I am semi-puzzled between the discussion that we had in class on Thursday, and Jackie's article "Disciplinary Landscaping, or Contemporary Challenges in the History of Rhetoric." As I understand now, Jackie and Gesa are looking to include women in the rhetorical tradition by recovering lost texts. They seek to discover these women's rhetorical theories in order to enhance the field of rhetoric. They want to not only include western women, but they want to globalize this project to include women's texts around the world.
I asked this question in class on Thursday: "Are they finding a goldmine of rhetoricians globally?"
Kate answered: "It depends on your definition of rhetoric."
Does it? Does it really? I feel like that was a very short answer to a really important question.
Throughout the semester, we have been studying these texts that mostly argued about the same things: eloquence, the cannons, ethos, logos, pathos. I was led to believe that this is what rhetoric is, because that is what we studied the vast majority of the semester in a Rhetorical Theory class.
Then we studied a few people who did not write about rhetorical issues. They wrote about slavery, women's rights, etc. So I tried to examine how these people were using eloquence, cannons, ethos, logos, and pathos, because I thought that was the purpose of reading it for this class. But when does this stuff stop being rhetoric? Is t when the author is no longer trying to persuade someone? Is it when the subject matter is not about cannons or eloquence? It seems to me like Jackie and Gesa want rhetoric to be an extremely inclusive field, possibly to the point where absolutely any words ever written or spoken are rhetoric. Maybe even body language?
I'm struggling with this concept.
I've had the same problem through the semester--what exactly is rhetoric? I've been wanting to come across a pretty definition tied up in a bow, but that hasn't really happened. Even within our readings that were directly discussing rhetoric, each author had a different definition of what rhetoric is. And then as you point out, we have authors that aren't talking about rhetoric, but of other subjects. But if that is rhetoric, then what else is? Can any writing and/or speech be considered rhetoric? It's hard to know where to draw the line.
ReplyDeleteTo some extent the answer I've been getting is that the definition of rhetoric varies according to person. Which is fine, but then I have trouble expanding 'individual definition' into an entire field. To have a field, don't you need to have at least a semi-unified definition of what it is you're studying? This is the reason that I don't quite understand why 'rhetoric' and 'feminist rhetoric' are somewhat different fields--shouldn't they just be branches in the same area of study? I don't think I have any answers for you--just more questions.
I think it's safe to assume that there can be found rhetoric in any discourse. If we stop thinking about rhetoric as something that can be easily qualified, perhaps it becomes more clear? (question mark was intentional) Think about other disciplines, like philosophy, for example. We can think about and try to understand the nature of anything, and so the borders of philosophy must be flexible. If not, then what does that say about disciplines that seem rather concrete and easily definable, like physics. Did you know that time stops at the speed of light? How do we think about a concept like that? We need to be able to philosophize. After that, we need to find rhetorical methods of communicating it to others.
ReplyDeleteI say, embrace the confusion and make Rhetorics what you need it to be. If it helps, maybe think of it as *a way of understanding how language is/has been/can be used* (I think that might actually be one of the definitions we've read).