Considering the Public Work of Rhetoric from the Place of the Community College

Globalization/ Neo-liberalism as Opportunity for Public Sphere-Making?

In Ackerman and Coogan's work on public rhetoric, the editors argue that the  public turn of writing since 1970 originates with or at least was focused at the Wingspread Confernce which addressed rhetoric’s epistemic crisis. “... the departure point was that neo-Aristotelian methods valorized persuasion and made exemplary the political speech within historical context of the state” and to see the message as larger than just persuasion, but also the rhetorical functions of ego-defence, knowledge-making, values expression (4). 

Herbert F. Johnson, Jr., Wingspread, residence in Racine, Wisconsin. House reflected in pool. Library of Congress Prints and Photograph gsc 5a03863 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/gsc.5a03863 

Communication/Speech was stifled in this tradition, but compositionists had moved beyond structure and form, current-traditional approaches. Then we see enter into the discipline the cognitivists (Flower, Hayes, Lauer, others) , social-constructivists (Bruffee), and audience-purposed theorists such as Lundsford. Ackerman and Coogan argue that the student-centered process movement failed and that the social-constructivists came in with the “conversation of mankind” move. 

The criticism there, and Communication/Speech’s resistance, then metamorphosed into a call for the rhetorician to act as citizen-scholar and engage in the community. The advantage is being in the university -- having access to moneys there [note the pre-neo-liberal assumptions of a funded academy] within an institution that claims to be interested in community works was still conflated with the corporate position of civic virtue and economic entrepreneurialism. 

The resistance now comes with the effects of globalization/ neo-liberalism as communities become disengaged, hesitant to create a true public sphere; this however, Ackerman and Coogan see this, however, as more opportunity and relevance.

I find this an optimistic argument, even for 2010. The community college in Texas, for example, has been defunded to such an extent, and students nation-wide are so burdened by educational debt, that students are more concerned with their personal concerns, keeping their head above and their hands out of reach out of reach the financial waters and degree fruits of Tantalus,

Tantalus, 1588, Hendrick Goltzius | The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Google Cultural Institute

What my own working-class students complain about is the lack of possible space for public-sphere engagement -- they and their families spend so much time working (sometimes multiple jobs), commuting, studying, caring for other family members, that they simply do not have the time to engage with other peers to create public spheres. Similarly, in a space such as Houston, public space is in short supply. The neo-liberal neighborhood is built without commons in mind -- houses, perhaps a small playground place, a pool depending on the price of the homes. But new subdivisions are built without clubhouses in mind, libraries are sometimes miles away, county buildings are further and often have no meeting space. Schools, because of security concerns, no longer permit the public to meet in their buildings. And the local authorities, even if private citizens had the time to prepare in informed, rational discourse about their concerns, often meet in places far away and at inconvenient hours to be addressed by the constituents.

For example, the Harris County Commission meets on alternate Thursdays at 11:00 a.m. -- few working class citizens can attend that meeting. Even though it is livecast, the discourse is unidirectional and watching audience cannot "phone in" their comments. School districts meet at 7:00 p.m. in inconvenient locations. In a commuting area such as greater Houston, many families are only coming together at that time. Our own college system Board of Trustees meets many miles away from the working class students of Aldine and Spring, and the only driving routes to get there are consistently congested during rush hour (which in Houston lasts several hours). Again, few students or other citizens could arrive to such meetings on time, even at 7:00 p.m.

Where I'm going is that Houston's neo-liberalized state may be an "opportunity" for public sphere engagement, but working class students and their families -- because of neo-liberalism -- are prohibited from creating public spheres because of temporal and geographic limitations.
What is needed, then is a reconsideration of our neo-liberal status and to consider alternate geographies, communication systems, and even alternate economies that would permit citizens to create public spheres beyond the Hamermasian description, beyond the typical face-to-face model. What we need is for poor Tantalus is to get tacos delivered and a Camelbak.

References
Ackerman, John M., and David J. Coogan, eds. The Public Work of Rhetoric: Citizen-Scholars and Civic Engagement. U of South Carolina P, 2010. Print.

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