A re-reading of the rhetorics of Thoreau: A case for dialogic teaching

Abstract

Reading Walden with an eye for contemporary issues in rheorical and composition theory, I contend that this work has much to offer a theory of dialogic pedagogy. Dialogic pedagogy advances a view that knowledge is situationally negotiated and contingent upon the limitations and exigencies of these situations. A pedagogy based on this theory should advance a self-reflective resistance to and critical awareness of socially organized knowledge and ideology; it should contribute to student awareness of knowledge as an "event" rather than static content. My thesis is that a re-reading of Walden can reveal another voice to add to the discussion of such a postmodern pedagogy. I read Thoreau as an advocate of an epistemology of qualified, experiential claim. This perspective claims a relationship between the authority of experience and that of specified, academic professional communities, relying on something like Burke's "identification" for rhetorical power rather than perceptions of the "air tight" logic of hegemonic discourse.