Thomas Rickert Office:
Heav 303B
English 680-I (Heav 210) Office
Phone: 494-3719
Spring 2006—Monday,
Email:
<trickert@purdue.edu> English
Office Phone: 494-3740
English 680-I: Institutional Discourses: Rhetoric, the
Humanities, and the Advent of the Corporate University
Required Texts:
Isocrates, Loeb Edition, Vol.
2
Rhetoric as Philosophy—Ernesto Grassi
The Principle of Reason—Martin Heidegger
The Closing of the American Mind—Allan Bloom §
The University in Ruins—Bill Readings
My Freshmen Year—Rebekah
Nathan
Course Packet at CopyMat
§ Get it used on amazon.com
(cheap!) or elsewhere.
Recommended:
Phaedrus—Plato
The Idea of a University—John Henry Newman* Clueless
in Academe—Gerald Graff
The Idea of the University—Jaroslav Pelikan* Cosmopolis—Stephen Toulmin*
Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Liberal
Education—Martha
Nussbaum* American Higher
Education: A History—Christopher Lucas
Universities in the
Marketplace—Derek
Bok The
Knowledge Factory—
University, Inc.: The
Corporate Corruption of Higher Education—Jennifer Washburn* American
Higher Education—Hofstadter and Smith, eds.
A University for the 21st Century—James Duderstadt The
Postmodern Condition—Jean-Françios
Lyotard
What's Left of Enlightenment?—Keith M. Baker and Peter H.
Reill, eds. The Condition
of Postmodernity—David Harvey
Race and the Enlightenment:
A Reader—Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, ed.* Empire—Antonio Negri and
Michael Hardt
Dialectic of Enlightenment—Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno Beyond the Corporate University—Henry Giroux, ed.
Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism—Jerrold Seigel* Digital Diploma Mills—David Noble (online)
Day Late, Dollar Short: The Next Generation and the New
Academy—Peter
C. Herman, ed.*
Failing the Future: A Dean Looks at Higher Education .
. . —Annette
Kolodny Literate Education in the
Hellenistic & Roman …—Morgan
The Social Life of Information—John Seely Brown and Paul
Duguid English
in
Beyond English, Inc.—David Downing, Claude Mark Hurlbert, and
Paula Mathieu Universities and the
The Realms of Rhetoric: The
Prospects for Rhetoric Education—Petraglia and Bahri, eds.*
Rhetorical Education in
*Are especially useful and/or
relevant.
Objectives:
English
departments, and the work that they do—whether writing instruction, literary
studies, rhetorical training, visual literacies, textual production, and so
on—are traditionally derived from something called The Humanities. This term
certainly distinguishes work in English from work in The Sciences, but in the
age of the postmodern, corporate university, it is increasingly unclear what
the Humanities are anymore, much less whether they still have a place in Empire
(our increasingly globalized and administered transnational corporate world).
This confusion concerning the Humanities is closely intertwined with the
changing nature of the university itself. These uncertainties have lead to
feelings of unease, diagnoses of ruination, and predictions of demise. And
more. Much more.
What
we call the Humanities have their origin with Petrarch, who provided their
initial impetus and formulation largely as a reaction against the contemporary
scholastic university of his day. However, the Humanities themselves have their
roots in something we call the "liberal arts," and to understand
those, we need to go back to the Greeks. While it will not do to make direct
parallels, we can nevertheless see similarities in the educational debates of
their time to the debates ongoing now. Looking at Plato, Aristophanes, and
Isocrates, we can see three different views of education offered, representing
the new philosophic rationality, the poetic tradition and religion, and civically
minded rhetorical education, respectively. We will read Plato's Apology of
Socrates in conjunction with Aristophanes' comical upbraiding of Socrates.
Socrates' defense of his critical role in the Athenian public—as the
citizenry's necessary gadfly—is perhaps the opening move of what will emerge
centuries later, in Kant and other German Idealists, as the idea that there
needs to be an institution that fosters and shelters a critical perspective,
and that the business of philosophy is to provide that criticism. Isocrates
favors a more rhetorical understanding of education, one that prepares students
to be effective in the polis. Petrarch,
heavily influenced by Cicero (and we are unfortunately skipping the Romans),
goes back to these Greek traditions, to rhetoric, and to ideas of civic
preparedness in giving shape to the then new studia humanitatis and the idea of character formation.
Following
our all-too-brief consideration of the Italian Renaissance, we will move to the
Enlightenment (and counter-Enlightenment, a movement that will bear fresh fruit
two hundred years later with the advent of postmodernism) and the origin of the
modern research university in
Heidegger's
The Principle of Reason and essays by Hamann, Derrida, Ijessling, Lanham,
and others consider in various ways and from a variety of perspectives the
insufficiency of reason as it is tied to the Enlightenment project. Like
Horkheimer and Adorno (Dialectic of Enlightenment), Heidegger and others
argue that reason can lead to astonishing forms of barbarity, cruelness, and
violence. If this is so, the idea that education is bildung, the
progressive enculturation of human beings towards a rationalist conception of
the highest and most spiritual goals, is jeopardized. And, indeed, much
postmodern theorizing takes exactly this orientation, calling into question all
the old values, ideals, and goals that served as centering commonplaces. The
flipside is that if education can't deliver on what its humanistic and
Enlightenment legacy promised, we are left wondering precisely what it is for.
Besides, that is, the production of what
Today
the university is perceived by many to be in crisis. Maybe it is; maybe it
isn't. What is clear is that the university is in transformation. What this
transformation is, what it means for us, and what it means for the Humanities and
for Rhetoric are questions that are far from clear. Certainly, we can see
corporate business interests at work, but that is not the only factor
generating change in the university. As I noted above, the
rhetorical/philosophical grounds upon which the university has been based have
been challenged. So, we will look at a variety of contemporary diagnoses of the
contemporary university, such as Bill Readings and Rebekah Nathan, and also
including Allan Bloom's trend-setting, right-wing indictment of higher
education, The Closing of the American Mind. Toward the end of the
course we will focus more specifically on the role and future of English
studies, with an emphasis on rhetoric, looking at a variety of contemporary
perspectives and criticisms. Certainly, the advent of the corporate university
does affect education—what it is, how it is pursued, how it is perceived, and
what relation it is to have to culture and work. We will close with another
battery of essays that consider the future, such as Mark Taylor, who delves
into systems theory to propose a total re-organization of the university in relation
to business and society, Bruno Latour, who wonders about the role of critique,
and more.
One
key operative question throughout the course will be: What's left of the
Humanities and the Enlightenment in the postmodern university? Since these
movements inspired the creation of the modern research university and largely
defined the role of the liberal arts within it, it is not so easy to jettison
them as archaic relics of the past. Today it is as
difficult as ever to argue that rhetoric and composition is more than a service
course in skills training for other disciplines, over and against the drive to
make education more vocation- and profit-oriented. And yet, at least at its
outset, the Humanities were also concerned with a richer conception of what it
means to be human. Petrarch genuinely
believed that studying the classics (the Greeks and Romans) made one wiser; if
we pomo cynics sneer at that sentiment as dangerously naïve, we still leave
entirely untouched the liberal arts tradition in which we live and work, a
tradition that at some level continues to believe Petrarch's sentiment for us,
like a prayer wheel that prays for us (or a laugh track that laughs for us…). That
it is difficult to hear this tradition above the din of the demand for job
skills and profits does not mean that it doesn't still function to preserve the
shape and trajectory of much that we do. At another level, however, a level
that seems to disturb many people across the political spectrum, the tradition
of the Humanities is being evacuated of any import: pragmatics,
professionalism, and market interests have come to dominate higher education to
a degree that appears to make Petrarch and his legacy a vanishing anecdote, a
myth that no longer speaks to the contemporary experience. A primary wager of
this course is that this tradition still matters, even if the content of that
"mattering" may still be up for grabs.
Assignments:
In-Class Papers: Three
one-page papers (legal size paper, single-spaced), to be read aloud in class on
the due date. Please bring copies of your paper to distribute to the class. The
papers will follow a format of (approximately) half summary, half analysis.
They may take as their focus one primary work from the readings for that 2-3
week period, but should incorporate all major works and at least some of the
minor ones. Expectations for these papers will be high.
Final Paper: This course
requires a final summation paper; it asks you to give a recap of the dominant
themes of the course, an examination of the last five weeks of readings, and
your assessment of the future role of rhetoric and/or composition, the
Humanities, and the university. These papers can be tailored to your research
interests, and the list of recommended texts I give above can aid you in
pursuing particular topics in greater depth.
Weekly Posts:
Lastly, this course requires weekly posts to the course's online bulletin board.
The address is: www.unconcealment.org/trickertbb
You will see a board for this
class labeled Institutional Discourses.
You will have to register, and
during the semester, you will have to login to post. Note that you can select
the option of having your computer automatically recognized to minimize your
logging in if you wish. You can also set up your profile, and so forth. If you
have any problems, first, read the FAQ. If you still have problems, let me
know.
You will need to
make "one" post a week. There are a variety of ways you can fulfill
this posting commitment. First, your post should address the reading(s) for the
coming class, taking a concept,
issue, conflict, theme, etc. and exploring it. Length should be a minimum of
one developed paragraph. Although I would prefer you to remain focused on that
week's readings, it may be useful to address texts from previous weeks. A
second possibility is a response to someone else's post. It is preferable that
you address a post concurrent with that week's readings, but again it may be
useful to return to older posts to re-visit an issue. A third possibility is to
split your post for that week into two shorter ones, or to make one your own
and one as a response. Only one post a week is required, but further postings
beyond the minimum are of course quite welcome—especially responses to others.
I add that the goal of this assignment is to foster sustained intellectual
inquiry and exchange, and I will expect you to treat others with respect,
regardless of the possible level of disagreement. Please visit the site several
times a week so that you stay current with the discussions. Also, make sure
your name is on your posts.
Late Work: Papers to be read
aloud will not be excused. If you miss the due date, you will be docked a
letter grade (unless I excuse your absence beforehand) and required to read
your work the following week.
All assignments are required
to complete the course.
Assessment:
Your grade will be determined
on a 100-point scale. The percentages break down like this:
In-Class Papers (3) 20%
= 60%
Final Paper 20%
Blog posts 20%
Attendance:
This class is not primarily a lecture
course; accordingly, your attendance and participation is crucial not only for
you personally, but for everyone in the class. Days in which we share papers
are especially important as this will serve as a forum for the exchange of
ideas and understanding concerning the material. I will expect you not to miss
class. However, if a problem does arise that requires your absence, please
discuss the matter with me beforehand make arrangements.
Disability:
If you have a disability that
requires special accommodations, please see me privately within the first week
of class.
Calendar (subject to change as needed):
Week 1 (1/9): Endtroducing!
Plato, The Apology
Aristophanes,
The Clouds
Week 2 (1/16): Go Greek
Martin Luther
King Day – No Class
Randall Collins, "Partitioning Attention Space:
The Case of Ancient
Jeff Walker, "The Emergence of Poiesis, Logos, and Rhetorike"
Martha Nussbaum, "Socratic Self-Examination"
Bruce
Kimball, "The Foundation of the Artes
Liberales"
Week 3 (1/23): The Artes
Liberales
John
Poulakis, "Rhetoric and Civic Education: From the Sophists to
Isocrates"
Kathleen
Welch, "Writing Instruction in Ancient
Week 4 (1/30): Paper #1
Week 5 (2/6): Human, All Too Human . . .
Robert Proctor,
"The Humanist Transformation"; "Petrarch and the Origins of the
Humanities"
Samuel Ijessling,
"Liberal Arts and Education in the Middle Ages" and "The Italian
Humanists"
Walter Ruegg, "The
Rise of Humanism"
Vico, excerpts
Petrarch, excerpts from
Letters (optional)
Week 6 (2/13):
The Grassi's Always Greener . . .
Ernesto
Grassi, Rhetoric as Philosophy;
"Why Rhetoric is Philosophy"
Janet
Atwill, "Rhetoric, Humanism, and the Liberal Arts"
Week 7 (2/20): Paper #2
Week 8 (2/27): The Calm, Cool Calculus of Reason: The Enlightenment
Mendelssohn, "What is Enlightenment?"
Kant,
"What is Enlightenment?"; The Conflict of the Faculties
(excerpts)
Hamann,
"Letter"; "Metacritique"
Reim,
"On Enlightenment"
Humboldt
(excerpts)
Green,
"Modern Culture Comes of Age"
Ijessling,
"Kant and the Enlightenment"
Hammerstein, "The
Enlightenment"
Richard,
"
Robin
Schott, "The Gender of Enlightenment" (optional)
Week 9 (3/6): Blinded
by the Light: A Critical Engagement with Reason
Heidegger, The Principle of Reason
Derrida, "The
University in the Eyes of its Pupils"
Hans Sluga,
"Heidegger and the Critique of Reason" (optional)
Week 10 (3/13): Spring
Break – No Class
Bruce Kimball, "Emergence of the Liberal-Free
Ideal"
Martha
Nussbaum, "Citizens of the World"
Week 11 (3/20): Paper #3
Week 12 (3/27): Diagnosing the University I: Journey to
the Seed
Nathan,
My Freshmen Year
Ashby, "The
Future of the 19th Century Idea of the University"
Week 13 (4/3): Diagnosing the University II: Excellent
Souls
Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
Richard Lanham,
"The Q Question"
Week 14 (4/10): Diagnosing the University III: The
Minimally Programmed Unit?
Bill Readings,
The University in Ruins
Bruce Kimball, "A
Typology of Contemporary Discussion"
Dominic LaCapra,
"The University in Ruins?"
Week 15 (4/17): Composition and the University
Porter, Sullivan et al,
"Institutional Critique"
Marc Bousquet,
"Composition as a Management Science"
Sharon Crowley, Composition
in the University (excerpts)
Goodburn and Minter,
"Concentrating English"
Petraglia,
"Identity Crisis"
Kali Tal, "It's a
Beastly Rough Crowd I Run With" (optional)
Week 16 (4/24): Is this where you live?
Mark
C. Taylor, "The Currency of Education"
Jacques
Derrida, "The Future of the Profession or the University without
Reserve"
Bruno
Latour, "Why Has Critique Run out of Steam?"
Richard
Lanham, "The Audit of Virtuality"
Ellen
Cushman, "Beyond Specialization"
Robert Scholes, "A Flock of Cultures"