Hey, everyone.
Sorry these are going out so late. These are the discussion questions for "The Space for Rhetoric." I sent them out to the e-mail list, but thought I should also post them here. I do not expect us to get to all of these in class, but I feel they are worth thinking about in the context of this chapter. I will post my presentation to the storage shed after class.
Do you agree or disagree with the idea that all discourses say something about space? (114) Has this chapter changed your view on this topic or strengthened it?
Is “space” really rhetorical? If so, is this true of all space or just certain spaces? Give examples. If not, elaborate.
How does the internet play into this as a system of virtual sites? What about Skype? How has this chapter effected your perspective of the interaction between spaces and rhetoric?
What documents, symbols, and images represent Albuquerque?
On school days, I leave my apartment, go down the stairs to my parents' car parked on the street, drive down Coal from the Reynold's neighborhood (by the zoo)--passing through downtown, under the interstate, and through the student ghetto--to University, past CNM, to Cesear Chavez. I park in South lot, ride shuttle to UNM, walk to class in Ortega Hall turning at the fountain with the obelisks to walk the concrete corridor along Woodward. What defines these spaces? What does my routine say about these spaces? What do these spaces say about me? Think about your own routine and answer the same questions.
How does the setup of your home and neighborhood shape your everyday life? How is it oppressive?
How does your home and neighborhood’s material space reflect cultural or social ideologies, values, etc?
“[Cushman] studied…the ‘approach’ to the [Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute]: an expansive stone staircase that both invites and expels those who do not belong to either the school or the town. Cushman’s conclusion is that symbolized social divisions coincide with social distances between academics and the everyday” (113). How does this tie in with the metaphorical “ivory tower”? What symbols are around our campus and what messages do they invoke?
I don't seem to be able to originate my own blogs, so I will avail myself of the space afforded me by Penelope, whose presentation I very much enjoyed, even though I must confess, I need to reread that chapter on rhetoric and space or the rhetoric of space. Yes, we can use words to write things about "space." To say that certain spaces speak themselves, produce their own rhetoric, as it were, is, surely, to speak metaphorically. We have to do the speaking for inanimate space, in the final analysis, no?
ReplyDeleteI also wish to use this space to apologize to the young woman for my unthinkingly rude challenge to her father’s quality of memory, it was as if I was calling him a liar.
What I should have said is that Lembeke’s argument in his “Spitting Image” is not that every alleged instance of spitting was false but that the totality of such numbers of reports, taken together, supplements objective historical reality into becoming an urban legend.(Supplements. b/c of total lack of evidence from newspapers and television reports, police records, etc, total lack of any documentary evidence – where and when -- of a single instance of spitting). What he concludes is that these men felt spit upon, when they came home, felt used and discarded. No parades was the least of it.
I also wish to thank the young woman for taking back the nationalist/patriotic card, tearing it to pieces, and throwing it away. I have not been witness to such a gate-opening and generous move in a long time, especially coming after what she had every right to think of as an insult to her father.