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03/12/2005 Archived Entry: "Understanding"
Understanding Booth
Since we will read McLuhan in 7020 after the break, and since I have been reading Booth discuss issues of understanding and rhetoric in The Rhetoric of Rhetoric, just a few words on Understanding Booth.
Booth's contention that rhetoric is about reaching understanding is problematic. I called it totalitarian for how it quickly dismisses the need for dissent or even a lack of understanding as rhetorical goal. Settle quickly into understanding, Booth argues, to avoid conflict (opposite of Burroughs' Nova Technique). McLuhan's probes mark one place to think through the question of not understanding and how such a gesture undermines totalitarian tendencies in politics, ideology, and, of course, education. The probes are not meant to reach an understanding nor to "save the world" as Booth continues to triumph as central to rhetorical need. This claim is highlighted as Booth proposes a pedagogy of "How to Teach the Remedies" (100). In its place, I would offer a more McLuhanesque approach: How to teach the Remedi(ation)s. One remedi(ation)s-motivated probe I'll pick from McLuhan: "In the electric age, we wear all mankind as our skin." And: "People don't actually read newspapers. They step into them every morning like a hot bath."
Remediate that.
Talk among yourselves.
Replies: 3 comments
I keep thinking that Booth never abandoned the missionary experience he had as a young Mormon, but that he shifted the focus of that zeal to rhetoric as he understands and practices it.
He seems very concerned with reconciling with his own belief systems and thus gives a lot of emphasis to finding common ground rather than to finding problems.
Posted by John @ 03/12/2005 06:22 PM EST
Yeah, but instead of a remedy, we have remediation (I hope my chair is reading this!)
All media mis-understand us completely.
Posted by jeff @ 03/12/2005 02:53 PM EST
So, does that mean that we can update Richards' definition of rhetoric: the study of misunderstanding and its remediations?
I kinda like that.
cgb
Posted by collin @ 03/12/2005 12:39 PM EST