Elbow Wars

Elbow Wars

Rhetorical Theory and Practice makes me think of George Lucas's Star Wars. More specifically, Peter Elbow's Writing Without Teachers makes me think of the Jedi training scene in Empire Strikes Back where Yoda cautions Luke Skywalker that he must unlearn what he has learned. That seems to succinctly summarize the Elbow reading. Unlearn what we have learned. And I agree. And not just because Elbow's rhetoric is overly persuasive – which at times it can be – but more because as a writing consultant I have seen this method deployed with some degree of success on the entire gamut of writers.

There is more of a connection to Star Wars than you might think. Consider the following quote from the reading: "…but this voice is the force that will make a reader listen to you, the energy that drive the meanings through his thick skull… it's the only voice you've got. It's your only source of power" (6-7). Force? Energy? Source of power? Jedi Master indeed. That is not to say Elbow is not without paradox.

On page four, elbow asks of us to not evaluate our freewriting and then devotes the following forty three pages explaining how to do just that. It is my belief that Elbow does this in order to cement the importance of the spirit of the exercise – otherwise we would merely get hung up in revising in our heads as we put our thoughts on paper.

What I like about grad-school, and I realize that this class is designated as an undergrad course, is that students are encouraged to contribute to academic knowledge. This is a slight shift from the lecture-absorption paradigm pervasive in undergrad. We are encouraged to break a mold that is seen all too often in undergrad – when idea X is presented as the accepted model, end of discussion. Here, with Elbow, we are given a taste of academic freedom to explore the possibility that the things we thought we knew about academic writing – or just writing in general – may not necessarily be the best way to approach writing. We may not agree with him. He may not even be right (something he continually recuses himself of). But his point is a poignant one: challenge yourself to think from more than one perspective. An idea that aids us in our quest to contribute knowledge. An idea worth paying attention to.