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Reviewed by:
  • Rhetoric and the Republic: Politics, Civic Discourse, and Education in Early America
  • David C. Bailey
Rhetoric and the Republic: Politics, Civic Discourse, and Education in Early America. By Mark Garrett Longaker. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007; pp xx + 266. $39.95 cloth.

Teachers and scholars of rhetoric enjoy a distinction unique among academic professionals in that the practices we teach in the classroom eventually inform the discursive norms of the nation's sociopolitical sphere. That is, the discursive practices learned in our classrooms can enter the rhetorical bloodstream of the national community by way of our students. This influential position is something to be proud of, yet it also creates well-founded anxieties about the quality of rhetorical pedagogy and the sociopolitical implications of the rhetorical norms we help create. Mark Garrett Longaker is interested in enriching the scholarly dialogue about the sociopolitical effects of rhetorical pedagogy. In Rhetoric and the Republic, his aim is to demonstrate that rhetorical education in early American universities was, contrary to many accounts, a contested site where individuals and institutions from various religious, economic, and social contexts did battle over the meaning and practices of republicanism.

Longaker begins the introductory chapter by briefly drawing attention to what he calls the "Edenic narratives about the history of rhetorical education" (xii). His analysis about the inaccuracy of these narratives is a call to rhetorical critics (and other educators as well) to stop describing eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American rhetorical history as some sort of bygone golden age of responsible civic rhetorical education because "we should consider how rhetoric engages the politics of each particular moment in history" (xiii). This theme is expounded upon in the chapter "One Republic, Many Republicans" wherein Longaker outlines the topoi—power, liberty, civic virtue, the vita active, and corruption—that, he argues, comprised republican political discourse of the later half of the eighteenth century. The remainder of the chapter is [End Page 137] devoted to illustrating how various pedagogical and political elites from Yale president Timothy Dwight to Thomas Jefferson articulated diverse visions of republicanism.

In chapter 2, entitled "One Republic, Many Paideiai," Longaker more explicitly links the fragmented understandings of republicanism to the pedagogical practices of American universities designed to instill civic virtue. The thesis of this chapter is that the preferred methods and content of rhetorical education were largely a function of the religious, economic, and social desires of administrators, professors, and community elites. For instance, Longaker reminds his readers that Harvard students were ranked according to social class up until the 1770s and that the professors and financial backers of Virginia's College of William and Mary were most interested in providing a belletristic education that would equip students with knowledge of enough Greek and Latin phrases "to circulate in polite company" (54). Even in schools where rhetorical instruction was more rigorous, such as the College of New Jersey, academic debates were sometimes settled by simply referencing the Bible as the final authority. This chapter features a lengthy, and generally convincing, discussion of the effects of economic considerations on paideia. Longaker writes, for instance, that rhetorical education at Benjamin Franklin's Academy of Philadelphia was, to the chagrin of the institution's trustees, designed around the mastery of written and spoken English necessary to engage in profitable commerce.

Chapters 3, 4, and 5 are interesting case studies that Longaker uses to support his thesis. In the concluding chapter, Longaker suggests that contemporary liberal hegemony can, with the aid of Gramscian Marxism, create sites for inclusive national discourse. As such, the contemporary efforts of academics and pundits from the Right and the Left endeavoring to revive American republican discourse are both futile and misguided in Longaker's opinion. Specifically, he dismisses these proposals as more "Edenic narrative" that fails to "help us to investigate or navigate the civic terrain" (216).

Longaker's analysis is both trenchant and provocative. He succeeds in illuminating the historical and political complexities of early American rhetorical pedagogy. His success in this endeavor challenges rhetorical critics and educators alike to consider both the sociopolitical implications of what they do and the potentially hegemonic influences upon their teaching and scholarship. Longaker's inclusion...

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