OK, this is a quick one…a little discursive bit harvested from a facebook site “Kutztown University Needs to Change.” This site was created by a couple of students who decided it was better to organize than just sit around and complain.  A noble idea, no?  One might even call it active citizenship.  As of this post, that facebook group has 1,118 members.  Not bad for a week old…ahh, digital activism.

Anyway, a couple of days ago a Kutztown University administrator joined the group and has been responding pretty regularly to the students…mostly in the form of “you need to understand how the university works.”  One of his posts from earlier today is my nugget for today:

Just some suggestions. Before you go asking for changes on your main points, you need to make sure that you understand where the University is now, that you are being reasonable and rational in your approach, and that you aren’t asking for wants and desires rather than just needs. Wants and desires are the things you’d like to have if possible, needs are those things that are required out of necessity. For example, I want and desire a new Harley, but I don’t need it to get to work (and my wife won’t let me have one anyway). So, if I base my whole outlook on getting that Harley, I will be disappointed, even though I can still get to work. It is similar with this University. We aren’t Harvard or Yale. We don’t have a gigantic endowment. Our tuition and fees are low compared to Penn Sate and surrounding State public schools. Therefore, sometimes we are only going to be able to give what is needed, not what is wanted or desired.

“We are only going to be able to give what is needed, not what is wanted or desired.”  Nice move.  Notice the movement in this argument…the movement suggests that the space of needs is narrow.   And, I would argue, the administration is best positioned to determine what are needs and what are desires.  KU is positioned next to Harvard and Yale to frame “endowments” and to Penn State and “surrounding state public schools” to frame “tuition.”  Interesting.  One could wonder, justly I think, what can actually be changed?  That is, we are both NOT privileged ivy league schools.  And, “we” are GENEROUS with our tuition.

I am too tired at the moment to really work this though…but this is another piece to the argument that is being worked out locally.  One of the little pieces I am working on right now is called “Shut up and Teach!”  Perhaps, the nugget above is a piece of reasonable neoliberal discipline?  Echoes of the World Bank at moments.  More, so much more to write.

I know that not everyone out there is a Hillary fan, but I loved this moment in the debate last night. I don’t know how much of this is projecting, but this seems to be closer to who she is as a politician than those picky little pot-shots that come out of her campaign. After the debate last night, David Gergen said that there seems to be a theme emerging–not Hillary-the-one-with-experience, but Hillary-the-fighter. He seemed to be suggesting that it may be a little too late, thought. Funny thing is, that is what my wife has been saying since Hillary launched her campaign. She’s a fighter.

I’ve had a couple of email conversations with people who wonder why I’ve been a Hillary supporter. For some, it seems to run counter to my politics. After all, many people associated with “movement” politics are lining up with Obama and he has all the makings of an inspirational leader. He seems to have captured the imagination of some on the left, and certainly given hope to many young and emerging voters. I keep coming back to how my local experiences in APSCUF-KU and conditions on our campus are lining up with this presidential campaign. I put it this way to one person: “I want a fighter, not a lover.” As my wife argued last night, the pendulum has swung so far in a bad direction over the past 8 years, so much damage has been done to people in their everyday lives, that we need someone who can fight to swing it back…THEN we can start from a more even playing field at work on changing the way we work together.

I am very sympathetic to this. I our current vote of no confidence in our university president, some faculty have argued some version of “can’t we all just get along,” or “can’t we just sit down and talk with the president to resolve these issues without going for a vote of no confidence?” Again, both of these statements are reasonable, and even desirable. But they’re also ahistorical. That is, they ignore the years of sitting down and talking. They don’t consider the ways in which this administration has simply ignored problems. They don’t weigh the very real concrete impact of this administration’s policies on the quality of education and working conditions. And, again, I think I understand that position in many ways. So the “reasonable” position only makes sense when we “forget” history.

Anyway, my initial reason for posting was to share this little video from last night’s debate. Here ya go!:

Sometimes, on my 30 minute commute to work I replay words and arguments over in my head to try and get a better grasp of their contours and what they seek to do, the affects they have, etc. In my co-authored book with Rachel Riedner, one of our chapters takes a look at the role of despair in neoliberal rhetoric. We describe the role of despair in neoliberal rhetorics as follows:

What we see in the everyday working of despair, is the work of hegemony at the level of habitus—“a system of lasting, transposable dispositions which, integrating past experiences, functions at every moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions” (Bourdieu 82-3). That is, despair is not limited to one specific kind of experience within neoliberalism. Rather, it is a transposable disposition, flexible enough to contain expressions of resistance. As part of a hegemonic discourse, despair sneaks into everyday arguments about current conditions and possible alternatives (79).

This “transposable disposition,” in my mind, is part and parcel of a kind of “neoliberal commonplace”–a persistent pattern of cultural argumentation.

I first started working on questions of despair when I was first getting involved with our local union chapter and teaching an Advanced Composition course called “Global Literacies.” In both my union work and in my class I noticed a recurring pattern of moral outrage followed by some version of the statement: “there is nothing we can do.” On the one hand, this frustrated the hell out of me–especially in the union context–but, the persistence of the argument made me think that I should be thinking about what it means and what it does [see excerpt for a brief intro into how Rachel and I situated this issue].

Anyway, that set me on my current path of taking an interest in the “micronegotiations” of hegemony, so to speak. That is, the everyday arguments made in everyday contexts that rise to the level of “commonplace arguments.” You could say, I am working on a “commonplace book” that focuses on neoliberal rhetoric [if you are interested in what a commonplace book is, check out this power point presentation floating out there on the web].

As you may or may not know, one of the hot conversations on our campus right now is a vote of no confidence in our university president. At this point, the issue is part of a public discussion and we do not know whether or not such a vote will be taken. But the issue has certainly sparked a spirited discussion among faculty and in the community at large. Some of the emails that have made it into my “commonplace book.” More accurately, they have occupied my mind during my drives to campus each morning and evening.

Here’s a brief list of some of the issues I have been thinking about:

• how do individuals identify with institutions, in this case with our university
• what is considered “proper” and how codes of civility and manners overlap in discussions of “process” or “the way” an issue was handled
• public image of an institution. In particular, public images as constructed in images and PR material (reputation) and/or public images based upon actual practices
• shades of progressive–”liberal” ways of seeing
• The role of institutional authority in argumentation (thinking Robin Lakoff’s arguments in The Language War here).

Oooops…look at the time. Gotta run to a meeting!

I don’t know why I feel the need to re-post posts. “If you were stranded on a desert island, what would you bring.” But this is not a desert island. I could simply put a link to this previous post…but, no. I have to re-post.

I was actually about to begin writing about on of the recent emails circulating on campus. I want to turn my rhetorical lens there and see what happens. I guess I wanted to provide a little context? After spending so much time talking about context with my students, maybe it’s rubbing off too much! Anyway, here’s the set up for the post I may yet write today:

Well it’s 2008 and D. and I have had some time to relax and talk about our cookery and all things rhetorical. In particular, I’ve been thinking a lot about (re)connecting parts that have been alienated or at least estranged for a few years now. The connection between my research, my teaching, service and committee work, and my union/activist work. Or course these areas have never been completely separate, I have found my time at Kutztown has stretched each of these areas in somewhat different, and often competing, directions.

Put another way, in the process leading up to tenure, I agreed to serve on this committee, this committee, and that committee. My goal was to do the work that that committee needed done. I continued to work on my book (just finished! and soon to be published!) that continued questions and concerns that grew out of my time in Washington, DC and my first couple of years here. And I learned the ins and outs of our local union, worked to change our union, and am now a member of our executive committee. I can look through my eight (more?) tenure binders and see all the work I’ve done. And, I could, I guess, be proud of that work. However, there is something consistently troubling about it–I struggle to find the connecting threads. That is, I feel that in my time here I have been trying to negotiating four competing “identities,” so to speak. It seemed as though I was constantly responding to each of these areas separately.

So, I’ve had a break now and have spent time with my good ole pal Dionysus and have been shifting my gaze so to speak. The questions that I am now trying to work with are about reconnecting all aspects of what I do–instead of compartmentalizing and juggling.

What does that mean specifically? Well, with our book done, I will now be turning to the everyday “rhetorical work” I do in the union as one of my areas of research. I want to consider, analyze, and learn from these struggles as part of a rhetoric of advocacy. A new course I am just about ready to present to my department is called “Rhetoric, Democracy, Advocacy”–again, connected. My next two conference papers–on at CCCC’s in New Orleans and another at RSA in Seattle–will analyze the struggles around the ELC and our contract negotiations. I plan on turning both of these into publications.

Why do it this way? Well, it seems to me that the reason I got into this whole thing–academe, that is–was the same reason I’ve been an activist, a unionist, and an agitator. I believe in democracy and the struggle to equality, justice, and what is right. I believe, as Frederick Douglass put it: “power cedes nothing without a demand.” I teach writing because I believe that writing and literacy are key to developing critical democratic citizens and advocates. I work to change the university because I believe colleges and universities are one of the few places left that hold out the promise of critical inquiry, democratic exchange, and citizen education.

So, I hope to use this space, too, as a space to think through things…to, draft my thoughts and to build a written trace of my inquiries.

One of the things that got me to write today was something I’ve been thinking about over the past several days as I drive to and from work. Our union is introducing a discussion about of a vote of no confidence in Kutztown University President Cevallos. And, as you can imagine, this has caused a stir. Once again I am all too aware of patterns of arguments. Arguments that you become quite familiar with if you do any kind of oppositional, activist work. I began thinking of them as “commonplace arguments,” that can be addressed as a “class of argument.” So, I’ll do some of that here. And I particularly like the following way of thinking about “commonplaces” in rhetorical traditions:

Commonplaces:

“Commonplaces are small nuggets of language that carry a lot of weight for a particular group or in society at large, at a given time. They can be slogans, bumper stickers, catch-phrases, or simply pieces of language that we use all of the time, but which are more complicated than we realize, perhaps because they are so very common. Because they can be evoked in the same way as a slogan or an idea, objects such as ‘the flag,’ and documents such as ‘The Constitution’ (especially ‘The First Amendment’ and ‘The Second Amendment’) also function as commonplaces in rhetoric.”

“Commonplaces: An Introduction,”

Professor John Hilgart, English Department, Rhodes College
and Professor Van E. Hillard, First-Year Writing Program, Duke University

Talk to you soon!