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Research Agenda

My research agenda in the field of rhetoric and composition has three related goals: first, and most generally, to develop further the political critique of rhetoric, writing, and literature; second, to recover neglected periods, traditions, individuals, and texts in the broader field of culture and the more specific field of rhetoric; and third, to remap (with the tools provided by Marxist and postcolonial theory) the ways in which we understand rhetoric—in particular the civic tradition of rhetoric—and its material conditions.

As such, I draw on a variety of theoretical and critical perspectives, from the dialectical materialism of Marxism (especially that of Lukács and Jameson) to the rethinking of materialist critique by Gramsci and others; from the application of this critique to social and cultural practices by the Frankfurt School, the Birmingham School, and American and Latin American scholars of cultural studies to Foucault's contribution to this critique in terms of his redefinition of power and subjectivity. I also draw on the postcolonial critiques of Césaire, Memmi, and others not only to deepen my political critique in terms of culture and imperialism but also to critique the assumptions, values, and beliefs of Marxism. I use, in this way, not only postcolonialism but also race and gender theory, as race and gender have often been neglected in materialist critique.

In rhetorical studies, this sort of critique, I argue, has not been adequately developed. No doubt the work of most rhetoricians, in particular those who work on civic rhetoric, is political. Yet, this work is generally not materialist but rather progressive or civic republican, sometimes even liberal democratic. While rhetoricians like Michael Calvin McGee and James Arnt Aune do engage the Marxist tradition, the former does so only in terms of an ideological critique and the latter in terms of a rhetorical criticism of Marxist texts. What a truly Marxist rhetoric or simply a Marxist critique of rhetoric would look like remains to be seen, though it has been suggested by Omar Swartz. Likewise, critical rhetoric (and what is ironically called material rhetoric) is also promising, yet, unlike Swartz, it is not materialist in a Marxist sense: this, in fact, was Dana L. Cloud's point in her article, "The Materiality of Discourse as Oxymoron."

In composition studies, this materialist critique has not been developed either. One significant exception is Richard Ohmann's English in America, published in 1976 and reprinted in 1996, especially the chapter, "Rhetoric for the Meritocracy" by Wallace Douglas. Certainly scholars who advocate critical pedagogy like Ira Shor, epistemic rhetoric like James A. Berlin and Patricia Bizzell, or critical concern for race (Victor Villanueva and Keith Gilyard), class (Mike Rose), gender (Miriam Brody, Susan C. Jarratt, and Susan Miller), sexuality (Harriet Malinowitz), and ability (Brenda Jo Brueggemann) are part of a broader coalition that is interested in social change. While I do not suggest that such a critique can serve as an umbrella for these disparate movements, I believe that a properly materialist critique is needed.

My specific contribution, then, lies in developing a materialist critique of rhetoric. This critique is needed for two reasons: first, to create the conditions of possibility for absolute democracy and social change and to imagine how rhetoric enables such conditions; and second, to understand how rhetoric itself constrains those same conditions of possibility and to imagine a critique to respond to these constraints. This materialist critique also provides a richer understanding of the social and cultural history of rhetoric.

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Research Interests

My primary research interests are rhetoric and composition, including the history of rhetoric, rhetorical theory, rhetorical criticism, and composition theory. More specifically, I am interested in political theories of rhetoric and composition like epistemic rhetoric, ideological criticism, critical rhetoric, and social-epistemic rhetoric. I am also interested in material, spatial, and visual rhetoric. Finally, I am interested in comparative rhetoric, especially Latin American rhetoric and its relationship to rhetoric in the United States and Canada.

My secondary research interests are literary and cultural theory, especially Marxism, critical theory, and cultural studies. In addition to literary and cultural theory, I am interested in American literature and autobiography.

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Dissertation

My dissertation, "The Political Unconscious of Rhetoric: The Contradictions between Property and Rhetoric," is a Marxist critique of the rhetorical tradition. In The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act, Marxist theorist Fredric Jameson argues that all texts, whether they are explicitly political or not, are socially symbolic acts that contain traces of the uninterrupted narrative of class struggle. As a socially symbolic act, rhetoric too has a political unconscious. The traditional history of rhetoric represents rhetoric as a practical art that is used in civic spaces, such as political forums, courtrooms, and public ceremonies. From Protagoras's dictum that "man is the measure of all things" to Kenneth Burke's definition of human beings as "the symbol-using animal," rhetoric is said to provide the conditions of possibility for human civilization, education, and even democracy. While democracy may be the manifest content of rhetoric, I argue that property constitutes its latent content. Therefore, property is the political unconscious of rhetoric. This dissertation is a Marxist attempt to remap the rhetorical tradition by interrogating the rhetorical tradition and its civic republican (or more specifically, proprietarian) assumptions. For more information, see my dissertation proposal.

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Current Research

My current research includes my dissertation, which I intend to revise for publication. In order to turn it into a scholarly book, I will elaborate on the theory of the political unconscious and its implications for the study of rhetoric. I will also revise the present chapters, as well as include several new chapters on the city, the marketplace, and intellectual property. Finally, in addition to the influence of property on rhetoric, I will examine the influence of rhetoric on property.

In addition to my dissertation, I am working on several unrelated articles. The first group extends the theoretical insights of my dissertation to other areas. For example, "Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and the Rhetorical Tradition" analyzes the rhetoric of silence. The second group deals with the politics of composition, one of which examines the teaching of political matter and another of which examines the abolition debate. The third group concerns the relationship between rhetoric and history, "The American Archive: The Rhetoric of History and Memory," a theoretical study of the impulse to archive the past, and "The Forensic Narrator: Rhetorical Strategies in Historiographic Fiction," a rhetorical analysis of historical fiction.

For more information on my research, both past and present, see my curriculum vitae.

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Projected Research

In the coming years, there are three other projects on which I want to work. The first is a scholarly website on rhetoric entitled Gryllos.com. The second is a historical study of the representation of rhetoric tentatively entitled The Visual Rhetoric of Rhetoric. And the final project is a comparative history of U.S. and Latin American rhetoric, tentatively titled Rhetorics in the Americas (see the final section of my comprehensive exam).

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Research Experience

In addition to my own research, I have held four research positions: one with a nationally recognized research project, two with graduate faculty, and one with a member of the House of Lords. My first research position was with Lord Denis Howell, a Labour Party whip in the House of Lords during the summer of 1994. I have also held research assistantships with two professors, Thomas P. Miller, Professor of English, and Charles Tatum, Dean of the College of Humanities and Professor of Spanish, both of the University of Arizona.

My most productive research assistantship, however, was at the University of Houston, with the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project. The goal of the project is to locate, identify, preserve, and make accessible the literature of Hispanics from colonial times through 1960 in what today comprises the United States. It was here that I learned many of the research skills that I use today: developing a search strategy; searching databases, bibliographies, and archives; taking notes; making bibliographies; etc.

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Research Awards

I have won a number of awards for my research, both at the University of Arizona and the University of Houston. The most notable is the Riepe Fellowship, a graduate award for research at the University of Arizona, which I won in the summer of 2003.