Today’s Plan
- Lanham’s Q Question
- Write Ups
- Calendar (Syllabus Update)
Lanham’s “The Q Question”
Lanham, Richard A. (1993). “The Q Question.” The Electronic Word. Chicago: U of Chicago P.
As I’ve said before, this is one of my favorite essays of all-time, even if I find the opening a bit tricky to understand. It warrants a full-read, as the final few pages reward close reading the preceding explications. Today I’m going to try and help you enter into the argument as we read and discuss the opening pages together.
As we read, we should have a few questions in mind. The first, which should be the simplest, is I think quite difficult to answer. The second, which also should be easy, can also be difficult (especially on your first read).
- What is the Q Question? (see Graff, p. 173)
- What is the weak defense of rhetoric? (Who is on team weak)?
- What is the strong defense of rhetoric? (Who is on team strong?)
- If Universities were to change education, to try and provide a Stronger answer to the Q Question, then what are some changes they would have to make?
A Not-So-Brief Guide to the Write Up
For next Wednesday’s class, you need to read Lanham’s essay “The Q Question” and write a one page, single-spaced response, generally 700-800 words, which will fit in one page if you play with font size and margins. Fellow nerds: if you have written too much, I will advise 9 pt Arial as the smallest font you can use. Let’s revisit what I wrote about Write Ups in the syllabus:
But I also want to run this more like a graduate seminar–in which we are sharing ideas and learning from each other. Every week we do readings, you will be expected to share one Write Up with the class. What is a write up? It is a one-page, single-spaced, response to the day’s assigned readings. I will leave it up to y’all whether you do Tuesday or Thursday (week one everyone will turn in a Write-Up for Thursday). The first paragraph (¼ to ⅓) of the Write Up should offer a cut and dry summary of the reading. Standard stuff: what was the author’s intention/argument? What evidence does she offer? What changes does she conclude are necessary?
The next (⅓) of the Write Up should focus attention on a particular sentence/paragraph/section of the text. What should we, as a group, pay more attention to? What stung you, to use theorist Gregory Ulmer’s term? What resonated? What matters? What is bullshit? What do you want to pull against? Write ups are as much about reflecting on how readings made you feel as they are about logocentric response. Rhetoric, affect, response, responsibility, reflection. Throughout the course I will undoubtedly and obnoxiously thread words together.
Those two ⅓’s might add up to a whole. You might be out of room. Your page might be filled. But if it isn’t, then you can do the final ⅓: put this reading in conversation with something else you’ve read. Maybe a connection to something in this class. Maybe a connection to something from another class.
The aim of this class is learning. Write Ups aren’t formal papers–they are informal takes. They are snapshots of encounter and learning. They document struggle and success. You are free to experiment with style, voice, and language. If you don’t use “I” in these papers, then you are doing it wrong. They are personal engagements with the material. No one should be claiming universal mastery here.
As you read the Lanham, get in the habit of underlying key sentences. Whenever you do, write a word or two at the top of the page. Once you are done reading, flip back through the text and try to find connections between your notes and marginalia. What stands out? What are they key terms? The key themes to the entire essay? What is Lanham’s over-arching purpose?
The first paragraph at a Write Up is perhaps the most difficult: in a few precious sentences, you have to attempt to summarize the entire work. This is hard!
The other paragraphs should be more familiar to literature students; I am asking to close read a specific sentence or to. Contextualize it (place it in the stream of the over all argument), cite it, and then tell us why it grabbed you, why it is important, why you are skeptical, why it is wrong. In essence–what is a section of the text that we should talk about? Why?
The final paragraph can look at a second passage, or it can do something else. You can put the reading in conversation with something you’ve read for this class, or for another class. You can apply the reading to something in the news. Something you saw on a social media feed. As long as you are thinking, you can’t mess this up. You might open this section with “Reading Lanham made me think of…” You might tell us about a term in the reading with which you were unfamiliar, and what you found when you googled it.
As I’m reading the Lanham, I’m wondering whether your educational experience more reflects the Strong or the Weak defense. What would Lanham make of the courses you have taken? I’m thinking of two different passages here:
In practice, rhetorical education [Strong Defense rhetoric] is education in two-sided argument, argument where truth is decided by the judge or jury, where truth is a dramatic criticism handed down no the forensic drama which has been played out according to the rules laid down bu a rhetorical education (p. 161).
And
Perhaps now we can comprehend how Quintilian might have felt that a rhetorical education as he had traced it conduced to civic virtue. It trained people in the Strong Defense, in the skills needed to create and sustain a public, as against a private, reality. It did not simply train, it created, the public person. It is the perfect training for the pattern of government Plato hated the most, a genuine, open-ended democracy (p. 189)
