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Where am I in relation to all of this?

A Reflection on Stories:

Rhetoric Theory and History

Reflection

Coming into this class, my understanding of rhetoric was based primarily on George Kennedy’s Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction from a global rhetorics writing course I took as an undergraduate. And, while this work gave me some context of rhetorics among social animals, Aboriginal Australian, Ancient Chinese, Indian, and Greco-Roman cultures, it only surfaced the depth that I’ve come to understand rhetoric encompasses.

To quote from Powell, Levy, Riley-Mukavetz, Brooks-Gillies, Novotny, and Fisch-Ferguson’s (2014) article, “Our Story Begins Here: Constellating Cultural Rhetorics,” in Enculturation, “‘rhetorics refers both to the study of meaning-making systems and to the practices that constitute those systems.” This definition situates the patterns we practiced in WRA 805, Rhetoric Theory and History: how do previous stories shape the world, why did/do these stories shape the world in the way that they did/do? and, what new stories can be written?

*stories for the purposes of this reflection embrace:

historiographies
prominent thinkers’ perspectives
less known and unknown voices’ tales
religious views
philosophical questioning and reasoning
geographical placement
poetry, songs, narratives
material and land creations

Beginning: Historiographies

We began with pieces such as “The Truth About Stories” by Thomas King and “Stories Take Place: A Performance in One Act” by Malea Powell, which expose the power of storytelling: its shear ability to create, frame, and forward individuals’ thinking.

Through the historiography section, meaning-making was done with evaluative work. We read pieces, such as:

Berlin “Revisionary Histories of Rhetoric”
De Certeau The Writing of History
Foucault The Archaeology of Knowledge

And, we evaluated by asking:

How the authors were arguing?
What’s being said?
What is important to history from the work?
And, a rhetorical analysis of the form / structure of the text itself (how the authors were saying what they were saying)

I use “we” to refer to the class as a whole because it was not just myself evaluating and processing in an isolated environment. To quite the contrary, the weekly writings and discussions involved all participants in a high level of concentrated inquiry into the historiography that was staring us in the face.

My personal qualms with the beginning few weeks of our class were about the grandiose word, “truth.” I wanted an absolute. This is rhetoric. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. This is how you persuade. Use these rules and you will be successful. These are the people who were successful. Be like them. Be successful too. But, as my individual investigation continued, it became clearer and clearer to me that the voice(s) that claim “truth” as an absolute are those who work within their own binaries, their own hierarchies, their own stories of limitation. Was I one of those people? Yes. Did I want to be? No.

The Middle: “The West”

From a couple weeks into the semester until about half way through, we dove into the Western Rhetorics, famously accounted for as being “rhetoric” and a founding contributor to the discipline of present day Rhetoric and Composition studies. Sure, plenty of ethos can be given to this category of Western rhetorics.

We read “classical rhetoricians” and other well known voices, such as:

Aristotle’s On Rhetoric and Nichomachean Ethics
Augustine’s The Genuine Teachers of This Art
Isocrates’ Against the Sophists
Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric & Belles Lettres

We asked questions, some similar to our earlier thoughts, such as:

What’s argument?
How are the authors making their argument?

How’re they doing what they’re doing?
What world is this argument making?

And, I started to see how my tinted lenses had been shaped to see with perfectionistic binaries and hierarchies based on my cultural upbringing in Western beliefs: good vs. bad, beauty vs. ugly, success vs. failure, strength vs. weakness, power vs. poverty.

I saw, with anger at first, how these ancient beliefs still hinder societies into conformist nations, instead of communal and inclusive places. Yet, this structure was done out of intellect, whether we deem this “good” or “bad,” the human desire to categorize is in its very own right meaning making, which, if anything, has given us one method of discovery and method of relating to a larger audience to be used in future work, years, decades, centuries. I cannot be angry at these Western binaries and hierarchies in the way I was originally because I don’t know life without them. I don’t know what life would feel like, look like, work like. From these readings, discussions, and writing responses, what I do know is that this is not where we, collective group of students and I believe many scholars from the Octalogs in the field of Rhetoric / Composition, want our stories to explore and develop into.

The New Beginning: But, is it really?

Mignolo/ De Certeau, Indigenous North America,

Middle East / Africa / African American

This new beginning has been in the process of the Rhetoric / Composition field for several years as the field in the second and third Octalogs began to not only recognize a need for the voices in the field that were not yet “known,” but also began to incorporate these voices to make the field fuller, more alive. (Of course, outside of the Octalogs the field has stretched into many more voices, rhetorics, and stories throughout its several decades as a field).

We read a lot throughout these three sections. Therefore a scattering of each consists of:

Mignolo/ De Certeau:

Mignolo’s Local Histories / Global Designs and The Darker Side of Western Modernity
De Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life

Indigenous North America

The Great Binding Law, Gayanashagowa
Website of the Haudensaunee Confederacy
Story of the Peacemaker & The Great Tree of Peace
Bonnin’s Why I Am A Pagan
Deloria’s “Four Thousand Invitations”
Stanciu’s “An Indian Woman of Many Hats: Laura Cornelius Kellogg’s Embattled Search for an Indigenous Voice
Driskill’s “Indian in the Archive: Performance Historiography A Cherokee Ghost Dance”

Middle East/ Africa / African American

Ridolfo’s “Judah Messer Leon and the Sefer Nofet Zuphim”
Lipson’s “Ancient Egyptian Rhetoric”
Diab’s “Revisiting Arab-Islamic Rhetoric: The Constitution of Medina and Human Rights Discourse in the 7th Century”
Pough’s “It’s Bigger than Comp/Rhet: Contested and Undisciplined”
Smitherman’s “African-American English: From the Hood to the Amen Corner”
Royster’s “When the First Voice You Hear is Not Your Own”
Jackson’s “Afrocentricity as Metatheory: A Dialogic Exploration of Its Principles”

While venturing through the meanings of these texts, we grappled for answers or at least thoughts about:

How did the author of the secondary source create a view of the primary information?
What practice is being performed? What is the orientation, vocabulary, method (methodology), and “makings” that are occurring?
How do we demythologize the spaces and real and imagined people that fit into these spaces? How do we demythologize the consequences of these spaces and people?
How does one go about creating this type of work? Where does one start to learn and practice? How does one study?
How is land a story?

Unpacking these questions led to answers about personal connections as African American authors told their unique narratives about being listened to or being unheard, Native Americans stated their sophisticated sovereignty, which has been recurring for centuries, Egyptian canon and practices are acknowledged for their ancient influence and power, and Jewish meaning making are seen as stemming from religious studies and cultural normalities. In addition, we considered who was authoring the text for primary voices on rhetorical practice. For it is not more valuable if a primary voice speaks about their experiences and culture, but those who do not adequately invest in digging into the depths of cultures, practices, beliefs, and theory of spaces they are not members of must be viewed with a selective response; knowing, truly knowing, we learned comes from meeting a maker, making, reading, doing all of the activities that the maker tells you to do, accumulating and constellating and checking back with the maker to see how one’s inquiry is digesting.

As this reflection gallops onto a fourth page of thoughts and lists, I reign back my impulse to my own beating heart in this story of complexity, years of work, navigating voices, and placement within this limited time and space we all have.

Conclusion

This class may come to a closure, but for me inquiring into the cultural surroundings and stories that make up those surroundings is freshly new. While my Western gaze is still where I physically come from, through the readings, discussions, and writing responses I have been exposed to so many more dimensions to what rhetoric means. What theory means. What history means. If rhetoric is “‘the study of meaning-making systems and to the practices that constitute those systems,” then theory might be considered the “practices” within the quote. History might be the systems within that quote. Or, the two can be reversed. Even without a clear definition, I can be comfortable. For, defining isn’t everything. Categorizing isn’t everything. The stories will still be there whether they are written, unwritten, visible, invisible. And, I can be comfortable exactly where I am with my eyes and heart a little more open than when class started. When, I didn’t know these stories. When, I didn’t have these theories and histories to look back upon and revisit as now old friends, instead of brand spanking new ones. This is where I’m situated.

This is where I’m related to all of this.

These stories are now a part of my story.

I know they are there.

They are a part of me.