609 Week 2 - Blog 1

Aristotle's topoi of cause and affect speaks to me in regards to Peter Vandenberg’s article, "Composing Composition Studies." Vandenberg’s clear and coherent thinking cuts through much of the muddled and egocentric thinking that fosters and creates the continuing hierarchy in English studies. Vandenberg’s last couple of sentences sum up the situation, “To the extent that the top-down relationship of “research” to teaching appears natural, logical, or self-evident rather than historical, contingent, and economically determined, the present division of labor in rhetoric and composition and the university at large is certain to persist” (29). How true! What strikes me is Vandenberg’s clarity. At times, I am guilty of thinking it is natural and self-evident research should have the limelight because it is the work “leading the way.” But who says that research entitles anyone to anything extra (effect)? Don’t soldiers risking their lives in the trenches deserve as much credit as the general leading the way atop the hill? Vandenberg’s clear wording and thinking contends historical, contingent, and economics (follow the money trail) are the actual cause of the conditions of working teachers. In one sentence, he seems to have summed up what dozens, hundreds, have tried to do in thousands of pages.