Material Inertia: The Sedimented Spatial Rhetoric of Public School Buildings

ABSTRACT

This essay develops the concept of material inertia, a lens for studying artifacts of material and spatial rhetorics with a focus on long durations. The essay uses the case study of the DeWitt Clinton High School building, constructed in 1906 in New York City and still in use at CUNY John Jay College, to demonstrate how friction between the building’s design and use is exacerbated over decades. The essay argues for reading long-lived spaces via material inertia to understand the rhetorical force of non-human actors across time, and calls for scholarship in material rhetorics to take specifically durational approaches.

Notes

1. I thank Risa Applegarth for her formative comments, and my RR reviewers, Sarah Hallenbeck and Richard Marback, for their very helpful reports on earlier drafts of this article.

2. For an update of methodological moves in feminist historiography, see Enoch, “Survival.”

3. Both actor-network theory and rhetorical materialism raise the question of agency, and how it is attributed. I describe DeWitt Clinton as “active” but not as “agentive”; for more on this distinction, see Cooper.

4. See, for example, Blankfeld; Pfister.

5. See, for example, Marback “Unclenching.”

6. An examination of Snyder’s architectural plans shows that each of his designs incorporates an auditorium in both buildings he designed and renovated. The auditoriums’ importance is demonstrated in his discussion of proposed renovations: “The Erasmus Hall High School having never had an auditorium or an assembly room in which the school could be assembled at one time, it was conceded that this should be the principal feature in erecting the first portion of the buildings” (1904, 300, emphasis added).

7. Jean Arrington has undertaken the monumental task of documenting all of Snyder’s schools, extant and demolished. For a partial list, covering the Bronx, see Arrington 75-76. For a list of New York City Landmark Preservation Commission designated schools (including Snyder’s), see Cohen 238.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Carl Schlachte

Carl Schlachte is a lecturer in English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he received his Ph.D. in rhetoric and composition in 2019. His work has appeared in Present Tense and is forthcoming in the edited collection The Things We Carry: Strategies for Recognizing and Negotiating Emotional Labor in Writing Program Administration (Utah State University Press).