National Healing: Race, State, and the Teaching of Composition

The Styles

The Styles Because it is reminiscent of Aristotelian attempts at inclusive rhetorical categorization, readers will find echoes of the Western, Classical, rhetorical tradition in the writing of Taoist poet Sikong Tu (837–908 C.E.). In his Tang dynasty treatise, The Twenty-Four Styles of Poetry, Sikong catalogs style, from the “The Masculine and Vital Style” with its “potency and masculine strength” (1996, 25), to “The Flowing Style” which “takes in like a water mill / and turns like a pearl marble” (38). But because Sikong’s text combines a categorical study of poetics with a philosophy of composing and living, Western readers will also find themselves surprised and enlightened by the Twenty-Four Styles. This unique blending of perspectives on writing causes one to be reoriented by this ancient text. The book has the power to retune one to think about composing in new ways. It is in the Taoism, in the firm standing in the belief that the letting go of egos makes successful creation possible, that one can see new possibilities for writing. For instance, to achieve realism and a faithful rendering of reality in one’s writing, “The Actual Scene Style,” Siking tells us: “Use very straight speech / Without design or deep calculation.” Fair enough. That is instruction any writer should follow. But quickly Sikong follows this advice with Taoist mysticism and interiority: Chancing upon a hermit Is seeing the heart of the Tao. . . . Go where your temperament leads. Not seeking makes it splendid. With luck you will stumble on this rare and crystalline sound. (35) In The Twenty-Four Styles—indeed, everywhere one looks in the Styles— the characteristics and experience of style are expressed in imaginative, spirited terms. For instance, in “The Implicit Style” the experience of implicitness is presented as much or more than any definition: The Styles     81 This style’s like straining full-bodied wine or like a flower near bloom retreating into bud. It is dust in timeless open space, is flowing, foaming sea spume, shallow or deep, cohering, dispersing. One out of a thousand contains all thousand. (31) How far from Western epistemology is Sikong’s poetics. How far from the rhetorics of the West where the goal is persuasion and where the focus is on controlling the appearance of the self and the actions of another. In Sikong’s poetics, to achieve a natural style, you Go with the Tao and what you write is fine as spring. It’s like meeting flowers in bloom, like seeing the year renew. Once given to you it cannot be stolen, but gain it by force and soon you’re poor again. (30–31) It is easy to see what is often missing in composition studies. By permitting the poetic realm of writing to remain the intellectual property of creative writing, literary criticism, and, sometimes, literary theory, rather than claiming it as an essential concern of rhetoric and composition , we in composition continue to give up our claim to the heart and soul of writing. One is not likely to find much of this kind of imaginative exploration of style in classically-oriented Western rhetoric. This situation has, over the historical long-haul, contributed to the maintenance of instrumentalist views of writing, where writing is used to complete an exercise or job, to win a case by influencing the feelings of others. In this view, writing is a tool for achieving manageable ends: getting a good grade, finishing a report, etc. Indeed these are important, perhaps even decisive ends, depending on the context of the writer. But writing is also a complex set of processes that contribute to the ongoing creation of the meaning of the world. Yes, writing is an instrument for persuading, but it is also a means by which we make order out of chaos, bring the past to light and imagine possible or necessary, and sometimes beautiful , alternatives for the future. True, these too can be matters for persuasion . As compositionists such as Amy J. Devitt (2004) and Anis Bawarshi and Mary Jo Reiff (2010) have told us, our genres are no less complex, 82   national healing complicated or interrelated than our needs and intentions. But by focusing on the material ends and quick gains, we can miss the deeper reasons for writing. A grocery list can speak of the love of family ties; a lab report can speak of a student’s respect for parental sacrifices to pay for a college education. Writing should be taught in...