Eric Knickerbocker
May 8, 2003

The Rhetorical Framework of Scientific Prose: A Discursive Examination

There are those who consider scientific prose to be a reflection of objective reality in its purest form, who believe that when a prophet in a white lab coat engraves his letters upon a page, it is done on sacred tablets of stone. Such idealistic thinking, however, fails to take into consideration that science is a human enterprise and that behind the most prestigious electron microscope lurks a pair of human eyeballs. Further, consideration is not taken of the communal nature of the scientific enterprise that generates and regurgitates vast amounts of previous information—in the form of written texts, no less—that are far removed from the laboratory or the original setting in which the experiments took place. This essay is designed to argue that, no matter how cleverly disguised behind technical terms any given piece of scientific writing may be, it reflects its own form of rhetoric: rehashing, reinterpreting, and reprocessing the claims made from previous scientists in an effort to cajole and persuade. To frame our argument, we will look at Charles Bazerman and his use of the critical theory of intertextuality, show how critics Dorothy A. Winsor and David Chandler validate the rationale behind this approach, examine how the ancient concept of Kairos is reflected in this entire process, and trace intertextuality’s evolution from Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory to the present with proponent Julia Kristeva’s insights. In demonstrating that scientific prose does indeed employ its own form of rhetorical device, we will conclude with a few brief thoughts on what intertextuality reveals about the scientific corpus and its overall effectiveness.

Intertextual Analysis: Philosophical Underpinnings

In an effort to demonstrate the rhetorical necessity of scientific prose, Charles Bazerman examines Gould and Lewontin’s 1979 essay “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm” in a critique entitled “Intertextual Self-Fashioning: Gould and Lewontin’s Representations of the Literature.” His method of approach builds on an idea Julia Kristeva popularized of “intertext.” In essence, this theory attempts to analyze a scientific work based on the backdrop of its references and/or other works that would be part of the repertoire with which its readers—often others within the scientific community—might be familiar (Selzer 20). Embodied in this concept is the idea that not only do readers necessarily build on a prior “database” of personal knowledge (21) but that each scientific discipline has its own intertext, or “web of texts” considered authoritative, just as sacred writings, art, and literature all have their own formal or unspoken canons. These intertexts shape what one means when one says “Western Art in the 16th Century,” for instance. Bazerman argues that the person who controls the intertext controls audience perception, thereby reshaping and molding previous information into the generation of new knowledge (Bazerman 21).

Bazerman, however, is not content to leave it here; instead, he must poke and prod around a bit and see what he can uncover about this particular text in light of the “web of texts” that serves as its interpretative framework, and in so doing, shed some light on the methodologies of scientific prose in general. He first examines the rhetoric found within the abstract itself, noting nearly immediately that it does not really provide a summary of the article per se, but is itself a strategic part of Gould and Lewontin’s argumentation. He goes on to write: “From the first sentence of the abstract . . . Gould and Lewontin set themselves up against a literature, a body of statements, a dominant text-producing research program,” citing Gould and Lewontin’s first sentence: “An adaptionist programme has dominated evolutionary thought in England and the United States during the past 40 years” (Bazerman 21, 22). Bazerman suggests that this introduction details the source of intertext that is to be retooled, noting that Gould and Lewontin state, “We criticize this approach and attempt to reassert a competing notion. . .” (Bazerman 22).

As Bazerman points out, Gould and Lewontin do not immediately begin a frontal assault, instead circling around to the back door with an unlikely example of the spandrels ¹ of San Marco, this rhetorical device designed to capture the undivided attention of their audience of fellow scientists. After setting their Spandrels firmly in place as a sort of garrison, they move into attack mode, in which the enemy is declared to be the view presented by certain adaptationists, which is made out to be impossibly narrow. In setting up the chess board as they have, Bazerman claims they draw from predominantly German and Austrian literature in an attempt to “foster a self-conscious split between misguided Anglo-Americans and wiser Europeans” (Bazerman 25). By reminding us of this literary structure, Bazerman suggests they attempt to topple it and build another on its base, thereby generating new “knowledge” (Bazerman 25).

Within this renovated structure, readers are called to look beyond this “narrowed Anglo-American discourse” to a broader view of the world, aptly demonstrated by Bazerman’s subheading “A Larger Cultural Frame for the Local Silliness” (Bazerman 25). This context, Bazerman explains, helps us understand the spandrels of San Marco. Like architecture and its interest in large, vast spaces, Gould and Lewontin see meaning as complex, rather than reductionist, for reductionism, as Bazerman writes, does its reducing from “culture to nutrition, from anthropology to biology” (Bazerman 25). The categories of culture and anthropology are much broader than this sweeping designation (Gould and Lewontin’s description itself a carefully constructed truth claim): culture reduced to protein and anthropology reduced to a single biological explanation alone are hardly adequate, and this is precisely the claim that Gould and Lewontin stake, both explicitly as well as implicitly in their choice of language (Bazerman 25).

Another aspect of the discourse Gould and Lewontin imply—and the source of the title—is an appeal to Dr. Pangloss in Voltaire’s novel Candide. However, there is a two-fold aspect to the criticism of Dr. Pangloss by Voltaire: not only was he a fool, but he was a “manipulative hypocrite” (Bazerman 27). When Candide closes, Dr. Pangloss is “ridiculed and reviled for his hypocrisy, not his simplemindedness” (Bazerman 27). This then, is the two-edged sword Gould and Lewontin wield in their attack upon the enemy of “Anglo-American adaptationism.”

Because Bazerman is not himself a biologist, he is modest in his claims, showing how he set about to undertake his intertextual analysis: he cross-references all but three of the forty-one citations that Gould and Lewontin use to see how they employed these divergent sources and to determine if they were fair in such treatment or if they were taken out of context (Bazerman 28). In the event of uncertainty or ambiguity, Bazerman “erred on the side of accepting Gould and Lewontin’s interpretations” (Bazerman 28). What he found, interested him. Twenty-eight of the thirty-eight cross-references clearly supported the “Spandrels” characterization. The remaining ten, however, “raise issues of interpretation, almost always in determining the article’s position on the adaptationist-antiadaptationist issue, or even whether they recognize that issue as relevant” (Bazerman 29). What is perhaps even more interesting, however, is that of these ten, four were prior works by Gould, and an analysis of them do not show any strong position taken for his stance in “Spandrels,” as though he gradually evolved into his current expansive version of adapationism. In fact, some of this earlier work would seem to argue the opposite of what he is arguing for in “Spandrels,” which, as Bazerman points out, is perfectly fine—Gould “is allowed to change his mind”—but it seems strange that there is no mention of this fact (Bazerman 30). It seems that is it is simply swept under the carpet quietly as though Gould has always maintained his present position (Bazerman 30).

Bazerman then turns his attention to the symposium structured for the purpose of presenting the papers on adaptionism in which Gould and Lewontin presented “Spandrels.” The entire presentation was comprised of ten papers and one commentary: the fact that Gould and Lewontin’s paper appears at the end of the session “suggests that their paper was intended by the organizers as the critical or cautionary voice that frequently caps such occasions, while not undermining” the others as a whole (Bazerman 30). The vast majority of these pro-adaptionist papers did not fit Gould and Lewontin’s depiction of their “narrow-minded” peers, but the two that do are ironically those of the symposium’s sponsors: Maynard Smith’s “Game Theory and Evolution of Behaviour” (along the lines of the “cannibalism-nutrition argument”), and R. Holliday and T.B.L. Kirkword’s “The Evolution of Ageing and Longevity,” which argues that even things considered counterproductive (such as aging) can, in fact, be viewed as adaptive (Bazerman 31). The rest of the papers were arranged along a graduated continuum from these two decisively adaptionistic pieces over to Gould and Lewontin’s essay.

The discussion paper by A.J. Cain at the end of the symposium is worthy of note, because it directly attacks Lewontin, a fact which would seem to suggest that he—and not Bazerman—is the real die-hard behind the stance argued in “Spandrels.” The big argument between Cain and Lewontin is over the philosophical question of determinism, which Cain feels is imperative: one does not control one’s own destiny. In fact, “Cain implies that the nominally adult Lewontin would be acting more adaptively if he left his adolescence behind him and accepted the sociobiological reality that we have little control over our own fate” (Bazerman 33). Such commentary raises serious questions to those who contend that scientific prose has nothing in common with rhetoric or other persuasive appeals.

This intertextual revelation leads Bazerman to his conclusion, in which he makes the implicit enemy in “Spandrels” explicit. He claims that “Spandrels” is none other than a war on sociobiology, Gould and Lewontin not willing to accept the notion that we do not have a responsibility to our environment and for our fate. Gould and Lewontin feel that we are culturally adaptive, and as such, this implies that there is such a thing as free will and creativity. To arrive at this insight, Bazerman has used the process of intertextual analysis, calling on a sampling of the “web of texts” against which Gould and Lewontin weave: and his conclusion is that the crux of the paper is in actuality a debate that is philosophical in nature. Each discipline was born out of philosophy in its attempt to gain control of knowledge, and it is these philosophic questions that rhetoricians often debate, including authors found within the scientific community (Bazerman 38). It would seem that in the final consensus, Bazerman’s intertextual analysis demonstrates that Gould and Lewontin, two distinguished and highly respected scientists, are in essence arguing free will in the face of determinism: a debate likely as old as civilization itself. This sounds suspiciously like it aligns more closely with the field of rhetoric than most scientists would likely be willing to admit: hiding behind a poker faced façade of supposed objectivity could itself be seen as a rhetorical strategy.

Dorothy Winsor’s Social Constructivism Theory and Intertextuality

Bazerman’s essay raises some questions in my mind as to the rationale behind the intertextual analysis, so I was curious to uncover the logic behind this methodology. This query led me on a search for arguments either supporting or refuting Bazerman’s claims, and, to my surprise, I found very few critics who were willing to posit any kind of counter-claim to Bazerman’s method of intertextuality. I discovered absolutely no one who questioned this approach’s legitimacy in unlocking the rhetorical nature of scientific prose.

Among Bazerman’s like-minded proponents resides Dorothy A. Winsor, a critic who draws many of the same inferences in her idea of the “social construct” of knowledge, detailed in her analysis “Constructing Scientific Knowledge in Gould and Lewontin’s ‘The Spandrels of San Marco’” (Winsor, 127). In explaining the basis of “social constructionism,” she writes:

In social constructionist terms, collective authority is knowledge. It is not enough, however, for an article to cite references as authority. Rather, an article must explain to readers how they are to interpret the references and how the references all add up to support the current work.” (Winsor, 129–30)

In this telling statement, we have a view of how scientists build on the back of, and manipulate, the body of knowledge that has gone on before them and why intertextuality can be a revealing tool in unearthing this approach to generating new knowledge through the interpretation of texts.

Running parallel to Winsor’s social construct theme, Bazerman’s assumptions are summarized well in his following remarks:

Representation of the intertext—the web of texts against which each new text is placed or places itself, explicitly or implicitly—is thus a strategic site of contention, for it is the site at which communal memory is sorted out and reproduced, at which current issues and communities are framed, and dynamics established, pushing the research front toward one future or another. [. . .] Especially if we are to convince readers of fundamentally new positions, we must somehow uproot the intertext upon which current audience perceptions rest.” (Bazerman 20–21)

In both instances, we are dealing with “collective authority” and “communal memory,” the idea surfacing that a scientific document does not exist as an isolated unit, but is rather surrounded and supported by a corpus of material previously generated and freely molded and manipulated to suit the desired ends of the particular scientist(s) involved, a process far removed from the microscope or the laboratory.

Bazerman elaborates on this “communal memory,” suggesting that more than just the mental framework a person already has in place is being challenged, but rather the entire bulk of collective “knowledge” is being repositioned and interpreted (Bazerman 21). Winsor agrees with his sentiments, arguing that knowledge is built upon the foundation of common consensus, forming a series of texts that can be traced back into virtual infinity (Winsor, 128). Winsor’s claim further bolsters Bazerman’s emphasis on the importance of the intertext, for it provides the rationale behind the construction of “knowledge” in a social fashion: it is constructed from reams of paper documenting “common consensus.”

While their conclusions are very like-minded, there are some subtle differences in their respective approaches. Winsor, for instance, seems to look a little more carefully at the use of language within the text itself, noting the employment of a hierarchical typology of truth claims which she ranks from one through five. This system is used to rank the nature of the truth claims presented: A type five argument “is of knowledge so thoroughly accepted it need not be made explicit” (Winsor, 130). From here, the scale gradually drops off in terms of certainty, dropping down to type one and two arguments typically prefaced with disclaimers such as “We believe,” and “In our opinion” (Winsor, 130). The goal is quite simple, writes Winsor. “When scientists are engaged in controversy, their object is to push their own claims higher up the scale and to push rival claims lower, activities that Gould and Lewontin practice in ‘The Spandrels of San Marco’” (Winsor, 131).

This last statement is again reminiscent of the one represented by Bazerman earlier: “Especially if we are to convince readers of fundamentally new positions, we must somehow uproot the intertext upon which current audience perceptions rest” (Bazerman 21). The biggest difference between Bazerman’s claim and Winsor’s, is that she has taken it a step further and identified a way in which scientists can “uproot the intertext upon which current audience perceptions rest” by pushing the previous eggs out of the nest to make room for their own in the hierarchy of rivaling truth claims. Winsor further suggests that even Gould and Lewontin’s use of illustrations aid in this process of reinterpretation: “A figure is a piece of writing meant to define reality, not simply reflect it. Moreover, by means of more writing in the figure’s caption and the explanation of the text, the writers tell the readers what to see in the picture” (Winsor, 134).

David Chandler, author of Semiotics: The Basics, further supports the observations of both Bazerman and Winsor. Chandler devotes the thirteenth chapter to the topic of intertextuality, a chapter which would suggest that Winsor’s conception of the social construct is well within the framework of intertextual analysis. Chandler does, however, cite at least one compelling question raised by intetextual analysis—whether this be a scientific piece of prose, hyperlinks from a web page, an advertisement, or an item from the popular media:

The notion of intertextuality problematizes the idea of a text having boundaries and questions the dichotomy of “inside” and “outside”: where does a text “begin” and “end”? What is “text” and what is “context”? The medium of television highlights this issue: it is productive to think of television in terms of a concept which Raymond Williams called “flow” rather than as a series of discrete texts. Much the same applies to the World Wide Web, where hypertext links on a page can link it directly to many others. However, texts in any medium can be thought of in similar terms. The boundaries of texts are permeable. Each text exists within a vast “society of texts” in various genres and media: no text is an island entire of itself. A useful semiotic technique is comparison and contrast between differing treatments of similar themes (or similar treatments of different themes), within or between different genres or media. (Chandler, para. 13)

Chandler then proposes the idea of intratextuality, involving the internal relations within the text, much like Winsor’s own analysis of the inner dynamics of the text. Like Winsor, he sees this as involving the “internal relations” in a text, including the “codes” within a photograph itself of its relation to its caption (Ibid., para. 14). Such conclusions add a further blow to the idea that scientific discourse is hermetically sealed, never appealing to any kind of persuasive appeals; in fact, by the very limitation of language itself, it could be argued that even if the empirical research is itself objective, the communication of these facts relies on the arbitrary and imprecise nature of language.

Satisfied by the affirmations of Bazerman’s intertextuality (represented here by Winsor and Chandler), I was then able to move on to the next phase of my investigation: the evolution of intertextuatity from past to present and how this further bears out the recognition that scientific discourse employs rhetorical devices.

The Kairos Element of Intertextual Criticism

As we have previously suggested, the foundation for Charles Bazerman’s intertextual analysis of “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm” can be understood as resting on the slab of “social construction,” a theory Dorothy A. Winsor employs in her critical essay “Constructing Scientific Knowledge in Gould and Lewontin’s ‘The Spandrels of San Marco’” and is furthered by David Chandler in his book Semiotics: The Basics. Yet the idea of knowledge being socially constructed, at least in part, is not new, nor is the concept of seizing upon the intertextual opportunities provided by other rhetoricians. These concepts can be seen as modern variations of the ancient Grecian concept of Kairos.

The term Kairos is somewhat resistant to definition, though, according to Eric Charles White, its most immediate meanings can be stated as “the right moment” or “the opportune” (qtd. in Metaphor and Analogy, para. 1). To gain the full concept of what the Greek mind envisioned when it thought of these things, however, two classic metaphors are in order here: the quantitative which capitalizes on the proper time (chronos) and the qualitative aspect concerned with creating opportunity (Kairos) (Rhetorical Situation, 1st indented para.). Together, these two different ways of conceiving Kairos can be seen as painting a much fuller picture for us.

The first metaphor involves the weaver whose skillful use of the shuttle must catch “the critical time” in which the hole is opened in the yarn; a moment too soon or too late and the gap in the warp of cloth is closed, thereby prohibiting the shuttle from passing the yarn through (Metaphor and Analogy, para. 2). In the second instance, we have the picture of the archer, bow taut with just the precise amount of tension, creating the opportune moment by aligning the sights with the target and letting fly the arrow from the string. Timing is crucial for the marksman or woman to score a direct hit, yet is in a sense “created”: this is “the opportune,” or the opening of a window of opportunity (Metaphor and Analogy, para. 2).

In social construct theory, which undergirds Bazerman’s overarching notion of intertextuality, we have both elements of Kairos at work: on the one hand, the rhetorician builds on the pre-existent framework, or intertext, that is commonly accepted as knowledge (Bazerman 20–21). On the other, a scientific author (or any other writer whose aim is persuasion) must move the level of their truth claims up and down a scale of relative uncertainty or solidity in order to create opportunities that reconstruct the text according to their strategic methodology (Winsor, 130). We can find the weaver at work, waiting for the proper time to release the shuttle; we can also see the picture of the archer, bow taut, sights aligned, creating an opportunity; Kairos and chronos working in tangent to construct knowledge.

Carolyn Miller examines the 1968 debate between Lloyd Bitzer and Richard Vatz in her 1992 effort “Kairos in the Rhetoric of Science,” published in Steven P. Witte, Neil Nakadate, and Roger Cherry’s collection A Rhetoric of Doing: Essays on Written Discourse in Honor of James L. Kinneavy (qtd. in “References” and “Observations about Kairos”). She writes:

Bitzer’s objectivism insists that the situation exists independent of the demands on the rhetor . . . Richard Vatz offers another perspective, suggesting that situations are created by rhetors; thus, by implication, any moment in time has a Kairos, a unique potential that a rhetor can grasp and make something of . . . . (Qtd. in Rhetorical Situation, 1st indented para.)

While Miller is careful to point out that “we should remember that an opening can be constructed as well as discovered” (qtd. in Rhetorical Situation, 2nd para.), according to the write-up “The Rhetorical Situation,” she seems to “implicitly” side with Vatz by identifying Bitzer’s argument with chronos, whose views best support the postmodern mindset in which social constructivism flourishes (3rd para.). This would align nicely with what we know of intertextuality and the underpinning framework of social constructivism upon which it rests. In this instance, Miller sees Vatz’s view as creating or constructing opportunities, or as Bazerman says, “Because the intertext is such a strategic site of contention—the battlefield for control of the cognitive universe within which new claims will be read—analysis of intertextual representations lets us see not only the rhetorical game being played, but also the struggle to define the rules and stakes of that game” (21). Upon Bazerman’s battlefield is emblazoned the image of the archer, looking for an opportune moment to shoot a flaming shaft into the reader’s base of discernment, hoping to “uproot the intertext upon which current audience perception rests” (Bazerman 21). We also have the image of the weaver, knowing when to push the shuttle through and when to pull it back.

So too, likeminded Winsor argues, in the words of Bruno Latour: “The rules are simple enough: weaken your enemies, . . . help your allies if they are attacked, . . . [and] oblige your enemies to fight one another” (Qtd. on 133). It would seem that we again have an animated Kairos, the weaving archer and the shuttle poised on an invisible string, the lines somewhat blurred in a postmodern world where truth is simply a social construct and nothing more . . . at least that we can ascertain with any certainty.

Carloyn Miller adds her own parallel thoughts—originally appearing in “Opportunity, Opportunism, and Progress: Kairos in the Rhetoric of Technology”—though again, she seems to favor the window of opportunity while presupposing the predetermined right time:

Kairos tells us to look for the particular opportunity in a given moment, to find—or construct—an opening in the here and now, in order to achieve something there and then. Pointing as it does to the ways that situations change over time, to the relationship between past and future, to the ways that one moment differs from the next, Kairos seems to be a natural tool for examining a discourse (indeed, a form of cultural life) that emphasizes change, development, progress—all notions we conceptualize technology. (Qtd. in “Observations about Kairos.”)

It would seem that in her definition of the ancient concept of Kairos, Miller places it and herself squarely side by side with the “Bazermans” with their “intertextual analyses” and with the “Winsors” with their “social constructivisms,” each arguing that scientific prose is indeed a form that applies rhetoric device to its objectified trappings. Kairos, intertextual analysis, social constructivism: the lines from past to present—from the “there and then” to the “here and now”—seem to dance and jump about, awaiting some weaver’s warping or archer’s arrow to pin them squarely down long enough to allow us to take a closer look under the microscope. Let’s take a closer look at the immediate history of intertextuality as a tool capable of unearthing the rhetorical nature of scientific prose.

Mikhail Bakhtin: Intertextual Pioneer or Torchbearer?

Before Charles Bazerman ever put pen to paper, Julia Kristeva was espousing the views of Russian thinker Mikhail Bakhtin in her book Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (New York: Columbia UP, 1980.). Two of the main tools on Bakhtin’s workbench that the critic, feminist, philosopher, and intellectual Julia Kristeva admires are the concepts of dialogism and ambivalence (Kristeva, para. 10). For Bakhtin, the world of literature sits within history and culture, these two elements made tangible by the written page the author reads (Ibid., para. 3). That is to say, the writer is first immersed in, and shaped by, the history and the culture via the medium of writing (Ibid., para. 2). The author in turn, being a man or woman of letters, “dialogs” with this written medium (dialogism), often disagreeing with it and reshaping it to his or her own liking, hence the term ambivalence, suggesting a combination of acceptance and rejection of a set of given texts (Ibid., para. 3).

These two tools are played out in a three dimensional field which includes the (1) writing subject, (2) addressee, and (3) exterior texts [or context] (Ibid., para. 8). Writes Kristeva, “The word’s status is thus defined horizontally (the word in the text belongs to both writing subject and addressee) as well as vertically (the word in the text is oriented toward an anterior or synchronic literary corpus)” (Ibid., para. 8). In a sense, we can see the overlapping functions of Chandler’s “intratexturality,” as well as Bazerman’s “intertextuality”—Chandler’s being horizontal, Bazerman’s being vertical—or, we could perhaps re-state this explanation metaphorically as “intratexutality” being the foreground borne of the interaction of reader and text and intertextuality being the background of intertexts against which this “dialog” is positioned.

Kristeva sees this composite whole as intertextuality; contrast the following statements with those of Bazerman. Kristeva writes: “Any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another. The notion of intertextuality replaces that of intersubjectivity, and poetic language is read as at least double” [that is, in terms of “one and other”] (Ibid., para. 9, 14). Bazerman appears to follow the same logic when he comments: “Representation of the intertext—the web of texts against which each new text is placed or places itself, explicitly or implicitly—is thus a strategic site of contention, for it is the site at which communal memory is sorted out and reproduced, at which current issues and communities are framed, and dynamics established, pushing the research front toward one future or another” (Bazerman p. 20). Here we again see “the double” (“one and others”), as well as a mosaic, or web, of “recycled” elements. Both of these positions on intertextuality are well within the boundaries set by Bakhtin’s analysis.

According to Kristeva, Bakhtin saw the “literary world” as “an intersection of textural surfaces rather than a point (a fixed meaning), as a dialog among several writings: that of the writer, the addressee (or character), and the contemporary or earlier cultural context” (Kristeva, para. 2). Essentially, she claims, “Bakhtin considers writing as a reading of the anterior literary corpus and the text as an absorption of and a reply to another text: Dialog and ambivalence are borne out as the only approach that permits the writer to enter history by espousing an ambivalent ethics: negation as affirmation” (Ibid., para. 13). In this view, when an author sets about to write a text, this is a “reading” of subsequent works that have influenced him or her being poured forth in the form of a text that then becomes a manifestation of this prior consumption and the subsequent rehashing made tangible on the printed page. Here again, we have a definite progression toward intertextuality, which Bazerman carries to exhausting ends in his work on “Spandrels.”

This position stands in contrast to the so-called New Criticism, an approach Bakhtin skirted, for it assumes a monologic reading of the text and the ideal reader, no social context implied or needed; this is similar to the concept suggested to many people’s minds when it comes to scientific prose (Klages, para. 20). In her lecture notes on Bakhtin, Dr. Mary Klages, Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado summarizes it nicely: “poetry is therefore the use of words without reference to history” (Klages, para. 21). Bakhtin argues that structural approaches to literature act “as if it were a hermetic and self-sufficient whole, whose elements constitute a closed system presuming nothing beyond themselves, no other utterances” (qtd. in Klages, para. 19). Dr. Klages offers a wonderful and rather extensive example of this type of interpretation that Bakhtin loathed:

When I write “Two pounds ground beef, seedless grapes, loaf bread” you can read this two ways. We can do a “poetic” reading, where the words refer to abstract ideas, or to other words, or to poetry itself. Such a reading might focus on the first word, “Two,” as implying a fundamental duality, but that duality is undermined by the form of the verb “pounds,” which is singular. The idea of “pounds” as verb brings up an image of violence, that the “two” in the first word might be in some kind of struggle. That struggle might be against the “ground,” the third word, which connotes an image of violence—something being “ground.” . . . (Ibid., para. 22)

Her example extends on much further than is cited here, but it should suffice to demonstrate how this clever (if not somewhat presumptuous) reading bears out well the difference between the New Critics’ methodology and Bakhtin’s more integrated approach that would surely have seen these words within a larger social context, concluding it was examining a rather mundane grocery list (Ibid, para. 23).

Professor Lee Honeycutt of Iowa State University suggests that, unlike the New Critics, Bakhtin formed a unique return to the classic rhetorical triangle of Aristotle “by placing the author on an equal footing with his readers and texts,” but that in so doing it blurred “traditional distinctions between writer, reader, and text in terms of both the reading and writing processes” (Honeycutt, para. 12). He also notes that while Bakhtin’s method goes beyond the confines of classic rhetoric, it also avoids the pitfalls of “the endless skepticism of deconstruction” of Derrida et al., which, in Honeycutt’s opinion, often serves to confuse more than it clarifies (Honeycutt, para. 13).

The theme that unifies much of Bakhtin’s work is his notion of heteroglossia, which he saw as being particularly evident in the novel, in contrast to the New Critics’ primacy they afforded poetry. Writes Honeycutt:

In terms of literary criticism, Bakhtin believes the rise of the novel as the primary expressive form of Western literature depended in large part on its ability to accurately reflect the myriad voices of this dialogic sphere, which he refers to as “heteroglossia.” These popular styles of discourse find their ultimate source in an ancient “carnival” sense of the world, in which unofficial forms of language served to subvert and overturn the official seriousness of authoritative discourse. In a similar way, Bakhtin’s dialogics seeks to overturn what he calls “monologic” views of language that stem from earlier rationalist philosophies prevalent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (Honeycutt, para. 9)

In a fashion that only Bakhtin could perhaps appreciate fully, the lines between intertextuality and heteroglossia begin to get a bit sketchy: it is not always so clear where one notion stops and the other starts. But then again, haven’t we begun to realize such is the case with the world of rhetoric? We could safely conclude that Bakhtin was both pioneer and torchbearer—intertextuality personified.

Summary

When we take a backward glance across this essay, we can see how Bakhtin’s sense of community is a legitimate way of viewing scientific prose. Science is a human enterprise—it is not performed in a vacuum—and it requires written texts to communicate its points. Therefore, a study of intertextuality can help reveal the communal nature of this process, showing how Kairos is wielded and manipulated by the scientist to help support and bolster the claims of proponents, while discrediting the counter-claims of one’s opponents. Even the supposed aura of objectivity is furthered by carefully wording claims in an authoritative way, obscuring the uncertain nature of a field that progresses largely by common consensus, or social constructivism. With New Criticism being called into question for its blindness to any historical milieu, the intertextual methods, by rate of contrast, reveal not only the use of language within a document, but also how they are framed against the backdrop of other texts: indeed, against the surroundings of an entire field of study itself. Every discipline has jargon that serves to include insiders and exclude outsiders and this fact can be exploited to lend an impenetrable barrier to those on the outside who might question its claims. Intertextuality helps equalize the playing field, showing scientific discourse for what it is: a sophisticated form of rhetoric that spends as much time constructing social knowledge as it does peering with all too human eyes through the aperture of a microscope. Simply put, science is indeed a human enterprise and as long as there are humans, there will be need for persuasion.

¹ In the 1979 essay “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm,” Gould and Lewontin offer the following description and accompanying illustrations of spandrels (as qtd. in Understanding Scientific Prose, pp. 339–41):

Figure 1. One of four spandrels of St. Mark’s; seated evangelist above, personification of river below.

The great central dome of St. Mark’s Cathedral in Venice presents in its mosaic design a detailed iconography expressing the mainstays of Christian faith. Three circles of figures radiate out from a central image of Christ: angels, disciples, and virtues. Each circle is divided into quadrants, even though the dome itself is radially symmetrical in structure. Each quadrant meets one of the four spandrels in the arches below the dome. Spandrels—the tapering triangular spaces formed by the intersection of two rounded arches at right angles (figure 1)—are necessary architectural byproducts of mounting a dome on rounded arches. Each spandrel contains a design admirably fitted into its tapering space. An evangelist sits in the upper part flanked by the heavenly cities. Below, a man representing one of the four biblical rivers (Tigris, Euphrates, Indus, and Nile) pours water from a pitcher in the narrowing space below his feet.

Figure 2. The ceiling of King’s College Chapel.

The design is so elaborate, harmonious, and purposeful that we are tempted to view it as the starting point of any analysis, as the cause in some sense of the surrounding architecture. But this would invert the proper path of analysis. The system begins with an architectural constraint: the necessary four spandrels and their tapering triangular form. They provide a space in which the mosaicists worked; they set the quadripartite symmetry of the dome above.

Such architectural constraints abound, and we find them easy to understand because we do not impose our biological biases upon them. Every fan-vaulted ceiling must have a series of open spaces along the midline of the vault, where the sides of the fans intersect between the pillars (figure 2). Since the spaces must exist, they are often used for ingenious ornamental effect. In King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, for example, the spaces contain bosses alternately embellished with the Tudor rose and portcullis. In a sense, this design represents an “adaptation,” but the architectural constraint is clearly primary. The spaces arise as a necessary by-product of fan vaulting; their appropriate use is a secondary effect. Anyone who tried to argue that the structure exists because the alternation of rose and portcullis makes so much sense in a Tudor chapel would be inviting the same ridicule that Voltaire heaped on Dr. Pangloss: “Things cannot be other than they are . . . Everything is made for the best purpose. Our noses were made to carry spectacles, so we have spectacles. Legs were clearly intended for breeches, and we wear them.” Yet evolutionary biologists, in their tendency to focus exclusively on immediate adaptation to local conditions, do tend to ignore architectural constraints and perform just such an inversion of explanation.

Home | About | Newsletter | Forum | Misc. | Contact | Search | Links | Random Page

.:| get up to date: newsletter :. 1&1 .: discussion forum: participate |:.

http://www.mrrena.com/misc/intertextual.shtml