Take, for example, Grant Allen's
editorial
in the March 1920 issue of "Hobo" News.
The Public Work of Rhetoric_nodrm
"19 Young thus reminds us that rhetoric is inherently situational.
That is, in responding to a particular need/argument/event and aiming to persuade a particular audience, rhetoric must be grounded in the situation at hand.
While it might seem common sense, then, that anyone trying to persuade an audience to support an unpopular cause or radical social change would want to write with a measure of caution, an ear to a broad audience in need of con- vincing, the rhetoric of dissent is anything but cautious. What, for example, might we make of a newspaper or magazine that introduces itself in this way:
This Magazine is Owned and Published Co-operatively by its Editors. It has no Dividends to Pay, and nobody is trying to make Money out of it.
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A Revolutionary and not a Reform Magazine; a Magazine with a Sense of Humor and no Respect for the Respectable; Frank; Arrogant; Imperti- nent; Searching for the True Cause; a Magazine Directed against Rigidity and Dogma wherever it is found; Printing what is too Naked or True
for a Money-Making Press; a Magazine whose final Policy is to do as
it Pleases and Conciliate Nobody, not even its Readers--A Free Magazine. 20
With this masthead boast, the Masses, an early-twentieth-century socialist magazine, declared itself beholden to no one, a magazine "searching for the true cause," a "revolutionary" magazine presumably uninterested in "reform," a magazine free from the constraints of capitalism. That declaration, if we take it on face value, defies every lesson on audience at least as it is tradition- ally taught in rhetoric handbooks. The writer violates, for example, several of the rules that Sharon Crowley and Deborah Hawhee have outlined in Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students for creating a successful ethos: the claims lack specific evidence, which violates a demand for showing that one has done one's homework; the arrogant tone arguably fails to create goodwill with the reader; and the third-person discourse fails to create a personal relationship between writer and reader. 21 If evaluated on the basis of classical rhetorical appeals within the text, the Masses--and many dissident press concerns-- might be deemed rhetorical failures. Perhaps this is why, in classrooms where we purport to study the power of language to make change in the world, we pay scant attention to the universe of dissident texts. Ignored or dismissed as "bad rhetoric," dissident texts offer the opportunity to study rhetorical exam- ples that have consistently sought to make changes in the world, and occa- sionally have succeeded.
Looked at in this way it seems that rather than violating rules of discourse, this passage from the Masses seeks to change the rules of the game. In declar- ing itself free, true, revolutionary, nonconciliatory, arrogant, "against rigidity and dogma," the editors challenge readers to imagine themselves as somehow aligned with a publication that aligns itself with no one and with nothing in particular, save the freedom to print what it wishes as it wishes. The audience that made this magazine so popular in the first decade of the twentieth cen- tury was looking, we might assume, for something new, something bold.
The rhetorical importance, then, of examining the workings of the dissi- dent press is to explore how, within such spaces, writers make different assump- tions about discourse protocols. Dissident press articles can exemplify how the rules we teach our students--about, for example, constructing a positive ethos--are not universal rules of good writing but rules for writing that oper- ates within certain accepted rhetorical situations. When one seeks to create change, or make something different happen in discourse, the rules might seem to fly out the window.
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 253
In examining the rhetorical workings of the dissident press, however, it would be incomplete to look only at the rhetorical appeals made within the texts or to equate its rhetorical force with the composed text itself. How these texts managed or failed to find readers and to circulate both materially and ideologically significantly determines the rhetorical power of any text to cre- ate a public appeal. 22 Thus in order to study the rhetoric of dissent, one must also look more closely at the relationship between textual circulation and the creation of a readership, or public. To do this, we turn to the work of Michael Warner on the creation of publics and counterpublics.
Dissident press publications work to create counterpublic spaces, which Warner argues are "defined by their tension with the larger public. . . . Dis- cussion within such a public is understood to contravene the roles obtaining in the world at large, being structured by alternative discourse positions or protocols, making different assumptions about what can be said or what goes without saying . . . it maintains at some level, conscious or not, an awareness of its subordinate status. "23 In other words, counterpublics engage in alterna- tive rhetorical strategies while seeking to effect change in a more-dominant public sphere.
Warner's work, then, allows for an alternative way to evaluate dissident rhetoric: one that goes beyond close inspection at the textual level. Rather than examining internal textual criteria, Warner shows us that a public appeal is successful when people pay attention. He argues that if and when public appeals are successful, they hail a public into being by their discourse. Once readers recognize themselves as the type of person being hailed by a message, and once they pay attention to it, a public is constituted. So the arrogance or lack of evidence in the appeal of the Masses is irrelevant if readers feel them- selves to be addressed by such words and pay attention to them. The act of readers' paying attention importantly begins the creation of a public.
Warner continues by arguing that a public cannot be constituted by a sin- gle text, no matter how compelling or provocative. He describes a public as "an ongoing space of encounters" defined by the "concatenation of texts over time. "24 Thus conversation and circulation are key. A publication can create a counterpublic space only if readers pay attention and if they seek to respond, speak back, or write letters to the editor: in other words, when the discourse reflexively circulates. In that sense, Warner argues, a text must be circulated, not just emitted in one direction. This challenge is key for dissident press concerns, for while it is one thing to give the appearance of people paying attention, creating responsive readers and writers is another matter entirely.
Take a contemporary example: the International Network of Street Papers (INSP) has a goal of creating a global space for circulating underreported news about poverty and homelessness. To this end, they have created the Global Street News Service. 25 At this point, nearly 100 independent antipoverty mem- ber newspapers around the world have successfully managed to share content
254 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
among themselves, so that, for example, a newspaper in Seattle can publish a story about child labor in Argentina reported locally by journalists there. This news service has helped each paper locally engage its readers, to broaden the discussion of poverty, via letters to the editor or local meetings of inter- ested volunteers, to include a global scope. As of yet, however, the News Ser- vice itself has not created a public of its own. The Web site is not a large draw for readers; it is more an internal resource for the papers themselves. When readers do happen upon stories there, there is no clear feedback mechanism, so the articles do not readily invite response or the creation of new texts. Going forward, the INSP can decide whether its News Service should remain an internal resource or whether it should seek to create an online counter- public space for uniting readers around the world interested in antipoverty issues. That would require directing readers to the site, but also making it a site that invites response and textual circulation.
With dissident press publications, response and circulation are always meant as means to change the world in some way, whether it is to change how peo- ple think about poverty, for example, or take action on a specific campaign. Warner argues that a public is always created with an aim of "poetic world making. "26
Public discourse says not only 'let a public exist' but 'Let it have this char- acter, speak this way, see the world in this way. ' It then goes in search of con- firmation that such a public exists, with greater or lesser success--success being further attempts to cite, circulate, and realize the world understanding it artic- ulates. Run it up the flagpole and see who salutes. Put on a show and see who shows up. 27
To judge the rhetorical success of a dissident press publication, ultimately, is to examine the situation in which it appears, to consider how it creates an image of the world as well as explore who shows up to salute this image. In the case of the INSP, it is too soon to judge whether it or another antipoverty network can help build global solidarity against poverty and create an alter- native image of globalization that will draw significant numbers of people. Still, it is a useful question to ponder and to examine as things unfold.
In that context, looking historically at publications like the Masses or "Hobo" News can help students of rhetoric see when and how publics form and dissipate, how discourse constitutes a public, whose attention gives life to a public, and how the dissident press creates images of the world that often are utopian but that sometimes have performative force. In the section that follows, we provide a background sketch of "Hobo" News as an example of how historical dissident press rhetoric might be used in today's rhetoric classroom.
"Hobo" News and a Rhetoric of Dissent
[James Eads] How's newspaper bridge connected America's migratory workers to one another and to the larger labor movement; today it
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 255 lies virtually forgotten, in a remote corner of the St. Louis Public
Library. 28
We propose to show you in plain unvarnished language the great truths of things as they are, by the men who are on the bottom of this social system. 29
By the 1870s most people in the United States were becoming increasingly aware of a growing stream of migratory laborers that later became known and feared as a "Great Army of Tramps. " Historian Todd De Pastino, in his book Citizen Hobo, attributes the cause of this mass homelessness to economic issues: the post-Civil War shift to a wage-based economy that left many peo- ple unemployed, a stock market crash, years of bankruptcies, and an inter- national depression. 30 Even though economic changes primarily caused an unprecedented stream of homeless workers, the mainstream press, academ- ics, and politicians failed to attribute economic causes to the change: "One might have expected the most learned commentators on the tramp crisis to have recognized its roots in the problem of unemployment. Such, however, was not the case. "31 Mainstream journalists, charity workers, and politicians responded in ways that were "not generous. Rather than offer charity, they called for mass arrests, workhouses and chain gangs. "32 Tramps on the road were dismissed as "lazy" and "shiftless. "33
In the ensuing years, journalists and academics became preoccupied with writing about the individual moral failings of tramps and hobos. De Pastino writes that certain members of the tramp army tried to engage the mainstream press through letters, like William Aspinwall, who sought to establish himself as a credible rhetor and to focus the critique of tramping on problems of social class and unemployment. All the while, his interlocutor, John James McCook, a minister and language professor at Trinity College, steered the questions back toward personal habits and morals. On his own, even a gifted rhetor like Aspinwell could not create a counterpublic force to counter the tide of antihobo sentiment circulating in the United States. But this tide of negative public sentiment did establish the rhetorical exigency for one man to help create a press outlet for hoboes to publicly express their views.
Today, off through a maze of hallways and closed doors, tucked into a tidy corner of the St. Louis Public Library Special Collections, is the fragile, yellowed archive of the 1915-1929 paper "Hobo" News, founded and funded by the eccentric, self-effacing James Eads How. How's grandfather (James Buchanan Eads, distant cousin to President Buchanan) had built the first road and rail bridge across the Mississippi--the Eads Bridge in St. Louis. His father (James Flintham How) served as vice president and general manager of the Wabash Railroad. His paternal grandfather ( John How) was three times elected mayor of St. Louis. How himself was Harvard and Oxford educated, trained in
256 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
theology and medicine, and a member one of the most prominent families in St. Louis.
What makes How's life significant for our purposes is a promise he made to use what fortune he had to "publish a newspaper for the benefit of his organization of the unemployed. "34 How did more than that, of course, but his paper, "Hobo" News, served as a voice of dissent, written by and about the very men How wanted to help. How's life often was that of the hobo. He rode the rails and frequently lived with hoboes sleeping in makeshift lean-tos along the Mississippi and following the crops as migrant labor. His life was dedicated to serving the poor and unemployed and especially the ever-increas- ing numbers of men living the hobo life. For them, he began the Interna- tional Brotherhood Welfare Association (IBWA), established and funded hobo colleges across the country, and was their "guiding spirit and 'angel,'" as an editorial in the first issue of "Hobo" News declared. By 1933, at age fifty-six, How was dead, stricken by pneumonia exacerbated, physicians said, by years of starvation and what one Time magazine article called the life he had cho- sen as a "vagrant. "35 His was not a life that went unnoticed. A 1911 New York Times feature story called him "The Millionaire Hobo," a "scientific anarchist," and a tireless campaigner for the rights of the unemployed. How called him- self a "voluntary anarchist," and told the reporter he probably was not a good socialist. 36
As with many dissident papers, "Hobo" News took its cue from this impas- sioned leader. The paper began as the official voice of the IBWA and early on broadcast the aims of this new organization: "We are forming brotherhoods of the unskilled and unorganized workers commonly called 'tramps' by news- papers and officials, but who, in reality are usually honest workingmen com- pelled to shift about like hungry animals in search of work. "37 "Hobo" News was established, in part then, as a response to a mainstream press that saw nothing of worth in the ever-growing numbers of people who were homeless and unemployed.
Founded in an era of radical labor movements like that of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and of outspoken anarchists and socialists like Emma Goldman, Ben Reitman, and Eugene Debs, "Hobo" News early on estab- lished its dissenting voice, often publishing articles and extracts by Debs, Up- ton Sinclair, and other powerful socialist and leftist leaders. This paper spoke directly to the people about and for whom it was written.
One scholar characterizes the rhetoric of this paper as functioning "pri- marily as a published version of a more oral format--meaning the campfire tale-telling and political discussion of the 'hobo jungle. '"38 To some extent, that is the case. The paper did feature stories, poems, and commentary that had the tenor of local talk. Yet "Hobo" News went far beyond that campfire tale-telling mode. More than simple folksy talk, "Hobo" News was a serious
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 257
advocate for unorganized laborers and, especially, for the unemployed. As the official publication of the IBWA, the paper published convention notes and organization news. Its greatest contribution, however, had to be the fact that it put a face on America's tramps, hoboes, and those who were homeless, out of work, and impoverished. As the editorial for the first issue states, "The writer admits that he doesn't like the word 'hobo,' but philosophically con- cludes: 'We have got it and we are going to make it respectable. '"39
In a number of issues, the paper challenged the mainstream press, accus- ing it of not doing the job of a free press. In 1920, for example, one writer quotes Upton Sinclair's account of journalist John Swinton's remarks on "The Independent Press": "There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is in the country towns. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write his honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. . . . The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vil- ify, to fawn at the feet of mammon and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread. . . . We are intellectual prostitutes. "40
In that way, "Hobo" News separated itself from the mainstream press and claimed, by association if in no other way, that it was a paper willing to write "honest opinions," independent of the "rich men behind the scenes" that Swinton called the puppeteers of New York journalists. How likened his paper to the socialist papers the Call and Appeal to Reason: "We must have our printed word--our 'Appeal,' 'Call,' our daily press in every town. How else can the masses of the people learn? The hour has struck--the psychological moment is here. It calls for economic education and for intelligent action. "41
In an attempt to reach a broader audience, as Lynne Adrian notes, "Hobo" News did try, at times, to address a double audience: both those it was writ- ten for and about and those who were closer to centers of power who might be swayed to use that power to effect change. In 1917, for example, one writer directly addresses that second audience with a challenge: "We care not whether you be an aristocrat or a plebeian, a priest or millionaire, a professional man or worker--it is necessary for your welfare and all your fellow-citizens, that you should be in touch with the evils of the hobo life. "42 In light of the 1917 Espionage Act, the editors might have felt a strong need to address even mil- lionaires as "fellow-citizens" in language that was certainly softened from ear- lier issues. Like other radical papers, "Hobo" News had been affected by that legislation, which threatened, and in many cases closed down, socialist and radical papers throughout the country. The Masses stopped publication dur- ing this period, for example, as seven of their editors, artists, and writers (John Reed, Max Eastman, Floyd Dell, Art Young, Merrill Rodgers, Josephine Bell, and H. J. Glintkerkamp) were tried for seditious actions under the Espi- onage Act. 43 Founded in 1897, the socialist paper Appeal to Reason, which had
258 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
published writers like Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, William Morris, and John Ruskin, had by 1922 closed its operations also under pressure from the Espi- onage Act. Though never actually shut down, "Hobo" News found its second- class mailing status suddenly gone, a real blow to a paper already running on shaky finances. It was also during this time that hoboes selling the paper were harassed, arrested, and beaten by police--their papers confiscated and, in at least one case, destroyed as the prisoner looked on. Under these circum- stances, it is not surprising that the paper tempered its rhetorical appeal in what seems an attempt to broaden its base of support and even forestall poten- tial charges of sedition.
Early on, however, the "Hobo" News rhetoric was anything but conciliatory. In the April 1915 issue, for example, How freely uses the language of leftist and radical politics. In what he called "The First Letter" to the paper, How addresses the editor as "Dear Comrade. " What follows is melodramatic but direct, and reads much like the earlier writings of Jacob Riis and Jack London44:
Dear Comrade:
Here's welcoming the "Hobo News" and its Editor. What a field you should have, O, paper!
What good you should accomplish!
What a multitude of sad and lonely lives you should
strengthen!
What a world of economic darkness and gloom you
should dispel!
Oh, Paper of the Masses of the proletariat. May you ever be true to the
highest and the best; generous to the adversary and fearless in the championship of the weak and oppressed. 45
Jack London had written this on watching street people in the city of London picking scraps off the sidewalk to eat: "And, this, between six and seven o'clock in the evening of August 20, year of Our Lord, 1902, in the heart of the great- est, wealthiest, most powerful empire the world has ever seen. "46 Or, from Riis's introduction to How the Other Half Lives: "Long ago it was said that 'one half of the world does not know how the other half lives. ' That was true then. It did not know because it did not care. The half that was on top cared little for the struggles, and less for the fate of those who were underneath, so long as it was able to hold them there and keep its own seat. "47
The language in "Hobo" News was drawn from these earlier authors, meant to touch the heart and to confront: "What are you going to do about it? " Riis asked in 1890. 48 "What a world of economic darkness and gloom you should dispel! " How writes in 1915. 49 The ample use of pathos, exclamation, and direct address is not a strategy a mainstream press would rely upon in telling the story of poverty. It is, however, a primary tool in dissident press publica- tions as they function in advocacy roles.
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 259
In The Design of Dissent, Tony Kushner posits four characteristics of success- ful dissent: "It is shocking, it is clever--even funny in a grim sort of way--and its meaning is instantly intelligible. . . . It is, or at least it seems to be, samizs- dat, dangerous, forbidden. " "Resistance," Kushner writes, "is sending up a sig- nal flare in the darkness. "50 A paper like "Hobo" News does precisely that: it aims to shock and surprise, to make readers reassess their own roles and, in the end, consider the extent to which they are complicit in the trouble at hand.
In a rhetoric classroom, one might ask students to read from the "Hobo" News archives alongside De Pastino's work or other historical accounts of the time period, the rhetorical situation for which "Hobo" News journalists wrote. Understanding the historical situation is complex and would make useful ground for discussion: What effect did an organized group of homeless men have on later government policies that offered some safeguards to workers, policies such as unemployment compensation, the acquiescence to the form- ing of unions, and later, the GI Bill? In what ways did a publication like "Hobo" News create a counterpublic space for offering alternative causal explanations of the widespread poverty that Americans were witnessing and undergoing? To what extent did the specter of an organized, politicized, publishing hobo army help change the public discourse on hobo culture--which later became romanticized in popular culture as the last bastion of true American man- hood? While there are no definitive answers to questions like these, in a rhet- oric classroom they would serve to shift the focus away from an exclusive study of invention, to consider the entire rhetorical situation, including the historical situation and questions of circulation and performativity, questions we believe are generative and exciting to pose with students.
These questions are additionally useful in helping students seek a public for their own work. In this way, students are reading as writers the journalists in the dissident press to consider if and how their strategies and appeals for creating an audience could be useful. One of us, for example, has twice taught a course called Writing for Social Change, in which students create their own advocacy writing projects. When first taught, students read a range of essays from mainstream new journalists, like Ted Conover, Adrian Nicole Leblanc, and William Finnegan. While useful in many ways, this work seemed an un- realistic model for students, since these journalists were publishing in venues like the New Yorker and the New York Times, and, for them, finding responsive readers was never in question. The second time this course was offered, stu- dents additionally discussed dissident press writings, from contemporary local writers as well as from historical positions, to help writers think through how to lend their voices to the creation of a public, rather than being a one-off cry in the wild. In such a sense that students are trying to write their way into the publics they seek to join--whether they be academic, political, social, and so forth--reading the work of outsiders seeking to create a responsive public can provide the bases for useful conversations.
260 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
But Are We Teaching Bad Rhetoric?
Even though rhetoricians are interested in the social function of texts and how language makes changes in the world, in what ways might we still be governed by questions of aesthetics instead of performativity? In other words, are we reticent to teach dissident press publications because we think it is just "bad writing"? In a recent discussion on the WPA Listserv, for example, one writer sought help finding examples of "good political writing" and prefaced his request with the caveat that he did not want examples of texts that he thought were "too moralistic or partisan" to engage students. Rather than questioning the writer's assumption that good political writing must not be too partisan or must not moralize, some responders to this thread offered examples of texts that defined "political" as bipartisan writing that took no clear political position: "[the writer] is not running for anything, has no hid- den agenda . . . for . . . people . . . on both sides of the aisle. " Alternatively, others suggested texts that took no political positions but rather analyzed political rhetoric to help students see that we "get 'fooled' by our culture into seeing every issue as having only two sides. " Such analyses of rhetoric are valuable in any class, but we would argue that analysis is not a substitute for strong rhetorical claims that passionately seek to persuade their readers of the justness of a cause. Analysis of political rhetoric is not a substitute for politi- cal, or politicized, rhetoric, and we believe a rhetoric classroom can and should be a place to examine and explore rhetoric that can be highly partisan, can be moralizing, can have clear agendas, and not be written for both, or either, side of the aisle.
What, then, might be the reluctance in recommending baldly political texts? One fear, expressed by the original writer of the question, is that stu- dents of an opposing political position would be turned off by the strong argument. But if we are trying to show that counterpublic discourses appeal to some readers while not appealing to most readers, would not such a response be an important part of the discussion in understanding how dissident rhet- oric works? If an argument were immediately appealing and accepted by all, it would not be dissident, and it might well not be an argument at all. Dissi- dent rhetoric works by appealing to some while turning off many others.
Take, for example, Grant Allen's editorial in the March 1920 issue of "Hobo" News. In it, he sets up a worldview of clear Manichaean opposites of good and evil:
If you are on the side of the Spoilers, then you are a Bad Man.
If you are on the side of Social Justice, then you are a Good Man. There is no effective test of High Morality at the present day save this. Critics of the Middle Class type often explain, of reasoning like this,
"What on earth makes him say it? What has he to gain by talking in that way? What does he expect to get by it? So bound up are they in
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 261
the idea of selfinterest [sic] as the one motive of action, that they never even seem to conceive of honest conviction as a ground for speaking out the truth that is in one.
To such critics, I would answer, "The reason why I write all this is because I profoundly believe it.
I believe the poor are being kept out of their own. I believe the rich are, for the most part, selfish and despicable. I believe wealth has been piled up by cruel and unworthy means.
I believe it is wrong in us to acquiesce in the wicked inequalities of
our existing Social State, instead of trying our utmost to bring about another, where Right would be done to all, where Poverty would be impossible. I believe such a system is perfectly practicable, and that nothing stands in its way save the selfish fears and prejudices of indi- viduals. And I believe even those craven fears and narrow prejudices are wholly mistaken: that everybody, even the rich themselves, would be infinitely happier in a world where no Poverty existed, where no hateful sights and sound met the eye at every turn, where all slums were swept away, and where everybody had their just and even share of pleasure and refinements in a free and equal community.
Arguably, this polemical statement might easily be dismissed by many stu- dents, because it conflicts with their beliefs or identity or seems too utopian. 51 But as an example of dissident rhetoric, it would not be expected to be em- braced by most readers. What would be interesting, when discussing a text like this, is to consider to whom such an argument might appeal. What aspects, if any, of Allen's worldview seem appealing to any students? To whom is he writing if he describes the rich as "for the most part, selfish and despicable"? It would also be important to discuss the ethics and responsibility of such writing: is it ever acceptable to characterize a person or a group as "despica- ble," "cruel," and "unjust"? Are issues of the relative power and prestige of the writer versus his or her subject germane to the discussion?
Beyond student resistance, we might hesitate to teach dissident writing in a rhetoric class based on aesthetic grounds: despite all its good intentions, dis- sident publications may not represent very good writing as we typically imag- ine it. Certainly Allen's article lacks subtlety or nuance. English-department aesthetics generally favor ambiguity over polemics, complexity over clarity. 52 Perhaps we fear we might infect students with "bad taste" if we take up lan- guage that aims more to do things than to mean, reverberate, and echo. Per- haps we additionally fear that we already live in a world saturated by "bad rhetoric": blogs, talk radio, and chat rooms that seek more to malign individ- uals than to argue for ideas or positions. Bringing in rhetoric like Allen's might only add to the cheapening of public discourse. Why give students examples of "bad rhetoric" if we all swim in a sea of it daily?
262 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
We would argue that dissident press rhetoric may, indeed, engage in some of the same rhetorical moves of character-assassinating blogs, discussion boards, and so forth, but the aim of bringing this rhetoric into the classroom is not imitation so much as it is a lesson in understanding rhetorical strategy. Moreover, the aim of a piece like Allen's is not to eliminate or ignore opposi- tion. Allen's vision is to take all people--rich and poor--along to a better, more just world. His goal is not to murder or eradicate the rich, but to change hearts and minds. Dissident-press writing, then, might not teach students how to write a model essay in the traditional sense of that word, but it can show them something about focusing on an issue passionately and seeking to bring readers along in the struggle.
Returning, then, to the question that began our discussion: should a first- year composition class teach public or academic writing? Rather than argu- ing one side or the other--public or academic--we would suggest another tact entirely. Relying on recent discussions of genre theory, we would argue that a first-year composition course ought to take as its focus the question of how language works, within situations, within genres, to consider how writ- ing and speaking can move audiences to action. 53 In such a class one would explore how public or academic arguments are made, arguments that result in, say, ordinances that ban the distribution of food to homeless men, women, and children, and how voices from the margins respond to such changes.
Nearly twenty years ago, when speaking about teaching rhetoric in the age of George H. W. Bush politics, Richard Ohmann, who describes himself as "a dissident intellectual," challenged our discipline with these words:
As everyone has heard, socialism is now dead, capitalism is trium- phant, and history is at an end. Let my irony not be read as a slur on the bold revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe. People there need our hopes and help as they try to shake off the tyrannies and bureauc- racies that claimed and tarnished the name of socialism. But they enter a world system whose tensions and crises grow ever more taut, more threatening to a decent future on the planet. Capitalism triumphant needs critical thought and liberatory rhetoric still more than capitalism militant in mortal combat with the Evil Empire. We will have to invent something new, or decay and perish. Can vision become a goal for rhetoric? 54
That question, "Can vision become a goal for rhetoric? " is one we believe is at the center of our desire to bring a rhetoric of dissidence into the writing classroom. A second Bush era has now come nearly to its end. In its wake, per- haps "vision" is the only appropriate goal for rhetoric today.
Notes
We thank the many friends and colleagues who encouraged us in this work and read bits and pieces of drafts or listened as we talked through so many of the issues raised
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 263
by the dissident press. Among them, we especially thank John Trimbur, who is both a good listener and a powerful skeptic; Allison Manuel, who read a late draft of this arti- cle and helped put us back on track; Lauren Goldstein, who help us with formatting; and the wonderful and generous men and women working in the basement and in the archives of the St. Louis Public Library. In many ways, this essay was written for Diana's great-great uncle Thomas Scanlon (1855-1938), who lived as a hobo in St. Louis at the turn of the last century, who surely walked under and past the Eads Bridge, and who, we imagine, might well have been one of the thousands of men carrying "Hobo" News from one harvest to the next.
1. Glenn, Lyday, and Sharer, Rhetorical Education in America. 2. Kushner, Design of Dissent.
3. MLA, "Focus. "
4. Berlin, Rhetoric and Reality, 4.
5. "Times and Iraq. "
6. National Coalition for the Homeless, "Feeding Intolerance," para. 13. 7. Pew Project, "State. "
8. Berlin, Rhetoric.
9. See Trimbur, "Review Essay"; Mathieu, Tactics of Hope.
10. Glenn, Lyday, and Sharer, Rhetorical Education, viii.
11. Cornish and Russwurm, Freedom's Journal, March 16, 1827. 12. Glenn, Lyday, and Sharer, Rhetorical Education, ix.
13. Kushner, "Design," 220-21.
14. Berlin, Rhetoric, 5.
15. Kessler, Dissident Press.
16. Ibid. , 155.
17. Ibid. , 14.
18. Streitmatter, Voices of Revolution, x. 19. Young, Inclusion and Democracy, 7.
20. Masses, October 1913.
21. Crowley and Hawhee, Ancient Rhetorics.
22. See Trimbur, "Review Essay. "
23. Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 56.
24. Ibid. , 90.
25. For more information, see www. streetnewsservice. com. 26. Warner, Publics and Counterpublics.
27. Adrian, "World We Shall Win. "
28. "Hobo" News, November 1916.
29. Ibid.
30. De Pastino, Citizen Hobo.
31. Ibid. , 17.
32. Ibid. , 4.
33. Ibid.
34. How, "First Letter. "
35. "End of an Idealist. "
36. "Millionaire Hobo. "
37. Ibid.
38. Adrian, "World," 105.
39. "Editor's Statement," "Hobo" News 1, no. 1 (1915): 2.
40. O'Brien, "Light," 5.
264 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
41. Quoted in "Millionaire Hobo. "
42. Adrian, "World," 111.
43. See, for example, "Hard to Get"; Sayer, "Art and Politics," 42-78.
44. See, in particular, London, People of the Abyss; Riis, How the Other Half Lives. 45. How, "First Letter. "
46. London, People of the Abyss, 78.
47. Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 1.
48. Ibid.
49. How, "First Letter. "
50. Kushner, "Design," 221.
51. This is a rhetorical strategy used, for example, by Catholic Worker cofounder Peter Maurin in what he called his "easy essays. " In them, he offered straightforward chal- lenges for change:
Better Or Better Off
The world would be better off, if people tried
to become better.
And people would
become better
if they stopped trying
to be better off.
For when everybody tries to become better off, nobody is better off.
But when everybody tries to become better, everybody is better off. Everybody would be rich
if nobody tried
to be richer.
And nobody would be poor if everybody tried
to be the poorest.
And everybody would be what he ought to be
if everybody tried to be what he wants
the other fellow to be.
52. See Newkirk, Performance of Self. In it, he argues that writing teachers by and large share a tacit aesthetic about what constitutes good writing, which includes writ- ing that takes tentative or exploratory stances and which is not overly emotional or sentimental.
53. See, for example, Bawarshi, Genre; Devitt, "Generalizing about Genre"; Miller, "Genre as Social Action. "
54. Ohmann, "Kinder, Gentler Nation," 230.
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 265
Works Cited
Adrian, Lynne M. "The World We Shall Win for Labor: Early 20th Century Hobo Self- Publication. " In Print Culture in a Diverse America, edited by James P. Danky and Wayne A. Wiegand, 101-27. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998.
Bawarshi, Anis. Genre and the Invention of the Writer: Reconsidering the Place of Invention in Composition. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2003.
Berlin, James. Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1985. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987.
Cornish, Samuel, and John Russwurm. Freedom's Journal, March 16, 1827.
Crowley, Shanon, and Deborah Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. 3rd
ed. Boston: Pearson, 2004.
De Pastino, Todd. Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America.
While it might seem common sense, then, that anyone trying to persuade an audience to support an unpopular cause or radical social change would want to write with a measure of caution, an ear to a broad audience in need of con- vincing, the rhetoric of dissent is anything but cautious. What, for example, might we make of a newspaper or magazine that introduces itself in this way:
This Magazine is Owned and Published Co-operatively by its Editors. It has no Dividends to Pay, and nobody is trying to make Money out of it.
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A Revolutionary and not a Reform Magazine; a Magazine with a Sense of Humor and no Respect for the Respectable; Frank; Arrogant; Imperti- nent; Searching for the True Cause; a Magazine Directed against Rigidity and Dogma wherever it is found; Printing what is too Naked or True
for a Money-Making Press; a Magazine whose final Policy is to do as
it Pleases and Conciliate Nobody, not even its Readers--A Free Magazine. 20
With this masthead boast, the Masses, an early-twentieth-century socialist magazine, declared itself beholden to no one, a magazine "searching for the true cause," a "revolutionary" magazine presumably uninterested in "reform," a magazine free from the constraints of capitalism. That declaration, if we take it on face value, defies every lesson on audience at least as it is tradition- ally taught in rhetoric handbooks. The writer violates, for example, several of the rules that Sharon Crowley and Deborah Hawhee have outlined in Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students for creating a successful ethos: the claims lack specific evidence, which violates a demand for showing that one has done one's homework; the arrogant tone arguably fails to create goodwill with the reader; and the third-person discourse fails to create a personal relationship between writer and reader. 21 If evaluated on the basis of classical rhetorical appeals within the text, the Masses--and many dissident press concerns-- might be deemed rhetorical failures. Perhaps this is why, in classrooms where we purport to study the power of language to make change in the world, we pay scant attention to the universe of dissident texts. Ignored or dismissed as "bad rhetoric," dissident texts offer the opportunity to study rhetorical exam- ples that have consistently sought to make changes in the world, and occa- sionally have succeeded.
Looked at in this way it seems that rather than violating rules of discourse, this passage from the Masses seeks to change the rules of the game. In declar- ing itself free, true, revolutionary, nonconciliatory, arrogant, "against rigidity and dogma," the editors challenge readers to imagine themselves as somehow aligned with a publication that aligns itself with no one and with nothing in particular, save the freedom to print what it wishes as it wishes. The audience that made this magazine so popular in the first decade of the twentieth cen- tury was looking, we might assume, for something new, something bold.
The rhetorical importance, then, of examining the workings of the dissi- dent press is to explore how, within such spaces, writers make different assump- tions about discourse protocols. Dissident press articles can exemplify how the rules we teach our students--about, for example, constructing a positive ethos--are not universal rules of good writing but rules for writing that oper- ates within certain accepted rhetorical situations. When one seeks to create change, or make something different happen in discourse, the rules might seem to fly out the window.
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 253
In examining the rhetorical workings of the dissident press, however, it would be incomplete to look only at the rhetorical appeals made within the texts or to equate its rhetorical force with the composed text itself. How these texts managed or failed to find readers and to circulate both materially and ideologically significantly determines the rhetorical power of any text to cre- ate a public appeal. 22 Thus in order to study the rhetoric of dissent, one must also look more closely at the relationship between textual circulation and the creation of a readership, or public. To do this, we turn to the work of Michael Warner on the creation of publics and counterpublics.
Dissident press publications work to create counterpublic spaces, which Warner argues are "defined by their tension with the larger public. . . . Dis- cussion within such a public is understood to contravene the roles obtaining in the world at large, being structured by alternative discourse positions or protocols, making different assumptions about what can be said or what goes without saying . . . it maintains at some level, conscious or not, an awareness of its subordinate status. "23 In other words, counterpublics engage in alterna- tive rhetorical strategies while seeking to effect change in a more-dominant public sphere.
Warner's work, then, allows for an alternative way to evaluate dissident rhetoric: one that goes beyond close inspection at the textual level. Rather than examining internal textual criteria, Warner shows us that a public appeal is successful when people pay attention. He argues that if and when public appeals are successful, they hail a public into being by their discourse. Once readers recognize themselves as the type of person being hailed by a message, and once they pay attention to it, a public is constituted. So the arrogance or lack of evidence in the appeal of the Masses is irrelevant if readers feel them- selves to be addressed by such words and pay attention to them. The act of readers' paying attention importantly begins the creation of a public.
Warner continues by arguing that a public cannot be constituted by a sin- gle text, no matter how compelling or provocative. He describes a public as "an ongoing space of encounters" defined by the "concatenation of texts over time. "24 Thus conversation and circulation are key. A publication can create a counterpublic space only if readers pay attention and if they seek to respond, speak back, or write letters to the editor: in other words, when the discourse reflexively circulates. In that sense, Warner argues, a text must be circulated, not just emitted in one direction. This challenge is key for dissident press concerns, for while it is one thing to give the appearance of people paying attention, creating responsive readers and writers is another matter entirely.
Take a contemporary example: the International Network of Street Papers (INSP) has a goal of creating a global space for circulating underreported news about poverty and homelessness. To this end, they have created the Global Street News Service. 25 At this point, nearly 100 independent antipoverty mem- ber newspapers around the world have successfully managed to share content
254 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
among themselves, so that, for example, a newspaper in Seattle can publish a story about child labor in Argentina reported locally by journalists there. This news service has helped each paper locally engage its readers, to broaden the discussion of poverty, via letters to the editor or local meetings of inter- ested volunteers, to include a global scope. As of yet, however, the News Ser- vice itself has not created a public of its own. The Web site is not a large draw for readers; it is more an internal resource for the papers themselves. When readers do happen upon stories there, there is no clear feedback mechanism, so the articles do not readily invite response or the creation of new texts. Going forward, the INSP can decide whether its News Service should remain an internal resource or whether it should seek to create an online counter- public space for uniting readers around the world interested in antipoverty issues. That would require directing readers to the site, but also making it a site that invites response and textual circulation.
With dissident press publications, response and circulation are always meant as means to change the world in some way, whether it is to change how peo- ple think about poverty, for example, or take action on a specific campaign. Warner argues that a public is always created with an aim of "poetic world making. "26
Public discourse says not only 'let a public exist' but 'Let it have this char- acter, speak this way, see the world in this way. ' It then goes in search of con- firmation that such a public exists, with greater or lesser success--success being further attempts to cite, circulate, and realize the world understanding it artic- ulates. Run it up the flagpole and see who salutes. Put on a show and see who shows up. 27
To judge the rhetorical success of a dissident press publication, ultimately, is to examine the situation in which it appears, to consider how it creates an image of the world as well as explore who shows up to salute this image. In the case of the INSP, it is too soon to judge whether it or another antipoverty network can help build global solidarity against poverty and create an alter- native image of globalization that will draw significant numbers of people. Still, it is a useful question to ponder and to examine as things unfold.
In that context, looking historically at publications like the Masses or "Hobo" News can help students of rhetoric see when and how publics form and dissipate, how discourse constitutes a public, whose attention gives life to a public, and how the dissident press creates images of the world that often are utopian but that sometimes have performative force. In the section that follows, we provide a background sketch of "Hobo" News as an example of how historical dissident press rhetoric might be used in today's rhetoric classroom.
"Hobo" News and a Rhetoric of Dissent
[James Eads] How's newspaper bridge connected America's migratory workers to one another and to the larger labor movement; today it
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 255 lies virtually forgotten, in a remote corner of the St. Louis Public
Library. 28
We propose to show you in plain unvarnished language the great truths of things as they are, by the men who are on the bottom of this social system. 29
By the 1870s most people in the United States were becoming increasingly aware of a growing stream of migratory laborers that later became known and feared as a "Great Army of Tramps. " Historian Todd De Pastino, in his book Citizen Hobo, attributes the cause of this mass homelessness to economic issues: the post-Civil War shift to a wage-based economy that left many peo- ple unemployed, a stock market crash, years of bankruptcies, and an inter- national depression. 30 Even though economic changes primarily caused an unprecedented stream of homeless workers, the mainstream press, academ- ics, and politicians failed to attribute economic causes to the change: "One might have expected the most learned commentators on the tramp crisis to have recognized its roots in the problem of unemployment. Such, however, was not the case. "31 Mainstream journalists, charity workers, and politicians responded in ways that were "not generous. Rather than offer charity, they called for mass arrests, workhouses and chain gangs. "32 Tramps on the road were dismissed as "lazy" and "shiftless. "33
In the ensuing years, journalists and academics became preoccupied with writing about the individual moral failings of tramps and hobos. De Pastino writes that certain members of the tramp army tried to engage the mainstream press through letters, like William Aspinwall, who sought to establish himself as a credible rhetor and to focus the critique of tramping on problems of social class and unemployment. All the while, his interlocutor, John James McCook, a minister and language professor at Trinity College, steered the questions back toward personal habits and morals. On his own, even a gifted rhetor like Aspinwell could not create a counterpublic force to counter the tide of antihobo sentiment circulating in the United States. But this tide of negative public sentiment did establish the rhetorical exigency for one man to help create a press outlet for hoboes to publicly express their views.
Today, off through a maze of hallways and closed doors, tucked into a tidy corner of the St. Louis Public Library Special Collections, is the fragile, yellowed archive of the 1915-1929 paper "Hobo" News, founded and funded by the eccentric, self-effacing James Eads How. How's grandfather (James Buchanan Eads, distant cousin to President Buchanan) had built the first road and rail bridge across the Mississippi--the Eads Bridge in St. Louis. His father (James Flintham How) served as vice president and general manager of the Wabash Railroad. His paternal grandfather ( John How) was three times elected mayor of St. Louis. How himself was Harvard and Oxford educated, trained in
256 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
theology and medicine, and a member one of the most prominent families in St. Louis.
What makes How's life significant for our purposes is a promise he made to use what fortune he had to "publish a newspaper for the benefit of his organization of the unemployed. "34 How did more than that, of course, but his paper, "Hobo" News, served as a voice of dissent, written by and about the very men How wanted to help. How's life often was that of the hobo. He rode the rails and frequently lived with hoboes sleeping in makeshift lean-tos along the Mississippi and following the crops as migrant labor. His life was dedicated to serving the poor and unemployed and especially the ever-increas- ing numbers of men living the hobo life. For them, he began the Interna- tional Brotherhood Welfare Association (IBWA), established and funded hobo colleges across the country, and was their "guiding spirit and 'angel,'" as an editorial in the first issue of "Hobo" News declared. By 1933, at age fifty-six, How was dead, stricken by pneumonia exacerbated, physicians said, by years of starvation and what one Time magazine article called the life he had cho- sen as a "vagrant. "35 His was not a life that went unnoticed. A 1911 New York Times feature story called him "The Millionaire Hobo," a "scientific anarchist," and a tireless campaigner for the rights of the unemployed. How called him- self a "voluntary anarchist," and told the reporter he probably was not a good socialist. 36
As with many dissident papers, "Hobo" News took its cue from this impas- sioned leader. The paper began as the official voice of the IBWA and early on broadcast the aims of this new organization: "We are forming brotherhoods of the unskilled and unorganized workers commonly called 'tramps' by news- papers and officials, but who, in reality are usually honest workingmen com- pelled to shift about like hungry animals in search of work. "37 "Hobo" News was established, in part then, as a response to a mainstream press that saw nothing of worth in the ever-growing numbers of people who were homeless and unemployed.
Founded in an era of radical labor movements like that of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and of outspoken anarchists and socialists like Emma Goldman, Ben Reitman, and Eugene Debs, "Hobo" News early on estab- lished its dissenting voice, often publishing articles and extracts by Debs, Up- ton Sinclair, and other powerful socialist and leftist leaders. This paper spoke directly to the people about and for whom it was written.
One scholar characterizes the rhetoric of this paper as functioning "pri- marily as a published version of a more oral format--meaning the campfire tale-telling and political discussion of the 'hobo jungle. '"38 To some extent, that is the case. The paper did feature stories, poems, and commentary that had the tenor of local talk. Yet "Hobo" News went far beyond that campfire tale-telling mode. More than simple folksy talk, "Hobo" News was a serious
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 257
advocate for unorganized laborers and, especially, for the unemployed. As the official publication of the IBWA, the paper published convention notes and organization news. Its greatest contribution, however, had to be the fact that it put a face on America's tramps, hoboes, and those who were homeless, out of work, and impoverished. As the editorial for the first issue states, "The writer admits that he doesn't like the word 'hobo,' but philosophically con- cludes: 'We have got it and we are going to make it respectable. '"39
In a number of issues, the paper challenged the mainstream press, accus- ing it of not doing the job of a free press. In 1920, for example, one writer quotes Upton Sinclair's account of journalist John Swinton's remarks on "The Independent Press": "There is no such thing in America as an independent press, unless it is in the country towns. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write his honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. . . . The business of the New York journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vil- ify, to fawn at the feet of mammon and to sell his race and his country for his daily bread. . . . We are intellectual prostitutes. "40
In that way, "Hobo" News separated itself from the mainstream press and claimed, by association if in no other way, that it was a paper willing to write "honest opinions," independent of the "rich men behind the scenes" that Swinton called the puppeteers of New York journalists. How likened his paper to the socialist papers the Call and Appeal to Reason: "We must have our printed word--our 'Appeal,' 'Call,' our daily press in every town. How else can the masses of the people learn? The hour has struck--the psychological moment is here. It calls for economic education and for intelligent action. "41
In an attempt to reach a broader audience, as Lynne Adrian notes, "Hobo" News did try, at times, to address a double audience: both those it was writ- ten for and about and those who were closer to centers of power who might be swayed to use that power to effect change. In 1917, for example, one writer directly addresses that second audience with a challenge: "We care not whether you be an aristocrat or a plebeian, a priest or millionaire, a professional man or worker--it is necessary for your welfare and all your fellow-citizens, that you should be in touch with the evils of the hobo life. "42 In light of the 1917 Espionage Act, the editors might have felt a strong need to address even mil- lionaires as "fellow-citizens" in language that was certainly softened from ear- lier issues. Like other radical papers, "Hobo" News had been affected by that legislation, which threatened, and in many cases closed down, socialist and radical papers throughout the country. The Masses stopped publication dur- ing this period, for example, as seven of their editors, artists, and writers (John Reed, Max Eastman, Floyd Dell, Art Young, Merrill Rodgers, Josephine Bell, and H. J. Glintkerkamp) were tried for seditious actions under the Espi- onage Act. 43 Founded in 1897, the socialist paper Appeal to Reason, which had
258 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
published writers like Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, William Morris, and John Ruskin, had by 1922 closed its operations also under pressure from the Espi- onage Act. Though never actually shut down, "Hobo" News found its second- class mailing status suddenly gone, a real blow to a paper already running on shaky finances. It was also during this time that hoboes selling the paper were harassed, arrested, and beaten by police--their papers confiscated and, in at least one case, destroyed as the prisoner looked on. Under these circum- stances, it is not surprising that the paper tempered its rhetorical appeal in what seems an attempt to broaden its base of support and even forestall poten- tial charges of sedition.
Early on, however, the "Hobo" News rhetoric was anything but conciliatory. In the April 1915 issue, for example, How freely uses the language of leftist and radical politics. In what he called "The First Letter" to the paper, How addresses the editor as "Dear Comrade. " What follows is melodramatic but direct, and reads much like the earlier writings of Jacob Riis and Jack London44:
Dear Comrade:
Here's welcoming the "Hobo News" and its Editor. What a field you should have, O, paper!
What good you should accomplish!
What a multitude of sad and lonely lives you should
strengthen!
What a world of economic darkness and gloom you
should dispel!
Oh, Paper of the Masses of the proletariat. May you ever be true to the
highest and the best; generous to the adversary and fearless in the championship of the weak and oppressed. 45
Jack London had written this on watching street people in the city of London picking scraps off the sidewalk to eat: "And, this, between six and seven o'clock in the evening of August 20, year of Our Lord, 1902, in the heart of the great- est, wealthiest, most powerful empire the world has ever seen. "46 Or, from Riis's introduction to How the Other Half Lives: "Long ago it was said that 'one half of the world does not know how the other half lives. ' That was true then. It did not know because it did not care. The half that was on top cared little for the struggles, and less for the fate of those who were underneath, so long as it was able to hold them there and keep its own seat. "47
The language in "Hobo" News was drawn from these earlier authors, meant to touch the heart and to confront: "What are you going to do about it? " Riis asked in 1890. 48 "What a world of economic darkness and gloom you should dispel! " How writes in 1915. 49 The ample use of pathos, exclamation, and direct address is not a strategy a mainstream press would rely upon in telling the story of poverty. It is, however, a primary tool in dissident press publica- tions as they function in advocacy roles.
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 259
In The Design of Dissent, Tony Kushner posits four characteristics of success- ful dissent: "It is shocking, it is clever--even funny in a grim sort of way--and its meaning is instantly intelligible. . . . It is, or at least it seems to be, samizs- dat, dangerous, forbidden. " "Resistance," Kushner writes, "is sending up a sig- nal flare in the darkness. "50 A paper like "Hobo" News does precisely that: it aims to shock and surprise, to make readers reassess their own roles and, in the end, consider the extent to which they are complicit in the trouble at hand.
In a rhetoric classroom, one might ask students to read from the "Hobo" News archives alongside De Pastino's work or other historical accounts of the time period, the rhetorical situation for which "Hobo" News journalists wrote. Understanding the historical situation is complex and would make useful ground for discussion: What effect did an organized group of homeless men have on later government policies that offered some safeguards to workers, policies such as unemployment compensation, the acquiescence to the form- ing of unions, and later, the GI Bill? In what ways did a publication like "Hobo" News create a counterpublic space for offering alternative causal explanations of the widespread poverty that Americans were witnessing and undergoing? To what extent did the specter of an organized, politicized, publishing hobo army help change the public discourse on hobo culture--which later became romanticized in popular culture as the last bastion of true American man- hood? While there are no definitive answers to questions like these, in a rhet- oric classroom they would serve to shift the focus away from an exclusive study of invention, to consider the entire rhetorical situation, including the historical situation and questions of circulation and performativity, questions we believe are generative and exciting to pose with students.
These questions are additionally useful in helping students seek a public for their own work. In this way, students are reading as writers the journalists in the dissident press to consider if and how their strategies and appeals for creating an audience could be useful. One of us, for example, has twice taught a course called Writing for Social Change, in which students create their own advocacy writing projects. When first taught, students read a range of essays from mainstream new journalists, like Ted Conover, Adrian Nicole Leblanc, and William Finnegan. While useful in many ways, this work seemed an un- realistic model for students, since these journalists were publishing in venues like the New Yorker and the New York Times, and, for them, finding responsive readers was never in question. The second time this course was offered, stu- dents additionally discussed dissident press writings, from contemporary local writers as well as from historical positions, to help writers think through how to lend their voices to the creation of a public, rather than being a one-off cry in the wild. In such a sense that students are trying to write their way into the publics they seek to join--whether they be academic, political, social, and so forth--reading the work of outsiders seeking to create a responsive public can provide the bases for useful conversations.
260 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
But Are We Teaching Bad Rhetoric?
Even though rhetoricians are interested in the social function of texts and how language makes changes in the world, in what ways might we still be governed by questions of aesthetics instead of performativity? In other words, are we reticent to teach dissident press publications because we think it is just "bad writing"? In a recent discussion on the WPA Listserv, for example, one writer sought help finding examples of "good political writing" and prefaced his request with the caveat that he did not want examples of texts that he thought were "too moralistic or partisan" to engage students. Rather than questioning the writer's assumption that good political writing must not be too partisan or must not moralize, some responders to this thread offered examples of texts that defined "political" as bipartisan writing that took no clear political position: "[the writer] is not running for anything, has no hid- den agenda . . . for . . . people . . . on both sides of the aisle. " Alternatively, others suggested texts that took no political positions but rather analyzed political rhetoric to help students see that we "get 'fooled' by our culture into seeing every issue as having only two sides. " Such analyses of rhetoric are valuable in any class, but we would argue that analysis is not a substitute for strong rhetorical claims that passionately seek to persuade their readers of the justness of a cause. Analysis of political rhetoric is not a substitute for politi- cal, or politicized, rhetoric, and we believe a rhetoric classroom can and should be a place to examine and explore rhetoric that can be highly partisan, can be moralizing, can have clear agendas, and not be written for both, or either, side of the aisle.
What, then, might be the reluctance in recommending baldly political texts? One fear, expressed by the original writer of the question, is that stu- dents of an opposing political position would be turned off by the strong argument. But if we are trying to show that counterpublic discourses appeal to some readers while not appealing to most readers, would not such a response be an important part of the discussion in understanding how dissident rhet- oric works? If an argument were immediately appealing and accepted by all, it would not be dissident, and it might well not be an argument at all. Dissi- dent rhetoric works by appealing to some while turning off many others.
Take, for example, Grant Allen's editorial in the March 1920 issue of "Hobo" News. In it, he sets up a worldview of clear Manichaean opposites of good and evil:
If you are on the side of the Spoilers, then you are a Bad Man.
If you are on the side of Social Justice, then you are a Good Man. There is no effective test of High Morality at the present day save this. Critics of the Middle Class type often explain, of reasoning like this,
"What on earth makes him say it? What has he to gain by talking in that way? What does he expect to get by it? So bound up are they in
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 261
the idea of selfinterest [sic] as the one motive of action, that they never even seem to conceive of honest conviction as a ground for speaking out the truth that is in one.
To such critics, I would answer, "The reason why I write all this is because I profoundly believe it.
I believe the poor are being kept out of their own. I believe the rich are, for the most part, selfish and despicable. I believe wealth has been piled up by cruel and unworthy means.
I believe it is wrong in us to acquiesce in the wicked inequalities of
our existing Social State, instead of trying our utmost to bring about another, where Right would be done to all, where Poverty would be impossible. I believe such a system is perfectly practicable, and that nothing stands in its way save the selfish fears and prejudices of indi- viduals. And I believe even those craven fears and narrow prejudices are wholly mistaken: that everybody, even the rich themselves, would be infinitely happier in a world where no Poverty existed, where no hateful sights and sound met the eye at every turn, where all slums were swept away, and where everybody had their just and even share of pleasure and refinements in a free and equal community.
Arguably, this polemical statement might easily be dismissed by many stu- dents, because it conflicts with their beliefs or identity or seems too utopian. 51 But as an example of dissident rhetoric, it would not be expected to be em- braced by most readers. What would be interesting, when discussing a text like this, is to consider to whom such an argument might appeal. What aspects, if any, of Allen's worldview seem appealing to any students? To whom is he writing if he describes the rich as "for the most part, selfish and despicable"? It would also be important to discuss the ethics and responsibility of such writing: is it ever acceptable to characterize a person or a group as "despica- ble," "cruel," and "unjust"? Are issues of the relative power and prestige of the writer versus his or her subject germane to the discussion?
Beyond student resistance, we might hesitate to teach dissident writing in a rhetoric class based on aesthetic grounds: despite all its good intentions, dis- sident publications may not represent very good writing as we typically imag- ine it. Certainly Allen's article lacks subtlety or nuance. English-department aesthetics generally favor ambiguity over polemics, complexity over clarity. 52 Perhaps we fear we might infect students with "bad taste" if we take up lan- guage that aims more to do things than to mean, reverberate, and echo. Per- haps we additionally fear that we already live in a world saturated by "bad rhetoric": blogs, talk radio, and chat rooms that seek more to malign individ- uals than to argue for ideas or positions. Bringing in rhetoric like Allen's might only add to the cheapening of public discourse. Why give students examples of "bad rhetoric" if we all swim in a sea of it daily?
262 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
We would argue that dissident press rhetoric may, indeed, engage in some of the same rhetorical moves of character-assassinating blogs, discussion boards, and so forth, but the aim of bringing this rhetoric into the classroom is not imitation so much as it is a lesson in understanding rhetorical strategy. Moreover, the aim of a piece like Allen's is not to eliminate or ignore opposi- tion. Allen's vision is to take all people--rich and poor--along to a better, more just world. His goal is not to murder or eradicate the rich, but to change hearts and minds. Dissident-press writing, then, might not teach students how to write a model essay in the traditional sense of that word, but it can show them something about focusing on an issue passionately and seeking to bring readers along in the struggle.
Returning, then, to the question that began our discussion: should a first- year composition class teach public or academic writing? Rather than argu- ing one side or the other--public or academic--we would suggest another tact entirely. Relying on recent discussions of genre theory, we would argue that a first-year composition course ought to take as its focus the question of how language works, within situations, within genres, to consider how writ- ing and speaking can move audiences to action. 53 In such a class one would explore how public or academic arguments are made, arguments that result in, say, ordinances that ban the distribution of food to homeless men, women, and children, and how voices from the margins respond to such changes.
Nearly twenty years ago, when speaking about teaching rhetoric in the age of George H. W. Bush politics, Richard Ohmann, who describes himself as "a dissident intellectual," challenged our discipline with these words:
As everyone has heard, socialism is now dead, capitalism is trium- phant, and history is at an end. Let my irony not be read as a slur on the bold revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe. People there need our hopes and help as they try to shake off the tyrannies and bureauc- racies that claimed and tarnished the name of socialism. But they enter a world system whose tensions and crises grow ever more taut, more threatening to a decent future on the planet. Capitalism triumphant needs critical thought and liberatory rhetoric still more than capitalism militant in mortal combat with the Evil Empire. We will have to invent something new, or decay and perish. Can vision become a goal for rhetoric? 54
That question, "Can vision become a goal for rhetoric? " is one we believe is at the center of our desire to bring a rhetoric of dissidence into the writing classroom. A second Bush era has now come nearly to its end. In its wake, per- haps "vision" is the only appropriate goal for rhetoric today.
Notes
We thank the many friends and colleagues who encouraged us in this work and read bits and pieces of drafts or listened as we talked through so many of the issues raised
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 263
by the dissident press. Among them, we especially thank John Trimbur, who is both a good listener and a powerful skeptic; Allison Manuel, who read a late draft of this arti- cle and helped put us back on track; Lauren Goldstein, who help us with formatting; and the wonderful and generous men and women working in the basement and in the archives of the St. Louis Public Library. In many ways, this essay was written for Diana's great-great uncle Thomas Scanlon (1855-1938), who lived as a hobo in St. Louis at the turn of the last century, who surely walked under and past the Eads Bridge, and who, we imagine, might well have been one of the thousands of men carrying "Hobo" News from one harvest to the next.
1. Glenn, Lyday, and Sharer, Rhetorical Education in America. 2. Kushner, Design of Dissent.
3. MLA, "Focus. "
4. Berlin, Rhetoric and Reality, 4.
5. "Times and Iraq. "
6. National Coalition for the Homeless, "Feeding Intolerance," para. 13. 7. Pew Project, "State. "
8. Berlin, Rhetoric.
9. See Trimbur, "Review Essay"; Mathieu, Tactics of Hope.
10. Glenn, Lyday, and Sharer, Rhetorical Education, viii.
11. Cornish and Russwurm, Freedom's Journal, March 16, 1827. 12. Glenn, Lyday, and Sharer, Rhetorical Education, ix.
13. Kushner, "Design," 220-21.
14. Berlin, Rhetoric, 5.
15. Kessler, Dissident Press.
16. Ibid. , 155.
17. Ibid. , 14.
18. Streitmatter, Voices of Revolution, x. 19. Young, Inclusion and Democracy, 7.
20. Masses, October 1913.
21. Crowley and Hawhee, Ancient Rhetorics.
22. See Trimbur, "Review Essay. "
23. Warner, Publics and Counterpublics, 56.
24. Ibid. , 90.
25. For more information, see www. streetnewsservice. com. 26. Warner, Publics and Counterpublics.
27. Adrian, "World We Shall Win. "
28. "Hobo" News, November 1916.
29. Ibid.
30. De Pastino, Citizen Hobo.
31. Ibid. , 17.
32. Ibid. , 4.
33. Ibid.
34. How, "First Letter. "
35. "End of an Idealist. "
36. "Millionaire Hobo. "
37. Ibid.
38. Adrian, "World," 105.
39. "Editor's Statement," "Hobo" News 1, no. 1 (1915): 2.
40. O'Brien, "Light," 5.
264 Diana George and Paula Mathieu
41. Quoted in "Millionaire Hobo. "
42. Adrian, "World," 111.
43. See, for example, "Hard to Get"; Sayer, "Art and Politics," 42-78.
44. See, in particular, London, People of the Abyss; Riis, How the Other Half Lives. 45. How, "First Letter. "
46. London, People of the Abyss, 78.
47. Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 1.
48. Ibid.
49. How, "First Letter. "
50. Kushner, "Design," 221.
51. This is a rhetorical strategy used, for example, by Catholic Worker cofounder Peter Maurin in what he called his "easy essays. " In them, he offered straightforward chal- lenges for change:
Better Or Better Off
The world would be better off, if people tried
to become better.
And people would
become better
if they stopped trying
to be better off.
For when everybody tries to become better off, nobody is better off.
But when everybody tries to become better, everybody is better off. Everybody would be rich
if nobody tried
to be richer.
And nobody would be poor if everybody tried
to be the poorest.
And everybody would be what he ought to be
if everybody tried to be what he wants
the other fellow to be.
52. See Newkirk, Performance of Self. In it, he argues that writing teachers by and large share a tacit aesthetic about what constitutes good writing, which includes writ- ing that takes tentative or exploratory stances and which is not overly emotional or sentimental.
53. See, for example, Bawarshi, Genre; Devitt, "Generalizing about Genre"; Miller, "Genre as Social Action. "
54. Ohmann, "Kinder, Gentler Nation," 230.
The Dissident Press in a Rhetorical Education 265
Works Cited
Adrian, Lynne M. "The World We Shall Win for Labor: Early 20th Century Hobo Self- Publication. " In Print Culture in a Diverse America, edited by James P. Danky and Wayne A. Wiegand, 101-27. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998.
Bawarshi, Anis. Genre and the Invention of the Writer: Reconsidering the Place of Invention in Composition. Logan: Utah State University Press, 2003.
Berlin, James. Rhetoric and Reality: Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1900-1985. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987.
Cornish, Samuel, and John Russwurm. Freedom's Journal, March 16, 1827.
Crowley, Shanon, and Deborah Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. 3rd
ed. Boston: Pearson, 2004.
De Pastino, Todd. Citizen Hobo: How a Century of Homelessness Shaped America.
