Cultural Rhetorics

There is a particular urgency in this political moment to understand children's experiences with current events. Drawing from data generated following the 2016 presidential election, this paper focuses on three racially and linguistically diverse children's persuasive compositions. Within a critical literacies writing unit focused on (im)migrant experiences, children called on legislators to act on the Republican administration's policies. Building on the understanding that all literacies are political and that teaching and learning are value-laden tasks, the author engaged a cultural rhetorics orientation-grounded in the understanding of texts, bodies, materials, and ideas as interconnected aspects of communication-for data generation and analysis. The findings highlight how children strategically employed rhetoric to persuade. They used logos, pathos, and ethos, as well as story, a central tool for meaning-making and building practices in the world. Ultimately, this study demonstrates how children, when properly supported, can agentively participate in critical literacies and act on real-world politics. Through the stories of young children, this study emphasizes what children have to tell adults and what a cultural rhetorics orientation, through its emphasis on story, enables literacies researchers and educators to understand about children's composing.

This Foreword, about robots, written in both poetry as well as prose, introduces the edited collection _Androids, Cyborgs, and Robots in Contemporary Culture and Society_, edited by Steven J. Thompson (IGI Global, 2018). The link on the thumbnail cover at
https://www.igi-global.com/book/_/179222 will take you directly to the published Foreword, which is open access. The attached PDF, sent directly to me from IGI-Global to use here, is presented with written permission of the publisher.

Life in a Saamaka village is surrounded by rules, from trivial activities such as harvesting fruits to the most formal of public meetings, everything has to be done in the right way, “the way we are used to”. However, these rules seem to be constantly under discussion, there are frequent arguments about which are the rules and how to apply them to each situation. This chapter takes a look at Saamaka politics, trying to understand how deadlocks concerning rules are overcome and how consensus is reached. The main ethnographic are from funerary rituals, activities in which a proper conduct is most important, and thus rules are taken particularly seriously. Brief descriptions of the hierarchy of political offices in Saamaka and the rhetorics in the kuutu (council meetings) will be necessary, in order to understand how authority is conceived and performed, and how rules are established by transforming relationships with the past. The closing arguments contest the recurring description of Maroon polities as “states within a state” and present an alternative approach that takes further into account both Saamaka political philosophy and its inherent relationship with their own style of life.

Typography reflects and expresses culture, and the limits we place on the use of type may reflect the limits we intend to place on our culture, including who is allowed to participate in it and in what way. An examination of typography critiques of “bad” typefaces often reveals the cultural biases and beliefs of the critic. Descriptions of type “character” tend to reflect the character of the critic, audience, or user, rather than the type itself. The use of “bad” type may also be a tactical form of resistance to power (de Certeau, 1984), visually conveying its intended audience or speaking back to assumptions about the message or author. Examples of “bad” type as tactical resistance include church bulletins; Comic Sans printed “I Can’t Breathe” shirts protesting police brutality against communities of color; and the website for a family-owned medical body donation service.

The United States has long grappled with the question of how to maintain an appropriate combination of religion and politics in the public sphere. The current electoral cycle is no different, as Presidential candidates attempt to negotiate both the political and religious landscapes. This essay introduces a special forum on rhetoric and religion in contemporary politics and touches on some recent instances of how religious differences have played out in the current political environment. Some of the issues discussed include the separation of church and state, Mitt Romney’s membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), Rick Santorum’s conception of the “war on religion,” and the controversy over contraceptives at religious institutions and Rush Limbaugh’s attacks on a Georgetown law student.

Speeches of Swami Vivekananda and Subhash Chandra Bose: A Comparative Study deciphers the speeches of Swami Vivekananda and Subhash Chandra Bose to trace out the thought patterns, revealed through the language, and thus to find out the points of similarities and dissimilarities for the final evaluation without harming the reputation of the two. 

(Speeches of Swami Vivekananda and Subhash Chandra Bose: A Comparative Study. Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 2006. Pp. 118. Rs. 200/-. ISBN: 81-7977-149-0)

This paper is a rhetorical analysis and critique of the epistemological lens of the RSA's (Rhetoric Society of America's) cfp (call for papers) for their 2018 biennial conference. In this piece, I argue that in order to address the challenges of the present moment, building toward a better invention and celebrating the past, as the conference calls us to do, then we must resist the need to begin conversations firmly situated with western traditions of rhetoric. We must be epistemically disobedient (Mignolo) to this zero-point epistemology and turn to non-western rhetorics and cultural rhetorics to help us truly invent and reshape our discipline. I further highlight the role that settlers and westerners must play in these efforts.

The unparalleled commercial sucessess that gospel-playwright-turned-screenwriter Tyler Perry has attained through converting his stage plays into films that depict black women overcoming personal crises raises questions about the intent behind his seemingly feminist-inspired representations of black womanhood. Through an analysis of the rhetoric of healing in Perry’s first two films, this essay reveals one of the suppressive pedagogical functions of Perry’s representation of black womanhood. Rhetorics of healing are a series of persuasive messages, performances, and literacy acts that writers deploy in order to convince readers that redressing or preventing crises requires them to follow the curriculum for ideological, communicative, and behavioral transformation that the writer considers essential to wellness. In Diary of a Mad Black Woman and Madea’s Family Reunion, Perry’s representation of rhetorical healing constructs black Christian women as students who must learn prescribed attitudes and behaviors to achieve, or remain in, states of wellness, and these lessons reinforce conservative gender ideologies and reify patriarchal constructions of the family and home. Given black women’s historically tenuous relationships with representations of themselves and their families in mainstream film, and given the ways in which their labor in the home is simultaneously desired and exploited, the popularity of Perry’s films does not suggest that his representations of healing foster black women’s self-empowerment. Rather, his popularity points to a moment where black women’s pain is a commodity and their instructive journeys to wellness are an exploited site where writers can carry out their own agendas.

Busking and street performance while generally subject to positive responses have been rendered as trivial or at worse, a purely commercial pursuit. While there is truth in such feelings, it is by no means the full picture and such a “triviality barrier” should be broached. In so doing so, the cultural importance of busking and the contribution it makes to the cultural scene of urban areas can be revealed and acknowledged.

In this thesis I hope achieve two aims. One; to give busking the respect I believe that it deserves and two; to use busking as a lens or theoretical example to contribute to the construction of a new theoretical discourse highlighting the importance of performance and rhetoric in culture.

Through imaginative geographies that erase the interconnectedness of the places where violence occurs, the notion that violence is 'irrational' marks particular cultures as ‘other’. Neoliberalism exploits such imaginative geographies in constructing itself as the sole providence of nonviolence and the lone bearer of reason. Proceeding as a ‘civilizing’ project, neoliberalism positions the market as salvationary to putatively ‘irrational’ and ‘violent’ peoples. This theology of neoliberalism produces a discourse that binds violence in place. But while violence sits in places in terms of the way in which we perceive its manifestation as a localized and embodied experience, this very idea is challenged when place is reconsidered as a relational assemblage. What this re-theorization does is open up the supposed fixity, separation, and immutability of place to instead recognize it as always co-constituted by, mediated through, and integrated within the wider experiences of space. Such a radical rethinking of place fundamentally transforms the way we understand violence. No longer confined to its material expression as an isolated and localized event, violence can more appropriately be understood as an unfolding process, derived from the broader geographical phenomena and temporal patterns of the social world.

An essay is presented on rhetorical strategies used to create relationships between people. It offers the views of a cultural outsider observing waitresses at a Southern United States Waffle House restaurant, where staff often use the epithet "honey" when speaking to customers. The author describes a shift in power where the restaurant staff are in control rather than the customer and the psychological implications, sexual aspects, and relationship defining results of his being called "honey" by the waitstaff.

This chapter is divided into five sections. The first section reviews attempts in the last decade of the twentieth century and first decades of the twenty-first--at conferences, workshops, and in publications--to define “Jewish rhetoric,” especially in relation to the Greco-Roman tradition, at the same time touching on the work of some primary scholars in contemporary fields of rhetorics and Jewish studies. The second section cautiously overviews the author’s own attempt to define “Jewish rhetoric,” touching on a 25-year examination of the philosophy of the Hebrew alphabet, which figures prominently in esoteric and mystical theories of creation–not only in the Hebrew Bible but also in Midrash and Kabbalah–and a tentative proposal that the rhetoric of the alefbet can be understood as an alternate, Jewish sophistic in which language is “Reality” and letters its “divine atoms,” so to speak; so deconstructed, G/d becomes the unknowable master rhetorician, and the ultimate sophist. The third section delineates various issues, questions, and problems that arise in the author’s analysis of Jewish rhetoric overviewed in the second section. The fourth section tries to redress at least some of the questions raised by locating Jewish rhetoric in the Torah–the Five Books of Moses–which is central to Judaism, especially since the destruction of the Second Temple, and that is found in every Jewish denomination and community. The fifth section concludes with a short list of basic issues seen in the analysis above of Jewish rhetoric that may be of value in attempts to develop the field of comparative global rhetorics.

"COMMENT
"Social construction" was already problematic when I published this (cf. Ian Hacking), but I wanted to acknowledge an earlier article by Ludmilla Jordanova.  My approach had always been comparable to that of the Strong Programme, even if not explicitly so.

My purpose here was, in part, to participate in the breaking of the separation between the social and intellectual history of medicine, treating them symmetrically and as entangled.  I felt that my earlier work had given me the credibility needed. 

However, I tried to avoid references to European philosophers, as far as possible.  I felt that I could make the same sort of points, using people who wrote in the Anglo-American traditions.  I did not want to stud the text with allusions to the kinds of author that are too readily dismissed by Anglophones.  This was a rhetorical manoeuvre.  Unfortunately, pressure on space led to many of the references to English and American philosophers being cut, along with pages of case histories, on Lyme disease, for example.

I used the early modern period in the hope that it would be recognizable to both those who studied earlier and later periods. 

It was not my intention to reduce the body to idealist description, but to stress the crucial role of mediating categories and concepts.  "Rhetoric" is not here conceived as a matter of conflict but rather of narrative and persuasion, whether verbal or symbolic.

ABSTRACT
An important element in recent science studies has been the analysis of the social rhetoric involved in the construction of disciplines and knowledge. An explicit use of rhetorical and semiotic frames of reference would illuminate many aspects of the history of medicine and could provide a unifying framework for the field. Medical theories were always intended for use and therefore had to be plausible in the eyes of patients. The interpretation of signs and the construction of explanations lie at the heart of diagnosis, therapy and prognosis. These are usually interactive processes and the efficacy of medical interventions therefore depends upon meaning, narrative and persuasion. Since mental processes are not rigidly separated from bodily functions, trust and expectation have physiological effects that are required for successful healing in all cultures at all times. The conduct of patients and practitioners always turns on the expectation of cure and the establishment of confidence. The efficacy of rhetoric was more readily recognized by practitioners in the past than it has been by social historians of medicine. Once mind—body dualism has been discarded, it can be seen that historians are not studying the context of  healing but its very heart."

Abstract: This paper attempts to explain the criteria which judges are likely to apply in the Fiji National Oratory Contest. It comments upon some features of the 1989 contest, and suggests factors which may have underlain the performance of contestants. However, the analysis is not merely local to an historical time or place. Oratory contests are a special case of the “speaking competitions” which are widespread in countries where English is learned as a second language. The cultural beliefs and traditions which come into play in public speaking are especially important in cross-cultural situations. The solutions discussed here have universal relevance for speakers and judges.

In recent years, humanists and social scientists have shown increasing interest in human-animal relations – to the point where many now speak of an ‘animal turn’ in the humanities and social sciences. Across history, psychology, anthropology, literature, sociology, philosophy, and law, an interdisciplinary field of human-animal studies has been forming. Certain common themes run through this diverse field, not least the reproduction of human-animal difference, and the conditions and the implications thereof.

Despite the long history of language use as a marker of such difference, the academic quest to investigate the boundary between human and nonhuman has, somewhat surprisingly, not taken root within rhetorical studies – at least not until now. For this edited volume, we therefore call for chapters that investigate the place of nonhuman animals in the purview of rhetorical theory; what it would mean to communicate beyond the human community; how rhetoric reveals our ‘brute roots.’ In other words, this book invites contributions which enlighten us about likely or possible implications of the animal turn within rhetorical studies. Would such a turn imply, for instance, that rhetoric needs a nonanthropocentric reconfiguration? The question, perhaps, is this: What difference would it make to the discipline if we assumed that nonhuman forms of communication were as interesting as human ones?

"Identification is affirmed with earnestness precisely because there is division. Identification is compensatory to division. If men were not apart from one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim their unity. If men were wholly and truly of one substance, absolute communication would be of man's very essence. It would not be an ideal, as it now is, partly embodied in material conditions and partly frustrated by these same conditions; rather, it would be as natural, spontaneous, and total as with those ideal prototypes of communication, the theologian's angels, or 'messengers.'" --Kenneth Burke, _A Rhetoric of Motives_ (22)

Note: I am making this paper available here because since its publication in RSQ 1995, it has been missing the diagram, "The Diaspora of Western Philosophy,"  discussed in some detail within its pages.  One could attribute its disappearance to mystical processes... but I prefer to make that (more recently designed) diagram available here. With apologies to the Rhetoric Society of America.

En este trabajo abordamos el estudio de la traducción del texto político, marcado por un carácter profundamente ideológico, por una especificidad histórica y cultural directamente dependiente de su pertenencia a un contexto situacional concreto y por una relevancia socio-político —tanto nacional como internacional— que contribuyen a hacer de su transferencia interlingüística un ejercicio especialmente necesitado de cuidado y habilidad para no dar lugar a ningún tipo de distorsión del mensaje original en su paso de la lengua/cultura-origen a la lengua/cultura-meta. Nuestro objetivo en este contexto es, por un lado, subrayar la importancia que el texto político y su traducción tienen en la sociedad y, por otro, describir y explicar sus dificultades traductológicas, con especial referencia a la problemática que plantean la terminología política y las características específicas de esta clase discursiva, entre las que destacamos las culturales, las ideológicas y las estilísticas. A propósito de estas últimas nos detenemos en la consideración de los discursos electorales y parlamentarios. Ambas modalidades discursivas están directamente relacionadas con el género deliberativo del discurso retórico, pues versan sobre asuntos, proyectos o situaciones del futuro y ante ellos los receptores han de tomar decisiones. Como conclusión proponemos el análisis retórico-cultural —basado en el entendimiento de los textos como construcciones pragmático-culturales en el marco de la sociedad— del texto político, como un análisis que podría contribuir a un conocimiento más profundo y razonado de sus características específicas y sus dificultades traductológicas y a la propuesta de las soluciones más acertadas y pertinentes en cada caso. / In this paper we study the translation of political texts. These texts are marked by a deeply ideological character, by a historical and cultural specificity directly dependent on their relationship with a particular situational context and by a sociopolitical relevance —both national and international— that contribute to make their cross-lingual transfer an activity in which much care and expertise must be applied in order to avoid any distortion of the original message on its way from the source-language/culture to the target-language/culture. Our objective in this context is, on the one hand, to underline the social importance of the political texts and their translations and, on the other, to describe and explain their translational difficulties, with special reference to the problems posed by political terminology and the specific features of this discursive class, among which we foreground culture, ideology and style. In relation to the latter we take into consideration campaign and parliamentary speeches. Both forms of discourse are directly related to the deliberative genre of rhetorical discourse, because they deal with matters, projects or situations of the future and the receivers have to make decisions based on them. In conclusion we propose to consider the rhetorical-cultural analysis —based on the understanding of texts as pragmatic-cultural constructions in a social framework— of political texts as an analysis which could contribute to a deeper and more justified knowledge of their specific features and of their translational difficulties, thus enabling the translator to find the most successful and relevant solutions in each case.

Contemporary processes of globalization beckon consideration of the discursive forces that shape our perceptions of community, group identity, solidarity, and belongingness. The freedoms and limits endemic to life in a globalized world afford a variety of communicative resources for those seekingto promote humane social action. In this article, the author engages the discourse of Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, a humanitarian-based nongovernmental organization, to illuminate its stake in contemporary global politics. Through its rhetorical crafting of a public image of neutrality, its use of media channels to publicize events, and its discursive construction of a humanitarian space for social action, Médecins Sans Frontières conscripts the powerful ethos of the social imaginary in an attempt to forge a global community uniting individuals, governments, nongovernmental organizations, and international institutions.

La hidra, el prodigioso monstruo mitológico de múltiples cabezas, es la figura central en la pictura de varios emblemas, comenzando por el 138 del Alciato auctus (dedicado a los doce trabajos de Hércules). Ya desde la suscriptio de este emblema, la hidra se asocia alegóricamente a los sofistas y a sus trampas argumentativas; esa es la versión que se repite en los comentarios de Sánchez de las Brozas y de Mignault, que acuden como autoridad al Eutidemo de Platón y que identifican explícitamente la sofística con la retórica. En este trabajo se estudia la asociación (o la falta de ella) de la hidra con la retórica en las obras citadas y en los repertorios emblemáticos de Sambucus (Szambot), Villava y Fernández de Heredia, en los Hieroglyphica de Valeriano, así como en los manuales mitográficos de Conti, Cartari, Pérez de Moya y Vitoria. La extendida identificación de la hidra con la retórica aparece como síntoma de la actitud ambivalente de la cultura de la época hacia dicha disciplina, que es a la vez herramienta epistemológica principal y objeto de desconfianza por su carácter de técnica amoral.

This essay sets out an approach to parallelism in verbal art as a semiotic phenomenon that can operate at multiple orders (or levels) of signification. It examines parallelism in the sounds through which words are communicated, in language communicated by those sounds, in symbols or minimal units of narration communicated through language, and then in more complex units of narration communicated through those symbols or units. Attention is given to how these different levels of parallelism interrelate and may diverge, while revealing that parallelism at all of these levels reflects a coherent semiotic phenomenon.

"Parallelism in Verbal Art and Performance: An Introduction" (in collaboration with Lotte Tarkka), "Parallelism and Orders of Signification (Parallelism Dynamics I)" and "Multimedial Parallelism in Ritual Performance (Parallelism Dynamics II)" can be read together as a monograph-length study.

Current figurations of the “immigration problem” in the United States challenge our understanding of the rhetoricity of contemporary bordering practices. The public discourse of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps serves to chart the alienization of undocumented migrants and the enactment of alien abjection on the U.S.-Mexico border. Alienization promises an antidote to majoritarian anxieties regarding national disunity in the form of a shoring-up of cultural boundaries that border-crossing subjects render troublesome. Ultimately, the fence logic engendered by groups such as the Minutemen reveals how struggles over the boundaries of citizenship both enable and limit an affect-charged civic imaginary.

As medical technology continues to progress, we are able to correct deficiencies in the body through means such as cochlear implants and prosthetic limbs. This has led some scholars to argue that we are creating technologized, cyborg bodies. However, these technologies have also enabled us to correct perceived cultural flaws in the body. This article explores the nature of the body through the lens of posthumanism, examining ways that individuals attempt to reshape their bodies through cosmetic surgery and other forms of body modification. Specifically, this article examines the practice of hymen restoration, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge’s artistic endeavours in cosmetic surgery and Stelarc’s cybernetic experimentations. These cases yield three potential visions of the body: the body must be restored; bodies must be unified; and the body must evolve. Such visions have consequences; the ways in which the body is rhetorically constructed influence how people choose to alter their own bodies. By considering the body itself as medium and as an interface with other technologies, we can better theorize what it truly means to be human.

Building on studies of alternative rhetorics, this article envisions personal writing pedagogy as a relational endeavor that fosters rhetorical alliances among disparate communities. I detail a particular course design through which "personal reflection" becomes a means of enacting more radical forms of belonging. Fifteen years ago, Christopher L. Schroeder et al.'s ALT DIS: Alternative Discourses and the Academy examined the emergence of "hybrid," "mixed," and "alternative" discourses within scholarly and student writing. These texts, wide-ranging and diverse, blend nonstandard discursive forms with academic conventions to explore new methods and reach broader publics (Bizzell, "Hybrid" 12). In Bizzell's words, they "have combined elements of The mandate is to search for classroom practices that use, build upon, and enhance experiences and that permit the re-definition and reconfiguration of acceptable forms of expression, representation, and presentation.

Winner of the 2018 Advancement of Knowledge Award from the Conference on College
Composition and Communication

Winner of the 2018 Lavender Rhetorics Book Award for Excellence in Queer Scholarship from the Conference on College Composition and Communication

Winner of the 2017 Outstanding Book Award from the Conference on Community Writing

Fashioning Lives: Black Queers and the Politics of Literacy analyzes the life stories of sixty Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people along with archival documents, literature, and film, author Eric Darnell Pritchard provides a theoretical framework for studying the literacy work of Black LGBTQ people. Pritchard discusses how literacy is used to inflict harm and how these harmful events prompt Black LGBTQ people to ensure their own survival through a process he calls “restorative literacies.” He highlights restorative literacies in literacy institutions, historical records repositories, religious and spiritual spaces, parties, community events, activist organizations, and digital spheres. This trailblazing study draws connections between race and queerness in literacy, composition, and rhetoric and provides the basis for a sustainable dialogue on their intersections in the discipline.