JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory, Volume 28, Numbers 1 & 2, 2008 Page: 73
390, [6] p. : ill. ; 22 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Paul Butler
value of styles that may not, at first glance, appear transparent or clear to
most people.
One instance where the explanation of a complex, yet meaningful
style would have been helpful is in a 1994 "Readings" section ofHarper 's
Magazine that quickly betrays its real purpose: to make its subject,
composition professor Victor Vitanza-and, in turn, the field itself-
seem vain, inarticulate, and, in the form in which it's presented, unclear.
Published under the title "Reading, Writing, Rambling On," the Harper 's
piece undermines Vitanza by taking excerpts from his larger interview in
Composition Studies, conducted by Cynthia Haynes-Burton in 1993,
without giving the broader context for his ideas. When, for instance,
Haynes-Burton asks, "Who do you think your audience is?" Vitanza's
theoretical response, reprinted in Harper 's, shows some of his conflicted
sense of the field: "I am always giving writing lessons and taking writing
lessons. I don't know, however, if I am Levi-Strauss or if I am that South-
American Indian chief in Tristes Tropiques that L6vi-Strauss indirectly
gives writing lessons to. Perhaps I am both. Which can be confusing"
(29). On the surface, of course, Vitanza's statements appear opaque, even
comical, even though they are arguably a stylistic tour de force in which
the author uses the rhetorical trope of periphrasis to show the difficulty
of capturing the rhetorical situation of literacy, which he names
"inappropriation" (52). Yet, the Harper's excerpt does not capture
Vitanza's dilemma or his uncertain relationship with the very notion of
"audience," which he examines at length in the Composition Studies
piece. In a portion of that interview omitted in Harper 's, Vitanza
states, "I think that audiences are really overrated!" and one solution,
he explains, is to rethink the relationship between writers and audi-
ences (51).
Later, after Vitanza expresses doubts about how he positions himself
as a researcher in the field, Haynes-Burton asks him to "please start over,"
and Vitanza's conflicted reply includes the following paragraph repro-
duced in Harper 's:
Okay, so what I have said so far: I very consciously do not follow
the field's research protocols. And yet, of course, I do; most other
times, however, I do not. And yet again! Do you feel the vertigo of
this? I hope that my saying all this, however, does not come across73
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Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition (U.S.). JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory, Volume 28, Numbers 1 & 2, 2008, periodical, 2008; (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc268403/m1/71/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .