Well, someone has to start this out; I suppose I can put my two cents in and get the ball rolling. When I first read North’s introduction and his plan to investigate HOW people make knowledge (as opposed to re-hatching WHAT that knowledge is) I have to admit I was intrigued. It seems apropos that as a graduate student entering the field that I should be privy to the ways that I can “make knowledge,” the ways that my peers expect me to frame my work. I I anticipated a sort of insider guide, and at this point, still considering myself a relative outsider, I was somewhat excited.
At the end of about 20 pages I scrawled a large note across the top of my notebook, underlining it in a rather frustrated manner. “His writing is (annoyingly) Aristotelian.” I do not wish to offend those who are a fan of his, but the methodical creation of categories and then the predicable extrapolation of those categories really began to wear on me. This is a stylistic complaint alone; however, I felt the need to mention it since it really began to make reading painful around page 80. In terms of content, the categories we read in these beginning pages seemed rather appropriate, for lack of a better word (football is on my mind). I caught myself mentally testing his categories to see if I could file the authors we read last semester into one of his distinctions. His use of example authors and studies helped me better understand the various modes of inquiry and dissemination he discussed, and their inserted quotes broke up the monotony of his own theoretical, methodical prose.
However, as I read through the later sections, I kept returning to my uneasiness with the way he portrayed practitioners. Perhaps it was my own bias, but I was a bit offended by the almost “lower class” status that he assigned to their work. His discussion of their work and practices of making knowledge teetered on patronizing. As I read on it seemed to me that he spoke much for favorably/highly of scholarly and research work. This hint at a bias got me thinking about his entire undertaking. Can anyone really survey the field “from the inside” (as his intro states), as an ethnographer of sorts without a bias? Couldn’t five other professors tackle the same project and write final pieces that described each field and its practices in a different light. How reliable can this account be? Once you are an “insider” doesn’t objectivity slowly slip away from you? Isn’t his attempt doomed to biased flaws from the very beginning? Why those examples; why those authors; why those categories? The institution we attend and the professionals we come into contact with often shape our view of the field and its knowledge (he says so himself when we discusses how one enters ‘the house of lore’ at different entries), but then don’t his own opinions fall victim to the same reasoning? Can one really generalize an entire field from a position within that is arguably biased (consciously or unconsciously)? I know he attempted to add a “disclaimer” of sorts in his introduction stating that this was, in the end, HIS account of the field, but then what does that mean for his reader? How are we to take the account he created? Furthermore, I wonder how old he was and at what stage in his career he wrote this. I thought I remember it being mentioned in class that this was an early work of his. Can a young scholar in the field really claim to be able to survey its entire breadth? I know I wouldn’t be ready to tackle that feat within the next ten years or so. Hence I wonder if a seasoned professional in the field would have created a completely different account of the way practitioners and scholars make knowledge.
Lastly, in terms of our own benefit, I wonder how relevant this material is to the current field today. This was an account published in 1987, more than 20 years ago. As I mentioned earlier, I certainly do not have a good enough grasp on the field to be able to say whether these modes of inquiry are still acceptable/being practiced or if the field has moved away from these categories of professionals. I feel as though we have much more multi-faceted, perhaps schizophrenic, profession identities these days; so would his work still help a graduate student get the “insider information” I spoke of earlier or is it best utilized by us as a historical reference?
I think what Natalie had to say about North's style is something I agree with; it made the reading slushy for me to get through. But nonetheless I appreciated the foundation it provided in terms of modes of inquiry. Although North was writing at a time in which research in composition was not robust (nor is it still, I suppose, in comparison to other fields), the modes of inquiry should help us, as relatively new researchers, locate our inquiry appropriately, understanding what it is not as well as what it is (or intends to be). I thin the "not" is critical to understand, just as it is important to understand what the approach will be. Much like our discussion, for those of you in the Reflection and Contemplation group, about how silence frames sound, I think what I took from North that is key is a sense of the importance of defining whatever research I do in terms of what is and what is not.
North also used a visual that I found helpful: the rambling house with many additions. I liked his depiction of our field as one that has grown as rooms or sections in a house are added - then, when he was writing this, and now, as he predicted, I think it continues to evolve this way. That visual representation applies today, and I might even take it a step further to call it a college house (fraternity, sorority, just a bunch of roommates together) because not only does it continue to evolve it is also shaped by its inhabitants who may stay for a while or for a long time, maybe forever. But while certain roommates are living in the house at a given time, that group defines the house. As roommates change, the house changes slightly, but it is always the house, and there are always things left behind by roommates who have moved on. Our field is full of scholars and practitioners who contribute in much the same way - contributions that vary and evolve as the individual does. North's visual, and my own "renovation" of it, helped me clarify for myself the sort of patchwork birth that composition began as and continues to evolve from. North's interpretation helps ground my overall thinking about where we've been and why we are where we are.
North portrays composition as a field that has little connection between its parts, its pieces of patchwork, although he implies that it will in time. I found myself thinking ahead several years after North wrote this book to examples that refuted this claim, and while this provided a sense of evolution it also made his examples more distracting for me in understanding the concepts. Natalie's review suggests that these examples were helpful, and I think some were, but I didn't find this to be the case overall. Perhaps I'm impatient, but I wanted the modes of inquiry explained without the distraction of examples. Perhaps an annotated case study would have been more helpful, or perhaps I just couldn't get past the distraction of old examples.
I did find it helpful that North separated and explained the various roles within the field. His explanation of the difference between Practitioners and Scholars helped frame what it is we do and how we do it, and his subcategorizing of Scholars was helpful in understanding who makes up that aspect of the field. His Philosopher was difficult to grasp but his Historian and Critic were clear.
In the Practitioners section North discusses lore. This explanation of lore in our field helped explain how practitioner knowledge is made and informed and how it comes to be part of the overall scholarship. North's treatment of lore gives it legitimacy and value in its contribution to that scholarship. North's point about how composition has grown out of what practitioners do is a valid point. The experiential nature of our field is something we can relate to - as we learn about the composition field, those of us who are teaching are also experiencing it in the classroom, which informs our study and eventual scholarship. North helps explain the importance of Mina Shaughnessy's "Errors and Expectations" in this context: as a harnessing of the experiences that informed her thinking. It was not the rhetorical sophistication, as North put it, that made her book so iconic, it was the shared experience among practitioners that she captured so well.
It is interesting to look at research as such a complex system informed by myriad experiences and perspectives, as North purports. By describing researchers in terms of the communities of inquiry they inhabit, North helps us understand that all researchers bring themselves - that is their personal experiences and perspectives - to their approach to research. The resulting interpretations will be informed by the complexities of that which came before. North's explanation of where researchers "live" and why is helpful in grasping the nature of research as nebulous, and therefore providing us with a greater understanding of the need to respect the difficulty in preparing for research that will be valid and valuable in its contribution to the field.
First of all, let me say that I agree with the observations Natalie and Lianne made regarding North. In particular, though, I was struck with the same offense that Natalie mentioned in her review- of North’s portrayal of practitioners as less worthy or important in status than that of scholars and researchers. I did, however, have an afterthought that perhaps North was merely bringing to light a common assumption and view about college composition as a whole and how it is not seen as prestigious as other, more theoretical, areas of study. This is further shown in North’s mention of the “power-by-association” practice that is common even today- that is, the coupling of composition with another discipline; for example, “Linguistics and Composition”, “Literature and Composition”, and of course “Rhetoric and Composition”. North described the coupling of rhetoric and composition as giving a type of intellectual legitimacy to composition that the discipline of composition would not possess merely on its own. That, to me, furthered the idea of practitioners not being capable of operating by their own volition, an idea that is still prevalent today. This idea may be due to the seemingly non-cohesive nature of composition as a discipline-illustrated by North’s example of the rambling house with numerous additions.
North’s detailing of the modes of inquiry was actually helpful to me because it clarified the different areas that we all come from in order to make knowledge of composition. As I was reading about practitioners, I was continually reminded of the rhetorical situation and what an important role it plays in determining how to act from what we do or do not know. I found it fascinating that North was perplexed by the philosophers and found them frustrating and difficult. I admit I laughed a little inside because, ironically, that is how many would portray this work of North. I questioned North’s strategy in researching the philosophers, though, when he said he was “picking and choosing [his] way through more than twenty years of articles.” This method sounded random and faulty and perhaps is one of the reasons for North’s frustration and perception of difficulty that the philosophers present.
I liked that North emphasized the importance of community and the validation that a community gives to various modes of inquiry. The idea of lore and how it is created was an interesting read. I had never heard the term lore used with this connotation before. It reinforced the way I see agency and how ideas are no longer yours to manipulate once they are released into some form of lore. The contributor relinquishes control once their ideas are “out there” and something cannot be just “taken back”…only changed or commented upon. North’s book has become a piece of lore, and I can’t help but wonder what control North wishes to have upon the words he published over twenty years ago.
As far as North’s writing style, it was exasperating at times, but I found the various examples of how we know what we know useful in filling in the spaces in the composition realm I previously did not explore.
In many ways, I agree w/ what Liane and Natalie said. North’s intro got me excited (to use Natalie’s words) because he was offering me advice of how to really become a part of our field, a chance to dig in to the research and become a part of the community. Making new knowledge seems like a great idea to me, though a somewhat daunting task considering we are all relatively new to the community. What would we have to offer at this point that would be new knowledge? However, w/ excitement came the “slushy” moments (to salute Liane’s language choice). It seems his explanations were reading moments where one responds, why duh! When does the line become crossed when there is too much explanation? Or am I reading it wrong and there can never be too much?
I do think that, we the members of the Rhet/Comp community, need to be grounded in the history of our field. So Chpt #1 was a nice set-up for us. The history of our field has a lot to do with the direction we may be headed. I think I am learning this as we progress w/ our classes.
The practitioners were an interesting read for me b/c I kept coming back to a question that arose in my head during the intro. North wants to investigate the “how” instead of the “what” and then later says that practitioners only search for answers about the “how” and not the “why” (in his intro he said he wanted to investigate within the field). Why aren’t we asking all the who, what, where, how questions? Wouldn’t a study be better-rounded if we approached more than one of those questions in our research?
Do teachers resist new solutions? North suggests that they do. I think this is so true and something I latched onto that he said. I link this idea to our freshmen we teach. Every fall ( and sometimes spring depending on if they had 1101) semester we have to unravel what they learned in high school, so we can teach them how to build upon the five paragraph theme (or high school version of a literary critical analysis always a big one for AP students). They tend to be very uncomfortable attempting new ideas and resist the new idea of expending their ideas past three paragraphs or incorporating new techniques like show don’t tell into their work. I have actually had students argue w/ me that there is no need to learn past high school writing (ps…that interpreted means they already know what they need to know ). So, if students resist something new and uncomfortable, something that asks them to go against their traditional ideas, why wouldn’t teachers? Or for that matter new teachers attempting to figure out who they are in relation to the field, the classroom and their own pedagogy. We are human, thus we tend to resist things that seem different whether we agree w/ what is being offered as different or not. For us right now, we are learning to research. We are learning about ourselves in the classroom. It is hard not to resist the unknown.
The section on “the scholars” was interesting for me. Here I have to disagree w/ Liane. I felt like the critics were unclear of a read. I didn’t feel he gave enough support of what it meant to be a critic or what they are important to research. I also felt like his examples of critics were limited. He only used one example for both his study and Kinneavy’s. His conclusion to this chapter said that hermeneutical inquiry provides us with an access to voices, “our own and others: access to the nature of consciousness, in effect, and the way it makes the world in words” (131). I really like this idea, however do not feel it was explained or shown fully. He gave us a brief glance at what this type of inquiry can do and I felt like he could have done much more with it.
Lastly, I agree w/ both Liane and Natalie again and wonder why and how this book is still relevant so many years later. I though research was about creating new knowledge (though we do need a foundation for it). How can something written 20 years ago still be the model in which we follow today? I do like what Liane said that he helped us to understand “that all researchers bring themselves-that is their personal experiences and perspectives- to their approach to research. I agree 100%. Part of learning and gaining new knowledge stems from our lived experiences. So I guess I need to retract my above question, b/c North’s experience helped create new knowledge for me (even though it was many, many years ago).
As North sets the historical context for English and Composition studies—Composition with a capital “C”—he seems to unknowingly draw parallels to a number of historical plights. Composition Studies scholarship characterizes the struggle between the three-pronged elements of English studies—language, literature, and composition—as ongoing, a fact we see in our own department. North draws a similar picture of English studies as the marrying of three separate studies under an umbrella discipline. An acknowledged stretch, but Composition’s greater historical context mirrors that of colonial Europeans who colonized Africa. These conquerors, ignorant of dissension among tribal groups, placed dissenting tribes into nation states that resulted in centuries of conflict as the opposing and feuding groups were forced to unite. English studies reflects a similar fight where the power distribution between language, literature, and composition is conflicted and shifting due to the three studies having “no real unity as subject matter” (10).
It’s frustrating to me that English studies was struggling not only internally, but externally. Not long after literature, language and composition were lumped together, North recounts NCTE’s struggle to receive funding from the National Defense Education Act of 1958 and the NCTE’s response that “demonstrated that the English teaching profession could muster considerable rhetorical energy” and resulted in an extension of the Cooperative Research Program, parallels might be drawn to the variety of plights made by marginalized groups (11). Throughout history marginalized communities are most successful when provided a cohesive voice and a venue for communicating. Look at groups such as the women of the Seneca Falls Convention or, in memory of today, the blacks of the Million Man March who were given a voice because they congregated. North notes a similar response from English educators who gathered behind NCTE to serve as a figurehead for English studies as able to impart students with “the ability to think and write and read, and an intimate contact with ideals, beauty, and morality” (11). It’s this attitude of grandeur—of viewing composition as crucial to English studies’ historical context—that sets the tone for North’s exploration.
Perhaps North’s recount of Composition’s struggle is best summarized by Kitzhaber in his critique of 4C in saying, “It has too seldom attempted to spearhead promising new trends or to condemn outworn practices, if either is controversial” (14). This statement seems to haunt Composition throughout its short history and throughout The Making of Knowledge in Composition. I’m fascinated by the recent birth of Composition with a capital “C,” and am baffled by how slowly the field has seemed to rectify or acknowledge the problem Kitzhaber identified. North divides the next sections of the text based on the strategies of practitioners and historians, philosophers, and critics of composition. Setting the foundation of Composition studies and then layering on the variety of techniques and experiences of four groups of composition scholars and practitioners sets the tone for Making of Knowledge. These sections were interesting as they place Composition within several contexts, yet it was the history of Composition studies that captured me most. I found the thorough account interesting as—at least to me—it parallels a grander and more global history. In that sense—a historical sense—North’s intricate writing appealed to me. Yes, this text was written decades ago, but with any study it is imperative that I—or we—have a rooted foundation from which to grow.
Well, the trend in this blog seems to be agreeing with others, and in refraining from being too rebellious, I intend to continue that trend. First, I felt similar to Kara in that the introduction made me “excited.” It actually got me thinking back to our other class, “Designing Writing,” and how I felt as though I was starting to become part of the field. For the past couple of years, I have just blindly followed along, playing the game. I did not really stop to question why we did what we did or, perhaps more importantly, why things were set up the way that they were. Now, however, I am looking at first year composition through an entirely different lens. Rather than playing the game, simply completing my role as a cog, I am learning the intricacies of the game—how it is designed and works. I am becoming privy to the dirty work that goes on behind closed doors. Reading these works and discussing them in class made me excited—it was refreshing—and it is this feeling that I had when reading North’s introduction.
In the past, I had just done “research”—what I considered an umbrella term for everything that was involved in writing a “research” paper. I did not stop and ruminate over the methods I was using or really ponder over my aim in doing research. It was all just work. I had never thought of the composition field as the amalgamation of the various communities upon which North expounds. I probably would not be able to discern the difference between practitioners, historians, philosophers, or critics, either (at least not to the extent North does). I would not be able to detail the differences in their objectives, and I would have conceived of them as all just members of one holistic community: the Composition community. If someone would have told me that you could write one hundred plus pages on “the modes of inquiry” and “how people know,” I would have responded with an incredulous stare.
Sticking with Kara’s post, I liked what she said about research potentially becoming even more expansive, covering not just the “how” but the “who, what, where, why, and how questions.” However, maybe these questions are somewhat tacit in our research and other related work. I think North’s intention in focusing not on what people know but how they know sheds research, practice, and inquiry in a new light. When we read books, journals, articles, research, etc., we are searching for the “what”—the knowledge that the author is disseminating into the public via a particular medium. The “how” is often ignored when we read, and I think North wanted to bring this to our attention. When perceived from that angle, North’s study is quite important and illuminating, for the “how” feeds into and begets the “what.” It is not the created knowledge itself with which North is concerned; rather, it is how—the means through which—that knowledge is created that is of chief import. As North cautions—thought it comes off more as preaching, as he brings it up incessantly—studies or practices are often flawed by the “how” and these flaws cause blemishes—inconsistencies, generalizations, and half-truths.
It is here where I truly understood the pragmatics of North’s work. For anyone truly interested in not only entering the composition field but also contributing to it, North’s work seems paramount. To see the field meticulously broken down into its multiple parts was intriguing, clarifying, and—well—unexpected. For me, it was almost bordering on invasive, like seeing Composition naked, for what it truly was. It was as if Composition had been wearing a mask, and North ripped it off to expose its true identity. His work seems important because many do not —well, at least I did not—look at the field through this lens. We do not dissect its numerous, integral parts. However, while this is what made North’s work unique, I also felt like it simultaneously acted as a detriment.
Like Natalie, I felt as though North was belaboring certain points, and his work seemed very akin to Aristotle’s “Rhetoric.” He took a field, broke it down, and analyzed all of its constituent parts—and he did so with painstaking detail. For areas there were new, his work was illuminating, but some areas just had that “well, duh” quality to them. At times, he droned on to the point of ad nauesum. In fact, the work became so methodically that I actually welcomed moments where he would quote other authors, as these authors’ prose were instilled with what was missing in North’s: life. His writing style was robotic, which at least correlated with how he intended to explicate the field—piece by piece, systematically leaving no stone unturned.
That is not to say, however, that North did not have his moments. He did (some of which I have already mentioned). Furthermore, I found his history of composition becoming Composition quite useful. As is the case with anyone who intends to enter a specific field, becoming familiar with its history is vital. The history allows the opportunity to see where the field has been, and it can also be used as a good barometer for predicting where the field is heading.
Like Liane, I also enjoyed North’s metaphor of the House of Lore, but I think he could have, as Liane did, expanded on it. It is a house that I feel is constantly under construction—always being renovated. Parts of the house are worn, other parts are new, and some parts are being replaced. In addition, what each individual gleans from walking through the house of lore is different. It is a cohesive structure, there to be experienced, but how each of us experience it is completely different.
And, making sure I cover everyone who posted (except Emily), I agree with Jill’s point about the rhetorical situation. For me, this was North’s most important point about practitioners and the way they conduct their practices, though he did not explicitly use the term. As Natalie and Jill said, North appeared somewhat condescending in his portrayal of the practitioners; in a sense, he almost seemed to belittle their work. However, what I believe he was really doing was emphasizing the importance of the rhetorical situation. His main qualm with practitioners was that they have seemed to acquire a propensity for overstepping their boundaries. They would take their practices and, being too presumptuous, try to apply their findings to areas, disciplines, and communities where the work was not applicable. I felt this point related well with what Yancey said in class: that it is often times important to acknowledge a study’s limitations, as it builds ones’ ethos.
And on that note, I think I have rambled on long enough. I don’t want to pull a North.
I, too, echo the sentiments of those who posted before me. I was disheartened by North's seemingly negative stance on the practitioners, especially considering my future work with pre-service teachers. I found myself stewing for a long time over North's claim on page 17 that "the stuff of teachers' rooms...doesn't count as research..." after some consideration, maybe it doesn't count in the world of R/C, but it surely does count somewhere, right? North's writing style did become dry and predictable and at points I was lost in the examples. Kara, I'm right there with you, wondering when the examples become too much or if that ever does happen. I also must make a disclaimer that my reading of North was probably a lot different than many of your's because I am new to the world of R/C and what I bring to the reading is what I know from English Education.
Chapter one was interesting, for me especially, because I have essentially no prior knowledge in the history of R/C. It was also interesting to see some familiar names to those often sited over in my neck of the woods, English Education. Arthur Applebee, for example, is commonly referenced in English Ed for his study into the most commonly taught novel length texts in schools, which not very surprisingly have not changed much over the years.
Going back to North's idea that practitioners are of a subservient class, suggested by his tome that practitioners have nothing worth saying, I was angered by his statement that practitioners can only apply knowledge not make it. I would argue that this is not so. In English Ed, we teach/practice a type of research called "Teacher Action Research" and sure, it is grounded in your own practice and is centered around a question you have about your own practice, but it is research nonetheless. Perhaps not as scientific as North would like, but it is a form of research. In fact, I would be willing to bet, that many of you who teach the Freshman English courses have engaged in some form of teacher action research, be it formal or informal at some point in your teaching experience and as a result have formulated some kind of knowledge as a result or what North has termed as lore. I guess this chapter also rubbed me the wrong way, because I envision positioning myself as a practitioner in the future and not necessarily as a researcher, but that could also be because the practitioner stuff is what I know and the researcher stuff is unknown to me so far.
The section on the scholars was at times a bit confusing, but did contain a few nuggets that I could grasp onto and make sense of. One of those nuggets was the idea that the scholars do write for each other but they also write for an audience of outsiders as well. I was waiting for North to bring back in the practitioners as being members of this "outside" group, but he didn't. After all, even if what the scholars write as a result of their research is new knowledge of some kind; shouldn't this knowledge be written in such a way that can be accessible by the practitioners? In each section-The Historians, The Philosophers, and The Critics-North outlines steps for inquiry. I’m curious if anyone else thinks that these steps overlap more than North points out. It also leads me to believe that a research design would be strengthened by utilizing more than one of these approaches, but hey-I hope that’s what we’re going to talk about and learn about in this class! One last idea that I kept finding myself coming back to was this idea that Dr. Carroll keeps telling me---I need to find a study that ends where I want to begin. I can’t point to one quote or portion of North’s first 133 pages that speaks to this idea, but as I begin to grapple with my own questions, Dr. Carroll keeps pushing me to find a study that ends where my questions begin-as a way to make a place for myself in the field.
Unlike Natalie, who found the categories tedious, I liked North’s categorization of different types of scholarship within the field. For one thing, he is one of the first to try to develop some methodology to addressing what the field of Composition is and how it functions; he is pretty much contributing to previous scholarship, which seeks to justify not only Composition’s existence, but also our right to receive funding and acknowledgement of our work. So North had to start somewhere. With his categories, he was able to develop an analysis of types of scholarship in the field, the methodologies employed by those forms of scholarship, the problems of that scholarship, and the historical origins of the different scholarship forms. I like his emphasis on communities as “groups of inquirers more or less united by their allegiance to one such mode, to an agreed upon set of rules for gathering, testing, validating, accumulating, and distributing what they regard as knowledge” (North 1). With these categories, North provides a framework of action within the field, which is necessary in part so that scholars can speak to other fields and place themselves away from the English department literary scholars.
Now while I can appreciate the categories, I am also struck by what Liane termed “slushy” language. I think the slushy language comes from North’s descriptions within the categories. His use of metaphors like the Practitioners’ rambling house, which never ends, is highly affective, but some of his other style choices rely heavily on articles which the reader may be unfamiliar with and he tends to describe the scholarship fields in less then flattering light. I am speaking here of his description of the History scholar, because a Historian who looks at previous events and analyzes them is a fairly straightforward concept in the sense that most fields have people who are historians to preserve the information and scholarship from before. But North’s statement that “moreover, in these studies anyway, the investigators tend, quite appropriately, to be less concerned with making major original contributions to any particular history—Rhetoric’s or Composition’s—than with making the already established findings of such inquiry accessible to a Composition audience” seems to belittle the important contributions historians can bring to the field (67). After all, since this piece, feminist rhetoricians have been working to re-historicize the history of the canon in order to make significant changes to how women are regarded as contributors to the field of rhetoric and composition. The same criticism could be made of his description of Critics. Throughout that section, I kept thinking ‘but what exactly is the difference between the philosophers and the critics.’ So while his categories appear to be good choices for explaining the field, North seems to not think highly of any of them. Even the group Philosophers which North calls the “most important group” and he explains as “the impulse from which it springs—the impulse to account for, to frame, critique and analyze the field’s fundamental assumptions and beliefs—is surely an elemental one, and has been a feature of composition from its beginnings,” yet he qualifies this experience as a “the great debate does not lead to action” (91, 96). From what I understand of philosophy, action follows thought a great deal of the time, so how can North limit the function of a group of scholars in that way. Now most of my criticism of this work has everything to do with my place in history. I am studying this field post the contributions of North and so, the scholarship of Composition studies has changed and evolved. North’s ultimate contribution is to give the field a good place to start.
To carry on with the theme of the “excitement” that we all collectively experienced in reading the first half of North’s book, I found (as have others) the history of Composition in chapter 1 to be particularly interesting. Reading the first chapter, I was even more convinced that the early 1960’s marks the birth of Composition as a new and emerging academic field. As may have been the case for others in our program, I first considered the importance of “1963” last semester when we read The Rhetoric of Cool. Then, in another recent reading, Robert J. Connors referred to the ’63 Watson conference with a sense of nostalgia. Now (although this happens to be a chronologically backwards progression), North has been our third witness to the importance of the early 1960’s as foundational in Composition: “…events in education generally, and English specifically, were such that the early 1960s call the most attention to themselves” (9). The foundation of the CCCC’s in 1949 seems a fitting precursors to the foundation of the field as well. But what questions were being raised, regarding English/Composition, in the 1950’s and 1960’s? I continue to find myself asking why these years were so important. North offers several explanations and answers to why the 1960s marks the birth of Composition—or at least, he explains how English and Composition were conceived by universities of those times. There was a reform movement that emphasized scholarly fields and knowledge production over the individual needs of students (91). English was conceived as a discipline in which knowledge was the key component rather than skills. English was a fundamental part of an education that was considered both liberal and balanced in the best sense of these terms. North doesn’t discuss what “questions” were being raised in the 1950’s and 1960’s per se, but he does explain how education—and especially the liberal arts education—was conceived. A part of all this was a need to analyze English/Composition teaching according to methods more scientific in nature. According to North, several communities have been born within the field of composition as a result. Like Rori, I don’t think I could separate the field into these separate categories as North has done. Although, it is interesting that he seems disinterested in practitioners as researchers since “teacher-research” is a more common form of research in the field today (but perhaps it was not as much in the 1980s?). And this type of research takes the same stance as North—as a practitioner within the field. Despite the fact that one’s views are always subjective (always ideological), I think describing the field “from within” is a great task; there are things only an insider understands. As an example, I would refer to David Holmes who on one level is a scholar within the field of Rhet/Comp and on another level is an African American interested in scholarship on and around African Americans, and their history, and how they are perceived, etc. His perspective, we would assume, is unique in part because of his affiliation with the group he studies. Similarly, the teacher-researcher is studying his/her own “group” as one of the group members. Regarding historical scholars, they seem to be extremely important to any discipline; they are constantly giving us new ways to see the narrative of our field. The work on classical rhetoric and composition teaching, as well as Berlin’s work on writing instruction in 18th and 19th century American institutions, has been influential on my thinking about the teaching of English and Composition and my own teaching. I actually found the Philosophers to be quite interesting because of the breadth of sources that this area of knowledge brings to bear (not as much as History, but a large body still). Philosophical Compositionists, North tells us, draw on thinkers and rhetoricians throughout the ages in order to explain the nature of composition (but not to prescribe how it ought to be done). I am also impressed at North’s insistence throughout the book that none of these methods tell us how we must act as practitioners; certainly, each method ought to exist as something that may inform our practices but should not prescribe what those practices should be. In Composition theory, classical rhetoric and the new rhetoric inform our practices significantly. Ann E. Berthoff is one scholar in our filed whose work we studied last semester, and seems to be of great value in reminding us of how transitive (or unstable) language, labels, and categories can be. On the Critics, I agree with Lianne that more examples are warranted. To me, the examples North gives (Kinneavy’s basic aims of discourse and North’s own contextual analysis of his students’ texts) seem to point toward Genre theory and Bakhtinian analysis (North discusses his students work as “contextual” rather than referring to any specific genre; Kinneavy’s categories seem quite like genres). And again, I am led to wonder about the evolution of our field: when did Bakhtin enter the critical conversation? North’s book seems to suggest that it was some time after the mid-1980s. Overall, I am impressed with the breadth of North’s book. I thought his examples—the ones he did use—were well represented and well-explained; I didn’t actually find that I needed more examples. I suppose that having first read “The Idea of a Writing Center” and found that text engaging and well-written, as well as having heard from professors how foundational North was for Writing Center scholarship…I simply assumed him to be an authority (an “icon”) and didn’t much question his ethos here. And I still feel that way. Despite the datedness of the work, I believe that this work still identifies some of the primary discourse communities in our field today.
Like Natalie (and now I see, like Kara and Tony too), my first reaction to North’s book was that, yes, this is exactly what I need to know. I need to know “the whole series of steps an inquirer follows in making a contribution to a field of knowledge”(1) and, in particular, to our field of knowledge, since this is exactly what I hope to do at some point. Yet while I came to see North’s effort to paint this portrait of the way things are done as valuable (and certainly laudable) in both its scope and specificity, I also questioned whether or not North’s background and expertise were sufficient to allow him to produce the kind of accurate and comprehensive depiction that he seemed to think he would be able to provide. In particular, I was put off by his apparent need to categorize the activities of composition knowledge-makers into what seemed to me to be quite narrow and fixed methodological classifications and then to be disturbed to find there were those whose efforts violated the parameters of the externally and subsequently imposed categories as if this invalidated their work or somehow compromised an otherwise valuable contribution to the knowledge of the field. It almost seemed that this sorting and categorizing of the field’s scholarship was North’s effort, as a new composition professional, to analyze and synthesize the field’s seminal works in order to understand for himself just what being a contributor to the field of composition is all about, to fit all the work done before he entered the picture into some kind of mental matrix that would make sense to him. In the end, however, I decided that his effort to explain the way knowledge is generated and presented in our field does make a genuine contribution, itself, to our discipline’s scholarship and realized that it must offer information (or at least what many consider a valuable perspective) that has yet to be duplicated or significantly improved upon since graduate students are still being directed to consume and consider the ideas it exemplifies today, almost a quarter-century after its original publication.
The categories of composition knowledge building that North identifies, explores, and explicates in the early sections of the book include practitioner, historical, philosophical, and critical modes of inquiry. According to North, practitioner inquiry is the only form of knowledge building that harks back to our pre-professional days, the days before anyone thought to theorize, philosophize or analyze the teaching or learning of composition. While this may be true, like Tiffany and Natalie, I was uncomfortable with his characterization of both practitioners and their form of inquiry. North calls the practical knowledge developed through this type of inquiry “lore” and suggests that its primacy is one of the reasons for composition’s extended subordination in the realm of academe, where theory is typically valued over practice. As North explains, practitioners quite often begin an inquiry in response to some problem they perceive in the effectiveness of the currently accepted teaching methods when applied in practice. North characterizes these efforts as “a combination of informed intuition and trial and error” (45). Because the soundness of conclusions drawn from such efforts are hard to explain and defend to outsiders, North contends that “the larger society of Composition,” tend to devalue the contributions of practitioner inquiry (50). Oddly enough, however, when practitioners have attempted to reinforce their conclusions by also examining them in light of the findings of related scholarship, North feels the end result is “confusion […] over just what is being offered, and where its authority finally lies” (53).
This position apparently stems from his firm conviction that scholarship, at least in the Western humanist tradition, must not be engaged in the process of figuring out what can, should, or must be done. Instead, the work of scholars must be limited to “provid[ing] a coherent past for the field,” “examin[ing] the philosophical underpinnings of Composition,” or “the interpretation of texts [and determining] just which texts are to be interpreted, for what purposes, and by what means.” (59-60). North suggests that examining the results of historical, philosophical, or critical inquiry in order to determine the best course of action to solve a particular problem or to advocate for the superiority of one position over another is not only inappropriate but also detrimental to the knowledge-building process as a whole and labels the results of such attempts “dangerous” or “confusing.” This attitude, however, is what I find confusing. While I understand that there is inherent worth in simply documenting the discipline’s past, identifying theoretical foundations, and interpreting key texts, it seems to me that this value is magnified when the implications for further study and implementation that these types of knowledge contain are explored both in theory and in practice. Furthermore, since our discipline is so rooted and grounded in practice, this effort to orient the scholarship in a form of pure philosophy, history, or criticism strikes me as far less useful than taking those methods and transforming them into something more apropos to our own disciplinary goals and purposes.
Despite this rather significant concern, however, I still feel that, on the whole, North’s work helped me to develop a much clearer picture of just what the work of composition inquiry might entail. Like Rory and Julie, I appreciated not only the extensive explanations of what each type of investigative method, in its pure form, might include and how it might proceed, but also the numerous examples which he gave to illustrate his points (although, like Liane, I found myself skimming over a good portion of the many with which I was unfamiliar). Additionally, I felt North did an excellent job of laying out the complicated historical context and accounting for the unique evolution of the discipline and its conglomerate of research and scholarship methodologies. Having studied the first three sections of North’s book, I now feel better able to explain what it means to be a composition scholar and to appreciate the complicated political influences that have always surrounded the work of composition. Because of this, I also feel much better prepared to at least consider what I, myself, might have to offer the field as a composition practitioner and/or scholar.
Reading North's book comes at an important time for me (for all us, I would say, based on the comments I read). After spending last semester learning about the theories that underlie both what we do and what we understand as (developing) members of the rhet/comp community, I felt a growing need to know "How": How does one attempt to resolve a problem he or she notices in the writing classroom, for example? How does one test an observation of how language might function? How, in short, do we create knowledge as members of this community?
The answer, I've come to learn, is research.
Now, this may constitute one of those "Duh, Scott" moments, but for me, research was previously little more than the task of gathering information. I recognize it now as the process by which we create new knowledge. Moreover, I see it as a means of defining a discipline. The intent to define Composition as such seems to be the impetus for North's book. It is appropriate, then, that he focuses on how we conduct research.
Because Composition was and still seems to be a large rambling house with multiple (perhaps disconnected) rooms and wings, I feel that North's attempt to categorize was smart and perhaps inevitable. Also, as a reader, I rather enjoyed the divisions; they provided me with a manageable way to wrap my head around such a vast array of scholarship (I should note here that I actually enjoy Aristotle's Rhetoric). My problem with the categories, though (or rather, my hesitation), is that categorizing is inevitably reductive, and I think that this reduction ignores much of the crossover that occurs among, say, the work and interests of Practitioners and Researchers. Then again, I wonder if there is much crossover, especially since we're always hearing about the gap between rhet and comp--especially since we're all trying to chisel out our individual niche. I wonder also if a discipline isn't defined by such categories. If we can name it, define it, and place it in a box, we can explain what it is to those outside of the community (perhaps those who are responsible for passing education reform bills or determining how much funding a certain department or program will receive). We can also explain what it is to the members of that community, thus providing that community with a sense of identity. Perhaps this is North's achievement: identifying who we are for ourselves.
So overall, I stand in favor of North's approach (even if I'm somewhat skeptical of categories). It seems like a smart way of trying to tackle decades of research. It's also helped me to begin understanding how to take the next step in my development as a member of this community, i.e. how to move from someone absorbing knowledge to someone creating it.
As for the specific categories we read about in this portion of the book, I too felt that North perpetuates the second-class status of the Practitioner. At least that was my initial reaction. Yes, he certainly favors the creation of knowledge over the implementation of knowledge, but it seems to me now that the Practitioners also create knowledge; there's just no real definable methodology since much of it occurs by way of oral transmission. This knowledge is represented in what he calls "lore." North's discussion of lore coincided well with the experiences I've had as a teacher of first-year writing, for much of my pedagogical practices have come from conversations I've had with other teachers. It doesn't seem to me that North is saying Practitioners can in no way create knowledge, for lore would seem to function as a body of knowledge, especially when collected into "catechetical" textbooks. Moreover, the lore seems to constitute much of what we know as members of the rhet/comp community. Question: Am I reading North correctly here, or am I applying my own view of lore to North's chapter on Practitioners?
Two final notes: (1) I tend to agree with Kara in regard to the chapter on Critics. I did not leave that portion of the reading with as clear of an understanding of what makes someone a Critic. Yes, I understand that a Critic is not necessarily a Historian or a Philosopher according to North's defintion of those terms, but what exactly is a Critic? It seems that hermeneutics function as the defining feature; I'm just not sure how. (2) I find it interesting that one's methodologies define their position in the field, not the content of one's research.
As the last responder, I have the task of reading more than I bargained for, though great responses indeed. Admittedly, I came to this book rather frustrated so I did not intend to enjoy the reading by no means. But later found myself getting involved into the reading. Looking at myself and how I most inquire knowledge.
Of course, Practitioner was the first one to analyze. I am one by the very nature of my assignment at this university. In regard to North, I was taken aback by the way he framed this section. I first assumed that he was condemning the Practitioner by its use of lore, and then he somehow defends its existence and finally ends with them not fully understanding their limits and purpose. In his attempt to cover the entire basis of this group, there resides an ambiguity regarding where he stood on the matter.
The next section intrigued me more or less because it got into what we call Rhetoric. I felt so alive at this point. I actually learned something from last year- History as a foundation, chronological order of knowledge. And speaking of patterns North was very consistent in that. First it was comforting, the detailing of how knowledge is inquired, but as my mental capacity faulted with fatigue and boredom, they became a way to get through the material (give a form; explain; quote; explain; quote; and finally what the section can and cannot do).
(For written discourse, I understand why North constructed the arguments in this way, so I am only questioning how we apply these methods practically, trying to solve a problem in composition not the problem of conveying the message to a selected audience.) So to continue, in this day and age of hypertext, overlap, collaboration, and so forth, isn't it becoming rather difficult to categorize and subcategorize our field when it comes to research? By the very act of considering a methodology, aren’t we too gaining a contributor? North referenced this slightly in the way he discussed the subjects of humanities and history. Composition –capital “C” has varied compositions: literature, language, communication, writing, etc. Doesn't this apply to our research and methodologies? This field is huge (I think the appropriate word); can we successfully pick one allegiance (I may be wrong but this is what I sense North is trying to do, besides the issues of having us see what we do and what happened)? Aren't we all Historicians by way of our previous class in Rhet Theory? Aren’t we all Practitioners in our own right as teachers? Are we not all Critics in our own right as students? (Sorry can't think of anything for Philosophers, but it will come to me) Maybe we're overlapping so because we are taking research by every angle and aren’t we supposed to acquire knowledge by any means or limit it by definition. North does an informative job in identifying the categorizes of inquiring knowledge, but do we apply it in the same sense? By asking that question, I find myself overwhelmed, for if correct, it confirms the many possibilities available, especially for a practitioner who is said to only be told what to do. And just looking at our field in the light of this book, I realize how many long nights I have ahead of me.
13 comments:
Well, someone has to start this out; I suppose I can put my two cents in and get the ball rolling. When I first read North’s introduction and his plan to investigate HOW people make knowledge (as opposed to re-hatching WHAT that knowledge is) I have to admit I was intrigued. It seems apropos that as a graduate student entering the field that I should be privy to the ways that I can “make knowledge,” the ways that my peers expect me to frame my work. I I anticipated a sort of insider guide, and at this point, still considering myself a relative outsider, I was somewhat excited.
At the end of about 20 pages I scrawled a large note across the top of my notebook, underlining it in a rather frustrated manner. “His writing is (annoyingly) Aristotelian.” I do not wish to offend those who are a fan of his, but the methodical creation of categories and then the predicable extrapolation of those categories really began to wear on me. This is a stylistic complaint alone; however, I felt the need to mention it since it really began to make reading painful around page 80. In terms of content, the categories we read in these beginning pages seemed rather appropriate, for lack of a better word (football is on my mind). I caught myself mentally testing his categories to see if I could file the authors we read last semester into one of his distinctions. His use of example authors and studies helped me better understand the various modes of inquiry and dissemination he discussed, and their inserted quotes broke up the monotony of his own theoretical, methodical prose.
However, as I read through the later sections, I kept returning to my uneasiness with the way he portrayed practitioners. Perhaps it was my own bias, but I was a bit offended by the almost “lower class” status that he assigned to their work. His discussion of their work and practices of making knowledge teetered on patronizing. As I read on it seemed to me that he spoke much for favorably/highly of scholarly and research work. This hint at a bias got me thinking about his entire undertaking. Can anyone really survey the field “from the inside” (as his intro states), as an ethnographer of sorts without a bias? Couldn’t five other professors tackle the same project and write final pieces that described each field and its practices in a different light. How reliable can this account be? Once you are an “insider” doesn’t objectivity slowly slip away from you? Isn’t his attempt doomed to biased flaws from the very beginning? Why those examples; why those authors; why those categories? The institution we attend and the professionals we come into contact with often shape our view of the field and its knowledge (he says so himself when we discusses how one enters ‘the house of lore’ at different entries), but then don’t his own opinions fall victim to the same reasoning? Can one really generalize an entire field from a position within that is arguably biased (consciously or unconsciously)? I know he attempted to add a “disclaimer” of sorts in his introduction stating that this was, in the end, HIS account of the field, but then what does that mean for his reader? How are we to take the account he created? Furthermore, I wonder how old he was and at what stage in his career he wrote this. I thought I remember it being mentioned in class that this was an early work of his. Can a young scholar in the field really claim to be able to survey its entire breadth? I know I wouldn’t be ready to tackle that feat within the next ten years or so. Hence I wonder if a seasoned professional in the field would have created a completely different account of the way practitioners and scholars make knowledge.
Lastly, in terms of our own benefit, I wonder how relevant this material is to the current field today. This was an account published in 1987, more than 20 years ago. As I mentioned earlier, I certainly do not have a good enough grasp on the field to be able to say whether these modes of inquiry are still acceptable/being practiced or if the field has moved away from these categories of professionals. I feel as though we have much more multi-faceted, perhaps schizophrenic, profession identities these days; so would his work still help a graduate student get the “insider information” I spoke of earlier or is it best utilized by us as a historical reference?
I think what Natalie had to say about North's style is something I agree with; it made the reading slushy for me to get through. But nonetheless I appreciated the foundation it provided in terms of modes of inquiry. Although North was writing at a time in which research in composition was not robust (nor is it still, I suppose, in comparison to other fields), the modes of inquiry should help us, as relatively new researchers, locate our inquiry appropriately, understanding what it is not as well as what it is (or intends to be). I thin the "not" is critical to understand, just as it is important to understand what the approach will be. Much like our discussion, for those of you in the Reflection and Contemplation group, about how silence frames sound, I think what I took from North that is key is a sense of the importance of defining whatever research I do in terms of what is and what is not.
North also used a visual that I found helpful: the rambling house with many additions. I liked his depiction of our field as one that has grown as rooms or sections in a house are added - then, when he was writing this, and now, as he predicted, I think it continues to evolve this way. That visual representation applies today, and I might even take it a step further to call it a college house (fraternity, sorority, just a bunch of roommates together) because not only does it continue to evolve it is also shaped by its inhabitants who may stay for a while or for a long time, maybe forever. But while certain roommates are living in the house at a given time, that group defines the house. As roommates change, the house changes slightly, but it is always the house, and there are always things left behind by roommates who have moved on. Our field is full of scholars and practitioners who contribute in much the same way - contributions that vary and evolve as the individual does. North's visual, and my own "renovation" of it, helped me clarify for myself the sort of patchwork birth that composition began as and continues to evolve from. North's interpretation helps ground my overall thinking about where we've been and why we are where we are.
North portrays composition as a field that has little connection between its parts, its pieces of patchwork, although he implies that it will in time. I found myself thinking ahead several years after North wrote this book to examples that refuted this claim, and while this provided a sense of evolution it also made his examples more distracting for me in understanding the concepts. Natalie's review suggests that these examples were helpful, and I think some were, but I didn't find this to be the case overall. Perhaps I'm impatient, but I wanted the modes of inquiry explained without the distraction of examples. Perhaps an annotated case study would have been more helpful, or perhaps I just couldn't get past the distraction of old examples.
I did find it helpful that North separated and explained the various roles within the field. His explanation of the difference between Practitioners and Scholars helped frame what it is we do and how we do it, and his subcategorizing of Scholars was helpful in understanding who makes up that aspect of the field. His Philosopher was difficult to grasp but his Historian and Critic were clear.
In the Practitioners section North discusses lore. This explanation of lore in our field helped explain how practitioner knowledge is made and informed and how it comes to be part of the overall scholarship. North's treatment of lore gives it legitimacy and value in its contribution to that scholarship. North's point about how composition has grown out of what practitioners do is a valid point. The experiential nature of our field is something we can relate to - as we learn about the composition field, those of us who are teaching are also experiencing it in the classroom, which informs our study and eventual scholarship. North helps explain the importance of Mina Shaughnessy's "Errors and Expectations" in this context: as a harnessing of the experiences that informed her thinking. It was not the rhetorical sophistication, as North put it, that made her book so iconic, it was the shared experience among practitioners that she captured so well.
It is interesting to look at research as such a complex system informed by myriad experiences and perspectives, as North purports. By describing researchers in terms of the communities of inquiry they inhabit, North helps us understand that all researchers bring themselves - that is their personal experiences and perspectives - to their approach to research. The resulting interpretations will be informed by the complexities of that which came before. North's explanation of where researchers "live" and why is helpful in grasping the nature of research as nebulous, and therefore providing us with a greater understanding of the need to respect the difficulty in preparing for research that will be valid and valuable in its contribution to the field.
First of all, let me say that I agree with the observations Natalie and Lianne made regarding North. In particular, though, I was struck with the same offense that Natalie mentioned in her review- of North’s portrayal of practitioners as less worthy or important in status than that of scholars and researchers. I did, however, have an afterthought that perhaps North was merely bringing to light a common assumption and view about college composition as a whole and how it is not seen as prestigious as other, more theoretical, areas of study. This is further shown in North’s mention of the “power-by-association” practice that is common even today- that is, the coupling of composition with another discipline; for example, “Linguistics and Composition”, “Literature and Composition”, and of course “Rhetoric and Composition”. North described the coupling of rhetoric and composition as giving a type of intellectual legitimacy to composition that the discipline of composition would not possess merely on its own. That, to me, furthered the idea of practitioners not being capable of operating by their own volition, an idea that is still prevalent today. This idea may be due to the seemingly non-cohesive nature of composition as a discipline-illustrated by North’s example of the rambling house with numerous additions.
North’s detailing of the modes of inquiry was actually helpful to me because it clarified the different areas that we all come from in order to make knowledge of composition. As I was reading about practitioners, I was continually reminded of the rhetorical situation and what an important role it plays in determining how to act from what we do or do not know. I found it fascinating that North was perplexed by the philosophers and found them frustrating and difficult. I admit I laughed a little inside because, ironically, that is how many would portray this work of North. I questioned North’s strategy in researching the philosophers, though, when he said he was “picking and choosing [his] way through more than twenty years of articles.” This method sounded random and faulty and perhaps is one of the reasons for North’s frustration and perception of difficulty that the philosophers present.
I liked that North emphasized the importance of community and the validation that a community gives to various modes of inquiry. The idea of lore and how it is created was an interesting read. I had never heard the term lore used with this connotation before. It reinforced the way I see agency and how ideas are no longer yours to manipulate once they are released into some form of lore. The contributor relinquishes control once their ideas are “out there” and something cannot be just “taken back”…only changed or commented upon. North’s book has become a piece of lore, and I can’t help but wonder what control North wishes to have upon the words he published over twenty years ago.
As far as North’s writing style, it was exasperating at times, but I found the various examples of how we know what we know useful in filling in the spaces in the composition realm I previously did not explore.
In many ways, I agree w/ what Liane and Natalie said. North’s intro got me excited (to use Natalie’s words) because he was offering me advice of how to really become a part of our field, a chance to dig in to the research and become a part of the community. Making new knowledge seems like a great idea to me, though a somewhat daunting task considering we are all relatively new to the community. What would we have to offer at this point that would be new knowledge? However, w/ excitement came the “slushy” moments (to salute Liane’s language choice). It seems his explanations were reading moments where one responds, why duh! When does the line become crossed when there is too much explanation? Or am I reading it wrong and there can never be too much?
I do think that, we the members of the Rhet/Comp community, need to be grounded in the history of our field. So Chpt #1 was a nice set-up for us. The history of our field has a lot to do with the direction we may be headed. I think I am learning this as we progress w/ our classes.
The practitioners were an interesting read for me b/c I kept coming back to a question that arose in my head during the intro. North wants to investigate the “how” instead of the “what” and then later says that practitioners only search for answers about the “how” and not the “why” (in his intro he said he wanted to investigate within the field). Why aren’t we asking all the who, what, where, how questions? Wouldn’t a study be better-rounded if we approached more than one of those questions in our research?
Do teachers resist new solutions? North suggests that they do. I think this is so true and something I latched onto that he said. I link this idea to our freshmen we teach. Every fall ( and sometimes spring depending on if they had 1101) semester we have to unravel what they learned in high school, so we can teach them how to build upon the five paragraph theme (or high school version of a literary critical analysis always a big one for AP students). They tend to be very uncomfortable attempting new ideas and resist the new idea of expending their ideas past three paragraphs or incorporating new techniques like show don’t tell into their work. I have actually had students argue w/ me that there is no need to learn past high school writing (ps…that interpreted means they already know what they need to know ). So, if students resist something new and uncomfortable, something that asks them to go against their traditional ideas, why wouldn’t teachers? Or for that matter new teachers attempting to figure out who they are in relation to the field, the classroom and their own pedagogy. We are human, thus we tend to resist things that seem different whether we agree w/ what is being offered as different or not. For us right now, we are learning to research. We are learning about ourselves in the classroom. It is hard not to resist the unknown.
The section on “the scholars” was interesting for me. Here I have to disagree w/ Liane. I felt like the critics were unclear of a read. I didn’t feel he gave enough support of what it meant to be a critic or what they are important to research. I also felt like his examples of critics were limited. He only used one example for both his study and Kinneavy’s. His conclusion to this chapter said that hermeneutical inquiry provides us with an access to voices, “our own and others: access to the nature of consciousness, in effect, and the way it makes the world in words” (131). I really like this idea, however do not feel it was explained or shown fully. He gave us a brief glance at what this type of inquiry can do and I felt like he could have done much more with it.
Lastly, I agree w/ both Liane and Natalie again and wonder why and how this book is still relevant so many years later. I though research was about creating new knowledge (though we do need a foundation for it). How can something written 20 years ago still be the model in which we follow today? I do like what Liane said that he helped us to understand “that all researchers bring themselves-that is their personal experiences and perspectives- to their approach to research. I agree 100%. Part of learning and gaining new knowledge stems from our lived experiences. So I guess I need to retract my above question, b/c North’s experience helped create new knowledge for me (even though it was many, many years ago).
As North sets the historical context for English and Composition studies—Composition with a capital “C”—he seems to unknowingly draw parallels to a number of historical plights. Composition Studies scholarship characterizes the struggle between the three-pronged elements of English studies—language, literature, and composition—as ongoing, a fact we see in our own department. North draws a similar picture of English studies as the marrying of three separate studies under an umbrella discipline. An acknowledged stretch, but Composition’s greater historical context mirrors that of colonial Europeans who colonized Africa. These conquerors, ignorant of dissension among tribal groups, placed dissenting tribes into nation states that resulted in centuries of conflict as the opposing and feuding groups were forced to unite. English studies reflects a similar fight where the power distribution between language, literature, and composition is conflicted and shifting due to the three studies having “no real unity as subject matter” (10).
It’s frustrating to me that English studies was struggling not only internally, but externally. Not long after literature, language and composition were lumped together, North recounts NCTE’s struggle to receive funding from the National Defense Education Act of 1958 and the NCTE’s response that “demonstrated that the English teaching profession could muster considerable rhetorical energy” and resulted in an extension of the Cooperative Research Program, parallels might be drawn to the variety of plights made by marginalized groups (11). Throughout history marginalized communities are most successful when provided a cohesive voice and a venue for communicating. Look at groups such as the women of the Seneca Falls Convention or, in memory of today, the blacks of the Million Man March who were given a voice because they congregated. North notes a similar response from English educators who gathered behind NCTE to serve as a figurehead for English studies as able to impart students with “the ability to think and write and read, and an intimate contact with ideals, beauty, and morality” (11). It’s this attitude of grandeur—of viewing composition as crucial to English studies’ historical context—that sets the tone for North’s exploration.
Perhaps North’s recount of Composition’s struggle is best summarized by Kitzhaber in his critique of 4C in saying, “It has too seldom attempted to spearhead promising new trends or to condemn outworn practices, if either is controversial” (14). This statement seems to haunt Composition throughout its short history and throughout The Making of Knowledge in Composition. I’m fascinated by the recent birth of Composition with a capital “C,” and am baffled by how slowly the field has seemed to rectify or acknowledge the problem Kitzhaber identified. North divides the next sections of the text based on the strategies of practitioners and historians, philosophers, and critics of composition. Setting the foundation of Composition studies and then layering on the variety of techniques and experiences of four groups of composition scholars and practitioners sets the tone for Making of Knowledge. These sections were interesting as they place Composition within several contexts, yet it was the history of Composition studies that captured me most. I found the thorough account interesting as—at least to me—it parallels a grander and more global history. In that sense—a historical sense—North’s intricate writing appealed to me. Yes, this text was written decades ago, but with any study it is imperative that I—or we—have a rooted foundation from which to grow.
Well, the trend in this blog seems to be agreeing with others, and in refraining from being too rebellious, I intend to continue that trend. First, I felt similar to Kara in that the introduction made me “excited.” It actually got me thinking back to our other class, “Designing Writing,” and how I felt as though I was starting to become part of the field. For the past couple of years, I have just blindly followed along, playing the game. I did not really stop to question why we did what we did or, perhaps more importantly, why things were set up the way that they were. Now, however, I am looking at first year composition through an entirely different lens. Rather than playing the game, simply completing my role as a cog, I am learning the intricacies of the game—how it is designed and works. I am becoming privy to the dirty work that goes on behind closed doors. Reading these works and discussing them in class made me excited—it was refreshing—and it is this feeling that I had when reading North’s introduction.
In the past, I had just done “research”—what I considered an umbrella term for everything that was involved in writing a “research” paper. I did not stop and ruminate over the methods I was using or really ponder over my aim in doing research. It was all just work. I had never thought of the composition field as the amalgamation of the various communities upon which North expounds. I probably would not be able to discern the difference between practitioners, historians, philosophers, or critics, either (at least not to the extent North does). I would not be able to detail the differences in their objectives, and I would have conceived of them as all just members of one holistic community: the Composition community. If someone would have told me that you could write one hundred plus pages on “the modes of inquiry” and “how people know,” I would have responded with an incredulous stare.
Sticking with Kara’s post, I liked what she said about research potentially becoming even more expansive, covering not just the “how” but the “who, what, where, why, and how questions.” However, maybe these questions are somewhat tacit in our research and other related work. I think North’s intention in focusing not on what people know but how they know sheds research, practice, and inquiry in a new light. When we read books, journals, articles, research, etc., we are searching for the “what”—the knowledge that the author is disseminating into the public via a particular medium. The “how” is often ignored when we read, and I think North wanted to bring this to our attention. When perceived from that angle, North’s study is quite important and illuminating, for the “how” feeds into and begets the “what.” It is not the created knowledge itself with which North is concerned; rather, it is how—the means through which—that knowledge is created that is of chief import. As North cautions—thought it comes off more as preaching, as he brings it up incessantly—studies or practices are often flawed by the “how” and these flaws cause blemishes—inconsistencies, generalizations, and half-truths.
It is here where I truly understood the pragmatics of North’s work. For anyone truly interested in not only entering the composition field but also contributing to it, North’s work seems paramount. To see the field meticulously broken down into its multiple parts was intriguing, clarifying, and—well—unexpected. For me, it was almost bordering on invasive, like seeing Composition naked, for what it truly was. It was as if Composition had been wearing a mask, and North ripped it off to expose its true identity. His work seems important because many do not —well, at least I did not—look at the field through this lens. We do not dissect its numerous, integral parts. However, while this is what made North’s work unique, I also felt like it simultaneously acted as a detriment.
Like Natalie, I felt as though North was belaboring certain points, and his work seemed very akin to Aristotle’s “Rhetoric.” He took a field, broke it down, and analyzed all of its constituent parts—and he did so with painstaking detail. For areas there were new, his work was illuminating, but some areas just had that “well, duh” quality to them. At times, he droned on to the point of ad nauesum. In fact, the work became so methodically that I actually welcomed moments where he would quote other authors, as these authors’ prose were instilled with what was missing in North’s: life. His writing style was robotic, which at least correlated with how he intended to explicate the field—piece by piece, systematically leaving no stone unturned.
That is not to say, however, that North did not have his moments. He did (some of which I have already mentioned). Furthermore, I found his history of composition becoming Composition quite useful. As is the case with anyone who intends to enter a specific field, becoming familiar with its history is vital. The history allows the opportunity to see where the field has been, and it can also be used as a good barometer for predicting where the field is heading.
Like Liane, I also enjoyed North’s metaphor of the House of Lore, but I think he could have, as Liane did, expanded on it. It is a house that I feel is constantly under construction—always being renovated. Parts of the house are worn, other parts are new, and some parts are being replaced. In addition, what each individual gleans from walking through the house of lore is different. It is a cohesive structure, there to be experienced, but how each of us experience it is completely different.
And, making sure I cover everyone who posted (except Emily), I agree with Jill’s point about the rhetorical situation. For me, this was North’s most important point about practitioners and the way they conduct their practices, though he did not explicitly use the term. As Natalie and Jill said, North appeared somewhat condescending in his portrayal of the practitioners; in a sense, he almost seemed to belittle their work. However, what I believe he was really doing was emphasizing the importance of the rhetorical situation. His main qualm with practitioners was that they have seemed to acquire a propensity for overstepping their boundaries. They would take their practices and, being too presumptuous, try to apply their findings to areas, disciplines, and communities where the work was not applicable. I felt this point related well with what Yancey said in class: that it is often times important to acknowledge a study’s limitations, as it builds ones’ ethos.
And on that note, I think I have rambled on long enough. I don’t want to pull a North.
I, too, echo the sentiments of those who posted before me. I was disheartened by North's seemingly negative stance on the practitioners, especially considering my future work with pre-service teachers. I found myself stewing for a long time over North's claim on page 17 that "the stuff of teachers' rooms...doesn't count as research..." after some consideration, maybe it doesn't count in the world of R/C, but it surely does count somewhere, right? North's writing style did become dry and predictable and at points I was lost in the examples. Kara, I'm right there with you, wondering when the examples become too much or if that ever does happen. I also must make a disclaimer that my reading of North was probably a lot different than many of your's because I am new to the world of R/C and what I bring to the reading is what I know from English Education.
Chapter one was interesting, for me especially, because I have essentially no prior knowledge in the history of R/C. It was also interesting to see some familiar names to those often sited over in my neck of the woods, English Education. Arthur Applebee, for example, is commonly referenced in English Ed for his study into the most commonly taught novel length texts in schools, which not very surprisingly have not changed much over the years.
Going back to North's idea that practitioners are of a subservient class, suggested by his tome that practitioners have nothing worth saying, I was angered by his statement that practitioners can only apply knowledge not make it. I would argue that this is not so. In English Ed, we teach/practice a type of research called "Teacher Action Research" and sure, it is grounded in your own practice and is centered around a question you have about your own practice, but it is research nonetheless. Perhaps not as scientific as North would like, but it is a form of research. In fact, I would be willing to bet, that many of you who teach the Freshman English courses have engaged in some form of teacher action research, be it formal or informal at some point in your teaching experience and as a result have formulated some kind of knowledge as a result or what North has termed as lore. I guess this chapter also rubbed me the wrong way, because I envision positioning myself as a practitioner in the future and not necessarily as a researcher, but that could also be because the practitioner stuff is what I know and the researcher stuff is unknown to me so far.
The section on the scholars was at times a bit confusing, but did contain a few nuggets that I could grasp onto and make sense of. One of those nuggets was the idea that the scholars do write for each other but they also write for an audience of outsiders as well. I was waiting for North to bring back in the practitioners as being members of this "outside" group, but he didn't. After all, even if what the scholars write as a result of their research is new knowledge of some kind; shouldn't this knowledge be written in such a way that can be accessible by the practitioners? In each section-The Historians, The Philosophers, and The Critics-North outlines steps for inquiry. I’m curious if anyone else thinks that these steps overlap more than North points out. It also leads me to believe that a research design would be strengthened by utilizing more than one of these approaches, but hey-I hope that’s what we’re going to talk about and learn about in this class! One last idea that I kept finding myself coming back to was this idea that Dr. Carroll keeps telling me---I need to find a study that ends where I want to begin. I can’t point to one quote or portion of North’s first 133 pages that speaks to this idea, but as I begin to grapple with my own questions, Dr. Carroll keeps pushing me to find a study that ends where my questions begin-as a way to make a place for myself in the field.
Unlike Natalie, who found the categories tedious, I liked North’s categorization of different types of scholarship within the field. For one thing, he is one of the first to try to develop some methodology to addressing what the field of Composition is and how it functions; he is pretty much contributing to previous scholarship, which seeks to justify not only Composition’s existence, but also our right to receive funding and acknowledgement of our work. So North had to start somewhere. With his categories, he was able to develop an analysis of types of scholarship in the field, the methodologies employed by those forms of scholarship, the problems of that scholarship, and the historical origins of the different scholarship forms. I like his emphasis on communities as “groups of inquirers more or less united by their allegiance to one such mode, to an agreed upon set of rules for gathering, testing, validating, accumulating, and distributing what they regard as knowledge” (North 1). With these categories, North provides a framework of action within the field, which is necessary in part so that scholars can speak to other fields and place themselves away from the English department literary scholars.
Now while I can appreciate the categories, I am also struck by what Liane termed “slushy” language. I think the slushy language comes from North’s descriptions within the categories. His use of metaphors like the Practitioners’ rambling house, which never ends, is highly affective, but some of his other style choices rely heavily on articles which the reader may be unfamiliar with and he tends to describe the scholarship fields in less then flattering light. I am speaking here of his description of the History scholar, because a Historian who looks at previous events and analyzes them is a fairly straightforward concept in the sense that most fields have people who are historians to preserve the information and scholarship from before. But North’s statement that “moreover, in these studies anyway, the investigators tend, quite appropriately, to be less concerned with making major original contributions to any particular history—Rhetoric’s or Composition’s—than with making the already established findings of such inquiry accessible to a Composition audience” seems to belittle the important contributions historians can bring to the field (67). After all, since this piece, feminist rhetoricians have been working to re-historicize the history of the canon in order to make significant changes to how women are regarded as contributors to the field of rhetoric and composition. The same criticism could be made of his description of Critics. Throughout that section, I kept thinking ‘but what exactly is the difference between the philosophers and the critics.’ So while his categories appear to be good choices for explaining the field, North seems to not think highly of any of them. Even the group Philosophers which North calls the “most important group” and he explains as “the impulse from which it springs—the impulse to account for, to frame, critique and analyze the field’s fundamental assumptions and beliefs—is surely an elemental one, and has been a feature of composition from its beginnings,” yet he qualifies this experience as a “the great debate does not lead to action” (91, 96). From what I understand of philosophy, action follows thought a great deal of the time, so how can North limit the function of a group of scholars in that way. Now most of my criticism of this work has everything to do with my place in history. I am studying this field post the contributions of North and so, the scholarship of Composition studies has changed and evolved. North’s ultimate contribution is to give the field a good place to start.
To carry on with the theme of the “excitement” that we all collectively experienced in reading the first half of North’s book, I found (as have others) the history of Composition in chapter 1 to be particularly interesting. Reading the first chapter, I was even more convinced that the early 1960’s marks the birth of Composition as a new and emerging academic field. As may have been the case for others in our program, I first considered the importance of “1963” last semester when we read The Rhetoric of Cool. Then, in another recent reading, Robert J. Connors referred to the ’63 Watson conference with a sense of nostalgia. Now (although this happens to be a chronologically backwards progression), North has been our third witness to the importance of the early 1960’s as foundational in Composition: “…events in education generally, and English specifically, were such that the early 1960s call the most attention to themselves” (9). The foundation of the CCCC’s in 1949 seems a fitting precursors to the foundation of the field as well. But what questions were being raised, regarding English/Composition, in the 1950’s and 1960’s? I continue to find myself asking why these years were so important.
North offers several explanations and answers to why the 1960s marks the birth of Composition—or at least, he explains how English and Composition were conceived by universities of those times. There was a reform movement that emphasized scholarly fields and knowledge production over the individual needs of students (91). English was conceived as a discipline in which knowledge was the key component rather than skills. English was a fundamental part of an education that was considered both liberal and balanced in the best sense of these terms. North doesn’t discuss what “questions” were being raised in the 1950’s and 1960’s per se, but he does explain how education—and especially the liberal arts education—was conceived. A part of all this was a need to analyze English/Composition teaching according to methods more scientific in nature. According to North, several communities have been born within the field of composition as a result.
Like Rori, I don’t think I could separate the field into these separate categories as North has done. Although, it is interesting that he seems disinterested in practitioners as researchers since “teacher-research” is a more common form of research in the field today (but perhaps it was not as much in the 1980s?). And this type of research takes the same stance as North—as a practitioner within the field. Despite the fact that one’s views are always subjective (always ideological), I think describing the field “from within” is a great task; there are things only an insider understands. As an example, I would refer to David Holmes who on one level is a scholar within the field of Rhet/Comp and on another level is an African American interested in scholarship on and around African Americans, and their history, and how they are perceived, etc. His perspective, we would assume, is unique in part because of his affiliation with the group he studies. Similarly, the teacher-researcher is studying his/her own “group” as one of the group members.
Regarding historical scholars, they seem to be extremely important to any discipline; they are constantly giving us new ways to see the narrative of our field. The work on classical rhetoric and composition teaching, as well as Berlin’s work on writing instruction in 18th and 19th century American institutions, has been influential on my thinking about the teaching of English and Composition and my own teaching.
I actually found the Philosophers to be quite interesting because of the breadth of sources that this area of knowledge brings to bear (not as much as History, but a large body still). Philosophical Compositionists, North tells us, draw on thinkers and rhetoricians throughout the ages in order to explain the nature of composition (but not to prescribe how it ought to be done). I am also impressed at North’s insistence throughout the book that none of these methods tell us how we must act as practitioners; certainly, each method ought to exist as something that may inform our practices but should not prescribe what those practices should be. In Composition theory, classical rhetoric and the new rhetoric inform our practices significantly. Ann E. Berthoff is one scholar in our filed whose work we studied last semester, and seems to be of great value in reminding us of how transitive (or unstable) language, labels, and categories can be.
On the Critics, I agree with Lianne that more examples are warranted. To me, the examples North gives (Kinneavy’s basic aims of discourse and North’s own contextual analysis of his students’ texts) seem to point toward Genre theory and Bakhtinian analysis (North discusses his students work as “contextual” rather than referring to any specific genre; Kinneavy’s categories seem quite like genres). And again, I am led to wonder about the evolution of our field: when did Bakhtin enter the critical conversation? North’s book seems to suggest that it was some time after the mid-1980s.
Overall, I am impressed with the breadth of North’s book. I thought his examples—the ones he did use—were well represented and well-explained; I didn’t actually find that I needed more examples. I suppose that having first read “The Idea of a Writing Center” and found that text engaging and well-written, as well as having heard from professors how foundational North was for Writing Center scholarship…I simply assumed him to be an authority (an “icon”) and didn’t much question his ethos here. And I still feel that way. Despite the datedness of the work, I believe that this work still identifies some of the primary discourse communities in our field today.
Like Natalie (and now I see, like Kara and Tony too), my first reaction to North’s book was that, yes, this is exactly what I need to know. I need to know “the whole series of steps an inquirer follows in making a contribution to a field of knowledge”(1) and, in particular, to our field of knowledge, since this is exactly what I hope to do at some point. Yet while I came to see North’s effort to paint this portrait of the way things are done as valuable (and certainly laudable) in both its scope and specificity, I also questioned whether or not North’s background and expertise were sufficient to allow him to produce the kind of accurate and comprehensive depiction that he seemed to think he would be able to provide. In particular, I was put off by his apparent need to categorize the activities of composition knowledge-makers into what seemed to me to be quite narrow and fixed methodological classifications and then to be disturbed to find there were those whose efforts violated the parameters of the externally and subsequently imposed categories as if this invalidated their work or somehow compromised an otherwise valuable contribution to the knowledge of the field. It almost seemed that this sorting and categorizing of the field’s scholarship was North’s effort, as a new composition professional, to analyze and synthesize the field’s seminal works in order to understand for himself just what being a contributor to the field of composition is all about, to fit all the work done before he entered the picture into some kind of mental matrix that would make sense to him. In the end, however, I decided that his effort to explain the way knowledge is generated and presented in our field does make a genuine contribution, itself, to our discipline’s scholarship and realized that it must offer information (or at least what many consider a valuable perspective) that has yet to be duplicated or significantly improved upon since graduate students are still being directed to consume and consider the ideas it exemplifies today, almost a quarter-century after its original publication.
The categories of composition knowledge building that North identifies, explores, and explicates in the early sections of the book include practitioner, historical, philosophical, and critical modes of inquiry. According to North, practitioner inquiry is the only form of knowledge building that harks back to our pre-professional days, the days before anyone thought to theorize, philosophize or analyze the teaching or learning of composition. While this may be true, like Tiffany and Natalie, I was uncomfortable with his characterization of both practitioners and their form of inquiry. North calls the practical knowledge developed through this type of inquiry “lore” and suggests that its primacy is one of the reasons for composition’s extended subordination in the realm of academe, where theory is typically valued over practice. As North explains, practitioners quite often begin an inquiry in response to some problem they perceive in the effectiveness of the currently accepted teaching methods when applied in practice. North characterizes these efforts as “a combination of informed intuition and trial and error” (45). Because the soundness of conclusions drawn from such efforts are hard to explain and defend to outsiders, North contends that “the larger society of Composition,” tend to devalue the contributions of practitioner inquiry (50). Oddly enough, however, when practitioners have attempted to reinforce their conclusions by also examining them in light of the findings of related scholarship, North feels the end result is “confusion […] over just what is being offered, and where its authority finally lies” (53).
This position apparently stems from his firm conviction that scholarship, at least in the Western humanist tradition, must not be engaged in the process of figuring out what can, should, or must be done. Instead, the work of scholars must be limited to “provid[ing] a coherent past for the field,” “examin[ing] the philosophical underpinnings of Composition,” or “the interpretation of texts [and determining] just which texts are to be interpreted, for what purposes, and by what means.” (59-60). North suggests that examining the results of historical, philosophical, or critical inquiry in order to determine the best course of action to solve a particular problem or to advocate for the superiority of one position over another is not only inappropriate but also detrimental to the knowledge-building process as a whole and labels the results of such attempts “dangerous” or “confusing.” This attitude, however, is what I find confusing. While I understand that there is inherent worth in simply documenting the discipline’s past, identifying theoretical foundations, and interpreting key texts, it seems to me that this value is magnified when the implications for further study and implementation that these types of knowledge contain are explored both in theory and in practice. Furthermore, since our discipline is so rooted and grounded in practice, this effort to orient the scholarship in a form of pure philosophy, history, or criticism strikes me as far less useful than taking those methods and transforming them into something more apropos to our own disciplinary goals and purposes.
Despite this rather significant concern, however, I still feel that, on the whole, North’s work helped me to develop a much clearer picture of just what the work of composition inquiry might entail. Like Rory and Julie, I appreciated not only the extensive explanations of what each type of investigative method, in its pure form, might include and how it might proceed, but also the numerous examples which he gave to illustrate his points (although, like Liane, I found myself skimming over a good portion of the many with which I was unfamiliar). Additionally, I felt North did an excellent job of laying out the complicated historical context and accounting for the unique evolution of the discipline and its conglomerate of research and scholarship methodologies. Having studied the first three sections of North’s book, I now feel better able to explain what it means to be a composition scholar and to appreciate the complicated political influences that have always surrounded the work of composition. Because of this, I also feel much better prepared to at least consider what I, myself, might have to offer the field as a composition practitioner and/or scholar.
Reading North's book comes at an important time for me (for all us, I would say, based on the comments I read). After spending last semester learning about the theories that underlie both what we do and what we understand as (developing) members of the rhet/comp community, I felt a growing need to know "How": How does one attempt to resolve a problem he or she notices in the writing classroom, for example? How does one test an observation of how language might function? How, in short, do we create knowledge as members of this community?
The answer, I've come to learn, is research.
Now, this may constitute one of those "Duh, Scott" moments, but for me, research was previously little more than the task of gathering information. I recognize it now as the process by which we create new knowledge. Moreover, I see it as a means of defining a discipline. The intent to define Composition as such seems to be the impetus for North's book. It is appropriate, then, that he focuses on how we conduct research.
Because Composition was and still seems to be a large rambling house with multiple (perhaps disconnected) rooms and wings, I feel that North's attempt to categorize was smart and perhaps inevitable. Also, as a reader, I rather enjoyed the divisions; they provided me with a manageable way to wrap my head around such a vast array of scholarship (I should note here that I actually enjoy Aristotle's Rhetoric). My problem with the categories, though (or rather, my hesitation), is that categorizing is inevitably reductive, and I think that this reduction ignores much of the crossover that occurs among, say, the work and interests of Practitioners and Researchers. Then again, I wonder if there is much crossover, especially since we're always hearing about the gap between rhet and comp--especially since we're all trying to chisel out our individual niche. I wonder also if a discipline isn't defined by such categories. If we can name it, define it, and place it in a box, we can explain what it is to those outside of the community (perhaps those who are responsible for passing education reform bills or determining how much funding a certain department or program will receive). We can also explain what it is to the members of that community, thus providing that community with a sense of identity. Perhaps this is North's achievement: identifying who we are for ourselves.
So overall, I stand in favor of North's approach (even if I'm somewhat skeptical of categories). It seems like a smart way of trying to tackle decades of research. It's also helped me to begin understanding how to take the next step in my development as a member of this community, i.e. how to move from someone absorbing knowledge to someone creating it.
As for the specific categories we read about in this portion of the book, I too felt that North perpetuates the second-class status of the Practitioner. At least that was my initial reaction. Yes, he certainly favors the creation of knowledge over the implementation of knowledge, but it seems to me now that the Practitioners also create knowledge; there's just no real definable methodology since much of it occurs by way of oral transmission. This knowledge is represented in what he calls "lore." North's discussion of lore coincided well with the experiences I've had as a teacher of first-year writing, for much of my pedagogical practices have come from conversations I've had with other teachers. It doesn't seem to me that North is saying Practitioners can in no way create knowledge, for lore would seem to function as a body of knowledge, especially when collected into "catechetical" textbooks. Moreover, the lore seems to constitute much of what we know as members of the rhet/comp community. Question: Am I reading North correctly here, or am I applying my own view of lore to North's chapter on Practitioners?
Two final notes: (1) I tend to agree with Kara in regard to the chapter on Critics. I did not leave that portion of the reading with as clear of an understanding of what makes someone a Critic. Yes, I understand that a Critic is not necessarily a Historian or a Philosopher according to North's defintion of those terms, but what exactly is a Critic? It seems that hermeneutics function as the defining feature; I'm just not sure how. (2) I find it interesting that one's methodologies define their position in the field, not the content of one's research.
As the last responder, I have the task of reading more than I bargained for, though great responses indeed. Admittedly, I came to this book rather frustrated so I did not intend to enjoy the reading by no means. But later found myself getting involved into the reading. Looking at myself and how I most inquire knowledge.
Of course, Practitioner was the first one to analyze. I am one by the very nature of my assignment at this university. In regard to North, I was taken aback by the way he framed this section. I first assumed that he was condemning the Practitioner by its use of lore, and then he somehow defends its existence and finally ends with them not fully understanding their limits and purpose. In his attempt to cover the entire basis of this group, there resides an ambiguity regarding where he stood on the matter.
The next section intrigued me more or less because it got into what we call Rhetoric. I felt so alive at this point. I actually learned something from last year- History as a foundation, chronological order of knowledge. And speaking of patterns North was very consistent in that. First it was comforting, the detailing of how knowledge is inquired, but as my mental capacity faulted with fatigue and boredom, they became a way to get through the material (give a form; explain; quote; explain; quote; and finally what the section can and cannot do).
(For written discourse, I understand why North constructed the arguments in this way, so I am only questioning how we apply these methods practically, trying to solve a problem in composition not the problem of conveying the message to a selected audience.)
So to continue, in this day and age of hypertext, overlap, collaboration, and so forth, isn't it becoming rather difficult to categorize and subcategorize our field when it comes to research? By the very act of considering a methodology, aren’t we too gaining a contributor? North referenced this slightly in the way he discussed the subjects of humanities and history. Composition –capital “C” has varied compositions: literature, language, communication, writing, etc. Doesn't this apply to our research and methodologies? This field is huge (I think the appropriate word); can we successfully pick one allegiance (I may be wrong but this is what I sense North is trying to do, besides the issues of having us see what we do and what happened)? Aren't we all Historicians by way of our previous class in Rhet Theory? Aren’t we all Practitioners in our own right as teachers? Are we not all Critics in our own right as students? (Sorry can't think of anything for Philosophers, but it will come to me) Maybe we're overlapping so because we are taking research by every angle and aren’t we supposed to acquire knowledge by any means or limit it by definition. North does an informative job in identifying the categorizes of inquiring knowledge, but do we apply it in the same sense? By asking that question, I find myself overwhelmed, for if correct, it confirms the many possibilities available, especially for a practitioner who is said to only be told what to do. And just looking at our field in the light of this book, I realize how many long nights I have ahead of me.
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