Rhetoric
10: The Rhetoric of Argument
"What
Is Compelling? Argument, Reconciliation, Obligation"
Summer 2019, Session A, 2-4.30pm.,
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, 88 Dwinelle Hall
Instructor, Dale Carrico:
dcarrico@sfai.edy; ndaleca@gmail.com;
Course Blog: http://whatiscompelling.blogspot.com
Course Blog: http://whatiscompelling.blogspot.com
Participation/Attendance/In-Class
Activities, 25%; Reading Notebook, 15%; Mid-Term Exam, 30%; Final Paper,
5-6pp., 30%. (Rough Basis for Final Grade, subject to contingencies)
Course Description
The arc of the moral universe is a longing... and it bends from just us.
This course provides students with tools they can use to make better, more compelling, arguments and also to read arguments in better, more critical, ways. We will draw the tools for our argumentative toolboxes from the long history of rhetoric, from sophistical dissoi logoi, to the Aristotelian appeals, to Quintilian's four master tropes, to the rich archive of formal and informal fallacies, to argument modeled on litigation via Toulmin's schema, to argument modeled on mediation via Rogerian synthesis, to the pragmatism of the ends of argument. All the while we are workshopping these technical skills we will also be reading and discussing a range of texts that tackle questions of the reach and forms of violence and nonviolence in historical struggle and in everyday life. These texts will likewise draw from a long history, from Immanuel Kant, Martin Luther King, Jr., Frantz Fanon and Hannah Arendt to Arundhati Roy, Judith Butler, and Ta-Nehisi Coates. We will also talk through a play by Euripides, an essay by Nietzsche, a novel by Octavia Butler, a film by Cronenberg… The crucial thing to understand about the course is that we will not be taking on two separate projects, one practical and another theoretical. This course proposes that there is an indispensable relation between the traditional focus of rhetoric as instruction in the art of making compelling arguments and the theoretical preoccupation of many rhetoricians with questions of what violence or compulsion ultimately consists. It is commonplace to see Persuasion offered up as an alternative to the violent adjudication of disputes or hear Argument idealized as a space "outside" of violence. But the truth is that many arguments rely on the acceptance of a violent status quo or depend on conventional assumptions that deny marginal testimonies to violation. Also, many arguments stealthily threaten violence while at once congratulating themselves on their peacefulness. Ultimately, the course proposes that it is rhetoric's definitive concern with the traffic between the literal and figurative dimensions of language and its situated understanding of truth-telling that connects the work of rhetoric with a project of reconciliation that resists violence even as we cannot help but risk it.
A Provisional Schedule of Meetings
Week
One
May 28 SKILL SET: Key Definitions
[1] Rhetoric is the facilitation of efficacious discourse as well as an ongoing inquiry into the terms on the basis of which discourse comes to seem efficacious or not.
[2] A text is an event experienced as arising from intention, offered up to the hearing of an audience, and obligating a responsiveness equal to it.
[3] An argument is a claim supported by reasons and/or evidence.
Introductions: Rhetoric as occasional, interested, figurative; The literal as conventional, the figurative as deviant.
May 29 SKILL SET: Reading Critically/Writing Critically; Audience/Intentions -- Audiences: Sympathetic, Unsympathetic, Apathetic; Intentions: Interrogation, Conviction, Persuasion, Reconciliation
Euripides: Hecuba (Here is a link to the last few lines of the play, cut off from the online version for some reason)
May 30 SKILL SET: Aristotelian rhetoric; Ethos, Pathos, Logos; Writing A Precis
Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose
May 28 SKILL SET: Key Definitions
[1] Rhetoric is the facilitation of efficacious discourse as well as an ongoing inquiry into the terms on the basis of which discourse comes to seem efficacious or not.
[2] A text is an event experienced as arising from intention, offered up to the hearing of an audience, and obligating a responsiveness equal to it.
[3] An argument is a claim supported by reasons and/or evidence.
Introductions: Rhetoric as occasional, interested, figurative; The literal as conventional, the figurative as deviant.
May 29 SKILL SET: Reading Critically/Writing Critically; Audience/Intentions -- Audiences: Sympathetic, Unsympathetic, Apathetic; Intentions: Interrogation, Conviction, Persuasion, Reconciliation
Euripides: Hecuba (Here is a link to the last few lines of the play, cut off from the online version for some reason)
May 30 SKILL SET: Aristotelian rhetoric; Ethos, Pathos, Logos; Writing A Precis
Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose
Week
Two
June 4 SKILL SET: Four Habits of Argumentative Writing: 1. Formulate a Strong Thesis, 2. Define Your Terms, 3, Substantiate/Contextualize, 4, Anticipate Objections; Performativity
Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence
June 5 SKILL SET: The Toulmin Schema
William May, "Rising to the Occasion of Our Death" (In-Class Handout)
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
June 4 SKILL SET: Four Habits of Argumentative Writing: 1. Formulate a Strong Thesis, 2. Define Your Terms, 3, Substantiate/Contextualize, 4, Anticipate Objections; Performativity
Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence
June 5 SKILL SET: The Toulmin Schema
William May, "Rising to the Occasion of Our Death" (In-Class Handout)
Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
Arundhati Roy, War Is Peace
June 6 SKILL SET: Rogerian Rhetoric
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
Logan Rimel, My "Nonviolent" Stance Was Met With Heavily Armed Men
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail
Logan Rimel, My "Nonviolent" Stance Was Met With Heavily Armed Men
supplemental/referenced
texts this week:
Henry David Thoreau, A Plea for Captain John Brown; Howard Zinn, On Henry David Thoreau and When To Resist An Immoral State ; Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam; Ella Baker, Bigger Than A Hamburger; Combahee River Collective Statement
Henry David Thoreau, A Plea for Captain John Brown; Howard Zinn, On Henry David Thoreau and When To Resist An Immoral State ; Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam; Ella Baker, Bigger Than A Hamburger; Combahee River Collective Statement
Week
Three
June 11 SKILL SET: Logoi Dissoi
June 11 SKILL SET: Logoi Dissoi
Michel Foucault, from Discipline and Punish (this is a .pdf of the entire book from which you should read from the excerpts as far as you like) from "The Body of the Condemned" (pp. 3-31), "Docile Bodies" (pg. 135 +), and "Panoptism" (pg. 195 +).
Angela Davis, selections from Are Prisons Obsolete? Chapters 1, 2, 6
June 12 SKILL SET: Propositional
Analysis; Enthymemes, Syllogisms, Formal/Informal Fallacies (short day)
June 13 SKILL SET: Literal/Figurative Language; Figures, Tropes, Schemes; Four Master Tropes
Nietzsche, On Truth and the Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense
June 13 SKILL SET: Literal/Figurative Language; Figures, Tropes, Schemes; Four Master Tropes
Nietzsche, On Truth and the Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense
supplemental/referenced
texts this week:
Angela Davis, Abolition Democracy; Nietzsche, selections from The Gay Science
Angela Davis, Abolition Democracy; Nietzsche, selections from The Gay Science
Week
Four
June 18 Mid-Term Examination
June 19 Screening and Discussion of the Film, "A History of Violence," dir. Cronenberg
June 20 Hannah Arendt, Reflections On Violence (if this link does not work for you, an expanded version of "On Violence" is available as a chapter in the book Crises of the Republic, beginning on p. 103, which you can read a .pdf of here) and "Must Eichmann Hang?" (In-Class Handout)
June 18 Mid-Term Examination
June 19 Screening and Discussion of the Film, "A History of Violence," dir. Cronenberg
June 20 Hannah Arendt, Reflections On Violence (if this link does not work for you, an expanded version of "On Violence" is available as a chapter in the book Crises of the Republic, beginning on p. 103, which you can read a .pdf of here) and "Must Eichmann Hang?" (In-Class Handout)
Frantz Fanon, Concerning Violence from The
Wretched of the Earth
supplemental/referenced
texts this week:
Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Case for Reparations; Hannah Arendt on forgiveness from The Human Condition
Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Case for Reparations; Hannah Arendt on forgiveness from The Human Condition
Week
Five
June 25 Octavia Butler, Kindred (Purchase in time for class. ISBN-10: 0807083690 ISBN-13: 978-0807083697)
June 26 SKILL SET: Debate
June 25 Octavia Butler, Kindred (Purchase in time for class. ISBN-10: 0807083690 ISBN-13: 978-0807083697)
June 26 SKILL SET: Debate
June 27 SKILL SET: Workshopping
Final Paper: Producing a Strong Thesis; Anticipating Objections; Providing
Textual Support
supplemental/referenced
texts this week:
Mohandas K. Gandhi, The Meaning and Practice of Ahimsa; Karuna Matena, The Power of Nonviolence; Gene Sharp, How Nonviolent Struggle Works; Rev. William Barber, The Third Reconstruction; Correspondence of Tolstoy and Gandhi; Jane Addams, New Ideals of Peace: Passing of the War Virtues
Mohandas K. Gandhi, The Meaning and Practice of Ahimsa; Karuna Matena, The Power of Nonviolence; Gene Sharp, How Nonviolent Struggle Works; Rev. William Barber, The Third Reconstruction; Correspondence of Tolstoy and Gandhi; Jane Addams, New Ideals of Peace: Passing of the War Virtues
Week
Six
July 2 Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Introduction, pp. [1]-44.).
July 2 Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Introduction, pp. [1]-44.).
Robert Bullard, Poverty,
Pollution, and Environmental Racism
John Bellamy Foster, The Four Laws of Ecology and the Four Anti-Ecological Laws
of Capitalism
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