CFP: Crazy Frakin People

On Thursday last, I joined the MLA. To join this prestigious organization, one must pay $30 (as a graduate student) and hit "send."
Not hyperbole.
I also signed up for the National Communication Association's listserv. The result is that between 4 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Monday I received nearly 200 emails from various academic organizations. And two from someone trying to sell me Viagra.
The mess in my inbox servs (sic) to remind me that while dissemination has become easier, communication has not. I blog, Kari blogs, Lou blogs, we all blog, but the text has no "rhetorical life" (Jeanne Fahnestock). I could put in a plea here for just about any cause, I could write about clowns eating Kashi cereal, I could make non-sense rhymes and call it poetry, but it wouldn't be rhetorical. There would be "rhetoricity" but without audience, without feedback, it isn't rhetoric.
The CFPs pile up, repeat themselves, hail the same acamedics in the same institutions. Is it any surprise that I can find at least three Purdue English Graduate Students at any conference in the States? We say the same things, we give our same Schpiels (needs caps), we parade our same (usually Burkeian) theories to the same crowds. Over and over and over. We cite the same authors, read the same "hot" new books, leap on the same academic bandwagon--same routine, different hotels, differnt cities. Different "organizations" set aside for "different" purposes that all seem about the same to me.
Which is why I got two CFPs--one from the MLA, one from some regional rhetorical studies confernece--on "the backlash" against feminism. The same backlash I've been hearing about since 1995. Let's cite Eve Sedgewick. Let's quote Judith Butler. Let's say the same old things in a different town with newer representative texts. The
"backlash" in graphic novels. The backlash in blogging. The backlash in text messaging. Pick a text, any text, apply theory, eat some gourmet cheese, go home.
I'm not complaining that what we do is pointless. No, I think there are quite a few points that arise at said conferences, new ideas, new relationships forged, new side projects to think about. I love the sharing atmosphere. What bothers me is the sheer volume of CFPs, of conferences, of journals. The proliferation of texts makes it seem like we're going somewhere, but we still keep retreating back to the same old sources. I can go to any MLA conference and, upon hearing the thesis statement of a paper, know exactly how the paper will read, what points will be made, what evidence cited. Emily is right in saying that the Q&A afterwards is why people really go to conferences. Because everything before that is just review.
How many conferences do we need? How many panels can we have before we stretch ourselves too thin? Is there any sense of "expertise" any more?
I better be careful before someone turns my questions into a conference theme. Then again, someone probably already has.