Today’s Plan
- Project 3 Description
- Hypothesis Social Annotation
- Write Up #5
- Play
Project Three Description
I want to think we can collectively build a better world, and I think rhetoric is essential to that possibility. We need to be able to help people recognize the value of change and to persuade them that the world can be built in more equitable ways. That seems like a pretty good definition of rhetoric–using communication to change the way people think about what is good for the world and what is possible to achieve in the world.
But what if rhetoric weren’t simply a matter of communication? Of speaking the right words or writing the best sentences? A video.
For years I have tried to design assignments that ask people to do things in the world. But it usually involved symbolic action–writing something or designing something or even creating a weird video about something or someplace. But, as I was reading Cavarero in my grad class in the spring of 2023, I started to think about a different kind of project.
I wrote the following paragraph in the fall of 2023, in a conference proposal, before I started teaching the spring 2024 section of this class. Here’s how I described what I thought would be the project you are about to begin:
Third, I will report on a project planned for a spring 2024 upper-division rhetorical theory class that will aim to stage an experience of political plurality. Students will read Arendt’s essay “Action and the ‘Pursuit of Happiness,’” selections on action, presence, and politics from The Human Condition, and Cavarero’s Surging Democracy. They will then collaborate to plan, organize, and execute what I have tentatively named a “rhetorical carnival” (I will charge students with renaming the event). The event will be a two-hour long gathering in the University Commons that includes a range of activities aiming to produce the “joy” that Arendt describes. A spring 2023 graduate seminar brainstormed a few possible ideas, many of which draw on elements of improv comedy and performance: a Soul-Train inspired dance line (as opposed to line dancing, which aims at homogenous movement), collaborative storytelling, and an anti-selfie station (based on Cavarero’s critique of the political selfie in Surging Democracy).
A few corrections/adjustments:
- We might not have time to read the Arendt. I would rather spend more time carefully reading the Cavarero than trying to rush through more material
- We will be participating in the UPC’s spring activities day. I will have more information about this participation soon
- You will be designing a collection of activities that people will do
- You will have to tell me what makes those events resonate with “public happiness” and the explication Cavarero provides for that term
- I still want to know what an anti-selfie might be
As I mentioned earlier, I gave a conference presentation on this project at the summer 2024 Rhetoric Society of America conference, and that talk (slightly expanded) will be published in an edited collection called Just Rhetoric this summer. I will do my best not to steer you towards the conclusions (and activities) that we developed last year. This year is different–you are different, I am different, and our world is different–but I do want to sincerely say that I think this project, both its theoretical and performative dimensions, serve as a nice capstone to this seminar. At its core, it asks you to read some pretty intricate theory–on politics, communication, human being(s)–and then translate that theory into a list of criteria. We will use those criteria to both develop and critique experiences that can be included in our yet-to-be-renamed “Carnival.”
Reading to Develop Criteria
Our goal is to develop activities that promote the idiosyncratic experience of public happiness that Arendt describes. So, we need to make sure we have a critical vocabulary for developing and critiquing proposed activities and experiences. For what are we aiming? What must we avoid? These are the questions you will be trying to answer in your first reading assignment. As I mentioned before break, I will be away at a conference this Wednesday and Friday, so I am charging you with essentially three tasks.
- Read (and Annotate?) Cavarero
- Collaborate to Create a List of Terms, Concepts, Questions (with definitions and citation to pages). I am thinking that we will do this collaboratively in class next Wednesday–but you should be prepared to contribute. So if you aren’t using hypothesis (see below), then you better be keeping track of the five criteria in a google doc or something
- Do a Write-Up
Number One: Read (and Annotate?) Cavarero
We’ll start by reading pages 1-56 of Cavarero’s Surging Democracy. I would like to try using social annotation, which means I’ll ask that you create a free account with Hypothesis. Once you create your free account, follow these instructions to use Hypothesis’ social annotation tools. Note: I looked at a few different social annotation softwares and chose “hypothes.is” because-despite the annoying extra period–it has an excellent reputation for honoring user privacy and data.
As you annotate with hypothesis, I want you to use two kinds of tags.
- Recall from the Preface that Cavarero introduces five key terms corresponding to Arendt’s notion of politics: plural, horizontal, nonviolent, generative, and affirmative (x). Okay, let’s tag passages that help us to understand what those words mean.
- Use the tag “question” to indicate a passage that you want me to address in class, or one that you want to discuss with the class.
- Use the tag “suggest” to indicate a potential new term or criteria for our activities that doesn’t fall into one of the five in the first bullet above.
Fingers crossed, I will do a quick in class demonstration.
Write-Up #5
I recognize that the first 57 pages of Cavarero will cover a lot of intellectual ground. I don’t want papers that simply try to summarize it, and it would be foolish to try and summarize all of it. We’ll be doing plenty of work in class that aims at summary. You can explicate–bring further explanation, try to understand, work through a difficult paragraph line by line–but don’t just summarize.
By this point in the semester, I am hoping that you can respond to the Cavarero–what parts of this grab your attention? What claims or characterizations would you challenge? How might Lanham/Miller/Blankenship respond to specific paragraphs? What sentence could you write a book about? If Cavarero were on [TV Game Show] what might the [Questions, topics, games, events, challenges] be?
How might [movie, story, video game] be different if Cavarero wrote it? If Cavarero attended the Sanders / AOC event on campus over the break, what might she say about it? What would you say to Cavarero living in America 4 years after the publication of her book? Which of Cavaero’s key theoretical terms make the most/least sense to you? Which seems the most/least pragmatic/possible in the current political context? Etc etc etc.
