Berlin,+James.++Rhetoric,+Poetics,+and+Ideology.++Chpt+5

//Purpose of Rhetoric:// A study of language that goes beyond signs and signifiers to study the context of language use and its implications in power. //Keywords:// Social constructionist, social epistemic, ideology, //Quick Summary:// Taking previous argument about rhetoric/poetic split to next level. Discusses the nature of ideology using Therborn – “ideology interpellates subjects… through discourse and offers directives about three important domains of experience: what exists, what is good, and what is possible” (84). He then goes on to explain how Social Constructionist rhetoric tried to take up these ideas, but didn’t take economic issues into enough account, rather focusing on the political. The key difference was that Social Constructionism “never abandons the notion of the individual as finally a sovereign free agent, capable of transccending materials and social conditions” (86). In Social Epistemic, it’s “political agency, not individual autonomy” that is the guiding feature. He wraps up that section by stating that “The work of social-epistemic rhetoric, then, is to study the producion and reception of these historically significant signifying practices” (90). The point Berlin is driving towards is that rhetoric and poetics are not about Composition and Literature, but rather are a symbiotic pair in the study of language and its relation to our preceived worlds. Thus, there should not be a prizing of Literature over Rhetoric. //Response:// I see where Berlin is going with this, because that’s where he’s always going, but I think he goes around the bush a few too many times and I get a little lost about what the point is to some of it. I also worry that the only people this type of chapter convinces are those who are already convinced. One of the most persuasive parts, though, was when he discussed the need to understand both aesthetics and function (poetics and rhetorics) when looking at a complex social text like Hitler’s speeches in order to find out how they managed to persuade so many people to do such monstrous things. Overall, it feels like an unsatisfactory conclusion for all the postmodern, ideological, social arguments that he makes. I found the separation between social constructionist and social epistemic an interesting one (as I could never figure it out before), though I do wonder strongly at his classification of “writing as a process” as part of the elite social-epistemic rather than simply the social constructionist. It seems to me this idea falls more squarely into the first category, unless one is talking about the materialist arguments such as Bruce Horner makes in his Terms of Work in Composition. Or, I suppose, he does talk about Janice Laur who did a lot with feminist material conditions. I just don’t really understand how open-ended questions and discovery and invention work classify something as being about political agency without individual autonomy.
 * Berlin, James. “Rhetoric, Poetics, and Ideology – Chpt. 5″**