Semisensical ramblings by David W. Rick
“So maybe that’s where the power in writing comes from that I want to call magic: context.” –Peter Elbow Peter Elbow’s 1981 book, Writing with Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process, has long presented me a conundrum. On the one hand, everything Elbow says in the book feels right–I want to cheer for it, […]
“The middle ground, roughly halfway between poetry and mathematics, is where philosophers can make their best contributions, I believe, yielding genuine clarifications of deeply puzzling problems . There are no feasible algorithms for doing this kind of work. Since everything is up for grabs, one chooses one’s fixed points with due caution.” –Daniel C. Dennett […]
“Radical phantasy begins with the great and uncompromising refusal of conventional wisdom, a refusal that has always identified the countercultural magician, even when (as Agrippa demonstrates) the world believed in magic.” –William A. Covino Key Terms: Generative magic, Arresting magic, Phantasy William Covino’s 1994 work, Magic, Rhetoric, and Literacy: An Eccentric History of the Composing […]
“Throughout the inhabited world, in all times and under every circumstance, myths of man have flourished; and they have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and mind. It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which […]
“Truth in art is not the discovery of facts, not an addition to human knowledge in the scientific sense of the word. It is, rather, the exercise of human propriety, the formulation of symbols which rigidify our sense of poise and rhythm. Artistic truth is the externalization of taste.” –Kenneth Burke Key Terms: Syllogistic progression, […]
“As [an author] writes, he creates not simply an ideal, impersonal ‘man in general,’ but an implied version of ‘himself’ that is different from the implied authors we meet in other men’s works. To some novelists it has seemed, indeed, that they were discovering or creating themselves as they wrote.” –Wayne C. Booth Key Terms: Implied […]
“There is a degree of acceptance among us all, no matter how critical we might be, of traditions and national-cultural norms, an acceptance that not only must be considered but can be exploited in promoting changes in the systems that sort us in particular ways. Yet mine will not be a radical view, in an […]
“I seek to illustrate how code switching is all about race; how it is steeped in a segregationist, racist logic that contradicts our best efforts and hopes for our students. […] In the end, I promote code meshing, the blending and concurrent use of American English dialects in formal, discursive products, such as political speeches, […]
“Adopting subjectivity as a defining value, therefore, is instructive. However, the multidimensionality of the instruction also reveals the need for a shift in paradigms, a need that I find especially evident with regard to the notion of ‘voice,’ as a central manifestation of subjectivity.” —Jacqueline Jones Royster Jacqueline Jones Royster sets out three aims in […]
“The language represented in the headnotes of this essay reveals deeply held beliefs. It has a tradition and a style, and it plays off the fundamental tension between the general education and the research missions of the American university. The more I think about this language and recall the contexts in which I’ve heard it […]