Today’s Plan:
- Attendance
- Reminder: Writing Center workshop on Thesis Statements at 5:00 in Ross 0280
- Workshop Volunteers (3)
- Kairos
- Stasis
- Duffett Review
- Homework
Workshop Volunteers
To simplify, please email me a copy of your workshop piece, as an attachment (preferably a .docx) to insignificantwrangler@gmail.com.
Note on emails and spam filters: make sure your email has at least a subject line, a salutation, and a signature. Example:
Dr. Santos,
Here’s my piece for the workshop: http://something.com.
Thanks,
Kyle “The Yellow Dart” Smith
This increases the chances that a spam filter doesn’t think you are a machine programmed to send fake emails.
Kairos
Today I want to introduce two rhetorical concepts from classical rhetoric: kairos (prominent in ancient Greek rhetoric) and its relative, stasis (which lies at the center of Roman rhetoric). Together, these two terms should help you develop more purposeful and effective introductions, since they situate a reader to your topic.
The textbook definition of kairos is “right place, right time.” But time here means something different than we tend to think of it (as chronos, the quantitative measurement of time’s passing). Rather, kairos means something closer to opportunity, an opening in time. Rhetoricians debated whether a speaker could *create* such an opportunity, or whether she merely *recognized* one. Regardless, the point is that a great speaker recognizes the specifics of a moment and place (a context), and shapes them so that a listener or reader knows why she is speaking at that moment, why she is called to speak, the exigency (situation) that demands her response. So, establishing kairos in part requires
- informing a reader what problem you are responding to
- informing a reader why you are responding to that problem (why is the problem important)
- informing a reader why *you* specifically are responding to the problem (establishing some sense of ethos
These aims can generate a list of standard questions and guides, what we call topoi, for positioning yourself, your problem, and your audience. For instance, is this a problem that gets talked about a lot but rarely acted upon? Then here we go again. Is this a problem that you, a smart functioning human, didn’t know was a problem until recently? Then let me tell you something. Is this a problem that you thought was minor/easy to fix, but have learned it might not be? Then this might get complicated. Etc.
In Aristotle’s (in)famous treaty On Rhetoric, he declares that one of the primary obligations of a rhetor in the opening of her speech is to “prepare the judge” for what they are about to hear. While I have some pretty staunch disagreements with Aristotle, I want to highlight this advice. Millenia later, Martin Heidegger declares that this advice, on the part of Aristotle, is the birth of psychoanalysis and phenomenology: philosophical approaches that begin by recognizing that human consciousness, perception, and reason is always, already influenced by our “mood.” The task of an introduction is to set a mood: to anticipate an audience’s feelings toward a topic and shift them to a position whereby they might be more willing to entertain a new perspective.
Ok, let’s read and talk about a speech. You might have heard of this one.
Stasis
The Romans followed the lead of the Greeks and considered kairos in their speeches. But the Romans also develop more intricate and complex political and legal systems, and part of that advancement involved developing clear ideas for the purpose of speeches and the nature of arguments. Stasis theory, invented by the Greeks and advanced by the Romans, was a four-part heuristic (method of invention) for establishing the purpose of an argument.
Richard Lanham, in his Handlist of Rhetorical Terms, explicates Cicero: “Cicero argued that the whole matter [stasis, issue, schematizing what an argument was about] was contained in three questions: does it exist? (Sitne?); what is it (Quid sit?); what kind of thing is it? (Quale sit?). For Lanham, this is the root of the modern “journalist’s litany, Who? What? When? Why? Where?” (93). Lanham credits Hermagoras with articulating four different types of theses related to stasis:
- Conjectural, dispute over a fact, WAS the deed done? Does a thing EXIST?
- Definitional, dispute over a definition, what KIND of deed was done? What KIND of thing is it?
- Qualitative, dispute over the value, quality, or nature of an act, was it a LEGAL deed? Is it a GOOD thing?
- Translative, dispute over moving the issue from one court of jurisdiction to another, are we trying the case in the right court.
To Lanham’s list I might add one more:
- Procedural, dispute over what must be done NEXT? What do we DO with the thing?
Michael R. Moore’s WRD page has an extended list of questions that can help your invention process.
Each of these theses emphasizes a different mode of evidence–for instance, a conjectural thesis seeks to present physical evidence. A definitional or translative thesis, however, will need to provide discursive evidence (to demonstrate the legitimacy of a definition based on standards already established). A qualitative thesis is the most open to exploring circumstantial evidence, since it often makes contextual justifications for negative definitions. Think of defending a wife accused of murdering an abusive husband. Clearly, stabbing him in the chest is murder in the eyes of the law books–the discursive/textual frameworks–but can be qualified as self-defense and thus valued as a justified act. Similarly, qualitative arguments can change the ways in which we define things.
Think about the following controversies to try and identify the level of stasis:
- Death Penalty
- Abortion
- NFL and Concussions
- Kaepernick and the Anthem
Stasis theory helps you to identify what you *aren’t* arguing just as much as identifying what you are arguing. For instance, if you open an essay by writing “Abortion is murder. Let’s get that out of the way. But just because it is murder doesn’t mean it is wrong.” You’ve really clarified your level of stasis (and you might have completely alienated a large amount of your audience!).
Duffett revisited
I wanted to go back and revisit our reading in Duffett from the opening weeks of the semester, both because some of you are now participating in fandom groups and because we are beginning to approach the part of the semester when I ask you to generate a final paper topic.
Here’s the questions from our last reading:
- Why, according to Duffett, should we study fandom? What benefits does this line of study provide? [pages 2-3, 18]
- Summarize Duffett’s characterization of sports fandom. What is your response to this characterization? Does it have merit? [page 3]
- In the later portion of your reading, Duffett addresses the idea that fandom is a kind of consumption.[A bit of a trick question to see who was paying attention, see especially page 21, 23]
- Pay particular attention to the end of the paragraph discussing objectivity on page 17 and and long paragraph on page 21 (the last sentences of each paragraph are key to this exercise). I’m curious to know how your preliminary research into your fan community (and/or your previous experiences in that fandom) resonate with the ideas Duffett articulates. Take a few minutes to free write on this.
Homework
Go back and rewrite the first paragraph to one of your posts this week, revising to improve kairos and/or clarify stasis (without sounding like a robot).
Read Duffett Chapter 3 and complete Quiz on Canvas before class. Read and begin drafting week 7 writing.
Remember that we will be meeting in the computer lab on Wednesday (for real this time). We will talk about Duffett, revise some writing, and then I will leave you alone so you can write.
