Summer 2019, Session A, 2-4.30pm., Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, 88 Dwinelle Hall
Instructor, Dale Carrico: dcarrico@sfai.edy; ndaleca@gmail.com;
Course Blog: http://whatiscompelling.blogspot.com
Participation/Attendance/In-Class Activities, 25%; Reading Notebook,
15%; Mid-Term Exam, 30%; Final Paper, 5-6pp., 30%. (Rough Basis for
Final Grade, subject to contingencies)
Course Description
The arc of the moral universe is a longing... and it bends
from just us.
This course provides students with tools they can use to make better,
more compelling, arguments and also to read arguments in better, more
critical, ways. We will draw the tools for our argumentative toolboxes
from the long history of rhetoric, from sophistical dissoi logoi, to the
Aristotelian appeals, to Quintilian's four master tropes, to the rich
archive of formal and informal fallacies, to argument modeled on
litigation via Toulmin's schema, to argument modeled on mediation via
Rogerian synthesis, to the pragmatism of the ends of argument. All the
while we are workshopping these technical skills we will also be reading
and discussing a range of texts that tackle questions of the reach and
forms of violence and nonviolence in historical struggle and in everyday
life. These texts will likewise draw from a long history, from Immanuel
Kant, Martin Luther King, Jr., Frantz Fanon and Hannah Arendt to
Arundhati Roy, Judith Butler, and Ta-Nehisi Coates. We will also talk
through a play by Euripides, an essay by Nietzsche, a novel by Octavia
Butler, a film by Cronenberg… The crucial thing to understand about the
course is that we will not be taking on two separate projects, one
practical and another theoretical. This course proposes that there is an
indispensable relation between the traditional focus of rhetoric as
instruction in the art of making compelling arguments and the
theoretical preoccupation of many rhetoricians with questions of what
violence or compulsion ultimately consists. It is commonplace to see
Persuasion offered up as an alternative to the violent adjudication of
disputes or hear Argument idealized as a space "outside" of violence.
But the truth is that many arguments rely on the acceptance of a violent
status quo or depend on conventional assumptions that deny marginal
testimonies to violation. Also, many arguments stealthily threaten
violence while at once congratulating themselves on their peacefulness.
Ultimately, the course proposes that it is rhetoric's definitive concern
with the traffic between the literal and figurative dimensions of
language and its situated understanding of truth-telling that connects
the work of rhetoric with a project of reconciliation that resists
violence even as we cannot help but risk it.
A Provisional Schedule of Meetings
Week One
May 28 SKILL SET:
Key Definitions
[1] Rhetoric is the facilitation of efficacious discourse as well as an ongoing inquiry into
the terms on the basis of which discourse comes to seem efficacious or
not.
[2] A text is an event experienced as arising from intention, offered up
to the hearing of an audience, and obligating a responsiveness equal to
it.
[3] An argument is a claim supported by reasons and/or evidence.
Introductions: Rhetoric as occasional, interested, figurative; The literal as conventional, the figurative as deviant.
May 29 SKILL SET: Reading Critically/Writing Critically;
Audience/Intentions -- Audiences: Sympathetic, Unsympathetic, Apathetic;
Intentions: Interrogation, Conviction, Persuasion, Reconciliation
Euripides:
Hecuba (Here is a link to the
last few lines of the play, cut off from the online version for some reason)
May 30 SKILL SET: Aristotelian rhetoric; Ethos, Pathos, Logos; Writing A Precis
Immanuel Kant,
Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose
Week Two
June 4
SKILL SET: Four Habits of Argumentative Writing: 1. Formulate a
Strong Thesis, 2. Define Your Terms, 3, Substantiate/Contextualize, 4,
Anticipate Objections; Performativity
Thomas Jefferson,
The Declaration of Independence
June 5
SKILL SET: The Toulmin Schema
William May, "Rising to the Occasion of Our Death" (In-Class Handout)
Henry David Thoreau,
Civil Disobedience
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Declaration of Independence from the War in Vietnam
Ella Baker,
Bigger Than A Hamburger
Combahee River Collective Statement
Week Three
June 11 SKILL SET: Logoi Dissoi
Michel Foucault, from Discipline and Punish The Body of the Condemned, Docile Bodies, Panoptism
June 12 SKILL SET: Propositional Analysis; Enthymemes, Syllogisms, Formal Fallacies, Informal Fallacies (short day)
June 13 SKILL SET: Literal/Figurative Language; Figures, Tropes, Schemes; Four Master Tropes
Nietzsche,
On Truth and the Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense
supplemental/referenced texts this week:
Angela Davis,
Abolition Democracy
Nietzsche, selections from
The Gay Science
Week Four
June 12
Mid-Term Examination
June 13 Screening and Discussion of the Film, "A History of Violence," dir. Cronenberg
June 14 Hannah Arendt,
Reflections On Violence and "Must Eichmann Hang?" (In-Class Handout)
