Page 185 - Šolsko polje, XXX, 2019, št. 5-6: Civic, citizenship and rhetorical education in a rapidly changing world, eds. Janja Žmavc and Plamen Mirazchiyski
P. 185
book reviews
ceptible reality gets established. (ibid., p. 142) The author claims that to go
against what Fleckenstein calls visual habits and rhetorical habits (ibid., p.
147), students need to be immersed not only in processes of analysis but
also in processes of performance. (ibid., p. 153) He gives a practical exam-
ple of his own class assignment on the topic of global poverty, which he
used as an introduction into a discussion of transnational rhetorical citi-
zenship and spectatorship. It sounds as though Minnix made his students
recognize and question the rationale behind the exclusionary politics the
images/photos testified to, and the emotional response they were intend-
ed to provoke. However, the actual depth and thoroughness of their anal-
ysis, as well as what guidelines/criteria he used in assessing their work and
providing feedback is not specified.
Chapter 5 is more valuable to rhetorical educators in this respect. It
focuses on how to make students view the relationship between the global
and the local as porous and interpenetrating, describing how he succeed-
ed in pushing students beyond simplistic and uncritical celebrations of di-
versity in his own advanced composition class, articulating most reveal-
ing examples.
In many ways, the last chapter is a succinct summary of the mono-
graph: in higher education documents and initiatives in the USA (as well
as globally) sophisticated communication/rhetorical skills are generally
stated as educational goals that are pursued across different disciplines. It
turns out, however, that rhetorical education is not given much attention
in the global curriculum, and that students remain ill-equipped to engage
in agonistic democratic practices, not really capable of recognising and re-
sponding to the policies and conditions created and reproduced by the
power structures. Underlying the importance of collaborative work, the
author calls upon rhetorical educators to forge alliances both in the dis-
ciplines (with colleagues in rhetorics, composition and communication)
and against the disciplines (with colleagues from diverse disciplines) in
order to reframe the role of rhetorics in global higher education along the
lines of “agonistically engaging discourses, ideologies and pedagogies of
global higher education” (ibid., p. 197).
Inevitably, such rhetorical education has very little to do with the
impoverished understanding of communication skills rampant in higher
education environments. As a matter of fact, it perhaps sounds rather uto-
pian. Yet I believe it is precisely Minnix’s insistence on institutional anal-
ysis, on a rigorous theoretical basis, and on posing the right kind of ques-
tions rather than providing ideal pedagogical responses that make this
monograph a most valuable contribution to the ongoing debate about rhe-
torical instruction in the context of the global turn in (higher) education.
183
ceptible reality gets established. (ibid., p. 142) The author claims that to go
against what Fleckenstein calls visual habits and rhetorical habits (ibid., p.
147), students need to be immersed not only in processes of analysis but
also in processes of performance. (ibid., p. 153) He gives a practical exam-
ple of his own class assignment on the topic of global poverty, which he
used as an introduction into a discussion of transnational rhetorical citi-
zenship and spectatorship. It sounds as though Minnix made his students
recognize and question the rationale behind the exclusionary politics the
images/photos testified to, and the emotional response they were intend-
ed to provoke. However, the actual depth and thoroughness of their anal-
ysis, as well as what guidelines/criteria he used in assessing their work and
providing feedback is not specified.
Chapter 5 is more valuable to rhetorical educators in this respect. It
focuses on how to make students view the relationship between the global
and the local as porous and interpenetrating, describing how he succeed-
ed in pushing students beyond simplistic and uncritical celebrations of di-
versity in his own advanced composition class, articulating most reveal-
ing examples.
In many ways, the last chapter is a succinct summary of the mono-
graph: in higher education documents and initiatives in the USA (as well
as globally) sophisticated communication/rhetorical skills are generally
stated as educational goals that are pursued across different disciplines. It
turns out, however, that rhetorical education is not given much attention
in the global curriculum, and that students remain ill-equipped to engage
in agonistic democratic practices, not really capable of recognising and re-
sponding to the policies and conditions created and reproduced by the
power structures. Underlying the importance of collaborative work, the
author calls upon rhetorical educators to forge alliances both in the dis-
ciplines (with colleagues in rhetorics, composition and communication)
and against the disciplines (with colleagues from diverse disciplines) in
order to reframe the role of rhetorics in global higher education along the
lines of “agonistically engaging discourses, ideologies and pedagogies of
global higher education” (ibid., p. 197).
Inevitably, such rhetorical education has very little to do with the
impoverished understanding of communication skills rampant in higher
education environments. As a matter of fact, it perhaps sounds rather uto-
pian. Yet I believe it is precisely Minnix’s insistence on institutional anal-
ysis, on a rigorous theoretical basis, and on posing the right kind of ques-
tions rather than providing ideal pedagogical responses that make this
monograph a most valuable contribution to the ongoing debate about rhe-
torical instruction in the context of the global turn in (higher) education.
183
