Martin Kimathi Kariithi
Dr. Mahoney
ENG 502
November 18, 2009
Berlin, James. A. 2003. Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring College English Studies. West Lafayette, Indiana. Parlor Press. $34.25.
It seems that the waters of the big sea of English Studies have never been calm. There have always been storms and turbulence as the trend swings from shore to shore in an effort to find calm. Experts are always coming up with new and varying ideas of what it is and what it ought to be as well as how it ought to be taught. It is not a wonder therefore to find some current arguments burrowing from earlier arguments, as well as expert perspectives rhyming together. In Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Refiguring College English Studies, Berlin successfully situates rhetoric as the epicenter of English studies, shows how it is connected to both the social, economic and political affairs of the day, and most importantly how best teachers, as agents of change in the society, can productively teach – and learn together with their students – to change not only the boring classroom situation but the society at large.
A book so easy to read and navigate the two hundred and twenty pages, reading through Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures can be likened to driving a three-gear car for it is truncated into three distinct parts. In part one, titled “Historical Background”, Berlin takes us through the past and present of English studies before suggesting some proposals that can be applied to address the crisis afflicting the field. The importance of politics in English comes to the fore when he says, “…I hope to demonstrate, protests against the political involvement of English studies are as futile as protests against death and taxes. Indeed, given the democratic political commitment of the United States, it is as impossible for us to separate literary and rhetorical texts from political life as it was for the citizens of ancient Athens.” (xiii).
Berlin does not set forth in his book to show that rhetoric is superior to cultural studies. Instead, he endeavors to show how they are interconnected and how they can help in improving the overall situation of the English studies. “In short, we in rhetoric are convinced that our colleagues in theory and cultural studies have as much to learn from us as we have to learn from them. At the same time, we wish to join forces with these colleagues in working for revised conceptions of reading, writing, and teaching and, finally, for new models of English studies.”(xvii). Berlin, therefore seeks a common ground where theory and practice converge to modify the English studies. To do this, he advocates for a new approach to teaching of English where the materials of the course are organized around textual interpretation and production and consumption is not privileged over production. Teacher and student should in this case strive to accumulate the cultural competence necessary for them to not only situate the texts they read but also to decode the messages contained within them because, “What is important is the way texts are interpreted and used, not the texts themselves.”(13). It is not easy for the teachers because much of the effort will come from their side as Berlin observes:
“English teachers are the bankers, the keepers and dispensers, of certain portions of this cultural capital. Their value to society is defined in terms of the investment and production of this cultural capital. Since this capital has been located almost exclusively in literary texts, it is small wonder that attempts to challenge the rhetoric-poetic binary in which the value of these texts resides is resisted. Surrendering this hierarchy of texts means questioning claims to preeminence and power both within and outside the classroom, challenging the very bases of professional self-respect. Changing English studies along lines recommended here will thus require reformulation of every figuration of cultural capital on which our discipline is based.”(16-17)
In a brief but adequate way, Berlin also takes us through an account of where the English departments came from. He traces the emergence of English from the economic, social and political switch, changing the liberal arts colleges into research universities, and the society changing from being the entrepreneurial to corporate capitalism. This made it come to a point where one’s level of education determined one’s success in life. As a result, women started being involved in education too. And with one thing leading to the next, English became the universal mode of instruction.
Shifting into second gear “The Post Modern Predicament”, Berlin introduces the reader to an academic realm that is daily metamorphosing hence the change from traditional approaches to English studies. To aptly demonstrate this, he takes us through Fordism, with its overproduction of labor and thus strikes and protests, to Post-Fordism, which is nothing but Fordism with improved technology in both transport and communication. He shows us how English departments have recently changed in order to be in tandem with the Post-Fordism theory of producing graduates, but not any longer promising upward mobility due to the internationalization of business in the fact that most of the tasks can now be better performed by technology. This book partly seeks to demonstrate that colleges can better prepare graduates who can fit in the current highly-changing technology environment by displaying “…good work habits and attitude; and an understanding of American economic and social life…learning how to learn and learning how to behave (quoted in Blitz and Kurlbert 1992, 9). (52) He is for the idea that colleges, in preparing graduates, should adjust to the configuration of the job market and also listen to the advice of the employers.
According to Berlin, education should help produce citizens who are intelligent, articulate and responsible, “…who understand their obligation and their right to insist that economic, social and political power be exerted in the best interest of the community”. Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures insists that English studies has a key role in the democratic educational endeavor because, “It is after all, the only discipline required of all the students in the schools, even including in most states four years in high school. The college English department prepares the teachers who staff these English classrooms, so that its influence always extends far beyond its own hallways.”(57)
English language should not be taken as a “…set of transparent signifiers that records an externally present thing-in-itself, a simple signaling device that stands for and corresponds to the separate realities that lend it meaning. Language is instead a pluralistic and complex system of signification that constructs realities rather than simply presenting or reflecting them.”(61). By this, Berlin wants the reader to focus on how, by use of language, students can manufacture meaning in both their written and spoken English. And that is where rhetoric comes in as “…the study of the effects of language in the conduct of human affairs.” (72).Through a detailed discussion of the difference between ‘difference’ and differance’, Berlin ultimately proves to the reader that meaning is always determined after the struggle between the signifier and the signified. It is what is achieved after successful persuasion that gives rhetoric.
The book also focuses on the issue of situating the reader, as well as the writer. In what he calls “social epistemic”, Berlin argues that the reader is a product of the society much as the work of art and its writer are. Therefore, the reading should be interpreted in context, as the writing should too, because both acts are important to each other. “writing and reading are thus both acts of textual interpretation and construction and both are central to social-epistemic rhetoric.” (91). In reading and interpreting texts, according to Berlin’s argument, we should be forming meanings and know that the language used in the text is forming us as we are forming it. The task of the English class ergo, is to supply a mechanism of decoding the messages of the text and interpreting them in ways that they can help solve the daily life challenges.
As a good teacher himself, Berlin takes the reader through the classroom to show him how the social-epistemic theory works in preparing citizens for a participatory democracy. He argues that if English teachers and students situate themselves appropriately in regard to the texts they are reading, they can form discourses that can in turn “…form individuals as active agents of change, social creatures who acting together can alter the economic, social and political conditions of their historical experience.” (106). Here, Berlin is advocating for a democratic classroom in which ideas and opinions are shared and challenged as students are able to actively participate in the learning process instead of just being passive consumers and ultimately they are able to experience the world. This experiencing of the world is two fold for it is not only from the individual student’s point of view but also from the writer’s. And when students are able to experience texts this way, then it becomes easy and interesting for them to even create their own. They become inspired after learning the textual environments that created the texts they read and how they are contextually located to resolve either real or imagined problems. However, for this to happen, the classroom has to be democratized with the teacher assuming the role of a guide rather than an authority, and the students becoming active participants in the whole learning process.
In the democratic classroom, Berlin takes his reader through the importance of inter-textuality in English studies. Students are able to compare and contrast various texts as well as analyze them. A good example is the use of television films to teach. It gives students an opportunity to see the society through a different lens as presented by the artist, and hence their ability to use them to understand their society, sometimes in better ways than they had done before, since they are taught to not only analyze these films in terms of what they include, but also in terms of what they omit. The two films that Berlin presents to his readers: Roseanne and Family Ties are apt in juxtaposing two completely different families for the students to compare and contrast them in order to understand societies in which these characters come from and what significance they have on their over all life.
As stated earlier, Berlin’s book, like a three-gear-power car, is fun to drive, yet so scary at first. It is a book not only to be read but also to be practiced. Just like it is not enough to buy a car; one has to drive it. However, trying at once to put into practice everything Berlin advocates for is tantamount to starting the car and attempting to take off on gear three! The results could be disastrous if not catastrophic. Berlin, the expert, professionally prescribes one approach at a time, sometimes even going back and forth before advancing. “After all,” he says, “a primary goal of our efforts as workers in English studies is to prepare young people to be better participants in democratic economic, political, and cultural arrangements. Our work is to fathom possibilities for language and living heretofore unimagined.”(188). So, for the skeptical reader, Berlin is saying it is true the task is not as simple as it sounds, but with patience and perseverance, it is do-able.
. I would like each of you to choose one (1) of the units that you would be interested in presenting on this Wednesday. Ideally, there will be equal numbers of people representing each of the units. However, we don’t live in an ideal world. So, I’ll ask you to rank your top two units: 1 being the unit you most prefer, 2 being the runner-up. Post your preferences as a comment to this post.
