While rhetorical theory and composition pedagogy are often combined into similar programs, or even conflated to the same genre, the scholarship surrounding these fields can read as remarkably disparate. This paper attempts to explore one of the intersecting lines between the two – that of space – and follow this line in an affirmative fashion, which will trace how spaces (the classroom, bodies that occupy it, etc.) are not, as conventionally seen, static, but rather, are generative. That is, it is an exploration in the ways space navigates both rhetorical theory and composition studies, and, to a certain extent defines the scholarship and practices that follow. However, it is important to realize that in defining this scholarship, I will also be creating a space in which this definition operates – yet I hope to do so in a way that this space does not serve as a limiting or delineating boundary, but rather as a fluid and dynamic force: a force that simultaneously opens up, affirms, and imagines new spaces.
I also hope to address certain questions which are specifically pertinent to composition teachers: that is, what composition teachers ask students to do is to create, to compose – or, to produce, to generate. Yet, how does the space we allow (or deny) for this creation in some way contribute to or foster what is generated out of it? While so many scholars have (and understandably so) focused on the content of lessons, fewer have chosen to focus on (or even acknowledge) the other rhetorical elements (space being among these) which also contribute to the inventive processes that our students undergo.
I draw upon the foundational groundwork laid out by Bartholomae in “Inventing the University” as well as theoretical concepts laid out by Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, and Michel Foucault. Through these authors, the paper is an attempt to trace connections between how traditional concepts of imagination and invention have emerged through place, and to use these connections in a way that offers yet another generative view of how place not only contributes to generation, but might be manipulated (or, at the very least, addressed as a viable contributing factor) to classroom composition.
Works Consulted:
Bartholomae, David. “Inventing the University.” When a Writer Can’t Write: Studies in
Writer’s Block and Other Composing-Process Problems. NY: The Guilford P, 1985. 134-165.
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia. The University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences. New
York: Vintage, 1973
Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense.” CreateSpace
Independent Publishing Platform, 2012.
Warnock, Mary. Imagination. Berkeley: U California P, 1978.
I also hope to address certain questions which are specifically pertinent to composition teachers: that is, what composition teachers ask students to do is to create, to compose – or, to produce, to generate. Yet, how does the space we allow (or deny) for this creation in some way contribute to or foster what is generated out of it? While so many scholars have (and understandably so) focused on the content of lessons, fewer have chosen to focus on (or even acknowledge) the other rhetorical elements (space being among these) which also contribute to the inventive processes that our students undergo.
I draw upon the foundational groundwork laid out by Bartholomae in “Inventing the University” as well as theoretical concepts laid out by Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, and Michel Foucault. Through these authors, the paper is an attempt to trace connections between how traditional concepts of imagination and invention have emerged through place, and to use these connections in a way that offers yet another generative view of how place not only contributes to generation, but might be manipulated (or, at the very least, addressed as a viable contributing factor) to classroom composition.
Works Consulted:
Bartholomae, David. “Inventing the University.” When a Writer Can’t Write: Studies in
Writer’s Block and Other Composing-Process Problems. NY: The Guilford P, 1985. 134-165.
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia. The University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences. New
York: Vintage, 1973
Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense.” CreateSpace
Independent Publishing Platform, 2012.
Warnock, Mary. Imagination. Berkeley: U California P, 1978.