Changing the subject

Abstract

Conversations come to moments when the discussion lags, the subject plays itself out, and people pause to wonder what is to be said next. Discussions of rhetoric in civic terms may be at such a moment. The rhetoric that helped establish composition as a scholarly discipline in English departments invoked classical ideals to claim a public mission for teaching more than five paragraph themes. In communications departments, the "new rhetoric" renewed interest in public discourse by expanding studies to varied forms of symbolic action and deepening theories of critical interpretation. When critics began speaking as postmoderns, the civic dimensions of the new rhetoric became identified with the all too modern ideal of individuals speaking reasonably for the common good. Rhetoric was discussed in terms of a general "rhetoricality" dispersed throughout discourse, with the subject of rhetoric itself criticized for being mired in instrumental mentalities infused with republican nostalgia for ancient virtues (see Bender and Wellbery 1990). Rhetoricians often have been dismissed as mechanics with moral pretensions, but postmodernism raises basic questions about our subject of study and the subjectivities it instills (see Faigley 1992). These questions are particularly pressing for those of us in English departments, which are beginning to study and teach forms of literacy that were placed beyond the field of study when it was limited to a modern conception of literature. These trends challenge us to rearticulate what rhetoric is about and who it is for. A civic response to these challenges can help us make productive use of the changes that are redefining literacy and literacy studies. © 2003 State University of New York. All rights reserved.