Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

“Innovative,” “non-traditional,” or “experimental” discourses, such as collage writing and other multimodal texts, invite us to critique the reasons why thinkers choose to exercise rhetorical freedom: why they choose to stand differently in relation to western European rhetorical traditions. Humanities across the disciplines help to reveal the ways in which innovative discourses may reconfigure contemporary argumentation. The hermeneutic phenomenological investigations of both aesthetics and reception by philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer posit possibilities in argumentation for reinvigorated relationships with language and readers. Aesthetic theories of art and design show the ways in which collage principles can effectively enact extended arguments. Contemporary poetics contributes a springboard for re-thinking the ground of argumentation. For example, language poet and theorist Bruce Andrews asserts that, “Faced with rules or patterns of constraint…writing can respond with a drastic openness” (excerpted from Andrews’s 1988 essay “Poetry as Explanation, Poetry as Praxis”). How might we realize such openness, such freedom, in argumentation? How might we re-envision our understanding of and re-stage in rigorous ways the ancient, codified practices of argumentation? Innovative discourses demonstrate new theories of rhetoric in contiguity with western European traditions. But how liberated may we become; how free are we?