gazing westward

Connors explains why he is a historican of rhetoric, suggesting that it is the best way to unify and articulate ourselves as a discipline, the best way to bring together various methods, to help us overcome our ‘prejudices’ by looking closely at where we’ve been and therefore who we are.  Arguing against relativism, Connors suggests that there is good and bad history; he rejects historicism.  Connors enjoys the multiple nature of historiographical work.  While the methods of these multiple projects vary wildly, the field has motivation in common – “we all want to do some good” and are therefore saved from historicism (237).  We have this motivation – and rhetoric.  Yet we aren’t born straight from rhetoric; we are also born from the necessity of freshmen writing.  In the end, there are two reasons to be a historian within our field – 1)rhetoric allows us to look at ourselves and our field in a unique way in the academy, 2)history provides researchers with ‘hard evidence’ that allows arguments to be made. We don’t have any one method and we ought not try to adopt one.