civic/community engagement - in the community (in a commons) means composing in common. Increasingly, knowledge work and rhetorical performance happens in community formations, while workplace writing becomes rote (cf discussion on specialization). So we gotta meet students here. Where does this begin? Opensourcing the classroom, which requires an opensource rhetoric. One way to articulate such a rhetoric/guide is to annotate or elaborate on a postulate, mantra, idea, or refrain that has proven to be practicable by heuristically testing such ordering devices in real rhetorical situations. One example from open source is the mantra "share early, share often." In a classroom, this mode of invitation creates the conditions for commons-formation. Dissonance and unexpected rhythms may dissolve premises, egos, and classroom walls. The analogy to 'zine culture perhaps works best with a third term: the Sophist of Ancient Greece. A commonplace shared by open source culture and 'zine culture is the manifesto motif. The idea that open source culture combines ethics and methodology (under the banner and mantra "share early and often" discussed earlier) and therefore can be used to orchestrate a political body sounds a lot like "crowdsourcing," but it also calls to mind the Sophists of Greece, whose contribution was that they created a culture, a creative commons. In Jeff Walker's rendering of Isocrates Panegyricus: "the title of 'Helenes' applies to those who share our culture rather than those who share a common blood." In J.A. Freese's translation "culture" is instead rendered "badge of education": Athens "has made the name of Hellas distinctive no longer of race but of intellect, and the title of Hellene a badge of education rather than of common descent." Cf definition of "punk" in Not For Profit 'zine. The value of learning to perform (participate) in a shared culture, or creative commons, in my understanding of our present context, must be explored with an ear for new forms of civic engagement-as-scholarship.

CivicRhetoricTwoPointOh