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4 p h i l o s o p h i e s o f i n V e n T i o n T w e n T y y e a R s a f T e R T h e M a k i n g O f k n O w l e d g e i n C O M p O s i T i O n Kelly Pender In the preface to his 2003 Where Writing Begins, Michael Carter uses Stephen North’s not-entirely-approving description of philosophical inquiry in The Making of Knowledge in Composition (MKC) (1987) as a kind of disclaimer—as a way to fess up to the methodological shortcomings of his argument before he begins making it. Carter admits, for instance, that he has “foraged far and wide” into theology, astrophysics, ancient Greek philosophy, dialectical theory, and scientific chaos theory for the premises of his argument (xv–xvi). He counts himself among the “accidental philosophers,” who, as North explained, try to solve a practical problem only to find themselves more concerned with its underlying presuppositions (xv; North, 101). And finally, Carter pleads guilty to preaching, that is, to pushing his philosophical investigation of invention into philosophical reformism by offering it as a guide to action (xvi; North 111). “I am interested in reforming the way we conceive of writing and the teaching of writing,” Carter confesses. “I think there is a lot at stake here” (xvi). What’s interesting about these weaknesses of philosophical inquiry— foraging, low methodological self-awareness, and proselytizing—is the fact that North described them (and others) in The Making of Knowledge in Composition sixteen years before Carter published Where Writing Begins. Moreover, while North admitted that these weaknesses made it difficult for him to characterize the methodological community of composition philosophers, he also expressed optimism about that community’s future. “I am convinced,” he wrote, “that somewhere within this welter of arguing voices, a genuine dialectic and a real Philosophical community are taking shape” (92). The obvious question raised by Carter’s preface, then, is have they? Have a “genuine dialectic” and a “real community” of composition philosophers emerged in the way that North anticipated 64 T H E C H A N G I N G OF KN OWLED G E I N C OM P OSI T I ON they would when he wrote MKC nearly twenty-five years ago? Has philosophical inquiry achieved the “more coherent future” he hoped for? If so, how? What changes have occurred? And if not, why? Are some weaknesses just too difficult for composition philosophers to overcome? These are, of course, huge questions—ones that cannot be conclusively answered here because, among other reasons, the body of philosophical research in composition is just too extensive. To provide some tentative answers, then, I will look at one small segment of that large corpus: philosophical research on invention. Initially, this might seem like a strange move since, as North made clear in the penultimate chapter of MKC, his expectations for the future of invention research were not very high. Criticizing what he referred to as Richard Young’s call for an “investigative assault” on invention in order to “unlock its secrets,” North argued that the term’s only meaning came from the incompatible methodologies used to carry out that assault and gain disciplinary power. Thus he worried that come “accumulation time,” this meaning would reveal more about the field’s “inter-methodological tensions” than it would about invention itself (339). However, North also argued that as long as composition was subject to the “fairly strict methodological homogeneity” exerted by literature within the English department, its four researcher methods (experimental, clinical , formal, and ethnographic) would “be driven away,” leaving the three scholarly methods (historical, philosophical, and critical) to predominate (367). I would argue that this shift in composition has been nowhere more apparent than in invention research. As even a cursory review of the literature reveals, most of the compositionists and rhetoricians who study invention today do so with scholarly methods, and of those methods, the most common is philosophical.1 It makes sense, then, to look to invention , a place where the philosophical community has become dominant, in order to reflect on the state of philosophical method. Importantly, such reflection also gives us an opportunity to see what invention is becoming in light of the “methodological homogeneity” that North foresaw. whaT i s p hi lo so...

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