Is Kastely Advocating Peer Review?

As Kastely imparts Antigone’s narrative in his article he describes Creon one who, “fears and resists argument, because argument entails surrender of his personal authority and control,” (225). I think this lost line encapsulates many people’s, many student’s, reticence towards any form of argument, Kastely’s very much included. I think many people—fictional or not—regard argument as a battle where there is a chance of winning or losing. By avoiding argument, one can never truly lose under this philosophy. Kastely’s model of argument occludes the notion of winning or losing and urges a form of argumentation where both parties are open and accepting of the other’s criticism of their argument, if not directly seeking out this criticism. From a writing center perspective, I have many tutees whose thesis statements, or main arguments, are weak or flawed. Though they might not always request it directly, when they come in for appointments with me, they’re actually asking me to engage in Kastely’s form of argument—as opposed to trying to win some kind of argument battle—and provide them with criticism of their argument so that it can be made stronger. By playing Devil’s Advocate I can help strengthen an argument. This is what I see as the primary purpose of Kastely’s model for argument—to take it through a kind of peer review process so that it can be improved. This is easier when I have no real stake in the argument as a tutor, but I believe this is the gist of Kastely’s model.

Maybe I just have peer review on the brain since it’s the topic of my exploratory paper, but I’ll roll with it. This idea of argumentative improvement through critical peer review reminds me of an example from my research; a student writes an essay of the benefits of affirmative action and the peer reviewer criticizes the crux of the argument, saying that he fundamentally disagrees with it because as a Caucasian male, he’s witnessed affirmative action take away jobs from his family. This criticism has nothing to do with rhetoric of the first student’s argument, but rather with the basis of the argument itself. The example then details how this first student takes this criticism and applies it to his argument to make it stronger. What really happens is that he alters his argument to incorporate the peer reviewer’s concerns and offers his own criticism to his counter-argument, asking how many minorities have lost jobs to Caucasian males prior to affirmative action. In this example both parties involved in the argument are invested in it, and don’t want to yield their ground, yet this model for peer review forces them into a discourse over it. I don’t know how much stronger this criticism through discourse necessarily makes the first student’s argument, but from discourse, understanding may be achieved, which is what I think Kastley’s intent is with this model. Ultimately, this is the example that Kastely sees applicable to Creon and Antigone’s situation. Although I don’t know if either pair—the student and peer reviewer, or Creon and Antigone—would be rational enough to attain understanding from such heated discourse.

an argument for argument

     Kastely articulates a strong argument for argument. I especially appreciate his acknowledgement that students might see an argumentative paper as a cynical, futile exercise, a “well-formed essay that… has little if any impact on anybody,” (239). They could write a grandiose and passionate paper about why the drinking age should be lowered for an audience that is unreceptive and not willing to engage in an open-minded argument. Worse yet, students could see such as exercises as personally disempowering in the context of our political and corporate state.

            As the election is one month away, I find myself considering Kastely’s argument framework in terms of the presidential debates. The lack of actual argument in public discussions has dismayed me for a while; I wonder if there will be any real engagement of ideas in the presidental debates coming up on Wednesday. I rather doubt it; my cynical side leans toward what Kastley fears: “the production of arguments is a charade, no one actually attends then, and at best they are a mask for how real power operates – those who have power pretty much do what they want.” Do Americans want reasoned arguments where both sides approach issues with open minds? Perhaps college students are more open to this approach than someone who has been voting for decades; still, I feel like most people look to political arguments for reaffirmation of their views, not as chances to broaden them. A national One Read of Antigone, anyone?

White Noise is a great book and everyone should read it!

Like Melanie, I was baffled that Antigone might be used to teach freshmen composition. I imagine the discussions surrounding that text and argumentation would be something out of my nightmares: initial silence followed by restive shuffling then outright rebellion. And while I do like bringing in examples from literature to "problematize" argumentation (like Jack and Heinrich's arguments in White Noise, which are hilarious), I don't think slapping Antigone down on their desks and expecting a room full of non-humanities majors to discuss the work would is realistic. More than likely, this type of process would repulse students further to writing, and that would be a failure to the class. I'm wondering if there are other texts that might interest students in seeing forms of argument (probably not White Noise, either). 

Also, maybe this is showing my hand, but I'm a tyro when it comes to formal argumentation, and I'm wondering if we could be pointed toward resources to investigate rhetorical forms and moves. I feel like each Thursday, Nathan says something incredibly relevant about writing and interacting with students, but my background in rhetoric is lacking and I would love to know more about what he is saying without bugging the man. Perhaps I'm now the student who is struggling with forms since I don't have a sufficient background in rhetoric. Help?

Out of Sirc's Box (and Back into the Regular Old Box)

Sirc's box, when taken as a proposition intended to imagine a different kind of writing assignment, is most successful whenever he emerges from the theoretical and talks directly about in-class practical application.  Reading this, I was clouded by the theory and the art-talk; like Melanie, it took too long for him to apply it to the classroom, and I wanted more.  The journal-keeping and spring break documenting seem like interesting ideas, so why not talk about how students actually respond to them in the classroom?  How engaged are they?  How much does this improve the processes of their thought and their ability to assemble the "found objects" Sirc so promotes?

The next time Sirc surfaces into the practical world is a good deal more troublesome than his laundry list of possible box-inspired assignments.  The email from Sirc's student, Greg White, was disquieting.  Are we to throw out concepts of good writing entirely in favor of good ideas?  Even if, as we've previously read, college has become the new remedial writing grounds, does that mean that we can pass the baton to the students themselves instead of back to the high schools or keeping it for ourselves?  "Here you go," we say, holding out the Chicago Manual of Style to Greg White.  "You want to be hireable--you want to be able to write a single coherent email to a coworker, or else a cover letter for a potential employer--and you take care of this yourself.  You want to be an artist, cut up the pages into something pretty."

Sirc early on poses the question of whether he wants to prepare students for college or for life; according to his framing, he inevitably settles on life.  However, I argue that Sirc is preparing students, not for real life, but for Sirc's idea of college as a safe haven, as a maternity ward of ideas.  If a student came into the Writing Center having taken every writing class Sirc had ever offered, then asked me to help her with a statement of purpose for a graduate school or a scholarship, I would be lost entirely.  Of course there is an importance in being able to draw connections between text and object, to be able to assemble the like and the unlike into something coherent and refined.  Writing in itself contains all of that process of assemblance of found objects; the artistic essayists have been composing that way since the time of Thoreau, patching in allusion and quote and poem and pun and mortaring them together in solid, meaningful prose.  Why sacrifice grammar entirely on the altar of creativity?  Why is understandability the first thing to go when we start trying to think nontraditionally?  (I was about to say "out of the box," but that hardly seems apropos.)  To what extent is Sirc actually empowering Greg White for "real life," if Greg White will one day have a college degree but be functionally unable to compose a sentence?

Stasis and Premonitions

I think what Kastely accomplishes in this article is reconsider formal argumentation, but he ultimately comes to is the idea of stasis, only this time we can take it not a useful tool but as vital part of democratic citizenship.

Building off of Johnstone, Kastely claims that,

<<The point of philosophical argument, then, is not to seek agreement but to engage in criticism that allows one to see more clearly and more critically the understanding to which he or she has been led. It is an ongoing examination of commitments and the consequences of those commitments. Philosophical argument discloses what separates us intellectually.>>

The goal of argument should not be to intimidate your opponent with your conviction, but rather to enter a bravely into a vulnerable space where your mind and the minds of many are turning. It is not to replicate banal platitudes about abortion which you find convincing but to engage in a real conversation, in which the rhetors are at stasis. Publicized political discourse, i.e. the real world example, does not often have these moments.

I perhaps do not have much bad to say about this article because I am not as smart as you guys and some of it went over my head.

Just before I read Box-Logic my mind was wondering. I was thinking about doing research for a class I like better than this one. In Antebellum Novel, we are about to start working on a collaborative project, and I was envisioning a timeline that spans the length of the authors life that we are writing a profile on. We have class in 315 which has a long table but it is just me, Devin, Eric, and Dr. Okker--lots of open space.






So I got to thinking how I could have years jotted down on scraps of paper arching across the length of the table with pictures, letters, and annotations all inching up, down, and sidewise to mate up with their spot on the timeline. I was rather happy with this idea, but then I thought about how messy it would be. And I thought we would need a box to store it all in.

Low and behold some smart ass Dadaist thought of it first. It was a moment of creativity and I am not even sure I actually want to do it, but somehow Sirc channeled me sometimes before I realized we had two readings instead of one and told me to think like collector and not essayists. (I actually think this is a weird antagonism because as I was riding my bike the other day I was thinking about how one of the tropes of the essay is actually a trope of romance--the catalog. The catalog, the parade of pilgrims and their accoutrement (or for the materialist just the accoutrement) is an essay way to make associative, spatial, and temporal connections. I like Sirc suggestions (even if his art school rhetoric is grating to my ears) but I am afraid he does not imagine the essay as an art form, but instead kicks it under the bus with its inbred five-paragraph cousin.

I have been researching portfolios as a method of assessment and, of course, the portfolio is used in a wide array of field from art to fashion to business--a series better represented as a Venn diagram. Using portfolios to grade can be rather business like, meaning they can be a pain in the ass. Teacher and student making sure you have all your ducks in a row, every t crossed and every i dot dot dotted. Or it can be glamorous, representing only your very best work. Or it can be like the art box containing: drafts and proofs, notes and queries, photos and diagrams.

A post in between sneezes

I'm not sure if it's the head cold clouding up my brain or just that the readings did not strike as much as past ones, but I had a lot of trouble coming up with something interesting to say in response (and that's not to say that what will follow is actually interesting).  I was not a fan of the Kastely article for a number of reasons, the foremost of which was that I could not see myself use his method for practical application in the writing classroom.  I do believe that using literature as a tool for students to understand theory could be useful, but I would think twice before using Antigone as a text for a freshman writing class.  I could not help but think of my own first experience with Antigone, which was at the freshman level, though in a Development of Western Civilization class and not a writing class.  While we did not use the text to explore argument and the lack of it in the play, I can remember a general lackluster response to the text (other than the obvious topic of the female protagonist), and we were honors kids.  What I mean to say here, is that I would be mighty afraid to use a Greek tragedy to talk about writing - while conversation could certainly flourish (plenty of crazy things happen in those plays, what with guys killing their fathers and marrying their mothers), I find it hard to see it going in the direction that Kastely pushes it.  I can just see my biggest fear coming true - not getting one relevant student response during the whole class period, and me rambling on about what I wanted them to say.

My issue with Box-Logic, on the other hand, was that Sirc waited so long to get to the implementation of this theory in the writing classroom, and that when he finally got there, I wanted more from him.  While he did give me some good alternative ideas for writing assignments (like the photo journal) that I would like to try out, I wanted more of a description of how he has implemented "box-logic" in his classroom.  The excerpt from his student Greg's e-mail was a telling example of the success of this alternative approach to get students to write and think, and I just wanted more.  That's it.  More.  His approach also concerned me in that English 1000 is also medium through which students learn to write papers for the rest of their college careers - responses like Greg's would most likely not be acceptable as papers or even informal responses in other classes, so what kind of preparation does this give students, other than getting them comfortable with writing and expressing themselves?  Is it enough to just do that?

Snowflakes in a Blizzard

Oh boy. Well, Kastely’s article is published so it’s out there. Apparently it has much to say: Rationality=Bad, Individualism=Not Good (Bad). After reading much material from College English I’m very unconfident in the journal as a whole. Every article is an exercise in uncritical theory. I can demonstrate this fairly easy, but before doing so I’d also like to point out the dangers of this kind of rhetoric, coming from a pre-Bush era (1999).

It’s obvious that rational argumentation and formalism have proved ineffective in practice. George Lakoff, for instance, wrote about how Liberal (and Leftist) rhetoric has lost the battle because it still assumes rhetoric and actual facts are as effective as hype and soundbytes. And for the most part the anti-rationalistic urges embodied in so much 80s-90’s Theory were co-opted by Republicans and Right-Wing organizations (the New Right of the 1990’s). For example, consider the interventions at the debates about Health-Care in 2009. These were the same tactics used by the New Left in the 1960’s (e.g. Westboro Baptists using the same techniques of protest as 1960s activists).

So this anti-Rationalistic stance might be good for effective argument, sure. I don’t know if it is so good for ethics, nor very interesting to teach students. Form is supposed to be empty, but obviously empty formalism has its problems. Yet must the teacher fill the forms in on behalf of the student? Isn’t this the student’s purpose? The purpose of non USSR education? If not then education becomes indoctrination. Even if the indoctrination is tolerance and generally good it’s still indoctrination. I can’t accept it on any grounds. As to not being interesting, well, it’s pretty old hat by now to consider that rationality is often a cover for irrational urges, urges that harness empty forms in order to persuade. This is psychoanalysis itself, Greek Tragedy itself. Yes language is desire and hence rhetorical. (Duh.)

But if language is desire where does the critique of “expressivist” approaches to writing come in? Where is individual need and subjectivity to fit in these schemes? Well, for Kastely (et al) need is a “social construction” right? To me this is actually a rationalization in itself of the failure to be adequately rational, a failure of scholarship itself. This is all just bad faith and it worries me people get paid to theorize this kind of thing. Ironically, the whole chorus of “difference” is really the same everywhere it turns up. It is the same person in the form of so many 90’s Theory-ists bred on anti-science, anti-nature, and anti-individualism.  

 

Here’s the kicker:

Kastely critiques Toulmin for using “real world” problems by using Greek Tragedy. This is tragic in itself (if not comedic and absurd). A part of me likes this though (for its literary preference). But why is he critiquing a book from 1958? To my knowledge much rhetoric changed in the 1970s after Barthes and the same old difference types emerged on the scene.  Is it really an effective rhetorical move to critique a guy for referring to the real-world by referencing a fiction from a 500 B.C.? Maybe so, but effective doesn’t mean “right.”