Lousy Beatniks

While reading about expressionistic rhetoric in Berlin's Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class, I found myself thinking, "Wow, this sounds like a bunch of hippies came up with it." And sure enough, a couple sentences later, I'm reading that the major proponents came during the 60s and 70s. Not that I have anything particularly against hippies--my parents were of that generation, so I would be a rather ungrateful child to find too much fault with some of the ideas that came from that time period. I am glad that, as Berlin puts it, "This more extreme form of political activism in the classroom was harshly criticized by the moderate wing of the expressionist camp."

Reading through the Berlin piece as a whole, I find myself thinking a lot about where I fall in the various camps. More often than not, I find I am like a connoisseur of wines--purchasing what I like and leaving the rest. Consequently, I can't say that I belong to any one particular school of thought. Certainly there are times I fall more in line with one than the other. For instance, I tend to follow Elbow much more than Bartholomae, mostly because I feel Bartholomae follows traditional methods of instruction to a degree I find ineffective. However, I feel that for as "moderate" as Elbow might be, he takes notions of expressionistic rhetoric farther than I think they need to be taken.

So when it comes to Berlin's article, I really don't have an issue with saying that writing can be "scientific," that said science is influenced by ideology, and that power, indeed, comes from within. I don't find these ideas at all contradictory, though I am sure others might disagree. If, then, I am given a choice between hippies and scientists, I think I'll opt for the art-loving dabbler in science.