I appreciate Barry Kroll’s instinct to get away from the he said, she said view of argumentation. Seeing any issue as two-sided robs the subject of its complexity and closes the door on any new revelations or levels of understanding. His image of students sitting in a circle and piecing together a comprehensive argument is exactly the pluralistic set-up that gets us closer to real knowledge.
But parts of Kroll’s approach seem strange. Chiefly, he seems to advocate a writer make concessions to the audience. He writes: "The writer's task is to identify shared interests, compatible goals and common values that can serve as a basis for urging adversaries to cooperate."
Should that really be the writer’s task? Is this writing or a contract negotiation?
Writing ought to be dangerous, risky. Eggs must be broken for the greater human omelet. It ought to be a Denver omelet.
Kroll’s approach seems most applicable in terms of writing the “argument paper” or thinking of argument as a genre. I think that fiction writers make arguments in every piece. We might call them messages. But the idea is similar; we craft prose in such a way that the reader is left with an instinct to agree with us, or at least understand what we’re getting at or engage with our ideas in some way. And that happens without bending our techniques or vision to the whims of the audience.
Our thoughts coincide primarily in the idea of nuance. Successful arguments require it, and sometimes that means incorporating parts of an opposing view. But introducing nuance to freshmen seems a monumental task.
Quotable:
ReplyDelete"Writing ought to be dangerous, risky. Eggs must be broken for the greater human omelet. It ought to be a Denver omelet."