Making the gesture: Graduate student submissions and the expectation of journal referees

Composition Studies, Spring 2001 by McNabb, Richard

After several more introductory paragraphs further contextualizing "The Politics of Historiography," Brooks reaffirms his objection a second time:

My objection to these various descriptions of writing history is that none of them go far enough toward describing the writing of history as an act of communicative interaction .... While most participants of the octalog might readily agree that writing histories is much like a conversation, few actually talk about it in those terms, preferring instead the dialectical and archaeological metaphors. Redescribing the work historians of rhetoric do will not radically alter the nature of that work, but it will ... suggest some solutions to problems of interpretation, representation, and authorization. (8-9)

I quote at length to illustrate how Brooks negotiates the established research to validate his argument. He begins by positioning his topic, historiography, using "The Politics of Historiography" as a framework. Having established the topic, Brooks characterizes current conversations on the writing of history in rhetoric and composition, drawing on Berlin, Connors, Crowley, Enos, Vitanza, Johnson, Jarratt, and Swearingen. After briefly reviewing their viewpoints, Brooks then joins the conversation by creating a space for his present argument-"My objection to these various descriptions of writing history is that none of them go far enough toward describing the writing of history as an act of communicative interaction." What Brooks does, therefore, is carefully position other scholars to create a need for his position. The gesture here is not simply citing or summarizing (without which an article has only testimonial authority), but positioning the works of others in such a way that one's work seems not only appropriate but perhaps even overdue. Sustained attention to previous research and to claims of new knowledge can build a thread of continuity, making the genesis of an argument seem natural, logical, and more persuasive. This allows Brooks' readers to follow the genesis of his position, seeing how it evolved and what is at stake. Although there are variations to this approach among the articles published in RR, introductions like Brooks' account for nearly threefourths of them.

The epistemic patterns of introductions in articles in rhetoric and composition can be traced to the field's effort to establish a body of knowledge whose findings could be acknowledged by the wider profession. As I noted earlier, Robert Merton suggests that emerging disciplines initially establish their domain of knowledge through descriptive means, exploring and defining their objects of study. This would account for the high percentage of articles in rhetoric and composition journals prior to 1975 that show nonepistemic patterns in the introductions. These are articles that do not present communally defined problems and typically begin with a narrative or an historical anecdote. In the effort to move away from this kind of inquiry to more established ways of making knowledge for solving disciplinary problems, epistemic introductions become increasingly important. Using such a presentation, as MacDonald points out, lets academics "efficiently review the literature in the field, foreground the connections between previous and current work, warrant inferences, and rely on conventionalized tools (methods and concepts) that can be understood quickly and similarly within the discourse community" (189-90).