Table Of ContentRecovering Overlooked
Pragmatists in
Communication
Extending the Living Conversation
about Pragmatism and Rhetoric
Edited by
Robert Danisch
Recovering Overlooked Pragmatists
in Communication
Robert Danisch
Editor
Recovering
Overlooked
Pragmatists
in Communication
Extending the Living Conversation about
Pragmatism and Rhetoric
Editor
Robert Danisch
Department of Communication Arts
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, ON, Canada
ISBN 978-3-030-14342-8 ISBN 978-3-030-14343-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14343-5
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Acknowledgements
This book is dedicated to all of those scholars involved in the creative
rereading of our various intellectual histories. I am deeply indebted to
the scholars who have contributed essays to this volume for their abil-
ity to think beyond the regular canon of pragmatist philosophers. I have
beneftted from many conversations with those that are in this book and
many who are not. Those conversations are vital to the on-going task of
using pragmatism to make our world a little better. I’m very grateful to
the University of Waterloo for supporting my work, and for the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for generous sup-
port. Institutions like these are some of the greatest achievements of our
collective democratic efforts, and I am lucky to be a member of them. I
think it is fair to say the relationship between pragmatism and rhetoric is
now a central preoccupation for our feld. That is the achievement of a
range of scholars over the last twenty or so years writing terrifc books,
participating in panels and conferences, and thinking seriously about
what we might make of the pragmatist tradition going forward. This
book is mostly dedicated to all of the people that have been part of that
conversation for at least the last twenty years, from the senior statesmen
like Steve Mailloux to my younger colleagues with essays in this book.
A special thanks to Scott Stroud for pushing me to develop this project
when I might just have let it slip. And a special thanks to Pete Simonson
for teaching that seminar on pragmatism so many years ago. And my deep-
est appreciation is saved for Eliot and Julien, who continue to extend every
conversation that I’m a part of in the most amazing and productive ways.
v
contents
1 On the Uses and On-going Relevance of Pragmatism
for Communication Studies 1
Robert Danisch
2 Richard McKeon in the Pragmatist Tradition 23
Peter Simonson
3 Hu Shi’s Search for the “Chinese Sophist”
and “Spirit of Courageous Doubt” 53
Rya Butterfeld
4 Echoes of Pragmatism in India: Bhimrao Ambedkar
and Reconstructive Rhetoric 79
Scott R. Stroud
5 The Art of Adjustment: Ralph Ellison’s Pragmatist
Critique of Irving Howe 105
Jansen B. Werner
6 Living Pragmatism: Alice Dewey’s Open-Minded
Approach to Experiential Education and Cross-Cultural
Immersion 129
Karen Shea and Krysten Manke
vii
viii CONTENTS
7 The Accidental Pragmatist: Jonathan Haidt’s Moral
Psychology as Pragmatic Popular Science 157
Jeremy Smyczek
8 Jane Addams’ Rhetorical Ear: Teaching, Learning,
and Listening in the Settlement House Model 177
Amy E. Dayton
9 Emergent Publics, Public Emergencies: The Importance
of John Dewey in Jane Bennett’s Nonhuman Politics
of Vital Materialism 197
Daniel P. Richards
Index 223
notes on contributors
Rya Butterfeld is Assistant Professor of Speech in the Department
of Mass Communication at Nicholls State University, USA. She is the
recent past president of the Association for Chinese Communication
Studies and a member of the Third Council Committee of the Chinese
Rhetoric Society of the World. Her Ph.D., is in Rhetoric with a minor in
Political Theory from Louisiana State University, USA.
Robert Danisch is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department
of Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He is
author of Pragmatism, Democracy, and the Necessity of Rhetoric and
Building a Social Democracy: The Promise of Rhetorical Pragmatism.
Amy E. Dayton is Associate Professor of English and Director of the
Writing Center at The University of Alabama, USA. She is editor of
Assessing the Teaching of Writing, and has published essays in Rhetoric
Review, Community Literacy Journal, and College English.
Krysten Manke is currently a doctoral candidate for a degree in
Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Rhode Island, USA. Her
dissertation provides an archival investigation of the Dewey Laboratory
School as a site of rhetorical education. Her research interests include
the pedagogical intersections of feminism, pragmatism, and rhetorical
citizenship.
Daniel P. Richards is Assistant Professor of English at Old Dominion
University, USA, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses
ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
in rhetoric, technical communication, writing pedagogy, and American
pragmatism. His research specializes in professional and technical com-
munication, particularly in the context of risk and disaster, and his
work has appeared in Technical Communication Quarterly, Intercom,
Communication Design Quarterly, and Composition Forum, as well as
in several edited collections. His own co-edited collection, Posthuman
Praxis in Technical Communication (2018), has been published in the
Routledge Studies in Technical Communication, Rhetoric, and Culture
series.
Karen Shea is Professor of English at Johnson & Wales University,
USA. She has taught postsecondary English and English as a Second
Language for thirty years, both at home and abroad. Her most recent
research focuses on comparative rhetoric, open-mindedness, pragmatism,
and John Dewey’s personal correspondence from Asia.
Peter Simonson is Professor and Chair of the Department of
Communication at the University of Colorado Boulder, USA. He con-
ducts research on rhetorical practice across different media, the intellec-
tual history of communication in the United States, and the international
history of media and communication studies. He is author of Refguring
Mass Communication: A History, lead editor of The International History
of Communication Study and The Handbook of Communication History,
and producer of two documentary flms on the history of media research.
Jeremy Smyczek is Assistant Professor of English at St. Bonaventure
University, USA, where he teaches courses in composition, professional
writing, and rhetorical theory. His research investigates current uses of
American pragmatism in rhetoric and communication studies and its
potential as a tool to supplement existing approaches in the academic
communities studying scientifc argument and advocacy.
Scott R. Stroud is Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the
University of Texas at Austin, USA. His work lies at the intersection of
rhetoric and philosophy. He is author of John Dewey and the Artful Life
and Kant and the Promise of Rhetoric.
Jansen B. Werner is an independent scholar. His research explores
questions related to rhetoric, belonging, and civic life. He is currently
developing a book project that examines how Ralph Ellison employed
contradiction as a dynamic civic resource.
CHAPTER 1
On the Uses and On-going Relevance
of Pragmatism for Communication Studies
Robert Danisch
Pragmatism has a complicated intellectual history with multiple defni-
tions, a plurality of advocates and detractors, and a variety of disparate
fgures all claiming some allegiance to its worldview (Menand 2002;
Diggins 1994; Bacon 2012; Stuhr 1999; Misak 2015). This book’s aim
is not to settle any of the controversy surrounding pragmatism or to
reduce the multiplicity or plurality of defnitions and forms of it. That
kind of multiplicity demonstrates the advantages and vitality of the prag-
matist tradition. This book aims to cultivate a greater degree of variety
and complexity within the pragmatist tradition by interpreting and relat-
ing a series of fgures that we might not ordinarily think of as pragma-
tists. In order to expand the range of characters and commitments that
characterize the pragmatist tradition, I will argue, in this chapter, that we
consider the difference between philosophical pragmatism and rhetori-
cal pragmatism. This distinction will help us track the infuence of early
pragmatists on the disparate fgures assessed in the forthcoming chap-
ters of this book. This distinction, in other words, will help orient our
R. Danisch (*)
Department of Communication Arts, University of Waterloo,
Waterloo, ON, Canada
e-mail:
