Logos and the Un/known

Is it possible to teach pigs to fly? This is a question I find myself asking more and more as time goes on, and as the academic path leads my perspective further into pedagogic territory. I ask it in the context of teaching writing in the university. Hopefully it is common knowledge that the ability to write and be articulate is related prosperity in life, be it economic, personal, or political. One must describe a problem before it can be solved. According to Psychologist Jordan Peterson,

There is nothing more powerful than someone who is articulate and who can think and speak. It’s power. And I mean power of the best sort. It’s authority, and influence, and respectability, and competence. So you come to university to craft your highest skill, and your highest skill is to be found in articulated speech (Harvard Talk: Postmodernism & the Mask of Compassion).

This capability is what Aristotle called the 'logos.' In practice, logos is the ability to argue, and furthermore, a willingness to exercise the mind instead of muscle. It means that one tries to understand their opposition, so that disparate world views can be ameliorated through word.

In the West, our emphasis on logos can account for the personal freedoms we enjoy, our economic prosperity, and our power as a culture. At the same time, deficiencies in our logos have given rise to widespread dogmatic assumptions leading to oppression. According to scholar Harry Denny, "The language majority population often couches its discourse in racial and national terms, further confounding tensions and exacerbating divisions" (Murphy & Sherwood, 268). Cultures which justify sexism and the punishment of nonnormative sexual behavior do so with pathos and ethos, with the power of tradition and transcendent authority working in their favor. This kind of language may be considered anti-logos, propagating on the wings of 'tribal epistemology,' or a kind of knowledge which has its roots in antiquity.

Our behavior would indicate that we take the fruits of modern civilization for granted; we interact with technology seamlessly, we regard it as expendable, disposable, with a new iteration provided to the consumer every year. I certainly do not consider the vast quantity of human effort behind the computer screen as I write. We fall into the same trap regarding our rationality; we forget that the Enlightenment happened no more than three hundred years ago, an eye blink in human history. We forget that frontal lobe, known as the center for rational thinking, is the latest development in our brain’s evolution. Rationality is often marginalized by the structures which preceded it. Evidence of this phenomenon is seen in Merlin Donald's theory of mimetic culture:

[A] layer of cultural interaction that is based entirely on a collective web of conventional, expressive nonverbal actions.  Mimetic culture is the murky realm of eye contact, facial expressions, poses, attitude, body language, self-decoration, gesticulation, and tones of voice (Donald, 265).

Language rests on top of this corpus of evolution. The content of speech, rational in nature, is superseded by mimetic culture and its interpretive structures.

In effect, we are the pigs learning to fly, we are biological computers in constant conflict with our animalistic subroutines. Contemplating the Hobsean nightmare, we can see that violence is a much easier solution to societal problems than formulating an argument. This is where the university becomes relevant, as an institution wherein the core ethic is the argument, the propagation of the logos in opposition to propaganda. To be functional members of society, we must learn how to make arguments and evaluate them. The university is meant to be a beacon of light unto the world, a lure pulling us out of the darkness of human history, and away from regression into, as Johnathan Haidt puts it, a war against anything which counters our ‘sacred values.’

I believe that people find true motivation in life through the articulation of grand narratives. These grand narratives ought not be so powerful to the individual that they are blinding to alternative perspectives. At the same time, a life without narratives is likely to become one of nihilism.

I intend to help the writer discover not only what they want to write, but also provide a venue in which they may discover the reason behind why they write what they write. This places great emphasis on what Sherwood and Murphy call the ‘pretextual’ phase of the tutorial. While the actual content of their writing may have nothing to do with a grand narrative, I believe that centering their writing within a framework of personal belief is the most effective way to improve the writer.

This may be accomplished through various epistemologies, such as expressivism, social constructionism, traditional rhetoric, and even postmodernism. Every writer, regardless of their persuasion, uses these methodologies implicitly. Writers often seek to express a topic that is partly personal to them, partly mediated by society, partly rooted in tradition, and partly a reversal of dominant cultural paradigms. A tutor must be able to leverage each category proportionally to how each is employed by the writer. This pragmatic approach supplements the grand narrative, which is itself a genetic epistemology. Simply put, the mental faculties we utilize to interpret narrative evolved for a reason. Narrative was, at one time, necessary for our survival. It isn’t obvious that the conditions of society today differ to such a degree that it is no longer relevant. Therefore, one must, in a sense, discover the voice within their genetics; as philosopher Slavoj Zizek has called it, the ‘unknown known.’