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February 09, 2005
Varnum read with White's/Burke's Tropes
Varnum is particularly self-conscious of the fact that he is writing from a synechdochal stance. He is quite clear that he is moving between a micro-look at a particular series of events in the history of a particular time and place and set of characters in composition history, and a macro-look at the ways in which the enactment of the particular speaks to and informs the general, larger issues facing composition both then and now.
The other way I see Varnum as favoring the synechdochal trope is his movement back and forth among the various parts of the complex system he is trying to describe: the classroom, the program, the college, and the professional, cultural, and political climates involved in and around Theodore Baird’s professional life and Amherst College.
Of course, according to White’s analysis, all histories are inevitably metaphors, even as they privilege one Master Trope or negotiate between two or more, in the very fact that the history with its story form is standing in and pointing towards a way of seeing and feeling the thing it represents, but ultimately is not.
Posted by dwinslow at February 9, 2005 06:26 PM