I’m reading a recent piece of scholarship in rhetoric & composition, and I’m momentarily taken aback at having come across a passage that critiques Walter Benjamin for not being positive enough in his outlook. (The piece goes on to critique Benjamin and his Frankfurt School peers for being simultaneously too utopian and too negative.)
But y’know, I stop and think a minute, and it occurs to me: gosh, Walter Benjamin was kind of a gloomy Gus, wasn’t he? Probably not much fun at a cocktail party. And then there’s Franz Kafka: I mean, who knows what was up with that guy? And hey, isn’t there way too much negativity in rhetoric & composition in general? Sharon Crowley’s all like, “Abolish this, abolish that,” and I’m like, why all this abolishing and throwing stuff away; aren’t we better off the more stuff we have, and besides, when’s the last time abolishing anything did any good, anyway? And then Linda Brodkey goes on about all this Texas 1990 stuff and I’m just like, get over it already. And chicka chicka chicka Mike Edwards, I’m sicka him; look at him, writing about comp and economy, when we already got a class taxonomy. I mean, can’t we stop being so negative; can’t these people see that the world’s the best it’s ever been right now and we should just be happy with the status quo?
So with the conference coming up, and the deadline for the CCCC call for resolutions a couple days away, I’d like to see a resolution for more positivity and more happy support for the status quo in CCCC scholarship. Wouldn’t that be great? C’mon; who’s with me? We could even put a nice picture on the front page!
Yes, that damn Benjamin and his negative outlook. If old Walt had just been been more positive, perhaps he would have gotten tenure. And if he had looked on the bright side, maybe he wouldn’t have had to flee the Nazis and commit suicide. Let that be a lesson to all of us.
In and of itself, despair won’t get us anywhere. Hell, if I wanted to live out my days completely miserable, I’d have stuck to interviewing insurance claimants. So maybe (just maybe) we could do with less comp-laining in some cases, although I’d be reluctant to support this poster as a quick-panacea banner–too individualistic with it’s uni-theme, singularity, etc. Fine lines, as well, separate critique of conditions that proliferate hardship and the lament that frames the teaching of writing in simplistic (or whiney) terms as contemptible work.
Certainly the despairing whine of the comp teacher, as Becky points out, is hardly useful or productive. But the text in question seems to miss the point that there was far more to Benjamin than despair, and fails to acknowledge his hugely important contributions (TWOAITAOMR likely foremost for us folk with interests in writing and technology), and — as Krista points out — also shows an complete and inexplicable failure to understand the gravity of his terminal situation.