chapter 5/6 post

I have been thinking about the class as a whole and the things I have learned. There has been a lot from Cicero to Aristotle to feminist rhetoric. The information is there but I am struggling with the ideas of how to use it? And why? The answer was presented to me in chapter 5 of Feminist Rhetorical Practices. Critical imagination is the title of the chapter. To properly study rhetoric you must use critical imagination according to Kirsch. Kirsch goes onto say on page 72, “We go back and forth between past and present, their worlds and ours, their priorities and our own… It connects both us as scholars and the women as rhetorical subjects to the future.”  Kirsch is specifically talking about feminist rhetoric in the future but I think this quote relates best to our class.

When we study the past we constantly try to connect what we learned from the past to the present. This is a great thing according to the quote by Kirsch and it is exactly what Kirsch wants from us as rhetoricians as the future. Some of the theories and techniques used by the classical rhetoricians do not coincide with the present. For example Plato not believing in rhetoric in writing, now rhetoric in writing is prevalent. Another example could be the memory aspect of oratory. But now with projectors you can look at the audience and read of the screen at the same time, like the president. Memory is not as important as it used to be. As future rhetoricians we must look to the past and be able to morph it into rhetoric relevant to our audience or us.

I want to study rhetoric specifically in writing. That is why I signed up for the class. At first I struggled because of the focus mainly on oratory. According to Kirsch I must understand rhetoricians in the past, so I can critique their techniques and lessons now, so in the future I can properly influence rhetoric. Feminist rhetoric, in my opinion is the best example of this. Women were not being taken seriously at the beginnings of feminism. The techniques a man used in rhetoric was not necessarily a technique that would work for women. Women had to come up with their own techniques such as, “ to actually use tension, conflicts, balances, and counterbalances.” (Kirsch 72) Feminist had to take what they learned from classical rhetoricians, form their own version, and then they had to change the world. Just like we are challenged by Kirsch to change the world with our rhetoric.