introduction

[Andy Crockett]

Hello everyone.  I joined the list partly because I felt seduced by the
promise of interesting ideas, new knowledge, occasional answers to my
questions.  That secudibility might say something about online chats,
too, for those of you analyzing the group itself.  Foucault must have
said something about that.... On the other hand I often hate 'lists' b/c
I find something about putting myself out there and then wading through
faceless responses terrifying, far more than, say, reading a paper at a
conference.  I am a writer and artist, and I am a writer and rhetor
(with PhD in RCTE and years of teaching behind me).  I'm also interested
in postmodern and feminist theory, and popular culture, and have done
work on the essay.  I taught two years at a Japanese university
recently, and now I'm back and back on the job market, wondering if I
need to be more niche-able and not wanting to be....Here's one recent
issue of mine: rhetoric seems very postmodern to me.  That is, it is
relativizing.  Rhetoricians (and I would include myself among them at
times) seem to view things situationally, constructively, without
recourse to foundations or bedrock reality (unless socially
constructed).  In a chat it's easy to pull the rug out from someone
else's claim to Truth by exposing the assumptions and power agendas, but
I doubt that most of us live there.  I guess the question is, what is
the relationship between rhetoric and materiality, rhetoric and 'real'
conditions?  (Talk about a small question...)

Andy Crockett

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