Contemporary Rhetoric #2

Meaning, Language, and Time: Toward a Consequentialist Philosophy of Discourse
Kevin Porter

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
Gloria Anzaldua

The Writer’s Book of Memory: An Interdisciplinary Study for Writing Teachers
Janine Rider

The Expediency of Culture
George Yudice

Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women
Jacqueline Jones Royster

Meaning, Language, and Time: Toward a Consequentialist Philosophy of Discourse
Kevin Porter

Porter’s major project within the span of the book is to work towards “a coherent, explanatory account of meaning and its temporality” (3). I surmise its understanding how meaning is not fixed, nor essential, nor something that can be assumed a priori to a text or an utterance. Porter explains this as the motivation for his explanation of consequentialist philosophy, saying:

That is, according to what I will term later as meaning consequentialism (ie, the assumption that the meaning of an utterance or text is the consequences that it propagates), to say that “this text refers” is not to make an essentialist claim about the contents of the text but a pragmatic claim about a particular consequence or subset of consequences of the text, one that I presume, but cannot guarantee, accords with consequences that text has evoked or would evoke in other readers. In this way, I make the “claims” about text with the understanding that their means are real insofar as I experience them, but also contestable insofar as other encounter those texts; a text will mean only what I think it means only if I am its only reader…whatever consequences that text evokes in and through people–is not contained in the text…utterances and texts do not clearly do not consistently produce a certain consequence or uniform set of consequences. (12,13)

Using these ideas, Porter fleshes out what this means by analyzing Scott Lyons’ concept of rhetorical sovereignty. Rhetorical sovereignty is defined by Lyons as “‘inherent right and ability of peoples to determine their own communicative needs and desires [...] to decide for themselves the goals, modes, styles and languages of public discourse’”, as well as an overall ability of a people to “‘control its meaning’” (Lyons qtd in Porter 13). Using the aforementioned framework, Porter asks “But what if a people (or peoples, or persons) may only attempt to control, fix, or set(tle) meanings, yet such control–however so much we may agree with the motivations behind the attempt–can never be final because the consequences of utterances and texts cannot be indefinitely contained?” (14).

The last question serves as a rhetorical question, as Porter answers (and therefore furthers his argument) claiming there is no “privileged pure, primary meaning people ‘own’”, only the consequences “that result from the encounters with utterances” (14) or texts. Porter then asserts Lyons “says as much” when he “concedes that ‘sovereignty’ is a ‘contested term’ with ‘shifting meaning’ (Lyons qtd in Porter 14).

Porter’s explanation for this is time and the creation/recreation of rhetorical communities; meaning is created through interactions with utterances and texts and one specific utterance/text can propagate several meanings over any length of given time. Being a scholar-practitioner in composition and rhetoric, Porter applies meaning consequentialism to the various surveys of the field in a move to demonstrate how each maps/describes the field (in the discourse of measurement, a la Cintron, no less) without a clear concept of meaning is problematic. It relies on both a panchronic concept of time (meaning everyone, everywhere experiences the same thing, reads the same texts, and comes to the same conclusions at the same, a temporal moment) and consequentially makes for camps within the discipline which do not provide any insight in the production of meaning (his talk of anti-foundationalism on 49-50 is a good example).

Porter disagrees with the six-degrees of separation version of social networks on page 38, and overtly state he does not believe in the claims coming from such a framework (specifically, one node, or individual, knows every other node within a defined network due to a connection to only one other node). I see his point, and at the same time I would say his (Porter’s) work could work within Stephan Fuch’s ideas about networks, which (to me at least) are very different than Duncan J. Watts’ ideas about networks.

Later in the book, Porter describes time as relative, literally as relative to specific objects or persons as they experience the present, the now; for Porter there is no universal present nor a universal past. Also, there is no present that collects granules from the future to seed itself with the correct events to make the a priori future. The present only works into (borrowing from physics and the terminology describing black holes) the event horizon. There is no way to link the present to the future. Porter then parlays this into a few different claims applicable to rhet-comp studies.

A writer/speaker can not predict all interpretations of her work in the future, nor predict the uses her text/utterances will be called upon to fulfill in the future.

The consequences of a text or utterance for a speaker/writer has “no special privilege over the consequences of that utterance or text for other people” (274).

“Speakers and writers are not, a priori, the final adjudicators of what their utterances and texts mean, even if their utterances and texts are consequential only for themselves or even if listeners and readers acede to the results of any adjudication” (274).

These points also mean texts survive from the past into the present or the present into the future not because of some a priori stipulation, but because the text/utterance is “fecund” (274). The two important points I take away from this are:

The Meaning [capital "m" intended] of an utterance or text is fecund not because its consequences extend far into the past, but only insofar as its consequences continue to propogatte into the future.

The antecedent fecundity of an utterance does not guarantee continued fecundity: Utterances and texts that have been consequential may cease being consequential. (274)

All of this then collapses into Porter’s discussion of consequence.  A text or utterance must have consequence, and therefore, meaning for the audience engaging with said text/utterance.  Moreover, Porter uses this last element within his general argument about time and temporality to claim “however rare it might be” that such a thing as “birth without paternity” or “‘order out of chaos’” can occur; in short Porter claims “a first meaning” (274, italics original) is possible.  A text’s consequence drives the assigning (or construction?) of meaning to it by an audience (either in the present or in the future).  Once a forgotten, lost, or rediscovered  utterance/text moves from a state of non-consequence (ie it had no consequence because it had no audience discussing it) to a state of consequence, that is, it becomes consequential to somebody, it is at that moment said text/utterance has first meaning.  From this, Porter can hypothesize utterances and texts as having an progenitor point without creating a teleological mythology nor falling into a mystic, hazy past where language and texts and their origins are unexplainable.  While Porter admits this is not a perfect answer, it does move scholars away from a black box conceptualization of how discourse works.

In the final chapter, Porter demonstrates how meaning consequentialism works as a pedagogy.  Porter explains:

Meaning consequentialism is not something that proscribes pedagogies of severity or condemns meaning apriorism; rather, it provides us with a way of understanding why a person who wishes to enact a pedagogy of severity, who wants to wield absolute control over the consequences of his or her utterances, or who belives that meanings are fully determinate must be prepared to (a) work very hard (b) for an indefinite period of time (c) without an assurance of success (with success measured by whether students learn only what they are supposed to learn, whether our utterances produce consequences we did not intend or want, or whether everyone who hears an utterance is in agreement about what it “means”).  (297)

The previously described pedagogy is always very weak.  Every move must be made to control the space, texts, and utterances to ensure the teacher is seen as the center of knowledge.

This allows Porter to move towards his description of a pedagogy of charity, which roughly comes down to accepting students work as claims and arguments made by rational (meaning the student has reasons to discuss a topic in a specific way) person trying to persuade a reader of a specific course of action.  Porter claims this is in opposition to a pedagogy of severity, which assumes all student texts are error filled creations of irrational, marginally intelligent people who must be shaped and guided by a missionary-teacher to enlightenment.

Porter covers how a consequentialist pedagogy might look in practice using three different methods.

• Service learning 310-311
• Movies of the mind 311-312
• Personal narratives 313-314

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
Gloria Anzaldua
Note: these comments were written very quickly and with very little sleep.
Anzaldua’s take on language is what I find interesting about this text. Starting in chapter two, Anzaldua builds an argument how language, and specifically the names and sayings used to mark women as inferior within Chicano/a culture. Anzaldua claims that culture is passed through these linguistic cues (16-22).

In chapter five she’s describing the different dialects of Spanish used among Lationos/as, and eventually works to Chicano Spanish. Chicano Spanish is one way (besides geography and ancestry) to differentiate Chicanos/as from other Spanish speaking, Spanish surnamed groups (for example, Cubans or Puerto Ricans) explaining:

But Chicano Spanish is a border tongue which developednaturally. Change, evolucion, enriquecimiento de palabras nuevas por invencion o adopcion have created variams of Chicano Spanish, un nuevo lenguaje. Un lenguaje que corresponde a un modo de vivir. Chicano Spanish is not incorrect, it is a living language.

For a people who are neither Spanish nor live in a country in which Spanish is the first language; for a people who live in a country in which English is the reigning tongue but who are not Anglo; for a people who cannot entirely identify with either standard (formal, Castillian) Spanish nor standard English, what recourse is left to them bur to create their own language? A language which they can connect their identity to, one capable of communicating the realities and values true to themselves–a language with terms that are neither espanol ni ingles, but both. We speak a patois, a forked tongue, a variation of two languages. (55)

This is reminiscent of Bakhtin. Living, unofficial language versus dead, official language. Essentially, this is another dimension to Rabelais and His World, one where Anzaldua demonstrates how official, institutional language filters down to the communities in the margins and informs the cultures of those communities. Anzaldua serves as the embodiment of the pejoritized subject of those tropes and figures, as well as the embodiment of the tropes and figures of the unofficial, the marginalized, of the queer ways of knowing and being that work against the institutional element of society, and actually describe the experiential world as those who have no power in the official sphere experience it. She’s in the borderlands since she’s reacting to both the American dominant hegemony and Mexican-American interpretations/translations of that hegemony; the Mexican-American take on this world view is to privilege the heterosexual, the male, and the patriarchical. Anzaldua’s body and work serve as a site of mestiza rhetoric.

The Writer’s Book of Memory: An Interdisciplinary Study for Writing Teachers
Janine Rider

Chapter One
Memory, Our Muse

Rider’s main claim is the canon of memory “involves the full range of the intellect, including both imagination and reasoning; it is not mere rote learning” (3), and therefore, even in an age reliant on print for reminders, memory should not be delegated to the scrap heap as a forgotten canon.

The books three goals:

1. To supply readers with a clear picture of the history of memory in rhetoric and of contemporary approaches to memory in our own discipline and others.
2. To persuade readers to elevate the status of memory to that of a vital canon of contemporary rhetoric critical to the formation of both forms and ideas.
3. To convince readers that developing a revised theory of memory goes hand in hand with respect for a variety of rhetorics and arms us against a technological future in which individual and cultural differences might be erased. (3)

Here are the key claims Rider looks to assert throughout the span of the book:

• Memory is a key component of rhetoric–the mother of our muses, the storehouse of all our knowledge.
• Memory generates knowledge as well as preserving it. Through memory we reconstruct our past experiences and make new knowledge.
• Memory is based on both our individual and our social histories. The knowledge it provides us reflects experiences at the personal, societal, and universal level of our existence.
• Memory is activated by innumerable stimuli, from visual images to smells to words. This face becomes important as our vehicles of communication and storage change. We must ask if the means of remembering affects the kinds of knowledge we make from those memories.
• Memory thus defined sparks the human imagination and kindles inspiration and discovery. From memory comes the muse that inspires us to regenerate ideas and discover new connections and, therefore, write.
• Memoria, the thing remembered, is all we have. Upon memory rests our ability to think, speak, and write.  (4)

On page four, Rider claims cultural memory exists; cultural memory “allows us to discern, express, and value differences based on gender, race and social background.”  This claim would seem a direct refutation of Kevin Porter’s ideas about memory.  For Porter, every text or utterance has a different consequence for each reader/listener, and therefore, a different meaning.  Is Rider’s concept a blend of Porter’s ideas and that of Perelman, ie, moment of probabilistic reasoning among interlocutors from a same racial/ethnic/cultural background as they construct what a text/utterance passed from generation to generation means?

Kathleen Welch defines he centrality of memory to cultural expression: She states that when memory and deliver were removed from rhetoric, we lost rhetoric’s relation to our culture.  Invention, style and arrangement can exist in a vacuum, she says; it is memory and delivery that connect us to “history, culture, and the life of the polis” (“The Platonic Paradox” 9).  In other words, it takes a complete rhetoric–one that includes both memory and delivery–to promote and change our culture(s)…We always need someone to record major events from an unofficial point of view.  (4,5)

Chapter Two
Memory and the History of Rhetoric
In this chapter Rider provides a historical overview of how memory has been studied in rhetoric, starting from the classical and working into the present. Interesting points along the way:

• Simonides is credited with having “discovered” memory.
• Cicero is credited with the creation of memory as we understand it now, a static image of an event.
• Medieval rhetoric equated memory with the virtue of prudence–only through remembering sacred texts and clerical training could a person of the cloth apply scripture in meaningful ways to the new situations as they arose.
• Memory theaters were connected to the occult; it was thought memory was the key to ascending the great chain of being to the highest levels so members could understand the divine mysteries of creation.
• Vico is a precursor to more current rhetoricians and their wariness of positivistic philosophies.  The Romantics were not arhetorical, just concerned with individual expression, and through that expression, persuasion. According to Rider, this was a special form of rhetoric since it shifted emphasis away from a focus and concern with inventing persuasive ploys for a specific audience to the perfection of the speaker/writer’s delivery.  Rider contends rhetoric and poetic, as exemplified by the Romantic literary tradition, need to be brought together as memory is treated as “the source of creation and precursor to invention” (30).  To support this of James Berlin and Jay L. Robinson.

Quotable quotes

Memory and learning are inseparable.  Memory is not just a reproduction bu a reconstruction of past experience, a way of making new knowledge.  (16)

What we see in many of these theories of memory is a concern with how we know, and a conviction that memory plays a big part in our ability to acquire or create knowledge.  That conviction is a basic premise of this book, and it is addressed in more detail later; for now the point is that such a theory has classical roots.  (17)

A metaphor works by tapping common roots of feeling and experience in both the speaker/writer and the audience, by evoking shared knowledge…Metaphors are examples of social or cultural memory at work: They are examples of how our collective understanding of conventions of language can evoke common images and emotions in a large number of people who share cultural assumptions.  (18)

Printing is tied up as much in external spatial models as classical memories were in internal models.  Perhaps Ong is suggesting that external memory storage from its start is structured in a way that matches our internal need for organization.  Perhaps the external memory does not work alone, but by prompting the internal systems within which we must work.  (22)

[T]he more we depend on external sources to remember for us, the more important it becomes to trust our own memory–the true source of our own thinking.  Emphasizing the memory’s place in contemporary rhetoric, writing, and teaching is one way we can encourage the development of the individual memory.  (23)

Memory is the source of ideas.  Vico, like Plato, and others before him, see memory as a vital rhetorical art which has not just utility but generative powers as well.  From memory comes our personal and cultural knowledge; through memory, knowledge is remembered, reconstructed, and reorganized.  This is the process through which knowledge is created.  (24)

The above work may be fruitful for developing a framework in a rewrite of the Ruskin paper.

Chapter Six
Memory, Rhetoric, and the Teaching of Writing

In this chapter Rider argues for the return of memory to comp-rhet and provides ample support why such a reclaiming of memory (and concomitantly delivery) is important to the discipline. Using the work of Kathleen Welch, Rider explains a revisitionist look at Plato’s place in rhetoric would benefit the canon of memory.

[Welch] believes that the last generation has read Plato as being antirhetoric because he attacks sophistic rhetoric. This a mistake, she says, because without Plato we promote technical rhetoric and lose dialectic, which requires memory and delivery. (94)

In this instance, the reference to “technical rhetoric” means the emphasis on prescriptive grammar, generic forms, and overall theme writing, all of which Rider sees as a disservice to students and the discipline since it takes away from the act of composing the practices and canons of rhetoric, and moreover, creates a meaningless text that neither moves a reader, allows the writer to develop socially and personally, and has no use outside the walls of the classroom. In short, writing of this sort does nothing.

Rider continues to make a convincing argument by her continual use of Welch’s work. Rider explains “Welch says that importance of memory is apparent in the phrase we use for memorization by heart. ‘Remembering something, carrying something around with oneself, takes place at the center of one’s being’” (Welch qtd in Rider 94, emphasis original). Rider, immediately following this quest, asserts “It [memory] also takes us out of our isolated selves, binding us to a larger sense of reality” (94).

On the next page, Rider hits upon why individual memory is important to rhetoric, and for my work I think this an area I’d like to buidl from and explore. Using Patrick Mahony, Marshall McLuhan, and Kenneth Burke, Rider advocates for individual memory as the check against mass media constructed cultural memory.

Unlike primary orality, which preceded print, secondary orality depends on print. Though it seems spontaneous, it is not; it has been produced with care and with written scripts (Orality 135-138). And its effect is far-reaching. McLuhan suggests in Understanding Media that through the mass media it may be possible “to bypass languages in favor of a general cosmic consciousness which might be very like the collective unconsciousness” (84). Patrick Mahony’s 1969 essay in McLuhan and rhetoric notes that although McLuhan’s emphasis on the delivery (the medium is the message), delivery is closely allied with memory: “memory or information storage has been exteriorized into new media forms of pronunciation” (14). Mahony cites Kenneth Burke’s statement that whereas classical rhetoric stressed persuasion, new rhetoric stresses identification, “which can be a partially ‘unconscious’ factor in its appeal” (15). If Burke is correct, then the human desire to identify gives mass media an edge in convincing its audiences. Thus we have a new kind of rhetoric through which huge numbers of people find commonality by internalizing en masse new structures and new experiences…Old concepts “disappear” and new ones restructure our thinking.

The rest of the chapter goes over the cognitive approaches of teaching writing, and the scholarship under-girding that pedagogy. Throughout, Rider recasts the work as working from the canon of memory and not from discipline of cognitive psychology.

Chapter Seven
Re/Membering Culture

On pages 116 and 117 Rider provides futher support for my interpretation of her work that individual memory serves as the check against a mass media memory. She continues on to discuss cultural memory passed on through things like signifyin’, through the Freirean development of critical conscious, and the passing of oral histories among peoples. All of this involves naming, and through that naming, the creation of a cultural/communal memory. This memory stand in contrast to the memory proffered by the social elites, the mass media, or nation-states. I take this to mean cultural rhetorics are founded on memory; language practices, tropes, figures, and rhetorical tactics/strategies spring from memory and are applied through inventing the best deployment methods for the rhetorical strategy an individual finds herself in.

Echoing Berlin and his admonishment that comp-rhet develop the lexicon and for reading semiotic codes so as to teach effective reading and writing skills, Rider closes the book saying:

Culture and history (in a word, memory) cannot be removed from language. Language always reflects someone’s culture, someone’s history. Language fails when it denies its users connections with their own cultures and histories. To overcome this failure, we must revise our use of that language, that rhetoric…In doing so, we may find that all those words that give us power to speak and be understood–language, interpretation, knowledge–are no more, and no less, than synonyms for memory. (128, emphasis original)

The Expediency of Culture
George Yudice

“The Expediency of Culture”
In this opening chapter Yudice makes the argument that culture is now a resource to be used to solve political-social and economic issues. In contrast to the past, cultures is now the mode, model, and means to solve problems once covered and dealt with through economics and the social sciences. Part of this is due to the reduction in social services and the end of the Cold War; without social services as a given groups organize based on culture so as to form advocacy groups and culture is no longer a protected, funded set of rarefied practices, performance or artifacts since it no longer defines the capitalist West versus the communist East. Cultural becomes expedient since it solves problems, and the objective of this book is to discuss what is being accomplished “socially, politically, discursively” (Dominguez qtd in Yudice 25) by using culture.

The turn of information and social activites into property on 17 (possible use for C&W or RSA).

Culture is increasingly being invoked not only as the engine of capital development, as evidenced byhthe ad nauseam repetition that the audiovisual industry is second only to the aerospace industry in the United States. Some have even argued that culture has transformed into the very logic of contemporary capitalism, a transformation that “already is challenging many of our most basic assumptions about what constitutes human society” (Rifkin 200, 10-11). This culturalization of the economy has not occurred naturally, of course; it has been carefully coordinated via agreements on trade and intellectual property, such as GATT and the WTO, laws controlling the movement of mental and manual labor (ie, immigration laws), and so on. In other words, the new phase of economic growth, the cultural economy, is also political economy. As Thomas Streeeter argues, “property creation”–that is, the transformation of, say, signal transmissions into something that can be bought and sold, which is fundamental to profit in the electronic media–does not just happen in the “absence of political or social control” but “involves an ongoing, collective effort of…turning social activities into property” (1996:164). (17)

“Culturalization, then, is also based onthe mobilization and management of populations, particularly the “life-enhancing” marginal populations who nourish the innovation of the “creators” (Castells qtd in Yudice 20).

This forms an interesting dilemma when juxtaposed to the work of Rider. For Rider culture is part of language/writing/utterances and the canon of memory. What does it mean when symbolic/linguistic practices (composing and rhetoric) are suddenly made into a commodity, something which has value because of what it can do when mobilizing/managing people? From Yudice’s attack on the work of Hardt and Negri and his discussion of culture embodying Derrida’s “law of genre” as well as Bakhtin’s definition of the novel and deployment of heteroglossia, there’s an interesting conversation between the ability of individuals to maintain memories and use the canon of memory as way to verify dominant culture’s retelling of events. For Yudice, everyone and everything is a part of this network–of these institutions, events, organizations, NGOs, and governmental agencies that utilize the expediency of culture.

Care of self and its part in the expedience of culture (38-39).

Ethics, Foucault argued, did not entail a teleological foundation, such as is usually attributed to utilitarianism. His notion of the care of self emphasized the active role of the subject in his or her own process of constitution. There is a compatibility between this notion fo the care of the self and performativity, for Foucault’s ethics entails a reflexive practice of self-management vis-a-vis models (or what Bakhtin called “voices” and “perspectives”) imposed by a given society or cultural formation. Bakhtin’s notion of the author may serve as a prototype of Foucault’s performative ethics, since the author is an orchestration of others “voices,” an appropriation that consists of “populating those ‘voices’with his or her own intentions, with his or her own accent” (1981:293). He or she who practices care of the self must forge his or her freedom by working through the “models that he finds in his culture and are proposed, suggested, imposed upon him by his culture, his society, and his social group” (Foucault 1997b:291). (38-39)

Performativity refers to “the processes by which idenites and the entities of social reality are constituted by repeated approximations of models (ie the normative) as well as by those remainders (“constitutive exclusions”) that fall short. As I explained above, to the degree that globalization brings different cultures into contact with each other, it escalates the questioning of norms and thus abets performativity. (31)

Performativity is also decided by the fields of force the individual finds herself in, and oftentimes is mitigated by care of self practices the individual has to perform to present a socially appropriate ethos. Yudice refers to this aspect as performative ethics.

“Consumption and Citizenship?”
Keeping with the idea with culture an organizing and managing force, Yudice paints the US as a culture of consumers, and within in that culture, the drive to add new consumers/members to this culture through the marketing to specific subcultural groups along the lines of race, ethnicity, language use, and sexuality. Identity and purchasing power become the new channel for access and cache within the American public sphere, and the concept of identity can be even further refined into the idea of ethos.

According to Nancy Fraser, the conflicts among rival needs interpretations in contemporary society reveal that we inhabit a “new social space” in which claims are legitimized not by the “best argument” in an idealized public sphere, but the the cultural ethos that accounts for the needs in the first place (19889:157). (165)

This means there is no more rational-critical debate, merely the creation of “surrogate terrain” where “subordinated and stigmatized groups…constitute their identity” (166). Since the language within US law bequeaths protected citizenship rights to individuals and not groups, groups can only gain “entitlement” (166) to such rights through the aforementioned surrogate terrain. For Latinos this means the use of language as such a terrain; for gays and lesbians this means sexuality; for women it sometimes means sexuality as well as the concept of family. Through using the surrogate terrain the groups listed above can identify as a group and be identified, and therefore, argue for their individual need for protections and services of the state.

The creation of these identities also means marketing and recruitment campaigns aimed at these peoples. Only through this consumption are these groups seen as valuable or worthy of citizenship; guaranteeing civil rights (even through the use of state agencies) makes sense within the US since it ensures (and broadens) the base of consumers corporations can market to and profit from. Inclusiveness is dependent on spending, evidenced by the lack of attention or nation-state protections given to the poor.

Consumerism as ineffectual protest when advocating for a living wage or environmental protections (181).
Non-applicability outside the US (181-191).

These concepts seem similar to Burke’s arguments that rhetoric is built on identification. Has identification always existed, or has it come into being as the consumer society has come into being? And can Rider’s conceptualization of memory as a force against neoliberalism work when marginalized peoples are using their own collective identity as a means to organize and mobilize within the specific historical-cultural moment of neoliberalism? Rider’s work seems to see the individual and collective memory of a subordinated people as separate from the forces and events going on around such a grouping of people. Yudice’s text explains all of these elements as interlocked and working together, ergo, memory can not stand separate and perfect from the revising and retelling of the past or even the present.

Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change Among African American Women
Jacqueline Jones Royster

Introduction
The introduction is interesting because Royster makes it celar she is no a dispassionate observer of the subjects discussed in her book. While this is nothing new in comp-rhet, it furthers my Burke kick. Towards the end of the intro, Royster explains she identifies and feels consubstantial with the women in the book; her project is their project and their projects are her project. To tie to Yudice (and obliquely Foucault), I believe Royster is connecting with the women in her monograph through the surrogate terrain of literacy and rhetoric. In turn, Royster’s book is not built on the traditional presentation of evidence and foregrounded claims. It is a historical ethnography, a gradual tracing out of the events and identities of the African American women in her project, a performance of how and why these women should be considered important to the history of composition and rhetoric. I see this not as a fault, but as a savvy rhetorical move; in the very beginning Royster explains the ways the women of her study have been overlooked (3-5). It is obvious the traditional rational-critical approach would fail since it has not worked in the past.

“In Search of Rivers”
Continuing my identification as the means to persuasion tangent, here’s a quote from Royster about Alice Walker’s idea of truth and how truth was communicated to readers of Walker’s essays.

Walker encoders here a concern and respect for the power of “truth,” a term that deserves careful consideration in her work, as in African American women’s writing generally, especially given the contemporary questioning of “truth” as an absolute or as a universal concept. Walker’s view of truth, in contrast to a questioning of the viability of absolutes, appears to be connected more directly to experience; to naming the experience from a well-articulated and self-defined standpoint; to accurately representing it from that view; to using this viewpoint respectfully as a touchstone for ongoing interpretive needs; and to being willing to bear witness and give testimony base on the understanding that grows organically from it. (28)

The touchstone grounded by such a grounding of truth in lived experience is an attempt to create a surrogate terrain where readers can establish a common identity with Walker.

More overt claim of establishing common cause/identity:

In terms of generic form, Walker frequently begins an essay descriptively, establishes a piont smoothly and gracefully with an elaboration, but then stops this forward press to interject a descriptive or narrative digression. She uses narrative techniques so often to support her assertions that they seem actrually to constitute the evidence itself. The outcome, however, is that she succeeds in making both pathetic and ethical links between herself and the reader. As this point, Walker might gingerly back into her original cadence, to continue a carefuly reasoned exposition, and then end this type of essay bu moving to a larger vieew and articulating an abstraxtion, a generality. In essence, such strategies serve to isolate a territory, to frame it, so that a focal piont can be drawn for sense-making. The ultimate effect is to personalize the diea, to show the reader how it grows out of Walker’s own experience and observatsion and that, thought this experience, she connects the idea to a comunity and to what appears “naturally” and organically to be a usable truth. (39)

By the end of the chapter Royster explains Walker’s work as connecting to past group of writer/speakers who Walker uses as the foundation for her lived experience and worldview. I figure this is also Royster’s way of connecting to Walker as one of these writers from the past, as well as using that claim as the way to open her historical ethnography–now I as a reader, much like Royster claims Walker does with her reader, is ready to walk with Royster as she tells the story of African American women as writer, educators, activist, and rhetoricians. Royster is working in the tradition of Walker, and both are working in the traditions of their elders.

“A View From a Bridge”
In the final chapter of the book Royster explains how to create an afrafeminist methodology and why such an explanation is necessary. For Royster, explaining the researcher’s connection and to/within the African American community is important as it ensures an ethical and transparent subject position on the part of the researcher. Moreover, such an articulation ensures the researcher is accountable to the community and that said researcher is working in the tradition of African American writers who’ve come before her or coexist with her. Royster makes clear there is a social responsibility for scholars working within this methodology and work; scholars have the responsibility to work for social change through the use of rhetoric and writing in ways that affect the African American community and the presence of said community within the larger public sphere.

The above idea is built on three things: identification, consubstantiality (directly menionting Burke on page 272), and memory. The first two mandate working for the betterment of the community since the researcher is part of the community; the third guarantees the researcher does not become “disembodied, destabilized, or deconstructed” (284) and maintains an attachment to the material reality the community and the individual researcher live in and navigate. By eschewing a detached, postmodern angle, the researcher is able to claim the community’s history and see themselves as a part of that history.

In terms of the history of African American women’s literacy, afrafeminist ideologies permit us to see the connections of these women’s literate practices within the landscape of literate practices generally. In addition, however, the also permit us to see how these connections have been forged. We can see how these women with their unique voices, visions, experiences, and relationships have operated with agency and authority; defined their roles in public space; and participated in this space consistently over time with social and political consequence. Using this type of approach with a group taht by other lenses has been erpceived as inconsequential, we have a provocative springboard from which to question what “public” means, what “advocacy” and “activism” mean, what rhetorical prowess means, even what “literacy” means. With this type of analysis, the ferreting out of actions and achievements in the alternative terrain are instructive for an interrogation of contemporary public discourses, debunking the myth that public discourse is a ground only for institutionally sanctioned voice. With African American women, we have a cautionary tale, one that speaks volumes for the historical habits and practices of rhetoric and composition. (284)

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