Who Cares If Rhetoricians Landed on the Moon? Or, a Plea for Reviving the Politics of Historiography

Abstract

Most historical research in rhetorical studies is underwritten by an imperative to “broaden” the field’s historical horizons—to seek out overlooked, underrepresented, or excluded subjects. This “broadening imperative” is commonly aligned with revisionary historiography, which became a tool for historians to critique disciplinary values during the canon wars of the 1980s and 1990s. However, due to political and intellectual shifts in recent decades, “broadening” has become a preservative act to strengthen the field’s ideological values rather than a critical one to examine them. Ultimately, if historians value the radical perspective of “revisioning,” it is necessary to reinvest in critical historiography.

Notes

¹ Many thanks to Jess Enoch, Kendall Gerdes, Matthew Heard, Judy Holiday, Davis Houck, Kyle Jensen, Jen Wingard, Kelly Wisecup, Victor J. Vitanza, and Jim Zebroski for their patient guidance in this essay’s long development. Thanks also to RR reviewers Michelle Ballif and John Schilb for their generous readings and constructive comments.

² The others are Pete Conrad, Alan Bean, Alan Shepard, Edgar Mitchell, David Scott, James Irwin, John W. Young, Charles Duke, Eugene Cernan, and Harrison Schmidt.

³ See Swearingen and Schiappa for a good overview.

⁴ Many historians reject Berlin’s neo-Marxist politics, but revisionary histories are often linked to progressive politics (for example, Ferreira-Buckley; Schilb, “Differences”).

⁵ See Zebroski for a compelling case for critique in rhetorical studies.

⁶ For examples of recent historiographical work that resists the revisionary frame, see Ballif, “Historiography”; Hawk; and Vitanza, “Philology.”

⁷ A cursory glance reveals that revisionary histories have won several major awards in recent years, including book awards from CCCC and JAC and essay awards in Rhetoric Review, College English, and Rhetoric Society Quarterly.

⁸ I recognize the distinction between “first-generation” and “contemporary” is ill-defined and somewhat arbitrary. This is not unintentional. Some historians are demonstrably both. As Vitanza points out, “[S]eldom does any one historian function exclusively in any one category of historiography, though s/he may, indeed, for the most part emphasize one over the others” (“Notes” 85).

⁹ I am grateful to John Schilb for reminding me that revisionaries had diverging orientations to conventional politics (see, for example, Enoch; “Octalog”).

¹⁰ Crowley specifies the canon in “Let Me Get This Straight” (18n4).

¹¹ In a recent issue of Rhetoric Review, panelists from the first two Octalogs reflected on the state of rhetorical historiography following the third “Octalog” (see Agnew). Virtually every contributor notes the ongoing project of “pushing back the uncharted and unexplored areas of our field while (at the same time) being inclusive” (Agnew 244–45).

¹² Vitanza’s refrain that recovering “the excluded third” is not liberatory is worth revisiting on this point (for example, “Taking”), as are Vitanza’s other considerable contributions to revisionary historiography, both as contributor and antagonist. See Worsham for a compelling—and still incisive—argument that challenges the field’s ideological commitments.

¹³ See Bernal for a similar, if farther-reaching, critique.

¹⁴ Thanks to Kelly Wisecup for suggesting the concept of provisioning.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ryan Skinnell

Ryan Skinnell is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Writing in the Department of English at the University of North Texas in Denton. His research interests include rhetoric and composition histories and historiography, institutional rhetorics, archival methodologies, and modern rhetorical theory. His work appears in Rhetoric Review, JAC, Composition Studies, Enculturation, WPA: Writing Program Administration, and edited collections. He is currently finishing up a monograph about the institutional uses to which composition education has been put in American higher education, and he is beginning research that investigates institutional rhetorics and bureaucracy.