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Hugh Blair, Technê, and the Legacy of Both in Twenty-First Century

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Hugh Blair, Technê, and the Legacy of Both in Twenty-First Century HUGH BLAIR, TECHNÊ, AND THE LEGACY OF BOTH IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY COMPOSITION PEDAGOGY by WESLEY CLAY VENUS (Under the Direction of Michelle Ballif) ABSTRACT We often assume writing to be a technê, but we do so to a detriment. Thinking of any intellectual activity in this way trains our minds to the false belief that theory and practice can be made to correspond to one another in ways that are consistent with a subject, which is in this case language. Present-day writing pedagogy exists at the end of a long tradition of language- technai, and, as is the case with any human activity ever regarded as a craft, an often unaddressed and unacknowledged element of virtue attends it. This subjective and value-based component will always necessarily provide the foundation for the theoretical framework (its praxes), and in so doing create the illusion of objectivity. Such is the case for most of the theory- driven pedagogies we see today in composition studies, a tradition began to a significant extent in the eighteenth-century by Scottish rhetorician Hugh Blair. In these regards his legacy contributes significantly to the new tradition involving the systematic application of avant-garde academic theory to composition classroom practices. We see evidence of this in current- traditionalism, cognitivism, expressivism, and social-epistemicism which is consistent with the ancient model of technê and which is consistent even with certain elements of “the post-process movement,” a movement among composition scholars which at least abstractly positions itself apart from praxis-driven approaches to writing scholarship. INDEX WORDS: Hugh Blair, Technê, Composition pedagogy, Composition theory, James, Berlin, Current-traditionalism, Cognitivism, Expressivism, Social- epistemicism, Post-process HUGH BLAIR, TECHNÊ, AND THE LEGACY OF BOTH IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY COMPOSITION PEDAGOGY by WESLEY CLAY VENUS B.A., Mississippi State University, 1999 B.A., Mississippi State University, 2002 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2008 © 2008 Wesley Clay Venus All Rights Reserved HUGH BLAIR, TECHNÊ, AND THE LEGACY OF BOTH IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY COMPOSITION PEDAGOGY by WESLEY CLAY VENUS Major Professor: Michelle Ballif Committee: Christy Desmet Michael G. Moran Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2008 iv DEDICATION To my wife, Tina. Without her understanding and support, this dissertation would never even have gotten off the ground. She has been much more patient with me than I have been diligent about my work, which in most cases is really saying something. About her, and not me, of course. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many thanks go to the members of my comprehensive examination and dissertation committee, past and present. Thanks go especially to Dr. Ballif for having deftly guided me through the whole process, from my comprehensive exams, to the earlier wretched phantom prospectus, to the prospectus for this one, and on through to its completion. I hope this dissertation does as much credit to her as she put into it. Many thanks go to Dr. Moran, who also helped guide me through my exams, the earlier prospectus, and perhaps most importantly to the doorstep of Hugh Blair. As many thanks also go to Dr. Desmet, who taught the first course I ever took in composition studies, and, as head administrator of the First-Year Composition program, under whose directorship I have been able to put all I have learned in the abstract into conversation with all that I have done as a teacher. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.............................................................................................................v INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................1 Two Primary Figures: Blair and Berlin.....................................................................3 Technê and Virtue: Mutual Inseparability.................................................................8 Other Previous Voices.............................................................................................18 Chapter Reviews......................................................................................................21 CHAPTER 1 THE ROLE OF TECHNÊ IN ANCIENT RHETORIC: MATTERS OF MEDICINE AND HEALTH, AND MATTERS OF PASTRY BAKING .............26 Technê in Antiquity.................................................................................................29 Plato: Method and Transcendence ..........................................................................35 Gorgias, Sophistry...................................................................................................58 Aristotle...................................................................................................................67 2 THE ROLE OF HUGH BLAIR AND OF TECHNÊ IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF CURRENT-TRADITIONALISM ......................................77 Belles Lettres and the Legacy of Classical Virtue ..................................................80 George Campbell and the New Method..................................................................97 Modern Taste and Classical Virtue .......................................................................103 Taste, Systematized and Applied ..........................................................................119 vii 3 THE ROLE OF TECHNÊ IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF COGNITIVISM AND EXPRESSIVISM .............................................................131 Cognitivism ...........................................................................................................137 Espressivism..........................................................................................................155 Virtue and Technê .................................................................................................174 4 THE PERTINENCE OF TECHNÊ TO THE FURTHER DISCUSSION OF SOCIAL-EPISTEMICISM.....................................................179 Theory ...................................................................................................................184 Pedagogy ...............................................................................................................218 5 THE POST-PROCESS MOVEMENT AND ANTI- FOUNDATIONALISM: A CONTINUATION OF THE MYTH OF TECHNÊ..227 A Post-Process Pedagogy Proposed......................................................................231 Theory versus Pedagogy .......................................................................................259 CONCLUSION(S).......................................................................................................................264 NOTES.........................................................................................................................................279 WORKS CITED ..........................................................................................................................282 INTRODUCTION Since its earliest days, even before “composition” became “Composition,”1 the field has manifested a compulsion to apply every cutting-edge theory to the practical concern of the teaching of writing, a function of, in Lynn Worsham’s words, the “pedagogical imperative” of the field (96). Related to this imperative is the discipline’s assumption that writing is a technê— that is, that writing is a human activity that is rational and a reproducible process, and, hence, is teachable. This assumption has a long history, since it was decided by some in ancient Greece, after much debate, that rhetoric could be usefully elevated to the level of technê. As I will show, subsequent scholars, practitioners, and instructors have assumed, likewise, that rhetoric and its attendant activities like writing are all technai. This dissertation aims to investigate this disciplinary assumption by revisiting significant historical moments with the intent to demonstrate that to elevate any human activity to the level of technê, specifically rhetoric/writing, also means imposing limitations on that activity. A technê, as we shall see, requires one to limit access to the ambiguity of human action and thought and desire in order to gain progress and improvement and understanding, and that is not—I will further argue—the price that one ought to pay. Certainly it is not the price one pays willingly. Specifically, in order to make any activity into a technê, one must do two things: generally speaking, one must reduce its operations to rational laws, which do not perfectly suit it, and one must also enable an ultimately arbitrary standard of “goodness” or “truth” to be applied to it. This first requirement (rationality) we generally see developing into a kind of foundationalism, and the second requirement (the standard) we find is fairly consistent with the 1 ancient notion of virtue. In tandem, these two requirements form an essentially baseless sense of human activity—writing, in this case—because one supplies the rationale for the other. That is, we have a way of differentiating “good” or “effective” writing from “bad” or “ineffective” writing because we have standards of goodness and effectiveness we can rely on; and conversely, we have standards of excellence because what we think we know about writing— what we have observed of it—provides them for us.
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