?) about the reading before I started writing. With academic writing, I usually don't. The enargeia had to come from thin air. There was no problem to solve.
The visual analysis, on the other hand, was a subject that I knew intellectually should make me angry; within the frame of my feminism, there was a problem to solve. Did it seem that way because I felt something about it without knowing it? Is it just a matter of bridging the gap between a situation and a rhetorical situation -- a matter of having or creating feeling about something, even if I don't know it's happening? The biggest thing I've gotten out of my rhetoric major is, I guess, practice distorting information and practice getting myself worked up about something without being too crazy to write.
I really enjoyed reading this blogpost. I share similar feelings, being a rhetoric major and all. I thought this quote was really interesting:
ReplyDelete"I don't think about specific technique as much as I think about the actual experience of reading a text; I use strategies that I remember from my own reading, strategies that worked on me, but I rarely adapt the ones I learn about in rhetoric classes."
I can't remember what an enthymeme is either, but it really doesn't matter. Considering your ability to reflect on your own writing process so eloquently, it seems like you've really grasped what it is to be a rhetoric major. I became a rhetoric major because I like to write, and I know that my writing has improved drastically since I added rhetoric, but I also think that the rhetoric program doesn't allow for much creativity. It probably depends on the class, but I oftentimes feel restricted in rhetoric classes. I've actually learned a lot more about my own writing in my American studies and history classes than in rhetoric classes.
Sometimes, my writing isn't so great; it comes in waves. However, I never got the idea of the enargeia. It was, as you said, like pulling teeth. I haven't had to write like that in college until this class, and I never got the hang of it. I tend to think about emotions a lot more eloquently when I don't have to write down my ideas.
Charlotte, this is a great post. It's nice that someone has actually reflected on the class and how this has/hasn't shaped your idea or feelings about rhetoric.
ReplyDeleteAs for the uncertainty about what to do with rhetoric, I think that is probably a mutual feeling among many of us. I'm sure all of us have been asked, after telling someone we are a rhetoric and writing major, "Oh! Cool!...Well....so...wait, what do you do with a rhetoric and writing degree?"
"My enargeia felt like pulling teeth. All the blogs I've been writing feel like pulling teeth."
Haha, this is great. I experienced the same. I dreaded posting blogs. Most of the time, I'd open a word document, unsure of what to write, then 5 pages later I'd have to remind myself of what I was doing...got so off topic. Took forever to edit those damn things. Also, I have noticed that while I would go over readings before class, it was really in class that helped me (mainly because Professor Davis would explain them in a much more understandable way). During her lectures, I found myself googling random stuff about the authors, the readings, and then branching off into random things to look up that were somehow related. But when I had to start doing the blogs...my thoughts had passed. Which then meant rereading the texts and becoming confused again. I have a hard time forcing out a response. If it doesn't naturally MAKE me respond, then I probably don't have much of a response to offer.
You asked, "Can an affect be intense without the emotion registering consciously?" I think so. I think subconsciously, things stir us up, but emotionally, not so much. But when they do stir us up emotionally, that's when we really feel like we really care about it, because we actually feel it. Perhaps this was the entire idea of getting us to do blog posts - maybe we really have been somehow affected by the readings but on a level we don't notice, and doing blog posts was a way of attempting to force us to try to notice it and turn that affect into some emotionally charged response...who knows.