In the fourth chapter, Janice Lauer provides the continuing chronicle of invention as she divides it into three dimensions: the nature of invention; its purpose; and its epistemological power. For this week, you may choose from two options.
The first is to take one of the dimensions above and provide a gloss on it for an audience of first-year students in two sentences max.
The second is to resist Lauer's framework and provide another term that also seems to focus the continuing interest in invention. For example, I might propose the word agency since a good deal of the debate she describes seems to center on how much agency, if any, a writer can exercise.
If you choose this option, please again use two sentences max to identify the term and outline its role in the 20th century interest in rhetorical invention.
Looking forward ;)
ky
I'll try to encapsulate the dimension of invention's purpose for FY students:
ReplyDeleteThere is no consensus among scholars about any one purpose of invention, but proposed objectives include the need for inquiry, for constructing meaning, for coming to judgment about what we theorize or discover, and for interpreting and critiquing our world. Interest in invention has grown since the 1960s, and as it continues to evolve scholars import theoretical knowledge from outside the field of rhetoric that add to the complexity of the study of invention while at the same time introducing multiple ways of understanding and practicing it.
I'll take option two: a key term that's not a focal point for Lauer, but is certainly important in 20th century theories of invention. Belief system.
ReplyDeleteThe return of a scholarly interest in invention includes Kenneth Burke's pentad of key terms, to which he added the term "attitude" later in his theorization. Attitude is one's general view of life and the bearing one's general view has on action--and by this definition it is analogous to terms like worldview, ideology, or belief system.
For an audience of first-year students:
ReplyDeleteInvention, one of the five rhetorical canons, has had a long and somewhat tumultuous history in the academy where the need to define and strategize inventional acts has been debated, argued and researched in attempt to understand (or perhaps agree with) the purpose of invention. With a surge of interest in the 19060s, the debate over invention continues as scholars’ still deliberate the nature and purpose of invention (e.g. hermeneutics or heuristics—one or both?) leading to questions about the types of methods that best facilitate invention.
To FYC students:
ReplyDeleteThe purpose of invention may vary according to your project/context/motives, but it can always be an exciting, recursive act leading to production and/or interpretation. Invention might serve to raise questions for inquiry, synthesize information in a new way, help you reach new understanding and insights, provide support for your thesis, lead to self-actualization, and more; so, go forth and play!
Throughout the 20th century, scholars have debated the nature of invention, questioning whether the writer can make meaning through writing (heuristics), or whether the act of writing is really only an interpretation of pre-existing “texts” (hermeneutics). From the 1960s (when invention returned to vogue in the academy) to today, these two perspectives (heuristics and hermeneutics) remain the major talking points in discussions on the nature of invention.
ReplyDeleteFor our fyc students…
ReplyDeleteThe emergence during the 20th century of new theories about the nature of knowledge and how knowledge is acquired set the stage for renewed scholarly interest in invention as a rhetorical construct, an interest which began in the 1960s and continues to this day. While the renewed focus sparked widespread, ongoing disagreements regarding what might comprise the specific nature, purposes, and activities of invention, it nevertheless re-emphasized the importance of the study of rhetoric by highlighting language use as a meaning-making activity rather than merely a mechanism for dressing thought.
For FYC students:
ReplyDeleteInvention has a variety of purposes that depend on the context and the kind of composition. Invention includes methods of inquiry (raising questions), identifying the tension filled points within an issue, generating a text of your own, making insights, and investigating from multiple viewpoints; no matter what purpose you assign invention, it will help you discover what you have to say and help you make meaning.
For FYC students:
ReplyDeleteThe purpose of Invention and inventive techniques are is to provide you with points of entry into a specific discourse. In other words, the term Invention (capital I) describes prewriting strategies you can utilize to not only aid in the production/interpretation of a text but to also help you realize that you are indeed contributing to a greater body of knowledge with your text).
For FY students: Invention, one of the five rhetorical canons, is a slippery, squirrely, and tough to discipline (pun intended) term that even rhetoricians can't come to agreement on. But at the moment we're pretty sure about least two things-- first, invention plays an integral and necessary role in the way we come to think, write, and know and, second, that invention can be taught, learned, practiced, and explored in order to improve that thinking, writing, and knowing.
ReplyDeleteFor my FYC kiddos on invention's epistemological power: By employing invention, you are able not just to use rhetoric to better say what you mean or better convince other people about your ideas, but also to discover and develop what it is that you think in the first place. Right now, the study of rhetoric is very interested in invention, which I would argue is a good thing for you and us and our world, since those moments in time in which the field of rhetoric has not ignored invention have typically been moments where "the average girl or guy" is encouraged to question things and produce knowledge for herself/himself.
ReplyDelete**On another note--why do terms like "alreadiness" (quoted from Worsham on page 93) keep coming up in these readings? This is, in fact, a real question--though certainly not one I'll waste class time asking about.
Option #2:
ReplyDeleteI propose "motivation" as a term that might frame the continuing interest in invention. Ranging from the inventional uses of Burke's Pentad, whether used heuristically or hermeneutically, to Flower and Hayes' goal-driven cognitive theory of composing, motivation seems to underlie much of has been the renewed discussion on rhetorical invention. Motivation is even implied, however implicitly, in more recent theories of invention, for different subjectivities and different genres likewise entail different motivations and, therefore, different reasons for participating in invention.
Yes, I wrote three sentences. Oops :).
For FYC students:
ReplyDeleteIf I tell you we are going to do some invention exercises to begin work on our next paper, you probably have a reasonable idea of what I mean; however, if we look closer and begin to try to nail down what this invention thing actually is, it becomes much less clear. 20th century scholars have widely differing opinions on the nature of invention—although it is generally thought to have something to do with generating ideas and/or arguments—which revolve around questions like: is this generation process social? is generating arguments creating something truly new (heuristic) or merely piecing together existing texts (hermeneutic)? where does discourse come from? how does our judgment come into play? and what should even be called invention rather than something else?
Josh to ENC1102:
ReplyDelete"As we begin our work with our research
assignment, a term that I'd like us to keep thinking about is "invention"--a word that has been defined and used differently by a whole host of scholars in the 20th century. Some see it as a way to generate knowledge and produce writing and, likewise, we have been using invention exercises to generate ideas for our assignments; others see it as a way to read and interpret texts and, as we seek out resources for our research essay, we will also be using invention in this way to help us decide which texts may be useful for our essay, how to interpret them, how to integrate these other ideas alongside our own writing.
Class:
*silent awe*
Among the “host” of potential terms that could serve to focus continuing interest in invention, I will suggest context. It seems that the nature, purpose, and epistemology of invention reflect a dialogic relationship with context. Using context as a key term would enable us to use context as a way to think through, for example, the expert/novice factors that are mentioned by Ronna Dillon. Invention is not only a means of constructing or organizing knowledge, but a means by which context is put into dialogue with this knowledge. As invention shapes context, so too does context shape invention, point that seems to not be highlighted enough in this chapter. Perhaps, in this context, the way that invention is perceived by scholars as heuristic or hermeneutic is influenced by the primary contexts in which they are locating invention.
ReplyDeleteOption #1
ReplyDeleteThe often tacit strategies that you have used in the past to discover ideas and approaches to your papers and to formulate arguments have long, rich, and contested histories explicated in the theories of (most recently) 20th century scholars of rhetoric. These theories fall under the heading of invention, one of the five canons of rhetoric, and the sheer variety of those approaches offers you as developing writers many lenses through which you can view and articulate your own practices and generate a better understanding of what you know, how you know it, and how you can make other people know it.
To FYC students:
ReplyDeleteInvention is one of rhetoric’s five main canons, all of which work to explore how we communicate; invention sits as the first of these canons and involves what can be loosely understood as the early stages of composing. However, intertwined with these early stages of communication are notions of what exactly knowledge is and how we intend to create, construct, utilize, and share it. Throughout the years scholars have debated whether we create knowledge through our language and communication or whether our language simply conveys meaning and knowledge created “elsewhere." When we begin to compose we must think about how we know what we know and how we are going to communication that; this is epistemology in rhetoric and invention.
ps. that felt impossible and horribly simplistic...but interesting
Purpose of invention for FYC:
ReplyDeleteSince the 1960s, many scholars and theorists have debated the purpose of invention, one of the five canons of rhetoric, in the composing process. Such purposes include generating new understandings, proposing questions for future exploration, identifying content, familiarizing oneself with cultural influences, understanding better disciplinary knowledge and texts, creating new knowledge, and, best of all, playing.
"...resist Lauer's framework and provide another term that also seems to focus the continuing interest in invention...please again use two sentences max to identify the term and outline its role in the 20th century interest in rhetorical invention."
ReplyDeleteAmbiguity is the term that I would offer, not necessarily to counter Lauer's framework, but to expand it, especially since the trajectory of rhetorical invention seems to be expanding from an 18th century centering in a binary fixation to a more community and culturally expansive understanding. But, if for no other reason, the fact that Lauer borrows her evidence from varying disciplines invites a polysemous understanding of rhetorical invention.
The first of the five Canons of Rhetoric that’ll we’ll deal with is Invention. Invention can be a variety of methods and techniques you use to help you clarify what you know about a subject (what you’ve heard/read others say and/or experienced yourself), what you have to say about the subject (whether you agree or disagree or have a different point of view from what you’ve read, heard, and/or experienced), and how to articulate your ideas to an audience.
ReplyDeleteMichael Carter links invention to arche (118)or a point of intersection of opposing forces as generative of creativity. I'd also like to go with that idea and say invention is an action and it may be clear only in retrospect "when" invention happened. In that sense invention fits within an epistemological frame which includes an "understanding of creativity that is ongoing and discontinuous" (118). The thing that makes invention discrete and describable is the act of beginning In medias res.
ReplyDeleteAnother comment: I am very confused now: I always thought of the canon as five fingers on one hand ( the dominant one, for doing work in the world, as per Grassi). Now I think invention is over-arching the others? Is different, not equal? Is invention synonymous with rhetoric, instead of a part?
ReplyDelete