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Articles Conference Reviews |
2007C34RifeC.34: “Theory: Making Rhetoric Work in and for Social Movements” Chair: Kim McDonald, University of New Orleans, LA Speakers:
The three speakers all focused both on how rhetorical analysis assists with explorations of social movements, and how those involved in social movements use rhetoric to accomplish their goals. Chappell provided the audience with background on the civil war and recovery in Angola and Sierra Leone. Drawing upon the work of Crowley, Kulp, and the New London Group, she argued that the “arts” provide instrumental, private, and intrinsic benefits for building community identity—that art is a rhetorical tool used as such in post-conflict Africa. Chappell discussed how art can be used as a tool for building peace—a neglected role for art as an endeavor that fosters citizens’ engagement. She defined this type of art not as “high art” nor as self-expression and therapy, but art as a common enterprise. She stated her focus wasn’t on the aesthetic rendition but rather on collective experience of the artist. She stated that art could be used to understand peoples’ differences and act on the commonalities: bringing people to act on commonalities despite their differences. Chappell stated that a search for common grounds came from a conviction by engaging people’s hearts as well as their heads. She argues for seeing musicians from both sides of this post-war space and conflict “singing together.” Kristi Cole focused on autobiographical information of Shulamith Firestone along with “Radical Feminism” and Firestone’s definition of same. Per Cole’s presentation, my understanding is that Firestone’s radical feminism posited that the oppression of women defined all other kinds of oppression. Cole particularly focused on what she described as radical feminism between 1967-1974, mostly in New York City. Cole stated their agenda was simple: women’s oppression was the most fundamental type of oppression. Sex oppression provides the model for all other kinds of oppression such as racial equality movements and for student movements. Radical feminism relied on “consciousness raising.” Cole argued that after examining Firestone’s activism and the texts surrounding it, one might clearly note how Firestone used rhetoric kairotically to try to accomplish her goals with respect to radical feminism. Although, Cole reported after Firestone’s book, The Dialectic of Sex was published in 1970, Firestone stopped being politically active, became reclusive, and had bouts of mental illness. Firestone was institutionalized several times. However, Cole stated that Firestone’s solution to the problem of women’s oppression was a “new cybernetics culture post revolution,” because Firestone combined so many complicated elements in her activist handbook. Noting that Firestone herself is still alive, Cole stated that, when actively working, Firestone was aware of the “now time”, the revolutionary possibilities in the moment, the potentials for change within the moment, and the revolutionary. Firestone prepared herself and her readers, and she formed her argument out of those available to her—a social historical moment ready for change. And between 1967 and 1971, the radical feminists worked for the same goals. Kendall Leon, a CCCC’s 2006 scholar of the dream winner and a second year PhD student in the rhetoric and writing program at MSU, focused on rhetorical moves made in media coverage of the 1938 Pecan Sheller strike in San Antonio, Texas. According to Leon, in 1938 the pecan shellers participated in a strike that gave rise to a discursive moment that isn’t bounded by speech of a temporal nature but by subject position. Leon examined two newspapers, La Prensa and the San Antonio Light, and the competing discourses of this moment—examining how the meaning of the event was constructed and who had the right to speak about it. She examined the thinkable or allowable narrative moves. In San Antonio, the pecan industry was the large and important. They had refused to extend a minimum wage to the workers, stating that the shellers ate pecans while working. According to Leon, “Mexicans” earned 75 cents per hour, and the argument was that if “Mexicans” earned more they would just spend it on tequila. Using a Foucaltian analysis, Leon told of how some discourses proclaimed a denial of a strike actually existing, while other articles acknowledging the strike were printed at the same time. Leon also drew upon Foucault’s discussion of the constitution of discursive formations as well as Chicana historian Emma Pérez’s argument that things said are always an inscription on the body and on the subject. In media coverage, workers were allowed to have a voice but only in a certain way. The workers were only allowed to tell about bodily injuries but were not allowed to discuss what those injuries meant. Leon differentiated between those who speak and act and those who are acted upon: who is allowed to speak on what. The workers were asked to bear witness to their bodies while others were allowed to say what it meant. Leon’s presentation was intriguing and she made the entire discussion relevant to teachers and scholars in composition and rhetoric, by referencing Victor Villanueva’s On the Rhetoric and Precedents of Racism—wherein Villanueva challenges the veiling over of racism through the auspices of multiculturalism. Leon argued that one might connect the discursive moment of the pecan strike to the present moment, because in rhetoric and composition there is a “repetition of the speaking of diversity,” and yet the Latino/a students appear in journals as interesting vignettes –their “marked names” are assumed to speak from a certain rhetorical position, or are expected to provide certain kinds of narratives, as were the workers in the pecan strike. Comments? |