Like the beginning of Karen Kopelson’s CCC piece, “Sp(l)itting Images,” I, too, have a conversion narrative. The problem is conversion suggests religious awakening, and mine is not so much an awakening as a realization. Not, though, a realization as in “born again,” “seeing the light,” or “was blind now I see” realization. It was more of a realization of: Oh. That “oh” reflected an already established interest in writing and rhetorical meaning that, in my first non-rhet/comp course where I had my realization from a very non- rhet/comp person who became my dissertation adviser in an English dept with little rhet/comp representation, seemed natural.

Am I in the Carnival? Maybe not. Maybe. But I’m not so quick to become less self-reflexive, and neither is Kopelson as her conclusion makes aware (the admission of irony). My reflection, as above paragraph suggests, is that I didn’t emerge from a rhet/comp program, but I am rhet/comp. My adviser was not rhet/comp. There was one rhet/comp person on faculty when I arrived, and he arrived at the same time. My disciplinarity was born from a lack of disciplinary foundation.

This is an important moment of self reflection. Such moments are always obsessed with identity (who am I, what is this, what is that), and Karen’s article, at its core, is a call to stop such reflection because of the very limited gestures it produces. Still, there is much to value in navel gazing. First, the navel. A hole in our stomach that is not exactly  a hole. Then there is the gazing part.

I love how Barthes’ Roland Barthes is pure gazing. If there is a style (and I imagine Barthes writing this way on style) that I would adopt it woud be that book’s. If anything, I want more of this type of gazing rather than the gazing that seeks to prove value. I’ve given up on proving value. In my work, I have value. In my teaching, I have value. In my research, I have value. It is up to others to generate their own values: graduate students, colleagues, adjunct instructors, and so on. I am more than willing to help, but the call is theirs to make.  It is not up to me to make them value what I do. It is not up to me to make them gaze at my navel (as lovely as it may be). And Barthes’ work notes the same but does so via the question of  writing. Barthes, a non-rhet/comp person in a country with no rhet/comp tradition, is writing about writing. The ideal disciplinary model. At least, that’s what my conversion narrative teaches me. What does theory to do me, as Karen asks? It allows for reflection. Like a good blog post or a series of networked moments. Theory makes reflection possible.