The Arroyo article reminded me of a question I frequently have while reading these articles: Why don’t scholars spend more time borrowing each other’s terminology instead of reinventing the wheel?
On pg. 686 of Arroyo, he writes:
Kent devises another conceptual scheme for what he calls “internalist” and “externalist” rhetorics (reminiscent of Vitanza’s “inner-directed” and “outer-directed”).
These seem more than reminiscent to me, they seem synonymous. I could totally be missing nuance between the concepts, but it seems like, based on the definitions they offer, that the whole internalist/externalist thing IS basically the same as inner-directed/outer-directed. So why don’t they just keep using the same language instead of re-labeling everything? It seems like a rat race to try and get some sparkly term or concept forever immortalized in association with your last name. While I get the appeal of that (and that it’s probably important in your career if you’re an academic), it seems like if you were truly in the business of knowledge, you’d be more concerned about communicating clearly and efficiently in order to illuminate something new.
Perhaps I wouldn’t take issue with this as much if some scholars didn’t spend so much time waxing about the noble quest of the instructor and scholar to learn, teach, and illuminate. At times it all comes out as hypocritical to me. To be fair, though, we have read scholars who seem to do what I’m suggesting–borrowing concepts in an effort to move the conversation forward. So this could just be a case of a few rubbing me the wrong way.
Yes!
But…
So much to say on this. It’s interesting, too, that I felt similarly re-engaging with the whole post-process vs. (or not vs.) process argument. Sometimes it seems so silly — we produce scholarly straw men of theoretical positions in order to knock them down (for a variety of reasons).
And I’m back to one of the central questions of the course… what is it that we’re doing here? Ok… honestly… what is it that I’m doing here…? (besides being self-centered)
That makes sense–and I think sometimes the straw men are legit (not-so-straw-men?), and then some of the straw men are 100% straw. Maybe this is the whole struggle-in-academia thing of doing some things because it’s true pursuit of knowledge and some things because the man tells you that you need to publish a bajillion articles in addition to all the other work you’re doing? In which case I could probably be more gracious–it’s not like people don’t do the same thing in other fields, too.