Category Archives: lanham

Colbert, Citizens United, and Irony

Posted on February 8, 2012 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Apparently I live under some kind of rock, because today was the first I heard of Steven Colbert’s PAC. There’s a short article over at Slate documenting Colbert’s attack on the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision. A few random thoughts: … Continue reading →

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Davis on Derrida; What Levinas Offers Latour

Posted on November 16, 2011 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Via Blogora, a video lecture by D. Diane Davis on Derrida, deconstruction, gratitude, and debt: Derrida and gratitude: thinking always has a debt. “The image of the trail blazing subject, self sufficient and completely independent is, of course, a metaphysical … Continue reading →

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Quintilian Responds to Plato

Posted on April 13, 2011 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Addressing the idea that rhetoric be forbidden because it is capable of evil: Under such a mode of reasoning, neither will generals, nor magistrates, nor medicine, nor even wisdom itself, be of any utility; […] in the hands of physicians … Continue reading →

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Lanham on Style

Posted on February 10, 2010 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

Here’s some brief snippets from Richard Lanham’s 1974 Style: An Anti-Textbook. 30 years old, Lanham’s scathing assessment on the academic and public valuing of prose style perhaps rings more true today than at the time of its publication (during the … Continue reading →

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I never thought I would say this, but…

Posted on February 26, 2009 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

I actually find myself agreeing with Andrew Keen. Today Keen responded to Patricia Cohen’s NYTimes article on how the pending economic crisis will affect the humanities. Keen concludes: What I do know for sure, however, is that academic humanists — … Continue reading →

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Lanham definition of rhetoric; the Aim of Education(s)

Posted on February 23, 2009 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

I need to remember this somewhere, why not the blog. Now you can remember it, too. “Rhetoric” has not always been a dirty word, the opposite of sincerity, truth, and good intentions. For most of its life it meant the … Continue reading →

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On Thinking and Clarity

Posted on January 27, 2009 by insignificantwrangler@gmail.com

The following material is a response to Richard Lanham’s Style: An Anti-Textbook. I shared it with my expository students today. It relies on a ridiculous simplification. My use of the terms “rhetoric” and “composition” are completely idiosyncratic and reductionary. I’ll … Continue reading →

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