The New York Sophist

For those of you keeping track of my whereabouts, I am enjoying my first morning in Rabat in 2017. I have had a lot of mornings in Rabat over the years, but each trip comes with its own set of adjustments.

Reflecting on adjustment and how frustrated I get when things don’t go the way I would like them to aka my own personal preference. Adjustment is a hard thing to do. I thought about that as I got used to another Moroccan shower – they are always quite the challenge. This one though required intervention from the home owner, who understood immediately why I was having trouble and turned some knobs and hit a button on a box affixed to an outside hallway. Now I feel like a clean human. 

I’m contrasting this experience with the reported experience of students who debated at John Jay this past weekend. Of course, a woman was called “too aggressive” by a judge (not a debate type person mind you, but a real life professor sort of person I’m guessing) and there were difficulties in adjusting argument to ears and non-responsive teams. Admittedly, we were engaging more with the Davis book than most centrist-thinkers would be willing to do, but I did feel we had some good strategies to account for that. The question I am left with is how much adjustment becomes harmful? At what point does a slight adjustment become a slight?

Rhetoricians more than sophists have pondered this for quite a while – how much adaptation does one do before one does harm to one’s argument or one’s positionality? Are there some ideas the audience has that are not adaptable? Are there some we should reject? 

Of course there are – there are many things audiences carry around with them that we would want to intervene in as speakers and persuaders. How much can be done before one loses track or sight of the main point, or the reason the audience came to hear you in the first place? Of course, these concerns are eliminated from debate competition – we are debating debate, and judging debate quality outside of the context. There is no motive for why we showed up other than to debate. You can imagine the weirdness much easier if you were to picture an angry crowd: “We are here to protest, now give us an issue!”

The slight adjustment is to the context and lay of the land/audience. The adjustment slight happens when the judge tries to evaluate the debate as debate, without a larger conversation rooting the identities and roles of the participants (including observers). Judges feel they are not commenting on a part of a larger conversation, but the inate abilities of the performers to convince, sans context and motive, given there were someone in the room who was willing to be convinced.

I think the slight occurs when speakers feel they have to substantially alter their positionality to a point where they don’t recognize it in order to accommodate the audience. Recognizing what one is doing when persuading seems to me to be the root of the art. If you have to violate your positionality in the terms of recognition to get something across to an audience it might be doing it the wrong way, or something you wouldn’t do because it was uncomfortable, or it could be a fallacy in the Perelman/Olbrects-Tyteca sense. 

I feel that audiences, as opposed to some individual judge, avoid the issues of the slight. Judges, especially those who are not trained in rhetorical theory, feel they have to “judge” which is make pronouncements on what was good and bad. For them, the experience is a total experience. They comment on everything that led them to think one way or another. There is no larger audience filtering or serving as a buffer for their thoughts in the discussion of what happened. The things they say to the speakers might often be understood as requests to slight oneself, to “be someone else and then I would have voted for you.” This obviously isn’t helpful for students or judges. Often times judges appeal to ideological assumptions to justify their decisions that stem from racist or sexist assumptions (female “aggression” African-American “angry speeches”, etc). It doesn’t really check the boxes on the event being educational, i.e. how can we do this better? Opposed to: How can I win more debates?

The presence of an audience, the more I think about it and the more adjusted slights that I experience with my students, seems like a solution. The ancients always assumed an audience, or a judge who imagined himself as part of a larger community conversation on standards. Contemporary rhetorical thought, at least in criticism, imagines a realistically-sized audience for judgement. Everyone imagines him or herself as a part of a larger conversation about what works. But a single judge told that he or she is judging a competition, and given a charge to decide who is better at debating too easily reads the charge as “who is better” and provides commentary that may not be helpful if it is interpreted as, “If only you were someone else. Then you’d win.”

For those of you keeping track of my whereabouts, I am enjoying my first morning in Rabat in 2017. I have had a lot of mornings in Rabat over the years, but each trip comes with its own set of adjustments.

Reflecting on adjustment and how frustrated I get when things don’t go the way I would like them to aka my own personal preference. Adjustment is a hard thing to do. I thought about that as I got used to another Moroccan shower – they are always quite the challenge. This one though required intervention from the home owner, who understood immediately why I was having trouble and turned some knobs and hit a button on a box affixed to an outside hallway. Now I feel like a clean human. 

I’m contrasting this experience with the reported experience of students who debated at John Jay this past weekend. Of course, a woman was called “too aggressive” by a judge (not a debate type person mind you, but a real life professor sort of person I’m guessing) and there were difficulties in adjusting argument to ears and non-responsive teams. Admittedly, we were engaging more with the Davis book than most centrist-thinkers would be willing to do, but I did feel we had some good strategies to account for that. The question I am left with is how much adjustment becomes harmful? At what point does a slight adjustment become a slight?

Rhetoricians more than sophists have pondered this for quite a while – how much adaptation does one do before one does harm to one’s argument or one’s positionality? Are there some ideas the audience has that are not adaptable? Are there some we should reject? 

Of course there are – there are many things audiences carry around with them that we would want to intervene in as speakers and persuaders. How much can be done before one loses track or sight of the main point, or the reason the audience came to hear you in the first place? Of course, these concerns are eliminated from debate competition – we are debating debate, and judging debate quality outside of the context. There is no motive for why we showed up other than to debate. You can imagine the weirdness much easier if you were to picture an angry crowd: “We are here to protest, now give us an issue!”

The slight adjustment is to the context and lay of the land/audience. The adjustment slight happens when the judge tries to evaluate the debate as debate, without a larger conversation rooting the identities and roles of the participants (including observers). Judges feel they are not commenting on a part of a larger conversation, but the inate abilities of the performers to convince, sans context and motive, given there were someone in the room who was willing to be convinced.

I think the slight occurs when speakers feel they have to substantially alter their positionality to a point where they don’t recognize it in order to accommodate the audience. Recognizing what one is doing when persuading seems to me to be the root of the art. If you have to violate your positionality in the terms of recognition to get something across to an audience it might be doing it the wrong way, or something you wouldn’t do because it was uncomfortable, or it could be a fallacy in the Perelman/Olbrects-Tyteca sense. 

I feel that audiences, as opposed to some individual judge, avoid the issues of the slight. Judges, especially those who are not trained in rhetorical theory, feel they have to “judge” which is make pronouncements on what was good and bad. For them, the experience is a total experience. They comment on everything that led them to think one way or another. There is no larger audience filtering or serving as a buffer for their thoughts in the discussion of what happened. The things they say to the speakers might often be understood as requests to slight oneself, to “be someone else and then I would have voted for you.” This obviously isn’t helpful for students or judges. Often times judges appeal to ideological assumptions to justify their decisions that stem from racist or sexist assumptions (female “aggression” African-American “angry speeches”, etc). It doesn’t really check the boxes on the event being educational, i.e. how can we do this better? Opposed to: How can I win more debates?

The presence of an audience, the more I think about it and the more adjusted slights that I experience with my students, seems like a solution. The ancients always assumed an audience, or a judge who imagined himself as part of a larger community conversation on standards. Contemporary rhetorical thought, at least in criticism, imagines a realistically-sized audience for judgement. Everyone imagines him or herself as a part of a larger conversation about what works. But a single judge told that he or she is judging a competition, and given a charge to decide who is better at debating too easily reads the charge as “who is better” and provides commentary that may not be helpful if it is interpreted as, “If only you were someone else. Then you’d win.”

Had a great day today but nothing really exceptional happened. Taught and talked with colleagues. An alum came by and we caught up. Worked on arguments and thought of myself as very lucky to have a lot of great people involved in our debate program. It’s good to watch others teach and speak about something you’ve been in since you remember thinking. I remember that moment of realization so clearly when I was fourteen – the moment of, “oh, I can move other peoples’ minds around by disagreement.” I don’t remember how I used to think before I started to think about debate. I also remember reading and writing notes about every page of the NTC CX Debate Handbook a classic text that probably doesn’t teach anything I do today about debating but at the time I considered it a really special book. 

Departing to Morocco tomorrow to teach debate again in that great country. I am reaching a point where I feel like it’s time to pass the teaching of this art over to someone else, but the economic realities of the university make this impossible. I have no desire to see the program disappear, and a lot of desire to alter it in big ways. It’s just a lot of labor at first before everything becomes normalized. I look forward to some good conversations with friends and some good food while there. I am also very excited to watch my students teach. I always get something good out of the experience.

Speaking of labor, I have to decide what books to bring. I really should only bring 2 although I’m sure I could read three while there. I don’t plan to do much sightseeing as I’ve seen everything a bunch of times. So maybe 3 books. The trouble is the weight – gotta keep it light. I just recieved John McPhee’s new book about writing and I want to continue my trajectory on historiography with Shlomo Sand’s Twilight of History. I also need to start getting ready for the spring term, so I need to read Mitchell Duneier’s new book Ghetto to see if it’s a good read for the senior seminar on Rhetorics of Epistemology (definitely assigning Sidewalk again) as well as a book about the limits of consciousness as told by octopus researchers. I also need to re-read Ranciere’s book on Disagreement since I plan to talk about disagreement as a major theme at my upcoming talk for Twitch.tv.  I want to pull some of the better quotes and my notes on my previous reads don’t really have what I want to include. Maybe I should bring post-its. I saw a colleague’s note-taking method involved a lot of them. I called it “mobile marginalia” and I really like the idea. I am sure I have a few lurking around here somewhere.

So you can see the trouble I’m in. I think that I should bring McPhee, Ranciere, and maybe Duneier. That should do it. I hope I can stick to the plan and not throw my back out or something with a ridiculous set of books. Throwing in some of the copies of London Review of Books that I haven’t read yet should be good. Gotta start on that list of books that I’m going to have the university pick up for me for being a part of the mid-career writing group. Also I often forget I have a really nice Kindle reading device with hundreds of 2 dollar books on it. So I should stuff that in an open sleeve of the bag as well. 

Speaking of which, the new backpack rocked it today. Feeling much better about carrying stuff around in Rabat with it (and on campus it worked like a dream). It has a lot of pockets and I’m happy about that. More to come in Saturday’s blog about it after I race through CDG with it to catch a connecting flight.

It’s smelled like rain all day but it hasn’t rained yet. Just got another whiff of it through my open window. Feels great and smells great but I wonder where the rain is. Been thinking about my book project that is now several years old and nowhere close to the midpoint. Smells good, feels good – where’s the rain? Surprisingly did some jotting down of stuff that should go in the conclusion today. Was feeling inspired by the arguments, style, and content of a book I just finished, Regimes of History by Francois Hartog. In the first 3/4 of the book it’s like watching someone swing an intellectual Claymore around – he’s taking on some big weapons and making some big moves, and it looks really hard, and it’s graceful, and it’s all about the smallest stuff that really makes it work. Near the end he is making some almost pedagogical claims about historiography but never goes there – he stays clear of the prescriptive and sticks to the descriptive and a bit of the normative. It was somewhat inspiring, so I wrote a couple of paragraphs just to see what would come out. I think the book is ready to come out fully now, as I am finally in a position where I feel like I have the confidence to write it. Unlike other projects, I hope this one follows me around for a while and people talk about it. It’s going to be about debate, but debaters are not going to like it. I wonder who will like it? I might go for a Howard Stern approach and seek to be most popular and most read by people who despise me and what I stand for. Might work. Works well in academia accidentally, so I have a bit of support there.

Tomorrow, being a travel day, I have a clear calendar: A trip to the pharmacy for some last-minute items and snacks, then packing, listening to music, and then off to the airport around 3:30 in the afternoon. I have some documents to scan for the new LLC I founded and some notes and powerpoints to make. The scans may come, they may not. And planes are made for notes, wine, and the curious sense of being over a mile above the sea and not really thinking about it that much. Looking forward to getting underway.

I even bought a new bag and took a photo of it next to an old computer.

Cannot believe that there’s only one more full day before I embark for another trip to Morocco. Debate has given me many things since I started following its path and teachings, but the thing that never fails to surprise me is intense familiarity with countries most people don’t think about much at all. Top of the list? Slovenia and Morocco. 

It’s been a while since I’ve been to Slovenia, but I’m sure I’ll be returning there soon. Not sure when, but I can feel it. Morocco is a pretty steady trip these days. We started going in 2011 (I think) but it could have been prior to that. The trip is a peer-teaching learning lab. I think that’s a good title for it. I bring some of my debating students and they teach the Moroccan students about speaking and advocating. We spend about 4 – 5 days doing this during the day, and in the afternoons/evenings we visit some historical/touristy sites of interest. It’s a great time.

The real reason that I’m sitting here sort of shocked that I have to pack tomorrow night (more likely Friday morning as I’d rather read and write Thursday after class) is that I had a pretty great experience today at the mid-career writing learning community meeting. The short summary is: There’s a lot to think about here, I haven’t been doing this very well, and oh, my poor students. Just a bit more critical thinking about writing on my part would have gone a very long way. But that’s not just a dig against myself. It’s actually a very hopeful realization. If I can meet with some other bright folks and talk about writing and writing assessment for a few hours and get a dynamite critique of my own practices along with some ideas for my spring course, just imagine how good it’s going to be by December. On top of that, just imagine how much easier it’s going to be for me to help colleagues out with ideas in random brainstorming course-design sessions (which happen a lot more than you’d think). 

After our departmental assessment meeting I was feeling kinda blue. I was thinking that writing was perhaps the wrong way to go for assessing our majors. I thought that the problems our students had with writing obfuscated our ability to assess the things we were trying to look for in their work. I suggested oral assessment as an alternative. I still think there’s a lot of room to consider orality and oral work in our courses – we do very little of it even in the rhetoric department – but it’s not an either/or with writing. It’s a false choice. Writing helps in the preparation of the mind and the person for what’s to come. I think my biggest challenge is to move away from defaulting to writing as “final product” in my teaching. I need a new phrase for it, a new metaphor. Something will come. I would quote Sirc here but I have been doing that a lot lately, plus there’s a pretty good critique of him I’m supposed to read sitting right here on my desk. 

The meeting today gave me something I haven’t felt in a while on campus and that is hope for the future and the present. I think it’s pretty easy to feel alone in your work as a professor. I also didn’t realize how my view of the university is somewhat clouded by the comments I hear from students all the time. Students, since they are people, tend to talk about negative experiences more than good ones. If a professor is fantastic, that’s expected – nothing to talk about. If they are super bad – everyone tells the story multiple times. There’s a sort of false weight of negativity in my mind because I’m hearing the same story many times. That saturation is interpreted as multiple occasions but it might not be. I need a more critical ear when i’m overhearing/eavesdropping/talking with my students.

That isn’t to say there aren’t people who are problematic teaching a lot of things they shouldn’t! But it’s really good to be in a room with other professors who are humble, asking questions, realizing they don’t have it right and might never get it right, and like the idea of knowledge being a cloudy process rather than having fixed boundaries to be filled. Quite a refreshing and really uplifting day. And all we talked about was writing assignments, assessment, and what our students get right. I was pretty sad when it was over and didn’t really want it to end. But I do have a video that sort of shows the moment of the day where I was feeling very hopeful, and the whole campus seemed hopeful as well. I haven’t felt that good in a while doing something on campus. Here it is courtesy of my amazing Snapchat Specs:

I suppose the thing that made me feel the best was that there are a good number of people who spend a lot of time thinking about how to best design experiences for students. I don’t interact with these people as much as I’d like to, and I usually hear the dire stories from students or overhear the negative comments in the hallways. Perhaps it’s on me which to focus on and which to make part of the story that I tell myself about my role at the university. It felt like a pretty lonely spot for the past couple of years until today. There are so few places that students perceive are places that they can demonstrate their value, have good experiences, and improve themselves, perhaps focusing on a better metaphor and vision for writing will increase those spaces. 

Tomorrow starts the Learning Community on mid-career undergraduate writing on campus and I’m pretty eager to hear what everyone has to say. I oddly feel pretty solid about my own ideas and points of view, which is unusual for me. I usually like to have a few questions to share but don’t feel as strongly about my positions as I do tonight.

We did three readings for tomorrow’s session: Melzer’s Assignments Across the Curriculum, Chapter 2, Mya Poe’s essay “Re-framing Race in Teaching Writing Across the Curriculum” and a study by Anderson, et. al. “How Writing Contributes to Learning.” 

It’s all really great stuff and it worked together in a number of ways on my mind. 

My first thought is: I am not nearly as clear as I could be that the students can achieve what it is that I would like them to do in their writing. I am pretty clear, I think, in what the assignment is. I’m also pretty clear that they are going to have to do a lot of work to get there. But I’m never clear that they, as hard workers, can achieve what appears to be a high standard. This is going to take some work. I also spent a lot of time on Monday reflecting on what a shit teacher I am after I attended an assessment meeting where it was pretty clear that I am bad at teaching actual, measurable, meaningful college courses as we went through my students’ writing. I’ve written about what a shoddy job I did in that class, so no surprise. Plenty to think about there. This week is a week of reflecting on whether or not the university is the place for me. At least these readings gave me some handholds to try to scale this question. 

Secondly, the sad lack of creative, expressive, generative writing where students are creating and making something is pointed out, and how valuable it is for students to do that. Once again, the emphasis on skill-rhetoric, mixed with the harmful “Can I grade this?” assignment-framing question yields a bunch of work that is useless, unstimulating, and beneath our students’ level. I feel really bad reading this stuff as I really thought a lot of my assignments were creative. But it seems there’s a lot of work to do here as well. Again, another path up the question is revealed and I have some good handholds to help get a grip on what has to be done. 

The thing that struck me the most is the silly ban on phones and laptops that most faculty enforce here at St. John’s while simultaneously lamenting the ability of students to make convincing, sustained arguments. If you change the audience you get a very different picture. Most of our students are politically engaged via hip hop music that is available online and discussed in forums on the internet, something Melzer identifies as possibly prolific in courses, but difficult to measure as it is never graded or treated as a very serious part of the course. This is where our students have a lot of resources for crafting good argument, style, and rhetorical savvy for particular audiences. Listening to a beat or engaging with a beat while composing/inventing something to say or write might help them activate resources on argument craft that they didn’t know they had. I think hip hop is an overlooked resource for helping students understand that they already get how to make sustained, convincing arguments and how to evaluate them very well considering context and audience – the rhetorical situation.

The only hold up on this is the problem of teacher-as-examiner. Nobody that I know is going to want to give up this role. The desire for power – particularly disciplinary power- is everywhere among the faculty and the joy of exercising it over the students is a delightful privilege for a lot of folks who call themselves “teachers.” I really think this requires a lot of strategic effort to convince a number of teachers that the students can craft good arguments in this weird(ing) way and evaluate them, but you won’t be able to get it. Perhaps if the students were able to craft a textbook like project that supplemented the writing guide (or whatever the teacher assigns) this might help bridge the gap. It’s a longshot though. I think the suggestion of including hip hop to show students they already get composition of argument just breaks apart on this barrier.

We didn’t read Geoffrey Sirc, but I love his idea that Jackson Pollock transformed his relationship to art by placing the canvas on the floor. Art happened somewhere else when that perspective shift occurred. How can we put our assignments on the floor, or instruct our students to put Microsoft Word’s horrific white abyss, cursorial eye flashing at us on the floor to say to it, “You will record what is crafted here; you are not the craft.” This is the goal of improving college writing, to figure out how to teach students the confidence to speak to their laptops this way and to start composing like I am certain they can.