Daniel Coffeen

As homage, an essay on Lynch’s Mulholland Dr I published ages ago — & methinks it still stands up. euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.33…

@martinbohmer That’s very kind of you. I will say: I am proud of those lectures. Steal away! And thank you.

@DCoffeen It was, still is, an amazing list, an impressive syllabus and a mesmerizing performance. I have been stealing from it profusely over the years. Thank you so much!

I forgot that I’d created a blog for my Berkeley Intro to Rhetoric course lo these many years ago. I have to say, I love this syllabus, even if I’d add a few things now (most notably, Clarice Lispector’s Agua Viva which I taught in other classes).

@Ryanvandyke1 Gadamer runs through my veins. His materialist historicism argues for necessary communicative success—though not the success of intention or 1:1 correlation of sign & meaning. He offers a generous account of language that’s lived through—quite different than, say, Derrida.

@DCoffeen I’ve heard you mention Gadamer a few times, but have never seen a deep dive. How does he influence the way you interpret a text? What do you get from him?

@Ryanvandyke1 Kierkegaard’s dissertation — The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates. I’m not down with Booth’s or Rorty’s take.

@DCoffeen What are the main books that taught you about irony? Do you have any recommendations?

@YahiaLababidi I always imagine the visible & invisible as marbled, the two thoroughly entwined, inflecting each other while maintaining their difference.

'This visible world is a trace of that invisible one, and the former follows the latter like a shadow.' — Al Ghazali

@Ryanvandyke1 I always taught textual argument b/c without an object, I’m not sure what one’s writing about. On the first day of class, with no reading done yet, I’d have them read the classroom architecture. I actually got in an argument about this w a well known head of a writing program.

@DCoffeen The program I’m in really pushes “reflective” meta-writing which seems anti-argument based and doesn’t focus on a text. It really encourages bull shit papers. What texts did you teach for early comp? Was it the same ones you taught for your rhetoric courses?

@DCoffeen if you were teaching comp today, would your style and philosophy remain the same? Or is there anything you might adjust given how many students use AI to write essays these days?

@Ryanvandyke1 But argument should always be the structure of any comp writing, whatever the writer's skill. What else could they be writing? It doesn't have to be original per se but it has to be an argument.

@DCoffeen So I’d imagine the students would mainly be focused on the movement between their claims, the argument map. It’s tough bc originality is not the goal for early comp, learning to write/think is; so what does a teacher do if AI does that for them?

@Kpourvand Hmm. I don’t think one is truer than the other. Truth is absolute. Like zero. (Partial -zero emissions is absurd.) One might be ‘warmer’ than the other but it sure isn’t truer.

@DCoffeen Not necessarily. The spatialism was incidental to the analogy. Isn't "1+1=3" truer then "1+1=300,000" despite being false? I suppose the idea is that even if truth itself isn't scalar, propositions that attempt to track it might be.

How is ‘truer’ a word? What could that possibly mean? I’d like language to maintain at least the occasional absolute. If you need to qualify your truth, a keen adverb works quite nicely. But quantifying truth evacuates it of a meaning with any teeth. Just saying.

@dwats963 That’s marking a difference in kind, not in degree. Truer is a marker of degree. But I don’t understand degrees of truth.

@DCoffeen This is a little different, but sometimes I explain metaphysics to my English students by waiting for the sentence "Well it's his truth but not the "real" truth."

@Kpourvand But is truth a destination, then? If measures proximity to that destination? How is truth’s location identified — if the use case isn’t geographic?

@DCoffeen I think "truer" measures how close a proposition tacks truth, rather than referencing the truth in itself. "The United States borders Brazil" is truer than "the United States borders Mongolia" although both statements are false.

Wrote something on mourning ritual as a way ‘to think’ the unthinkability of death. medium.com/reading-the-wa…

@Richguard23Rich Clarice is always rewarding, deeply.

@DCoffeen Great post. As I was reading this morning I had a copy of Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector next to me as I prep’d for a trip. My first read of Lispector. The anticipation grows.

Yes yes, I don't think my mic is on any more but, well, I wrote something about ecological being, trees, rivers, identity, and language..and posted it here: medium.com/reading-the-wa…

@grantmaxwell Years ago, I submitted a manuscript to a few university presses that included a picture of Heidegger as the reason I refused to read him, quoting Nietzsche on Socrates. I thought it was funny. But one reader was so offended, he recommended against publication. I regret nothing.

Honestly, how can Heideggerians look at this guy and think, “he’s not evil”?

@Ryanvandyke1 Here’s the more robust argument map > hilariousbookbinder.blogspot.com/2012/01/teachi…

@DCoffeen I think that’s making more sense to me, but then how do you teach thesis statements? Do you teach it as just a starting point for the movement of the argument? Or is there too much focus on teaching thesis statements in comp classes?

@DCoffeen To avoid students listing, I’ve been thinking about incorporating your argument map into the comp class I teach. You’ve written that it’s not hierarchical, but then how do you explain that everything ties back to the thesis? Or do you not?

@Ryanvandyke1 No thesis statement. I used a tool I made called an argument map. Instead of rough drafts, which I’ve never seen help anybody, I had them submit 4-5 sentences that mapped the argument. This puts focus on the connection b/w points. In a glance, I could see their argument.

@Ryanvandyke1 Alas, I do not. But now I kinda want to write it. Or you should. Or we both should.

@DCoffeen Do you by chance know of any author who defines ethos, pathos, and logos in an atypical way? Perhaps in a kind of poetical dictionary style?