Tasker & Holt-Underwood: Here it is!

Here is finally the bloodshed and carnage that Tony longed for in the debate of Elbow and Bartholomae. It is not surprising that, in the world of feminist acadame, there would be differing opinions, for the arguments that have encompassed the male-dominated theories of composition and rhetoric have fizzled down over the centuries. Feminist rhetoric, however, has only been in discussion in the academic world, according to the article, for the last forty years, and most of the headway (and argumentation) has been made in the last decade and a half.

This article brings up quite a few discussions, however, and does a good job of representing quite a few points of view, especially about how feminist critique is approached. The first argument is that which Nancy presented in her Lunsford presentation, that women authors (silent or no) should be presented alongside the male: "the task of discovering neglected authors, providing basic research on their lives and theories" (54). 

The second argument, which came against feminist authors, was the inability of feminist authors to stay objective. My response to this accusation is first, that most scholars are passionate about their research and objectivity does not come naturally. Second, the article says that feminist authors have had difficulty remaining objective, too, but there has been objective research done in the field. Also, the paucity of female rhetoric from times past seems to require a bit of interpretation on the part of the scholars (which is where lack of text as well as text is significant in constructing the past), but, again, this is not all that unusual: "like much humanistic research, feminist methods are highly interpretive, difficult to identify, and often only implied" (57).

A third argument, made by Patricia A. Sullivan, is that women "should move toward a qualitative" model of research, possibly because of the highly interpretive mode of research that must be done in fields such as feminism, but maybe also because of the lack of quantitative evidence. However, there have been areas of study in feminism where authors (like Catherine Hobbs) have been able to recover both qualitative and quantitative support for their claims. In situations where information is limited, I feel that it is certainly wise for a scholar not to restrict herself to one mode of research or explanation. 

Indeed, with so much influx of information in support of feminist rhetoric throughout the millennia, it seems that we may be even closer to achieving "Lunsford's often-quoted call to recognize the 'forms, strategies, and goals' of female rhetoric" (59), though there will continue, I'm sure, to be arguments about how the information feminist research is arrived at (such as the debate between Gale and Glenn, Jarret and Ong, and then the more heated argument between Biesecker and Campbell).