Rhetoric And Composition Analysis

In so far as rhetoric, or rhetoric/composition, constitutes a discipline, or at least a concentration under the auspices of English Studies, it is possible to walk into many English departments in this country, and to tell who is who. Whether we opt to label our present age one of postmodernity, hyperreality, or a late stage of capitalism, departmental boundaries have never been thrown into relief as drastically as has happened with the latest wave of technologies. Put simply, and perhaps too simply, the literature faculties is the ones wringing their hands, while the rhetoric faculties are rubbing theirs together in delight. Some journals proclaim the "death of the book," while others explore "the future of composition and rhetoric." There are notable exceptions to this reductive

Birkerts writes, and I am inclined to agree with him, that it is no accident that the issue of canonicity is so prevalent in current English department debates. This is so, he explains, for reasons of scarcity. "If serious literature were alive and well in the culture (written, published, circulated, read, discussed), then there would be less reason to fret about the state of things in our institutions of higher learning" (190). Instead of expecting students to come to those courses with a solid foundation in literature, English courses are rapidly becoming the sole source of such a foundation. Rightly or wrongly, that gives the average literature syllabus a great deal of influence over what gets read, and, thanks to recent tax law, some degree of power over what is available. Such difficulties are attributable to a number of different cultural, sociological, and technological factors, factors which show little sign of reversing or even