In Closing

Where does argument happen?

I guess this is a simple question. Where does argument happen? But I still don’t really know how to answer. Where do people go to deliberate and discuss issues of common importance: tree disease killing local elms, the terrible economy, the land downtown that’s just sitting undeveloped, the fact that kids are killing each other for no reason at all, or the crap state of our food industry. Where do we go to talk to strangers about these things?

This question is also not a question of theory at all. Quite literally, where do people exchange words? Church, VFW halls, the internet, bathroom walls, bumper stickers, work sites, social spaces, classrooms, hair salons, etc. It seems like so many of these places regulate how deliberation can happen (work does not invite conflict or sustained discussion, for example, and neither does the hair salon). No wonder people live online so many hours a day.

Perhaps a related question in research terms is a kind of historical investigation into changing “gathering spaces.”

 

Nick Hornby on pop music

Maybe dis­posability is a sign of pop music’s maturity, a recognition of its own limitations, rather than the converse. . . . I was sitting in a doctor’s waiting room the other day, and four little . . . girls, patiently sitting out their mother’s appointment, suddenly launched into Nelly Furtado’s song. They were word perfect, and they had a couple of dance moves, and they sang with enormous appetite and glee, and I liked it that we had some:’ thing in common, temporarily; I felt as though we all lived in the same world, and that doesn’t happen so often.

“Drinking” in public and private

I’m reading Richard Sennett’s Fall of Public Man, and it has me thinking about the substitution of intimate feeling for public roles. In terms of this project on bourbon, I wonder if it’s possible to trace this movement in public discussions. Alcohol certainly has long had a moral thread running through it–surely the abolitionists were no less or more worried about “drinking” than we are today. Yet there are surely differences in how “drinking” is discussed.

Maybe worth thinking about when I finally get to start this project.

Placemaking: Rhetorical Studies and Critical Geography (an RSA 2013 summer institute)

Placemaking: Rhetorical Studies and Critical Geography

In recent years, disciplines like geography and urban studies have turned their attention to placemaking, or the physical transformation of stagnated spaces into something healthier, more dynamic, and more inspirational. Strangely, however, rhetorical studies has been largely absent from these interdisciplinary projects and conversations. Perhaps one reason for this relative invisibility is that rhetoricians have not yet articulated the differences between analyzing place-as-text and producing interventions in place through rhetoric. In short, we need to create a praxis of place. Continue reading →

Bourbon, horses, and argument

I wonder if it’s possible to trace the movement of argument (spatial movement, topological movement) across a given space, like a city. You’d need to trace just such a movement over time, so it would need to be a lasting issue. Here in Kentucky, the obvious issue is bourbon and gambling.

I like it. Argument’s movement through bourbon and horses. Have there been any projects tracing movements of argument across space, time, and topoi?

Temporary Difficulties

I’m very excited about this book coming out in March: The Temporary City.
book cover

Most of the professional training, thinking and strategies of architects, urban designers and planners, are strictly three-dimensional. In reality of course the city is four dimensional, and one needs to acknowledge the influence of time in planning and design strategies. Similarly, there has been relatively little analysis of the importance of interim, short-term or ‘meanwhile’ activities in urban areas. In an era of increasing pressure on scarce resources, we cannot wait for long-term solutions to vacancy or dereliction. Instead, we need to view temporary uses as increasingly legitimate and important in their own right. They can be a powerful tool through which we can drip-feed initiatives for incremental change – as and when we have the resources – while being guided by a loose-fit vision.

I’ve been thinking about the temporary lately. It’s hip right now. Just try to get into one of those fancy pop-up restaurants: the temporary space and transient character of these sites are what bring the big bucks (and the celebration). Of course, being transient and “a temporary” is hardly as glam as those NYC pop-ups.

For some personal reasons, I’ve also thought about different kinds of appeals made to “the temporary” in religious discourse. I grew up hearing songs about the earth being our temporary home; our reward is in heaven. That never felt quite right to me, maybe because of the strange effects that temporary vision usually has on people.

Temporary–as a state–suffers from a lack of investment. You don’t make connections when you’re temporary. You don’t care for spaces that are only temporary. Temporary is a state that you’re ideally supposed to leave at some point.

There’s lots more to be said about temporariness. I’m just scratching some surfaces here.

Seminar: “The Public and Its Problems”

Here’s a very abbreviated narrative version of this seminar syllabus:

We start with Habermas and then move on to lots of Berlant. Then Richard Sennett’s The Fall of Public Man and then Danielle Allen’s Talking to Strangers. From there, we’ll cover the “public turn” in rhetoric and composition: throw in some Cara Finnegan, Blake Scott, Rosa Eberly, Susan Wells, David Fleming. Then Phaedra Pezzulo’s Toxic Tourism.

Next comes the part I really debated: two weeks on Arendt’s Human Condition. I debated that for a long time, but it felt right.

After Arendt, we’ll turn to public and the academy.  Jacoby’s The Last Intellectuals is up. Then some readings and a guest visit from Stephen Schneider. After a week of reading debates about public intellectuals, we’ll end up with  Joseph’s Against the Romance of Community. You know, just so we don’t leave all happy-nappy.

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Every syllabus tells a story, and this syllabus is no different. I’ve considered several different ways to tell the stories of publics, though there are many different versions. Perhaps the best way to think about the story this syllabus tells is that it looks for ways that others have grappled with the public–and its problems.

The title for this seminar is an obvious nod to Dewey’s book by the same title. But I love the way that this title also contains an important ambiguity. Are the “problems” those of a public that is, ideally, free of problems when it reaches its telos? Or is the concept of a public itself problematic? Writ large, these two readings are the two main threads of publics scholarship at least since Habermas put forth his theory of the public sphere (and sparked a rich conversation in its wake).

So I will not offer a syllabus that resembles any sort of trajectory. There is no way to tie up loose ends at the end of the semester. Rather, I hope that these readings will expose the weightiest debates and most dynamic scholarship in publics theory.

Being social

Jeff noticed that I don’t link to anyone in this blog, which minimizes its chances of being linked on other people’s pages. This greatly reduces the chances that people will read this blog and interact with me. Never mind the fact that I’ve disabled the comments on this blog.

This is all a big step back from social media. It’s anti-social, which is a state that we’re all supposed to abhor.  Anti-social kids are dangerous. Anti-social adults are weird (or worse). Anti-social animals are given up for adoption. In short, being anti-social is like being the heavyset “before” in a before-and-after photo montage: you looked sad and pathetic, and now you look happy and alive.

I can’t exactly explain why I’m not interested in being social via social media right now. There’s probably a measure of social media exhaustion that we’re all experiencing, thanks to digital facetime overload. Perhaps this is also my own way of recognizing that social media can invite multiple ways of being/living online. If we are a brand, as is the inevitable consequence of social media, then we might need to pull back every so often and rethink how we are branding ourselves online.

And then there’s the possibility that I want to be social in ways other than via social media. Make friends with people in my town. Have conversations that don’t involve typing.

More notes toward that RSA workshop

 Not a final version. Not in the least. But it’s a first stab at a three-day workshop that should be a little ambitious without being too crazy. I hope this says what it needs to.
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Placemaking: Critical Geography and Rhetorical Studies
In recent years, disciplines like geography and urban studies have turned their attention to placemaking, or the physical transformation of stagnated spaces into something healthier, more dynamic, and more inspirational. Strangely, however, rhetorical studies has been somewhat invisible in these interdisciplinary projects and public conversations about critical transformation of place. Continue reading →