The New York Sophist

Everyone is, deep at their core, what they express. Actions speak louder than words. These ideas are very old, and very real, in the way we size up the value of others. Institutions and people are evaluated, positioned, and judged based on expression. What we say, what we communicate, is seen as a direct line to identity. Imagine speech as the hole one looks through to see a diorama within what appeared to be just a simple box.

This idea is very old but who knows how old it is. Aristotle suggested in writing that the testimony of a tortured slave was admissible with the same credibility as a public oath in his Rhetoric. The suggestion being that a body under duress cannot edit and halt the truth of the soul that comes pouring out. There are some in the American CIA who still hold this view. Rene Descartes subverted speech with thought as the location of being, but did not provide a verification mechanism other than speech. To think is to be, but what if our speech indicates that we do not think, or we think incorrectly, or worse yet – that we are wrong about something? What then?

Daily we are all humbly reminded that when we speak, we are making mistakes. When we open our mouths, out come noises that sometimes resemble our ideas, sometimes they don’t. And often we find ourselves wishing we were at a loss for words. The only solution we have for this in our “thought above speech,” “ontology is determined by expression” world is to rearticulate or provide another articulation. Since we have subverted speech’s role in our lives, as the constitution of ourselves and others, we do not have adequate tools to repair situations when speech comes out with all its living force.

The Aaron Schlossberg controversy is a recent demonstration of the poverty of our ability to render accounting for the power of speech. Schlossberg’s rage at the number of Spanish speaking employees of a Manhattan deli was captured on video where he accuses them of living off of his tax dollars, that they are undocumented workers, and that he will call Immigration to have them removed from his country.

His expression was read by everyone as his identity. This is who he is. There can be no mistake; his speech is preserved forever on video.

As news spread and people began to respond – they hosted mariachi bands outside of his office, taco trucks, and someone has now even mailed white powder to his office – we can see that the Cartesian mode of identity is alive and well, thought not withstanding. Schlossberg doesn’t think, ergo he should not exist.

Schlossberg, after his lease was cancelled at his office building (since he does not exist) posted an apology on Twitter.

The apology – not to be confused with the rhetorical category of apologia – is simply that, not a defense of what he did. Or is it? The only discourse available to him in the world of unconvertable ideological souls is to deny, deny, deny. He does it three times: He denies being the person in the video in a very direct and literal sense: “is not the person I am.” Secondly he directly communicates his nature: “I am not racist.” Finally he does it a third time, praising the diversity immigrants bring as one of the reasons he moved to New York. Maybe it is apologia? He does take a careful, if hidden position behind civility: “While people should be able to express themselves freely, they should do so calmly and respectfully.” So maybe he believes he pays for those sandwich shop workers to be here? He believes that they should not speak Spanish at work? It’s unclear. All we know is that he has said that he is not racist. We must compare performances to determine the real soul. And under duress, the real soul is always revealed.

We lack the tools to speak about speech as going beyond ourselves. Since speech is merely a tool of expression of truth, we can follow the footprints to the truth of the soul and determine if the soul is good or corrupt. If we see someone emotionally out of control, we believe, for some reason that this is when the real person comes out.

We do not consider the fact that we are all subjects of the power of speech. We have no language for the role speech plays in interpretation and knowledge. All Schlossberg can say is that he is not racist. Yet his speech was clearly xenophobic and racist. If Schlossberg is right, who was speaking? Was it anger? Frustration? Something else? Was speech speaking Aaron Schlossberg? Did he become a conduit for a tectonic, ancient discourse about race, identity, status, nation-state violence, etc.? These are not excuses for him, but inroads for us to try to understand how our beliefs and how ideology is spoken through us by powers well beyond us that, with every utterance, constitute us.

Kenneth Burke discusses the difference between the comic and tragic frames as the difference between death and understanding. The comic frame allows us to separate soul from speech so we can identify with the subject speaking as mistaken. This assumption of universal humility is missing from our national discourse. Imagine if Schlossberg said, “I was simply mistaken” – This defense is impossible. Instead he says the video captured a stranger, someone who is not him. It’s tragic. He is the opposite of this doppleganger who hurt people. He is not the person who hurt, but he apologizes for it. It’s tragic frame all over, and he has to die. If not professionally or attitudinally, perhaps biologically, as the white powder sent to his office attests. The comic frame offers a chance for self-inventory of our own relationship to ideology, which is much more difficult than simply scapegoating the evildoer. Another more difficult comic framing is to take responsibility for a city and a world that allows for someone to speak this way, or to be spoken by such an ideology. The power of speech to rend people’s reality is always an utterance away.

The other path is the Buddhist sense of language – necessary yet fundamentally lacking. We have to speak, and speech fails. Sometimes though speech is necessary although terrible. Where does Schlossberg’s anger come from? We cannot accept, from the Buddhist perspective, that the sandwich makers made him angry. Anger comes from within, not from the outside. We blame the outside, but we are the ones who cook up anger. From this attitude we can generate a feeling of sympathy for such a sad and angry man. What sort of empty, horrible life does Schlossberg have that would allow him to speak, or for speech to use him, in this way? What lonliness and sadness makes him feel people making sandwiches are worthy of such derision? It is incomprehensible in its dark implications.

What Schlossberg did was horrible, no question. But the poverty we have in being able to talk about the role speech has in creating and constituting pain, suffering, horrors, hate, and a whole lot more we normally term “reality” is even more horrifying. If we see speech as only a way to glimpse the quality of a soul, we have no way to account for the operation of speech on our identities and beliefs in severe ways. Democracy cannot function if speech is merely a thumbprint of a being that cannot be altered, cannot be changed, cannot be reasoned with – all that’s left for us to do is elimination, symbolic or otherwise. We must believe that speech is not an indicator of one’s ontic state, but of one’s particular constitution in that moment – and address that person before us in a way that they can, and will, change. This is the root of persuasion, and Schlossberg’s horrible beliefs are not a part of his DNA. He was convinced of them somehow, and it is up to us to interrogate and figure out how belief can be altered. This expression hurt more than immigrants; the whole situation and response should give us pause in our assumption that we live in a democracy where people believe that others, and themselves, can or even need to be persuaded.   

Interesting book that takes some sacred terms in composition theory (audience, objectivity, voice, etc) and critiques them from the lens of whether or not teaching is in line with composition theory and pedagogical approaches to writing. After admitting several times in the course of the text a well accepted idea that pedagogy lags behind theory about 20 to 30 years, the author critiques contemporary teaching for being too dependent on objectivity, authorial intent, liberal construction of audiences, and thin conceptions of proof.

Although the critique is well made, I think it would be great to see more of the book written like Chapter 6 which really had me going. It might be my own biases in terms of what I’m interested in, but this chapter on audience was great. I think that what set it apart was specific ideas for very radical assignments and classroom activities. I would have liked to see more of that throughout the book.

I like the idea of upsetting these God-terms, either tumping them over or literally making people who think they are good teachers upset. But the critique really doesn’t go as far as it needs to and also avoids some necessary complexity. For example, the chapter on objectivity is very good and very right about its criticism of fact-reliance in pedagogy, which honestly impacts the entire education system. But there’s little discussion of the importance of facts for issues such as holocaust denial, conspiracy theory (moon landing and 9/11 sort of stuff) as well as other strange ideas that often appear in American student writing. Making the critique of fact addiction more fuzzy with an analysis of the false-flag conspiracy regarding Sandy Hook, for example, might have really opened up the conversation between text and reader about what is possible in the teaching of writing today (as well as what is needed).

In the end the book was enjoyable to read, it just didn’t rock me the way I hoped it would. The critique is obvious and agreeable, the Audience chapter is amazing, and the rest of it seems, well, right – but not radically upsetting.

View all my reviews

Interesting book that takes some sacred terms in composition theory (audience, objectivity, voice, etc) and critiques them from the lens of whether or not teaching is in line with composition theory and pedagogical approaches to writing. After admitting several times in the course of the text a well accepted idea that pedagogy lags behind theory about 20 to 30 years, the author critiques contemporary teaching for being too dependent on objectivity, authorial intent, liberal construction of audiences, and thin conceptions of proof.

Although the critique is well made, I think it would be great to see more of the book written like Chapter 6 which really had me going. It might be my own biases in terms of what I’m interested in, but this chapter on audience was great. I think that what set it apart was specific ideas for very radical assignments and classroom activities. I would have liked to see more of that throughout the book.

I like the idea of upsetting these God-terms, either tumping them over or literally making people who think they are good teachers upset. But the critique really doesn’t go as far as it needs to and also avoids some necessary complexity. For example, the chapter on objectivity is very good and very right about its criticism of fact-reliance in pedagogy, which honestly impacts the entire education system. But there’s little discussion of the importance of facts for issues such as holocaust denial, conspiracy theory (moon landing and 9/11 sort of stuff) as well as other strange ideas that often appear in American student writing. Making the critique of fact addiction more fuzzy with an analysis of the false-flag conspiracy regarding Sandy Hook, for example, might have really opened up the conversation between text and reader about what is possible in the teaching of writing today (as well as what is needed).

In the end the book was enjoyable to read, it just didn’t rock me the way I hoped it would. The critique is obvious and agreeable, the Audience chapter is amazing, and the rest of it seems, well, right – but not radically upsetting.

View all my reviews

The University of Southern California is a very, very pretty place. 

Aside from the inevitable technical issues on the video call – why can’t any university just make it easy to do this? Everywhere I go there is a camera that isn’t connected, microphones and speakers that are not connected, logins and other security measures that only keep out and frustrate legitimate users of the systems, and on and on and on. Not to mention that faculty and others at the university think it’s amusing that computer illiteracy is rampant and epidemic across the academy. Anyway, we’ll try again today and see if it works. It’s so frustrating that there aren’t just simple computer setups at universities dedicated to video conferencing. 

The conversation yesterday was pretty good. I presented a talk (I am just now realizing I forgot to record it) that I should post on Academia.edu. I argued two lines of thought about civic debate: First, that we should start anew in considering what civic debate is when we engineer it for student debaters. To do so, we should start with the Roman commonplace questions: Is it? What is it? And finally, What kind is it? These are questions for the generation of argument: Existence, definition, and quality. If you skip one, you open yourself up to trouble later on.  

The second thing was a discussion of Robert Newman’s passing, which really marks a moment in American debate history. Newman was (and is) a titanic figure in American debate education. He was called a subversive by his own university in the 1950s for hosting debates on the question of the United States government formally recognizing China. Serious stuff.  Anyway, I reflect on his brand of subversion and what it can teach us about what civic debate ought to look like. 

 You can read my draft of the comments here. 

We talked about a number of civic events with different partners that might be possible based on our connections. I’m more of an attendee rather than a planner at these events simply because my Univeristy, as you probably know by now, has zero interest in anything outside of itself. It’s a total “walls up” institution where rooms cannot be reserved for any purpose during final exams, and the idea of taking undergraduates places for their benefit is seen as a problem. It’s impossible to reserve rooms for events or host things on campus – you are treated by the staff as a huge waste of time, annoying, and a problem. The University claims to be interested in students and student transformation, but in the end they are really only interested in getting paid on time, and making sure that students go to class. Some transformation.  

I’m happy to take students to events though which is why I attend this. And I’m even happier to discuss pedagogy of debating. I just have to deal with feelings of jealousy when i hear about all the great stuff that other people are doing simply because their university functions normally. As professors, they can reserve rooms when needed for academic purposes. They can develop partnerships. When I bring a complete overseas program to my university’s study abroad office they say, “good luck developing that, here are the forms to fill out.” Nobody wants to do any work. They want to collect a check and share pictures of their children on the university email. They want their summers off; they consider tenure a retirement plan. Pathetic.

I’m actually interested in teaching although I’m terrible at it right now. The conference is really thought-provoking, and makes me think about the classroom a lot. The classroom’s status as a transformative space is undervalued. People, even thoughtful high-ranking university folks, have written the classroom off as a static space that has an absolute set of practices. Where’s the imagination? 

Today’s discussion will focus a lot more on best practices and ways of talking about and justifying civic debate as more than a firm “not that” directed at other types of debating. Then this afternoon I have nothing but time to kill as I wait for my midnight flight back to New York. 

A lot happened yesterday that involved good food and wine and a boat. I didn’t have the time last night (because I went immediately to sleep) to download and have a look at the videos I took of the boat but maybe I’ll do it tonight after the conference. 

Had an amazing dinner yesterday at a place called Sol in Newport Beach. Amazing food. There was a good conversation we had (it was happening on and off on the boat as well) about assessment.  

A big question to think about in assessment is how to be fair about evaluating student efforts. One of the difficult things to evaluate in rhetoric courses anyway, is how well students do with uncertainty or ambiguity. If we directly craft moments of ambiguity to help them deal with ambiguity, is that good? If we provide an ambiguous criteria for evaluation, is that helpful? There is an argument that one is often evaluated and judged on ambiguous criteria.  

I believe the rhetorical response here is to teach students how to cut through ambiguity and make a descriptive argument as to what should be judged and how. But by a descriptive argument, I mean they do not advocate for a change in an open and clear way. Instead, they place their advocacy as something that exists and is unrecognized. They point out that there’s a way to judge and evaluate right in front of us that is the normal and natural way to do it.  

Most students would have trouble with this since their school experience is 98% discipline and 2% creativity and ingenium. When we ask them to obey a rubric, even an ambiguous one, the impulse is to try to follow it to the best of their ability then prepare appeal-style arguments when the grade is bad. Trying one’s best is often a reason to increase a grade in the contemporary college environment.  

If one wanted to teach responses and handling of ambiguity, one would want to do it in cooperation with the students, not holding it over them or being someone in charge or something. We often forget that one of the roles of a teacher is to cooperate and help students. Thinking of the classroom as a site of encounter for everyone there – including the professor – helps us focus on this idea of cooperation and help as a central element in teaching practice. Too often professors believe their role is guard of some vault full of points (imagine Scrooge McDuck’s money bin) and they have to make sure that nobody steals any points or gets points they are not worthy of having. 

Instead of this metaphor the cooperation metaphor might increase performance in the course as the professor leads the class through different ways of approaching ambiguity and wrangling it. There is no correct answer but merely good approaches. There’s not much of a question of grading process or product here – what product would you grade? The process is the only thing on offer. This also addresses an old question of whether you grade performances or understanding in a course. What about those students who are brilliant public speakers yet understand none of the principles of the course? What about those who are terrible at speaking but understand the principles very clearly? This final question is the ultimate ambiguity that professors must wrangle as they attempt to create a fair and meaningful grading system for their course. 

In debate, we side with performance 100% of the time. There’s nothing else. But how would debate alter if we decided to judge debates on process rather than performance? This might be a question or idea that the civic debate conference I’m attending for the next two days could perhaps one day entertain.