B. M. Calafell. “Pro(re-)claiming Loss: A Performance Pilgrimage in Search of Malintzin Tenepal.”

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Bernadette Marie Calefell’s “performance ethnography” recounts her cultural and historical search of Malintzin Tenepal.  As outlined in “Pro (re-)claiming Loss,” Calafell soon recognized that her search for Malintzin was actually a personal journey in search of herself.  To know thyself through the embodiment of a (fore)”mother,” “sister,” and “lover,” Calefell realized that her cultural identity was not based upon the ownership of artifacts, her proximity to geographical locations, and could not be maintained through the love of another family member, but it was the embracing of all that is the Chicana membership by valuing the familial struggles and advancements and anticipating the future cultural goals of a people which shapes the individual, as seen through the representation of Malintzin Tenepal and personal growth.

 

What is interesting about the journey is that Calafell wanted to “pass” and “blend in” to obtain a closer identification to her culture.  It was not a rejection of who she is, but it was an increased desire to belong.  Through a lack of “proclaiming” and “reclaiming,” Calafell’s connections to her culture shifts based upon her geographical location.  She was perceived as being both “authentic” and “inauthentic” while in North Carolina, not quite “cultural” enough, from her use of the Spanish language and her skin complexion.  Yet, she felt completely at home in Arizona because she had the “luxury” of not having to question her cultural affiliation based upon the historical significance of the area and not needing to feel that she needed to measure up because she was surrounded by love of her family.  On the other hand, Calafell does admit to cultural loss and did not answer the “whisperings” of Malintzin Tenepal.  “The voices whispering all along, were they hers? Were they mine or someone else’s?  The ghost of Malintzin Tenepal has been banging on my door again” (46).

 

Still Calafell identifies with Tenepal.  She dreamed, “Marina, I come to you now because, honestly, I see that you and I are in the same boat.  We have both lost our voices” (47).  Calafell traveled to Mexico in search of Tenepal and her sites of memory.  She found that Marina’s sites of memory were “destroyed” and/”unidentified” and silenced.  Malintzin had no “recognized” cultural home.  “The fact that Malintzin’s house remains unmarked and unendorsed again attests to the way that Malintzin is devalued in the writing of history” (48).

 

Calafell’s mission becomes one of “self-knowledge” and “possibilities.”  Although Tenepal is not “memorialized” the larger community, the individual journey is a “performance ethnography” that attempts to rewrite the master narrative that has overlooked her contributions to her people.  Calafell explained,

 

In this space, I create my own embodied understanding of my legacy, of my culture.  All along I had been mourning the loss of my voice, culture, and story not realizing that in this process, in this space of anticipation and finally in this space of reclamation and reconciliation through the traversing of my past, present, and future I have created a space of new possibilities, what Pollock terms a possible real.  The possibility of remaking in the performance of language and in this embodiment of history can be liberatory and intoxicating as it is the ultimate seduction. (51-52)

 

Calafell draws similarity between the “anticipation of possibility” of Chicano/a culture and “queer temporality.”  Recognizing that the Chicano/a people are like turtles, who carry their homes on their backs, I recognize many parallels within the African American culture, which is, by in large, people who are removed from an ancestral geographical identity of Africa, and people who must derive its cultural identity through self-recognition of “archetypes” and “jeremaids” of a positive people and their common goals.  The master narrative becomes less important, resulting in a “proclaiming” and “reclaiming” of a people.  Calafell said, “My intention is not to use this framework as if to suggest that those who employ a queer temporality have no history of their own, thus they must create history; rather I argue that dominant discourses do in fact include them in narrative, but in ways that marginalize them, do not privilege their experiences, or allow them to define those experiences” (52-53).

 

The author suggests using personal narratives and its “disidenticatory strategies” to disrupt the master narratives.  The Calafell’s article suggests that individuals may undertake recovery strategies of Social Histories of Rhetoric.  Individuals are able to perform the “rhetoric of pilgrimage,” “re-story history,” and “rewrite space” to a give back the voices of loss memories.  Calafell takes a cue from Erik Doxtader; she said, “I identify performative process or pilgrimage as a means of honoring identities in the making and alternative forms of advocacy (“Making Rhetorical History”)” (54).  The procedure is both “action” and “object.”  It is through this discovery of Malintzin Tenepal that Calafell finds a part of herself and a greater appreciation of her cultural identity.

 

 

“Activisim is an engagement with the hauntings of history, a dialogue between the memories of the past and the imaginings of the future manifested through the acts of our own present yearnings.  It is an encounter with the ghosts that reside within and inhabit the symbolic and geographic spaces that shape our worlds” (Rodriguez 37).

Brueggemann: Lend Me Your Ear: “On (Almost) Passing” Interlude 1

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“On paper she didn’t sound deaf . . .” (98). 

Brenda Jo Brueggemann’s “On (Almost) Passing” is a revealing account of one woman’s journey of growth and reflection, as she embraces the many truths of her life that are illustrated through the use of mirror images of herself.  It is amazing to see how she negotiates her existence between the d/Deaf and h/Hearing worlds while navigating through varying degrees of silence.  Still it is important to note that when we think of mirrors, they throw back the “seen” physical representation.  But Brueggemann’s mirrors are in her ears and are influenced by her judgments, moods, intelligence, and realities.  This multi-level “self-evaluation” causes her to see the impossible demands of “passing,” or in her case, “almost passing.”

 

As a “hard-of-hearing- individual, she does not completely fit into the d/Deaf world and is isolated in the h/Hearing world, forced to rely on her husband and other hearing supporters.  By “passing” as a hearing individual, she was able to maintain a “likeness” of a hearing person, while not recognizing your own needs.  This attempt to belong was not so successful when trying to “pass” as a d/Deaf person.  Full membership into the d/Deaf community, and many others, require “successful” individuals to fully accept themselves and embrace their realities that are a reflection of individual passages.

 

I was most impressed that she likened her “almost passing” journey to “coming out,” “literate passing.” “. . . this place as the art and act of rhetoric,” “books are easier to control,” and “doing literacy.”  Brueggemann’s self-evaluations included not only the physical, but encompassed her negotiations with language and its usage.  Through her writing, and to a lesser degree talking, she was able to shape her roles in the h/Hear and d/Deaf communities.  As a way of passing, she found safety in talking because she did not have to listen, thereby holding off external judgments.  Writing allowed her created a closed environment of her choosing, where she had total control, absent of negative external factors.  She found safety in two arenas in which h/Hearing individuals may view as opposite spectrums:  safety in talking and silence.  Still, as a hard-of-hearing individual, for Brueggemann, both talking and silence provided the same reinforcement.  The h/Hear community would most likely argue that both cannot exist in the same space and product the same outcome.  Is this not an excellent example of the usage of rhetorical strategies and how one navigates personal encounters?

 

Brueggemann said that her talents of being a storyteller, writer, and talker allowed her to “pass” as being a member of the h/Hearing community and a member of the “The Deaf Way.” She notes that the creation of narratives, within the two cultures, has different approaches.  The “Deaf Way” narrative formation is shaped through the experience and user’s language abilities to recreate that experience.  On the other hand, the experience drives the narrative for the h/Hearing world, which is less dependent on the individual’s communication skills or the listeners.  Such passage navigations lead one to understand the “Gallaudet Meanness” and the lack of understanding from those who are not d/Deaf, as related by the desperate mother’s explanation of her daughter’s behavior in the chapter.  Brueggemann said, “When I get to feeling this way—trapped, nailed, stuck in between overwhelming options—I tend to get frantic, nervously energized, even mean. And my will to pass, to get through and beyond at all cost, kicks in ferociously” (93).   She finds strength in her circumstances and uses her strengths of writing to navigate her way.

 

“Writing is my passageway; writing is my pass; through writing, I pass” (99).

   

What are the rhetorical implications of the “Gallaudet Meanness?”

 

Can one say that from a hearing individual’s questioning Brueggemann’s “accent” or “nationality” was a way of normalizing the “otherness” of difference that may be displayed through d/Deafness?

 

Public Memory: Harriet Tubman House

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The Harriet Tubman House is a lasting testimony of a woman who selflessly made 19 trips into the South, to escort slaves to freedom.  Harriet Tubman’s home is located at 180 South Street, Auburn, New York.  The historical site is maintained by the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Connection, which purchased the property and are striving to fulfill Harriet Tubman’s dream.

 

The Tubman House is a visual representation of a time in United States history when the bravery and efforts of a few made a difference in the lives of African American slaves and freed blacks, in spite of legal and personal harms.  From a time capsule perspective, visitors are able to drive onto the grounds of the historical site and marvel at the restored house that was once the home and property of one of the most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad. The entire twenty-six acres stretches further than the eyes can see.  However, even from the lush grounds and overgrown apple tree that surround the home and other original structure, it is amazing to consider and realize Harriet Tubman’s determination to purchase the property.  However, from historical accounts of Tubman’s financial difficulties, it seems unlikely that the picturesque version of the 2007 grounds and property was correct reality of the late nineteenth century.

 

Understanding the need to preserve social history sites, Christine Carter, the Tubman House Tour Coordinator, welcomes visitors into the Tubman Recreation Building, where two documentaries are offered to give guests an overview of Tubman’s accomplishments, service, and hardships.  A small gallery of oil painting, reprints, and newspaper clippings line the walls.  Not only do the images illustrate of Harriet Tubman’s life, but they include reprints of historic New York newspaper articles, illustrations of slave ships, “Bull Whip Days,” “Old Bay Tom, a former slave, well-known and much beloved citizens of Binghamton.  The multiple visual aids enable the guests to understand the urgency of Harriet Tubman’s life work, caring for those who were unable to care for themselves.

 

Upon entering the home, tour groups are transported back into history as they walk inside.  From the first floor, guests take in the period-piece furniture of the living room, which stages the room; are able to look into the downstairs bedroom, which contains furnishing that belong to Tubman; and are ushered through the kitchen and dining room, while given a historical lesson of household items used by Tubman and were popular during that period.  The second floor is closed to all visitors.  Due to lack of financial capital, all additional restorations are on hold until a suitable donation may be gained to complete the work.  The historical value of the Tubman House is not officially recognized by federal funding.  The Tubman House is sustained by dutiful individuals who see the importance of this recovered social history, which, at present, survives as an example of public memory.

   

Lindal Buchanan’s Regendering Delivery: The Fifth Canon and Antebellum Women Rhetors. Conclusion.

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 Lindal Buchanan’s Regendering Delivery points out the assumptions that were made regarding the fifth canon:

1. All rhetors are male
2. Discourse evaluation only considered the speaker’s vocal performances and physical presentation
3. Proper body position:  Males stood and faced their audience
4. Social context was “overlooked.”

The identified “blindspots,” were a reflection of the larger social dynamics of the period, Buchanan called for a “Regendering” of the Fifth Canon.  Buchanan argued for the “total” rhetorical experience, which accounted for inclusive representations of women and other marginalized speakers; recognition of social, historical, cultural, and political constraints that influenced public address at a given time; and evaluation of the individual motivations of the speaker.  Traditional stage performances were not delivered in a vacuum, and antebellum women were a part of the rhetorical tradition.  Still, she points out that the rhetorical performances mirrored the internal and external biases that were in place beyond the stage.

 

Buchanan suggested a comprehensive social approach would open the rhetorical framework and give a complete picture of the rhetorical form.  “Delivery thus becomes a site for investigating the intersection of variables like gender, sexuality, race religion, nationality, ethnicity, age, class, or disability with power and discourse in particular settings, for what transpires on the public platform is simply a microcosm of larger social and ideological forces” (160).

 

Buchanan narrowed her scope to identify six “topos” that related to the antebellum female and the social context:

1. Education:  Elocutionary instruction of women as defined by the social norms.  Regendering the Fifth Canon considered the education of antebellum women and the “reciprocal relationship” of public delivery
2. Access to the Public platform:  Women were denied participation.  Regendering the Fifth Canon looked at when, where, and for what reason antebellum women were allowed to speak.
3. Evaluation of space:  Evaluated Ownership of the public platform.
4. Discursive Genre:  Considered strict delivery codes that restricted women.
5. The Female Body:  Evaluation of the proper appearance of the female body in public.
6. Social intersection of “gender,” “delivery,” and “power” that antebellum women encountered.

By presenting this view of the antebellum women, Buchanan hoped to encourage scholarly evaluations of the oratory practices of female rhetoricians.  She voiced the importance of considering gender, power, and social context for a comprehension understanding the antebellum women rhetors.  Buchanan said, “I throw open the doors and invite all interested scholars to enter the theoretical home afforded by the regendered fifth canon, confident that our examinations of delivery from multiple perspectives and through multiple lenses will ultimately make the classical canons, the rhetorical tradition, and the discipline itself more inclusive, pluralistic, and compelling” (163).

CCR 751: Richardson and Jackson: African American Rhetoric(s): Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Forward, Preface, and Introduction.

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Forward:

Jacqueline Jones Royster masterfully laid out the importance of reading African American Rhetoric(s).  Royster asserts that Elaine B. Richardson and Ronald L. Jackson, II approached the text by framing their views as “the study of culturally and discursively developed knowledge-forms, communicative practices and persuasive strategies rooted in freedom struggles by people of African ancestry in America” (ix).  In addition to the collection’s attention to “discursive forms” of African Americans, its calls for attention to “recovery of achievement and legacies,” “pedagogical problems of inclusive knowledge of students,” “critical inquiries of practices,” “interpretive frames with interdisciplinary disciplines,” etc., relating to 1) views of a culture, 2) critical exploration of strategies and practices, and 3) closer attentions to the specific material conditions as it relates to a people’s “rhetorical performances.”  All of these areas are important while examining the rhetorical approaches needed for entering a new century; for these reasons and others, Royster believes that the book is “a vanguard of publications that can cast our gaze on both continuities and change in rhetorical scholarship and keep our scholarly dialogues well invigorated and meaningfully engaged” (xi).

 Preface:

Elaine B. Richardson and Ronald L. Jackson, II offer readers a collection of essays with hopes of opening the possibility for reviewing the discipline’s concepts and practices in new ways.  By embracing historical, pedagogical, and example of research in the field, the editors presented African American rhetorical strategies and accomplishments, questions of cultural injustice, cultural representation, achievements, and “current persuasive and negotiation strategies,” which are areas of concern that should be valued and evaluated for further scholarship of the field.  While focusing on Black rhetoric(s) through the individual contributions of the authors, the text “treats literary, cultural, discursive, and linguistic aspects of African American rhetorics such as womanist, Reconstructionist, Ancient Egyptian, and Afrocentric rhetorics as indivorceable components of a larger study of the universe of Black discourse” (xiii).

 

Richard and Jackson divided African American Rhetoric(s) into the three areas of interest and gives a synopsis of each author’s essay in each unit to illustrate its rhetorical values; however, it is important to understand that there are multiple aspects of consideration within African American rhetoric(s), and no one voice can represent the cultural, historical, or rhetorical importance of a people.  However, questions of representation of a people are considered within the text.  This point is most clear from the editors’ explanation of the synonymous usage of the terms Black, African American, Afro-American, and people of African descent.  It is through these important differences that the text’s interdisciplinary perspectives reveal foundations and links that sustain African American rhetoric(s), which are not yet fully recognized but are brought closer to understanding a people.

 Introduction:  

For the introduction to African American Rhetric(s), Keith Gilyard offers an essay to not only illustrate the historical and cultural importance of the African American experience, but he also reveals important avenues of rhetorical discourse that give African American rhetorics its flavor, by further addressing additional readings and conversations that have and are taking place for the further understanding and representation of a people.  In his essay, “Aspects of African American Rhetoric as a Field,” Gilyard acknowledges that it would be impossible given the boundaries and scope of this project to give the reader a complete background of African American rhetorics.  Yet, he is able to narrow his discussion to strategy and method.  He considers, “The focus is on what scholars working taxonomically and employing rhetorical perspectives ranging from Aristotelian principles to Afrocentric conceptions have made of oratory by those of African descent in the United States” (1-2).  Still, he recommends other resources for those who want to take this discussion further such as Language, Communication, and Rhetoric in Black America (A. Smith, 1972); Rappin’ and Stylin’ Out (Thomas Kochman, 1972); and African American Communication (Michael Hecht, 1993).

 

Gilyard reaches back to the nineteenth century African American rhetorical tradition and offers examples from the 1850’s and 1860’s by way of Frederick Douglass and Charles Langston, with recognition of 1890 anthologies by E. M. Brawley.  Greater still is his mention of Carter G. Woodson’s Negro Orators and Their Orations, which is “the first standard reference work on African American rhetoric” (1925); this shows a continuity that led to the publishing of the current project, African American Rhetoric(s).  With historical analysis of “occasional speeches” and “pulpit orations” of Blacks, Gilyard identifies C. G. Woodson’s focus of the major contributors such as Peter Williams, James Forten, John Willis Menard, James Mercer Langston, Ida B Wells-Barnett, William Monroe Trotter, James Weldon Johnson, Mordecai Johnson, Archibald Grimke’, Absalom Jones, William Wells Brown, and others of the nineteenth and early twentieth century.    But it is noted, “Woodson was a historian by training; thus, he attempts little in the way of technical or structural analysis of the speeches themselves” (3).

 

In addition, Woodson also acknowledged the religious oratory was very important to the African American rhetorical tradition.  Drawing faith and communal understanding, “millions of Blacks came to comprehend and speculate about the social world of which they were part. . . . Therefore, the study of Black pulpit oratory as well as scholarly treatment of the Black church in general are necessary components of research in African American public discourse” (4).  Works such as William Pipe’s Say Amen, Brother! Old-Time Negro Preaching: A Study in American Frustration (1951/1992) illustrate this fact.  Although religious oratory was important to the Black community, Pipe’s views reflected the stereotypical perceptions of the rhetorical form and black preachers.  Gilyard insists Pipes’s views reflected “acceptance of stereotypes about “primitive” Africans who, restricted to the “jungles of Africa,” lacked opportunities to develop sophistication. Given his perspective, Pipes sees early Black religion as primarily an escapist adaptation to servitude” (5).  Gilyard believed that Pipes did not value the “rebellious” and “multilayered meanings” of the rhetorical form.

 

Gilyard asserts it was not until the groundbreaking work of Lowell Moseberry, An Historical Study of Negro Oratory in the United States to 1915 (1955), that African American rhetorics is able to move beyond the “cataloging” to the “rhetorical methods” of Black persuasion.  Moseberry argued “that while Black orators used the same degree of induction, deduction, and casual reasoning employed by White rhetors of similar training and educational levels, they made a distinct departure from Anglo-Saxon patterns of oratory in terms of pathetic proof and style (p. 147). Black orators relied on keen invective, humor, and distinct—what Moseberry was willing to call African—brands of rhythmic phrasing” (5-6).

 

Gilyard identifies groundbreaking moments in African American rhetoric:  “[Marcus] Boulware’s study,  The Oratory of Negro Leaders: 1900-1968 (1969),  is the first major historical treatment of African American rhetoric devoted exclusively to text of the twentieth century. . . . For Boulware, the mission of the Black orator invariably revolved around six goals: (1) to protest grievances, (2) to state complaints, (3) to demand rights, (4) to advocate racial cooperation, (5) to mold racial consciousness, and (6) to stimulate racial pride” (7).  Boulware juxtapose his “mission” against “the century’s six great American presidents—Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kenney, and Lyndon B. Johnson.”  The Boulware study appeared during the time of increased “African American political and cultural expressions” such as “civil rights protests,” “violent civil unrest,” “the Black Power movement,” and increased T.V. representation of blacks all of which was foreign to the dominant community.

 

Gilyard offers readers a survey of twentieth century African American rhetoricians and prominent texts and studies.  Haig and Hamida Bosmajian’s textbook, The Rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement (1969), which was published as a student textbook to allow students to analysis rhetorical strategies.  Robert Scott and Wayne Brockriede’s The Rhetoric of Black Power (1969) “presents civil rights and Black power discourse as integrally connected” (10).  Also present as an examples are Arthur Smith’s Rhetoric of Black Revolution (1969), The Voice of Black Rhetoric (1971), edited with Stephen Robb, Language, Communication, and Rhetoric in Black America (1972), and The Afrocentric Idea (1998).  Smith (a.k.a. Molefi Asante) and Robb’s The Voice of Black Rhetoric “describes the general characteristics of African American rhetoric considered historically” (12).

 

Noted is Geneva Smitherman’s Talkin and Testifyin: The Language of Black American (1977/1986).  “Although primarily considered a linguist, Smitherman is perhaps most responsible for popularizing the “Black Modes of Discourse,” vernacular conceptions that are invaluable with respect to rhetorical analysis” (14).  The modes are (1) call-response, a series of spontaneous interactions between speaker and listener; (2) signification, the art of humorous put downs; (3) tonal semantics, the conveying of meanings in Black discourse through specifically ethnic kinds of voice rhythms and vocal inflections; and (4) narrative sequencing, the habitual use of stories to explain and/or persuade.  “Smitherman (1995) alternately conceptualizes an African American Verbal Tradition (AAVT) the encompasses (1) signification, (2) personalization, (3) tonal semantics, and (4) sermonic tone” (15).  For example, Smitherman suggests that AAVT was at play during the Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill incident, and it made Thomas a “more sympathetic figure.”

 

Gilyard concludes his Aspects of African American Rhetoric as a Field by listing the “significant post-1970s treatments of African American rhetoric include David Howard-Pitney’s The Afro-American Jeremiad: Appeals for Justice in America (1990); Keith Miller’s Voice of Deliverance: The Language of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Its Sources (1992); Shirley Wilson Logan’s Pen and Voice: A Critical Anthology of Nineteenth-Century African-American Women (1995) and “We Are Coming”: The Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Black Women (1999); Bradford Stull’s Amid the Fall, Dreaming of Eden: Du Bois, King, Malcolm X, and Emancipatory Composition (1999); and Jacqueline Jones Royster’s Traces of a Stream: Literary and Social Change among African American Women (2000)” (15).

 

Keith Gilyard presented an array of African American rhetorical accomplishments, strategies, methods, publications, and cultural style that shows the richness of the rhetoric field.  “. . . Stylin’ is the notion that a speaker has combined rhythm, excitement, and enthusiasm which propel a message and the audience. . . . Improvisation is a stylistic device which is a verbal interplay, and strategic catharsis often resulting from the hostility and frustration of a white-dominated society.  It is spontaneity. . . . Storytelling . . . is often used by a rhetor to arouse epic memory. . . . Lyrical Code is the preservation of the word through a highly codified system of lexicality.  It is the very dynamic lyrical quality which provides youth to the community usage of standard and Black English” (17).   Elaine B. Richardson and Ronald L. Jackson, II’s African American Rhetoric(s) continues the tradition and conversation.

 

Bacon, Jacqueline. “What If I Am a Woman?: The Rhetoric of African American Female Abolitionists.” The Humblest May Stand Forth. Chapter 5.

 

Jacqueline Bacon outlined the struggles that African American Female Abolitionists experienced when championing the abolishment of slavery in the United States.  Not only does Bacon recognize the dual forces of racism and sexism which are at play against the African American female abolitionist, but she identifies the internal and external, public and private factors that mark the differences of the African American and white female abolitionists’ rhetorical interests as well as the distinctions between the African American male and female abolitionists’ rhetorical approaches for change.  It is through these many balancing acts that the African American female abolitionist embraces and, at times, demands her roles as crusader, mother, sister, and American.

 

Bacon illustrates the African American female’s antislavery rhetorical approaches by presenting the public and private practices of black women such as Sarah Remond, Barbara Ann Steward, Maria Stewart, Sarah Douglass, Frances Ellen Watkins, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Jacobs, who found avenues of activism through their writing and public addresses.  In addition to challenging the traditional antebellum gendered roles, African American females realized that they were not equal to their “fairer” sisters in the struggle.  While both white and black female abolitionists argued for their right to speak out against slavery in American, their aims and motives were different.

 

African American females spoke out against slavery with the understanding that black people must help their own though “self-help” practices.  Slavery was not only harmful to the one in bondage but threatened the safety of all free blacks, by hovering like a shadow waiting to take back liberties already fought for and won.  Black female abolitionists demanded the salvation of a people because slaves were no more than disposable cattle.

 

Even with this realization, Bacon suggested that white females opposed slavery not for its shameful practices against lesser humans and rights but, first, for its harmful representation of southern white women.  The Southern white female’s acceptance of slavery reflected negatively on the white female standard of True Womanhood, a racial and social measurement which African American women never measured up to, causing society to question the African American female’s right to speak and to be heard.  By applying the “muted group theory,” “the Burkeian model,” and the “outsider-within” perspective, Bacon claimed that African American female abolitionists were able to “reshape” the notion of the True Womanhood and their public identities as voices for a people.

 

Privately, African American female abolitionists received very little support from African American males.  Black male rhetoricians took offense to black females speaking in public, infringing upon the black male’s public identities as the speakers of the race and his social standing and environments.  Furthermore, white men publicly rebuked and questioned the African American abolitionists’ gender, suggesting they were less than women and had more speaking qualities and physical features of men.  Still, the African American female abolitionist gained strength through biblical interpretation and practices, allowing others to evaluate their own actions through higher moral purposes.

  

From this rhetorical evolutions and standpoints, the African American female abolitionists’ finally applied the notion of the “True Born Americans,” compelling others to question the God-given rights of the individual, as stated by Founding Fathers, and the country’s position on slavery.  No longer was the aim of African Americans to seek acceptance of the larger white populace and to acquire huge financial gains.  African American female abolitionists preached for “colored” community building.  Blacks were no longer asking for equal treatment, but they were demanding equal treatment granted to all American citizens by birthright.  Through rhetorical strategies, Bacon illustrated the maze of language usage and understanding that had to be navigated by the African American female abolitionists, while demanding the immediate end to slavery in the United States.

 

 

From Maria Stewart’s farewell address (Boston 1833) as she presents biblical examples of females of action.  She was addressing the “relevance” of biblical practices and “its validation of her public speaking”:

 

“What if I am a woman; is not the God of ancient times the God of these modern days?  Did he not raise up Deborah, to be a mother, and a judge in Israel [Judg. 4:4]?  Did not queen Esther save the lives of the Jews?  And Mary Magdalene first declare the resurrection of Christ from the dead?  Come, said the woman of Samaria, and see a man that hath told me all things that ever I did, is not this the Christ?” (MWS, 68).

CCR 751: Oratorical Culture in Nineteenth Century America (Ch. 5, pp.139-157).

  

Johnson, Nan. “The Popularization of Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric: Elocution and the Private Learner.”  Oratorical Culture in Nineteenth Century America. (Ch. 5, pp.139-157).

 

During the nineteenth-century, the rhetorical “academic tradition” stressed the well-educated citizen, the “man” most often trained in religion, law, and politics.  Rhetoricians defined “rhetoric as the art that contribute the most toward the proper working of the political process, the disposition of justice, and the maintenance of the public welfare and social conscience” (139).  From the use of composition and well defined oratory skills, the appropriate cultural norms of democracy, correct citizenry, and progression of the nation were maintained.

 

By the mid-century enrollments at colleges and universities and other formal education settings had increased.  Yet, there was a larger populace of “self-learners,” which did not go unnoticed by rhetoricians and publishing companies.  They recognized that “self-learners” would not have the same educational access, background, and knowledge of students within formal institutional settings.  Therefore, the push to publish texts that simplified major rhetorical concepts and theoretical thoughts of elocution that one would receive in higher education were produced for a wider distribution to the general public.  “Popular rhetoric manuals covered a range of topics, including speech making, composition, letter writing, public readings, and elocutionary entertainment” (141).

 

The elocution movement and its push for more oratorical skills was the most influential rhetorical form which tended to go beyond the “traditional arena of public address.”  Oratorical skills were thought to improve the individual in intellectual thoughts and social refinements.  Unlike traditional public speaking, proper oratorical skills included not just modulations of the voice but included correct body gestures, timing, emotional appeals, and recitations of “masterpieces” or other items of social interests, to produce a passionate response from the audience.  This moved public address beyond the institutions of learning into public spheres of businesses, social gatherings, and parlors.

 

Elocution was deemed to aid professional and personal advancements.  “Popular elocutionists also stressed that systematic study of natural expression would eradicate speaking defects that interfered with communication and created negative impressions on others” (147).  It was in the best interest for all “good” citizens to improve communication skills to become/remain socially accepted, thereby, producing an environment of isolation for those who did not conform to “proper” social graces and speech.  “No one is qualified to hold a respectable rank in a well-bred society, who is unable to read in an interesting manner, the works of other” ([1827] 1830, 13-14).  Within the nineteenth-century cultural climate, “well-bred” carried with it associations with higher intellectual and moral virtue” (150).  Oratorical skills were so important that public speaking events and the performance of speakers and an outline of their views were often published and critiqued in local newspapers.

 

To address the needs of the “Private Learner,” elocution texts were published in three instructional forms:

1. Cross-over manuals: used by both academic and private learners for more far-reaching concepts, such as philosophical issues, theories, comprehensive principles, and readings.  Still the manuals were less challenging that academic texts used in higher education.  Cross-over manuals were written to be understood and applied, yet they gave the private learners and students the same information without the use of a formal instructor.  Explanations of concepts were simplified.  These types of texts were published at the onset of public demand.
2. Elocution Speakers: More simplified version of delivery techniques, instructions, and reading selections than cross-over manuals.  A further reduction of concepts with exercises and practice readings for better public execution.  Little or no focus on philosophy and theories.  The texts were produced for wider distribution and marketing campaigns.
3. Elocution Reciters:  “Condensed” approach, with little or no instructions.  They were a collection of “practical” selections arranged for a given “occasion.”  If one wanted an address for Christmas, Easter, a business opening, social gatherings, picnic, etc., the reader could memorize the passage and present it at the function.  This more “practical” and “popular” usage texts marked the direct fall and decreased publication of “masterpiece selections.”  Reciters were performance based texts.  “Reciters were published in two forms, single volume anthologies (often reprinted) and in serials of monthly, quarterly, or annual issues” (155).

All three publication types imparted to the “average citizen”/learner the recommendations of “the study of elocution for its practical versatility and for insights into taste, the power of language, and the higher emotions that elocutionary and performance provides” (156).  Like the students of traditional learning sites, the private learners were expected to come away with communication skills that would set them apart and facilitate the correct social actions.

 

 

After reading this chapter, I noticed that there seems to be a direct correlation between the decline of philosophical, theoretical, and technical approaches of elocution (“more simplified”) and the publication and distribution increases of the different types of public address texts.  With each “watered-down” version of elocutionary approach texts, rhetorical instructions and masterpiece readings were sacrificed to meet the needs for widespread distribution for more “practical” and “popular” texts.  It stands to reason that wonderful examples of private and public communication skills found in Civil War letters and other nineteenth-century correspondence are silent or less evident at the turn of the twentieth-century.  Could this be a result of social needs versus marketing demands?  Is this another area/voice of social histories of “everyday” individuals that is lost?  Can language pattern changes and usage be considered social histories events?

Gail Stygall: Resisting Privilege: Basic Writing and Foucault’s Author Function

 

Stygall, Gail. “Resisting Privilege: Basic Writing and Foucault’s Author Function.”  CCC 45.3. Oct 1994.

 

Defining “Basic Writers” and “Basic Writing” are hard for professionals and laypeople in the field.  Whether it is “remedial,” “development,” “educational opportunity students,” or “basic”: requiring foundational or fundamental instruction in writing,” there is no one catch-all definition or term that signifies the Basic Writer and Basic Writing.

Gail Stygall contends that while professionals resist the “deficit theories of language” when considering enrollment trends in favor of the “temporary” enrollment “Wave Theory” (i.e. vets returning from war, economic advancement, displaced adults, etc.), the fact remains that basic writing courses are needed.  She argues the Michel Foucault’s “author function” will “organize the curriculum of English studies and define its proper object of study” (321).  Stygall suggests that basic writing facilitates the author function, regardless of the fact that literature may argue over the validity of the “author.”  She said, “If literature and its related author function remain opposed to non-literature, non-literary writers will always fall short or the English department’s highest value.  A master discourse that reveres one kind of authorship and dismisses all others is bound to affect those kinds of authorship counted among the “all others” category” (321).

Basic writing institutional practices and “inscribed” author function dominance work together, along with “educational discursive practices.”  “I mean by educational discursive practices are those activities and talk about education that we experience as natural, normal, inevitable, and unremarkable.  These are practices that we take for granted: one teacher for each classroom; the existence of classrooms and buildings . . .; grading and sorting students; separating students by age and grade level; dividing time into semesters and quarters; days into class periods; homework and all those other aspects of the daily life of education that we rarely question” (321-322).

Stygall offers two studies to demonstrate educational discursive practices:

Linda Brodkey studied correspondence between an Adult Basic Education class and a graduate class she was teaching, which “maintained asymmetrical power relations.”

Stygall studied correspondence in the form of comments and drafts between her graduate students (professional student teachers) and students enrolled in a basic writing course at Temple University (undergraduate students).

By presenting these studies, Stygall hoped to examine the processes of Foucault’s “author function,” as it relates to Basic Writing.

Stygall offers Foucault’s definition of an “author” in literary criticism:

The author provides the basis for explaining not only the presence of certain events in a work, but also their transformations, distortions, and diverse modifications (through his biography, the determination of his individual perspective, the analysis of his social position, and the revelation of his basic design).  The author is also the principle of a certain unity of writing—all differences having to be resolved, at least in part, by the principles of evolution, maturation, or influence.” 

The Foucault’s definition produces two versions of author function found in English departments:  1. Authors in the literary sense—Novelists.   2. Authors in the sense of discursive initiations—i.e. Marx, Freud, etc. (those whose work and schools of thought create discourse).

Foucault identifies four characteristics of the author function:

1. “First, when writing or authorship became property and thus operant within the law of property, writing offered the possibility of transgression, especially in “the form of an imperative peculiar to literature” (324). [Applied to Basic Writing, Stygall suggests that “apprentice writers” should be judged as doing “pseudo-writing.”  But this is not the case.  Apprentice writers’ errors are judged more harshly than published authors whose errors are overlooked.  Students receive negative feedback from instructors more readily and like deficiencies are identified by placement exams.  Students’ errors are evaluated as “transgressions.”]
2.  “Foucault’s second characteristic—the relative prominence a discourse gives authorship—places apprentice writers in an academic setting in which the author function has prominence. This prominence results in a principle of limitation operating for nonauthors.” [Applied to Basic Writing, Stygall implies that because students are labeled basic writers, there is no assumption of change or improvement.  When there is noted change in a student’s writing, the question of “plagiarism” arises.  Author function in traditional educational institutions limits basic writers.  Likewise, Stygall suggest that teachers within academics are under scrutiny to perform with set guidelines.  “Finding and keeping a “good job—that is, one on a tenure line—means publishing.  Tenure decisions often mean the application of the author function to scholarly writing” (324-325).] 
3. “Third, the pairing of an author to a particular discourse is not a simple matching; it is rather the social construction of a “certain rational being” (324).  [The writers’ identity as writers is out of their control.  If a teacher/reader finds the writing “unclear” or “lacks logic,” the student may be labeled a “non-literate” or “non-logical” writer.  This places the teacher in a position as final arbitrator, giving or taking away value of student’s writing.]
4. Finally, the author function allows readings that acknowledge several selves of the same author, framed by processes of “evolution, maturation, or influence” (324).  “Though some composition scholars have recently examined the notion of the “authentic self” or the unified voice in relation to ideology, the dominant approach has been to silence multivocality and to unify self-presentation in student’s texts.” . . . “These textual “qualities” also have value in maintaining the author function.  Valorizing [to assign value or merit to: validate] multivocality in works of literature has the effect of denying or banning its presences in works by non-authors: (325).

“Being declared a marginal writer as a first year college student is public and institutionally sanctioned.  Being declared marginal in a graduate English program—as a consequence of a declared interest in composition, an interest in the non-authors, as it were—is less public, less officially sanctioned, yet is just as powerful” (326).

Due to educational discursive practices, authority/teacher roles tend to remind basic writers of their deficit writing abilities, whether consciously or unconsciously.  Basic responders in the Stygall study self-identified as subjectively “poor writers” or “enrolled in basic writing as the natural order” and forced to serve out their repentance.  Still student recognized that they had less power when labeled basic writers.  Discursive practices lead to privileges which hold education up as a model for everyone, even though this is not the reality (327-332).

Author Function is reproduced with the training of composition professionals.  Graduate students, who teach basic writing, pattern the same author function principles that were imprinted upon them to their students, and they must do so if they want to keep their jobs in the institution/English department (335).  Still, Stygall noted some “slippage” or rebel teaching practices in her students that challenge discursive practices.

Stygall had hoped to use Foucault’s Author Function and identifies discursive practices to bring about change in Basic Writing.  She deems this goal unfulfilled.  She isolates changes that she will make to future research in this area, as well as offered recommendations,

The idea of authorship in English departments is constructed by the people who populate them.  We do not have to simply accept current practices, especially when those practices make it impossible for some student writers to escape the imposition of negative status.  By challenging the principles on which the author function rests, by exploring the lived experiences of our basic writing students, by agreeing to rethink our own positions, we can begin to resist the reinscription of power and collaboratively redefine the author (339). 

1. Basic writing is not a temporary issue, so institutions should stop “creating temporary faculty positions.
2. Recognizing One Group of Writers.  Composition faculty should not cause/support divisions between “regular” and “basic” writers.  By identifying one group of writers, there would be on need to assign only graduate students and part-time instructors to basic writers.  

Stygall summarizes,  “In examining the role of the author function in creating and regulating the positioning of basic writing in English departments, I hope to point us to the path of resistance, one in which we examine our representations of educational discursive practices” (340).

Carr, Carr, and Schultz: Archives of Instruction pp. 33-80

From the chapter “Reproducing Rhetorics” (pp. 33-80).  19th Century Rhetorics, Readers, and Composition books in the United States.

 

Early in the nineteenth-century (1800-1830), text on rhetorical theory and instruction were presented in U.S. editions of previously printed British editions.  The texts were not a clear reprinting of the British texts but were selective adaptations based upon the needs of local and regional geographical areas.  This was an attempt to meet the needs of education growth in a particular area.  There was no need for widespread publication of texts since school participation had not reached widespread importance.   No text at this time had a “national circulation,” but a number of British authors and their rhetorical contributions standout during this early time period.

 

Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres was the most noted forerunner of rhetorical instruction in the United States.  It was first that came close to a national circulation.  Still his text was not taken as a whole but was printed as selected editions and abridgements.  It was divided into five areas:  “the nature of taste ,” “consideration of language,” “style,” “eloquence” (“public speaking”), and “a critical examination of the most distinguishing species of composition” (34).  Blair presented his arguments in first person lectures and reflective narratives.  He also used teaching analogies related to the “primitive man” to make connection and present Latin, Greek, Russian, and Gaelic.  “Blair’s orientation allows him to understand language as a historical human creation subject to change” (35).  But unlike other authors of the time, he did not suppose a “divine origin of language” (36).

 

Others built upon Blair’s work, taking what they needed by way of extensions and rewrites.  Some author’s of interest are listed:  Eliphalet Pearson’s British Essays on Rhetoric was used at Harvard.  He rewrites Blair in Dr. Blair’s Essay on Rhetoric, dropping Blair’s first person lecture and reflections and includes “dogmatic rules and principles.”  George Campbell argued for a “pure and proper usage” of rhetoric.  “His principles codify and rationalize the linguistic grounds of national identity” (39).  He developed canons for implementation of usage.  Bendict Anderson called for “imagined community.”  Using “print-capitalism,” texts would facilitate social relationships, producing a national language and identity.  David Irving combines Blair and Campbell views.  Alexander Jamieson’s A Grammar of Rhetoric and Polite Literature was the first “rhetoric printed in the U.S. to number its sections” (43).

 

The first American authors of rhetoric were teachers of local institutions.  Prior to 1831, “Authorship and Modes of circulation” could be divided into three areas:

1.             Commemorative recognition: usually printed posthumously and only one edition.

2.            Compilation: catechistic nature; for local instruction use.

3.            Elocutionary:  (late 1820’s) was more personal projects and independent publications of authors.  Blending of rhetoric and elocution.

 

By 1831, catechistic text began to disappear.  Authors began to produce texts that presented rules, definitions, and writing exercises.  By mid-century commemorative and elocutionary instruction were widely published.  Compilation was still important in the U.S. because “some were still linked to local institutions and teachers and had only a limited circulation” (53).

 

1866-1900 saw a call for more “practical” textbooks.  Rhetorical texts now considered grade levels of its readers, reflecting “the paragraph as a unit of discourse,” and “scientific, philosophic, or historical descriptions” (62).  Users wanted instruction to address “principles with local or immediate occasions of writing.”  With this new focus, British Rhetorics began to decrease as new U.S. rhetorical publications increased.  Still British author Alexander Bain is of importance with the publication of English Composition and Rhetoric (1866).  “He organizes the second part of his book, “Kinds of Composition,” not by genres or occasions of writing by what will later become the “modes of discourse.”  He lists five “kinds”: description, narrative, exposition, persuasion, and poetry” (63).  These five modes are used in Composition course today.

 

By the end of the century, with the many transformations and publications of rhetorical texts, archives were needed to house the “historical” growth of the field.  “The earliest archives were official repositories or sites of institutional memory” (79).  Unlike today’s archives which tend to be more eclectic, the 19^th century archive’s “texts are ordered, through practices of compilation, as a series of reproductions, redistributions, and critical appropriations and in some cases appear only as the tedious monotony of simple repetition.”  Because the field was constantly evolving, no “static” generalizations of textbook publications may be made from the viewing of 19^th century archives.  Items were lost and/or not evaluated for future importance.  However, archives may hold items which may give a limited view of issues such as national identity, instructional transformations, and concerns of educational growth in the U.S.

 

 

The one question that keeps popping into my head:  Why is this historical account of textbook publications and the onset of archives important?  I think it is most important because we are able to trace the influence of British Rhetorical authors and their contribution to American Rhetorical authors,which relate not only a national rhetorical identity, but shows the growth and importance of academic learning in the United States and the need for archives.  Early inventors were able to piecewise their way through modes of discourse, wiriting instructions, and publication methods that may taken for granted today.  Readers today must realize that the field of Rhetoric was never “static” and went through great evolutions to arrive at the place we are at today.

Michel de Cereau’s Historiographical Operation

 

[This is roughly the first half of the document.] 

 

Michel de Certeau asserts that it is the historian’s job to make connection between ideas and places to arrive at understandings.  Places are systems of thoughts.  He said historical operations are a combination of “social place, scientific practices, and writing.”  He speaks of “the silent laws” that “organize the space produced as text.”  The recording of history does not happen by chance.  De Certeau points out that Michel Foucault “denies all reference” to the author and takes for granted theoretical place, where methods (laws) are formed. 

 

De Certeau shows the relationship between social places and knowledge.  It is the “depoliticization of intellectuals.”  Within social institutions, spaces are “reclassified.”  Social spaces, such as universities, are not removed but will become more isolated with like minded individuals away from general use, producing scientific places.  From this, further divisions within universities are created—its own schools, scientific language, and disciplines.  

 

He points out the same organization and division are represented in society and its “ideas,” which may produce an “overlapping” of ideas with different functions.  For example, “In this way a social change can be compared to a biological change in a human body: like the biological change, the social change forms a language which is proportioned to other types of language, such as verbal” (61-62).  Although there is overlapping, there is no cause and effect relationship between the different functions.  “Inversely, an ideological discourse is proportioned to a social order, just as every individual utterance is produced in relation to silent organizations of the body” (62).  Each part works independently of the other, following its own laws for the good of the whole.

 

“In history every “doctrine” which represses its relation to society must be regarded as abstract.  It denies the very matter with respect to which it is elaborated” (62).

 

When considering historical discourse, one must take into account the “centralized” and “stratified” institutions, and “the weak influence of Marxist theory” (62).  Jurgen Haberman argued for a “repoliticization” of human sciences and development of “critical theory.”

 

“What is a “valued work” in history?  It is a work recognized as such by peers, a work that can situated within an operative set, a work that represents some progress in respect to the current status of historical “objects” and methods, and one that, bound to the milieu in which it has been elaborated, in turn makes new research possible.  The historical book or article is together a result and symptom of the group which functions as a laboratory.  Akin to a car produced by a factory, the historical study is bound to the complex of a specific and collective fabrication more than it is the effect merely of a personal philosophy or the resurgence of past “reality.”  It is the product of a place”(64).

 

“Making History” is a practice (69).  At one time, any thing in connection with history that did not utilize only its spoken form was considered “auxiliary science” such as “epigraphy, papyrology, paleography, dimplomatics, codicology, etc.; today, musicology, “folklorism,” computer science, etc. “History would only being with the “noble speech” of interpretation” (69).  De Ceteau suggests that histories must change and reflect its society.  It should never be a reflection of “an unchanged institution.”

 

“A strange phenomenon in contemporary historiography must be observed.  The historian is no longer a person who shapes an empire.  He or she no longer envisages the paradise of a global history.  The historian comes to circulate around acquired rationalizations.  He or she works in the margins.  In this respect the historian becomes a prowler.  In a society gifted at generalization, endowed with powerful centralizing strategies, the historian moves in the direction of the frontiers of great regions already exploited.  He  or she “deviates” by going back to sorcery, madness, festival, popular literature, the forgotten world of the peasant, Occitania, etc., all these zones of silence” (79).

 

“A brief study of historical practice seems to allow three connected aspects to be specified:  the mutation of “meaning” or the “real” in the production of significant deviations; the position of a particular event as a limit of what can be thought; and the composition of a place which establishes with present time the ambivalent figuration of the past and future” (83).