As I started thinking about this post, I couldn't help but thinking that rhetoric is shaped by eliteness and power. This seems inescapable to me and also Royce. She states that "interpretative communities have to be persuaded" if they are going to change current social hierarchies. It is not so much that we show people how something else is important, but we show them why it is important for them specifically. If we have to persuade a person of a feminist rhetoric, that seems to automatically imply that this rhetoric has to have a level of power in order to be accepted. I can't remember who said it but some rhetor said something like, "Rhetoric is not about making people understand a concept, it is about making that person accept that concept." This where persuasion comes in. Now the question I have is whether or not society is framing the rhetoric or if rhetoric is framing the society? Royce says that "traditional habits develop from social agreements and continuities" (164). This seems to imply that we learn our rhetoric and way of being through the society and through its influences. What she then wants to change is the society's core structure itself, currently one that has been dominated by a white, male, Western rhetoric. However, I have an opinion that rhetoric is shaped by the actions themselves, not the transfer of thought that occurs after this action. For example, the stand of Rosa Parks started a movement and spurred the rhetoric of civil rights movement. There was an undercurrent of thought and ideas that had moved underground throughout this time, but it was the action itself that spurred the movement. Just the same with digital rhetoric. It was the advent of the internet that brought about the necessity for globalization and the push towards a more dynamic rhetoric. This rhetoric had lain underground throughout this time, with the ideas of feminists and kairotic rhetors but it needed the push from a physical action in order for them to be realized. What I'm trying to get at here is that rhetoric is still determined by what has current societal power. What we accept is based off of what we need as individuals to relate in a society, stay relevant and have a certain amount of societal standing. I just started using the change from he-to-she in my own writing and the reason I did this was because I just found out that this is what is now socially acceptable. Previously I had always considered that since I am a male writer, the third person subject would be in the male voice. Not so now. I see the importance of shaping my writing in both a male and female voice, mainly because this is the new value. Nowadays even this notion of he and she is being considered outdated with issues of gender relation and transgender. It's hard to keep up, but in order for our rhetoric to be considered, it is becoming more and more important that it is also socially relevant.
As I wrote this first paragraph I realized that I kind of disproved my original statement saying that the society precedes the rhetor. Rosa Parks was a part of a minority rhetoric and this rhetoric influenced her thought into saying that she wouldn't move her place. At the same time, the popularity of minority rhetoric was expanded outside of that minority when she did do the action. What we value then seems to be a result of the action itself, the physical activity that shapes our conception and affects us through experience. This experience seems to be the important part and the main focus behind Royce's idea of persuasion. Going back to the original idea of elitism, I still can't help but feel that what is valued and will always be valued is what is currently meaningful to society as a whole. Meanwhile, our current rhetoric is becoming outdated by the second and what will be valued tomorrow is what is being talked about today. There are a variety of ideas floating around out there, but it seems to take a general consensus to make that push and that push comes from personal relevance and experience. After all this, I think I am more confused than before.
It's interesting that you bring the power element into the discussion. We assume that because we are white males, that rhetoric should look a certain way. But what would the landscape of writing and rhetoric look like if the predominant white male position wasn't the predominant position? What we think of classical literature... Would it look the same? Would it even be recognizable?
ReplyDeleteI think this is an important question to bring into the mix because it's the very nature of the question that we wrestle with, today, as we strive to marry technological advances with the rediscovered and recognized writings of the past, from any of the myriad of minority groups.