A Changing Tradition

The word tradition typically comes with the definition of passing on the same values and acts to one generation to another, yet Royster and Kirsch challenge this by demanding that other minorities and groups are represented in the rhetorical tradition. It seems problematic to have a tradition that is constantly changing and adaptable because it seems unstable, yet in academia as well as in a historical society tradition is constantly moving. Royster writes in "Discplinary Landscaping, or Contemporary Challenges in the History of Rhetoric" that, "whatever we currently know about rhetorical history as a disciplinary landscape is situated on a larger terrain of developed and undeveloped possibilities" (148). The metaphor of rhetoric being a landscape is continued on throughout both her article and her co-authored book. Although it encompasses the lack of understanding of the great mass of rhetoric, it appears to be create a strange dissonance. Thus, there needs to be a new call in language. Tradition seems to no longer fully embody everything that rhetoric can or cannot be. In literature studies they use the word "canon" to represent the Western male-dominated of texts, rhetoric needs a new word that more appropriately encompasses the mass of studies in discourse and rhetoric.

Royster goes on to state, "Because we have richly endowed traditions and highly entrenched habits in rhetorical studies that inevitably engender a certain amount of intolerance for change, another challenge is whether we can actually build a higher tolerance for dramatic change, kaleidoscopic vision, and philharmonic interactions" (166). I think the time has come as a discipline to rise to this challenge. Although feminist rhetorics has risen over the last decade, as well as the representation of other minorities the language used to describe it is still oppressive. By being outside of the tradition although still rhetoric still creates a hierarchy as well as binaries that weaken the rhetoric found in these new spaces.

Coming into this class, we had a shallow definition of what rhetoric was. This is the space to recreate that definition in order to encompass the complexity of meanings and find language that will be all-encompassing rather than situated in a tradition or outside of it.

Feminist Retorical Practices as they relate to Patrick

I think that it was Merlin who first posited the question at the beginning of the semester about "How does this [feminist rhetoric] relate to me?"  At the time I wasn't sure how to answer that question.  The easy answer would be to say that "it all matters." 

I have to think of my reality, though.  That reality is that I am a semi-privileged white male who grew up reading the likes of Stephen King and Tom Clancy.  I had nothing against female authors but it wasn't my style...  How does this relate to me?

What Royster and Kirsch have done is to gently reintroduce feminist rhetoric back into mainstream.  I like that they gently do this because again, in my position I think that I sometimes feel that when any group who isn't mainstream tries to introduce themselves into the mainstream they sometimes do so in such a forceful way that it almost turns me off to whatever it is "they are selling."

More than that through the course we have managed to sum up what Royster and Kirsch did in the conclusion by realizing that without feminist rhetoric we aren't seeing the full and complete picture.  There are so many new and varied types of rhetoric that are unfolding as both technology advances and history catches up.  As Royster and Kirsch put it, by reintroducing women to the mainstream we are realizing the many ways in which rhetoric can exist and flourish.

How does this relate to me?  I just finished up interviewing people who are homeless for my capstone project and I might ask myself the same question.  I think the answer is that without all the myriad ways in which a story can be told, we'll never have the full and complete picture of what it means to understand rhetoric and in doing so, we lose valuable writing along the way...

Royster's Landscape

"The challenge is to be adventurous enough in our thinking to take a different path, to find a different viewpoint, and to critique the terms of engagement so that a different sense of the landscape can be made visible, can be deemed valuable, and can become instructive in the re-en-visioning of what constitutes knowledge" (Royster 14).

Suddenly that quote that's been sitting on our website since the beginning of this class makes so much more sense. Wading through the style of the language that Royster uses is still a bit hard in some spots, but I think I've grasped her concept of using landscape as a metaphor about repositioning the way we look at rhetoric - at least, in the way I've interpreted it which is to mean, basically, going back over the landscape to take a closer look at things and find ones that we've missed.

A large section of this actually reminds me of how Patrick (I think?) was thinking of framing his critical discussion - by re-examining time periods that focus on male rhetoric and doing more research on the women rhetors of those eras (I think - Patrick, correct me if I'm wrong but that was the gist I got from your explanation). I particularly thought about that while reading the part detailing Enheduanna and her works. I feel like priestesses are a good place to start when re-examining the landscape of the impact of women in rhetoric because of their elevated status in ancient societies. This is almost a side note, but I'd love to look at the rhetoric of women who were wives to famous authors (only because that's where my focus lies) in the late 1800's, early 1900's because they usually are pushed out of the limelight, achievement wise.

Relevance and Revelations

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.

Hope and Care... and Confusion

It is clear that Rhetorics is a changing discipline. Royster and Kirsch want to infuse hope and care along with those changes -- infusing them into a field not formerly known to take care or seek hope. It doesn't seem to be only Rhetorics experiencing this change. Though I have no valid sources at this point, I do hear hints. My mom is studying for her LAC and tells me all the time of how the world of Psychology is beginning to look to new and different ways to understand mental illness, emotions, and the individual. I hear whispers of viewing the Universe as "alive" in Quantum Physics. Hope and Care.... and confusion.

I think whenever any discipline changes the way it performs, especially when the very behaviors being changed are now set in the cold granite of longstanding tradition, the result can feel too much akin to chaos. First, there are those within the changing landscape that struggle in fear of losing their validity (in Rhetorics, ethos is essential). Then, there are those emerging prodigies initiating the change that find themselves suddenly overwhelmed with the responsibilities of a budding new way of doing things, and the undeserved disdain of their elder peers. And more, there are those fledglings barely finding their ways into the discipline that wonder if they are the rope for some political tug-of-war they had no desire to partake in. Most of this occurs in whispers in private correspondences or the darkened shadows of office water coolers or other such places normally unoccupied by all the players, where whispers are allowed to go unnoticed. This, though it sucks, is natural. It is part of the process of change.

The prize, when the pendulum slows, will be a discipline that actively seeks the comfort of hope and care. A discipline that will offer the Rhetor opportunities to “take the time… to think consciously about [their] work in its wholeness…” (139). A discipline that engages the practitioner to see how “knowledge is fluid” when we “pay attention to the ways that ideas travel in order for us to become more consciously aware of patterns of intellectual and social engagement” (138). A discipline that seeks “to broaden and deepen our sense of what constitutes […] rhetorical performance […] to add texture and vibrancy to the methodologies that we are using in the field…” (138). A discipline that strives “to stretch the boundaries of our thinking and our capacity to see more, to see differently, and to be better positioned to interpret more adequately…” (137).

Questioning Rhetoric

The last chapter and the Royster article were very directed toward questions; questions about how to expand rhetoric, in which places to look, about how to reexamine our methodology of studying rhetorical situations, etc. The obvious question that Royster and Kirsch are trying to overcome is “What’s wrong with rhetorical practices as they are now? Why does it need to be changed?” And the main answer for skeptics (other than the fact that there is a major problem with the male, white, elite paradigm of rhetorical theory) is the last line of the book: “The inevitable conclusion is that the work continues” (151). This quote kind of has a dualistic meaning: Rhetorical theory must be changed because scholars are trying to defend their jobs and create security, and also that scholars must continue to tackle the challenging fact that there is an infinite amount of sources for rhetorical study, and so there is always work to be done. 

The biggest problem for me about these last chapters is that very conclusion: it opens the definition of rhetoric and its objects of study so much that we can consider anything studyable, everything is game. When this happens, how do we determine what is best to study? How do we determine what is the right thing to study over another thing? Why is it better to do study the rhetoric of women rather than the rhetoric of ethnic-minority speakers or the rhetoric of the Internet? What should matter to us?

I do like that feminist rhetoric attempts to expand our knowledge of rhetoric, and challenge it in new ways, however, with the idea of “inclusion” I believe that you can still fall into a trap of excluding different groups. Basically, trying to include certain members is not only broadening the canon, but redefinining it to a specific set of people. By only focusing on women, you exclude the idea that many male contemporaries may be using feminist styles, or exclude underdeveloped theory within more diverse parts of the world.

I guess my problem with “feminist rhetorical practices” is the idea that it is separate from any other kind of rhetorical study. By doing feminist rhetoric, it almost makes it seem as if you are taking a side – focusing more on giving blame on a specific group rather than working as hard as you can to make those big changes that will benefit women and the greater society as a whole, and letting go of the fact that rhetoric has been dominated by the male elite. For some reason, it feels like feminist rhetoric wants to disown all the work that has been done by those male scholars in order to further rhetorical theory. That’s probably just my reading of it. I do, however, realize that the main thing this book is trying to do (which probably differs from studies done using feminist rhetorical practices) is make that general assertion that it is time for change, and that it is time to focus on new territories rather than the same old male dominated public speaking sphere.

Some Thoughts on "Disciplinary Landscapes"

"Further, how do we bring such an understanding to bear in an academic domain such as rhetorical history where there is a deeply entrenched habit of standing in one place (that is, in territories deemed Western), shaping inquiries with a particular set of interests in mind (for example, the desires and experiences of elite males), and interestingly disregarding some features even within its own scope (for example, the desires and experiences of women or people from non-elite classes)?" (Disciplinary Landscapes)

Quite honestly, I'm confused at the almost hostile tone Royster takes against 'male' and 'western' rhetoric. On a broad scale, I understand and agree with what Royster is trying to argue--as a general rule, shouldn't any discipline expand its study as far as possible and question what is considered 'standard'? That said, I don't think that it negates the contributions of classical rhetoricians (who yes, by and large, were male).

The problem I have with Royster is that it appears to me that her focus is just as narrow as the traditional rhetorical studies/history that she is denouncing in this article. We touched on Thursday that even feminist rhetoric is mainly focused on 19th century American women's rhetoric. I guess I don't understand why the field has yet to expand to include, say, modern Chinese rhetoric, or 18th century women's writing in Ghana. And at the same time, I don't see anything wrong with wanting to study classical rhetoric.

I understand that a single person can't study everything within a discipline. And Jacqueline Royster's overall argument in 'Disciplinary Landscapes' is to call for a wider focus of study within the field. I just think that there is a happy medium here--we don't have to completely ignore classical or male rhetoricians just because they have been previously studied, and we don't have to never expand beyond them because it is simply the status quo.