Social-epistemic rhetoric

"It [writing] is an art, a creative act in which the process-the discovery of the true self-is as important as the product-the self discovered and expressed" Pg. 485 I found myself torn between Berlin's descriptions of expressionistic rhetoric and social-epistemic rhetoric because there were things I liked about in both. I liked the focus on the individual subject and the romantic beliefs that Berlin attributed to expressionistic rhetoric because they "argued for the inherent goodness of the individual, a goodness distorted by excessive contact with others in groups and institutions" (484). I interpret expressionistic rhetoric as more self-centered and focused on the individual writer than the other two Berlin discusses. More power and control seems to be attributed to the individual rather than to the groups to which they belong therefore in writing less attention is paid to the audience. Writing is seen more as an individual act of self-exploration rather than a collective one in which the audience dictates the process. Though I like the focus on the individual that expressionistic rhetoric embodies I also like social-epistemic rhetoric because it focuses on the relationship between the individual and group as the producer of knowledge. The notion of knowledge as a "historically bound social fabrication" was the most intriguing part of social-epistemic rhetoric for me because it is similar to my own thinking concerning the topic as individually defined and subjective rather than concrete. Also the idea that there is no universal self and further that the self is the product of their place in history, I sympathized with because it does acknowledge the effect of the group on the individual that we cannot escape. "As Marx indicated, we make our own histories, but we do not make them just as we wish" (489).