Who to Cite & When (How to Write Literature Reviews)

One writing process question that keeps resurfacing for me is: How “far back” do I go? Last weekend, I spent a lot of time working on my “Affrilachia” manuscript, revising especially the beginning, where I foreground my argument by making explanatory references to the theorists who shaped my perspective on Affrilachian art. In my second paragraph, I explain: “Drawing on postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha and rhetorical theorist Jenny Edbauer Rice, I offer the framework of performative rhetorical ecologies as a way of recognizing, conceiving, and valuing groups who live within the liminal, or “in-between” spaces of culture.” Even before diving into Hauser, I started feeling nervous. Who else has expressed conceptions of “rhetorical ecologies” and “performative rhetorics”? Beyond Bhabha there is Bellah. Butler. Cushman. Debray. Hartigan. Rice. Squires. Warner. Now Hauser. Do I footnote them? Do I incorporate them into my narrative framework? How many of them? Where do I draw the line? When will my reader get frustrated and want to hear what I have to say—我的贡献？如何在理论/学术时间中“遥远”吗？

当我读起来，我兴起了越来越兴奋。他始于将哈贝马斯的理想资产阶级公共领域延伸到一系列公共领域，其中“正在尝试适当自己历史性的社交行为者”（55）的话语使公众出现。对于他而言，话语对公众的出现至关重要，我们的秘密始终是多方面的，矛盾的，积极的，互动 - 或者其他理论家可能称之为“网络”（Cushman;福斯特;加洛韦）。当我稍后在Hauser的第一个参考“环境”的话语场景时到达五页时，我迅速停止了。Environmental!? Rhetorical ecologies?! “The communicative ecology shapes our上市spheres” (60)!?

Who came up with this first? For my Affrilachia manuscript, I imagine Edbauer Rice as the mother ship from which I spring. In her 2006 essay, “Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies,” she explains that language is constantly shaped into a multiplicity of pathways that resemble an active, ecological system. “The rhetorical situation,” she claims, “should become a verb rather than a fixed noun” (13). In other words, rhetoric is active and this activity takes place within a space of “movements and processes” (11) rather than within material- and time-constructed borders. Identity is performed in an interactive, social process that depends upon language. For Rice, rhetoric occurs in the realm of the上市:它不是一个单一的声音,而是一个“连接”of voices that occur in an “ongoing space of encounter” (5-6).

Seven years earlier, Hauser’s saying the same thing! We should “conceptualize publics as processes” (55). Scholars should “engage in analyses of the rhetorical ecology as well as the rhetorical acts, including their own, by which they evolve” (110 emphasis his). There it is! Bright as day: “rhetorical ecology.” Yet when I look at Rice’s bibliography, there is no reference to Hauser. Doesn’t this happen quite frequently in this “dappled discipline” of ours? Shouldn’t somebody make a chart of the hereditary lines of our field? While discussing Debray, someone in our class exclaimed: “It doesn’t seem like his guy’s read any rhetorical theory.” Why hasn’t he? Or has he, but he doesn’t see its value in his argument? Has Rice read Hauser? If so, why not mention him? How “far back” should we go?How many times have I asked this?

I reframed my question: Where doIstand on this issue? As I answer, of course I’ll have to “go back” and give credit where it’s due (even if I’m unsure ofWHO要么how many whos我会赞同信贷）。尽管如此，本周末的修订时最有价值的时刻发生在我站立并大声阐述我的丈夫 - 以自己的话语而不是通过他人的话来说。我第一次充满信心地修改这份手稿。它是一个巨大的救济，刚刚开始进入一个非常重叠，恐吓“声音的串联” - 知道我在他们中有一个声音。