Doubting the Rhetorical Situation
First, this:
Amnesty International - Pens from Troublemakers.tv on Vimeo.
That message -- that somehow the act of writing changes the world. I'm not wholly convinced, yet, though I suppose my students and colleagues believe that's what I think. I do, fully, believe that writing changes us, changes our world, changes the way we see the world, changes the way we make the world.
But there are other writers, writers in the dark. Writers with law degrees and political appointments and writers who are the result of a sperm and egg of powerful males and females before them. They write too. Or sometimes they only speak, and someone they own writes for them. So my writing is against their writing; my words against their words; my letters against their letters; my comma against their comma.
The belief that writing changes the world for the better -- that a signature, for example, will somehow validate the democratic experiment -- is ultimately naive. My signature cannot move the will of those empowered with their wealth and networks and secret combinations. There's rhetoric, and then there's rhetoric. And as much as we want to believe that good triumphs over evil, it doesn't. Often it's a draw.
We have this myth of western civilization that progress is inevitable, that we are somehow slowly moving towards the light, that in 200 or 300 years we'll live in some enlightened Star Trek Fleet Headquarters version of San Francisco where money is not needed, there are no poor, there is no racism, and mankind's mission is to reach out and make contact, and not to conquer. Ceasar's "Veni, vidi, vici" somehow replaced with Kirk's "to boldly go." We read Locke, Madison, Jefferson, Lincoln (selectively), Roosevelt and Churchill, King and Kennedy. We read these words because they make us feel good about ourselves, because -- after all -- they're on our side and we're on their side and therefore we must be the good guys, not the baddies.
I work in public education. I work with some really wonderful professional men and women who have good hearts and care about each other and students -- some of these colleagues have worked in education for over four decades (that rattles my head, thinking of the tens of thousands of students they've written to, read millions and millions of student words and sentences and paragraphs and papers, many of them, honestly, written without zeal, without knowledge, without truth). I work with and learn from some wonderful student-colleagues as well. I call them student-colleagues because a week doesn't go by without learning from them -- mostly good, sometimes bad (BPL, for example).
Together, we read and discuss and teach and share those words -- the words of Locke and Jefferson, et al. We pause and for a few minutes revere a magical combination of words written decades or centuries ago; writing that has been preserved by those authors and their audiences, passed down formally through publication and sometimes informally through a more loving workmanship than profit-making.
I was an idealist, once and then. I have volumes and volumes of journals from late high school, undergrad years, then after. I believed that words would heal me and undo the wounding. I stopped those journals after about 10 years. I haven't looked at them since. They sit, covered with dust, on the bottom shelf, perhaps never to be opened again. What good did all those words do? Nothing.
Bitzer argues
Voltaire -- "Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers."
Voltaire -- "Every man is guilty of the good he did not do."
Voltaire -- "We must cultivate our garden."
But Voltaire did not promise a rose garden. He only said we must cultivate it. The Garden of Eden turned out to be ridden with noxious weeds and we're still choked by those weeds today. This is why I doubt the ultimate power of the word. No matter how much we hoe, how much we till, how much we dig and dung, the weeds will return. They always do. Whatever future our civilization holds, weeds will always be there, the tares choking the wheat. Writing won't stop that.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+BruceJMartin Twitter @comstone
Amnesty International - Pens from Troublemakers.tv on Vimeo.
That message -- that somehow the act of writing changes the world. I'm not wholly convinced, yet, though I suppose my students and colleagues believe that's what I think. I do, fully, believe that writing changes us, changes our world, changes the way we see the world, changes the way we make the world.
But there are other writers, writers in the dark. Writers with law degrees and political appointments and writers who are the result of a sperm and egg of powerful males and females before them. They write too. Or sometimes they only speak, and someone they own writes for them. So my writing is against their writing; my words against their words; my letters against their letters; my comma against their comma.
The belief that writing changes the world for the better -- that a signature, for example, will somehow validate the democratic experiment -- is ultimately naive. My signature cannot move the will of those empowered with their wealth and networks and secret combinations. There's rhetoric, and then there's rhetoric. And as much as we want to believe that good triumphs over evil, it doesn't. Often it's a draw.
We have this myth of western civilization that progress is inevitable, that we are somehow slowly moving towards the light, that in 200 or 300 years we'll live in some enlightened Star Trek Fleet Headquarters version of San Francisco where money is not needed, there are no poor, there is no racism, and mankind's mission is to reach out and make contact, and not to conquer. Ceasar's "Veni, vidi, vici" somehow replaced with Kirk's "to boldly go." We read Locke, Madison, Jefferson, Lincoln (selectively), Roosevelt and Churchill, King and Kennedy. We read these words because they make us feel good about ourselves, because -- after all -- they're on our side and we're on their side and therefore we must be the good guys, not the baddies.
I work in public education. I work with some really wonderful professional men and women who have good hearts and care about each other and students -- some of these colleagues have worked in education for over four decades (that rattles my head, thinking of the tens of thousands of students they've written to, read millions and millions of student words and sentences and paragraphs and papers, many of them, honestly, written without zeal, without knowledge, without truth). I work with and learn from some wonderful student-colleagues as well. I call them student-colleagues because a week doesn't go by without learning from them -- mostly good, sometimes bad (BPL, for example).
Together, we read and discuss and teach and share those words -- the words of Locke and Jefferson, et al. We pause and for a few minutes revere a magical combination of words written decades or centuries ago; writing that has been preserved by those authors and their audiences, passed down formally through publication and sometimes informally through a more loving workmanship than profit-making.
I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. (King)I love that magic -- real love. And I love the hand that stirred those words together on that newspaper margin and I love the look of awe when fellow travelers "get it" -- we get what "mutuality" really means, understand how our bodies and minds and hearts and hands all intersect and interject and interconnect our souls. That garment weaves and has frayed edges, though. Sometimes we let our mutuality fade and falter, let it die like an un-watered orange tree in the oasis of this lonely, lonely world. That mutuality of which the Reverend speaks is countered by other networks which purposefully seek to unravel the garment, undo Locke and Jefferson, reverse or even pervert that myth of progress. Those networks of mutuality have words, too, and they are just as competent and driven as anything I would want for my student-colleagues.
I was an idealist, once and then. I have volumes and volumes of journals from late high school, undergrad years, then after. I believed that words would heal me and undo the wounding. I stopped those journals after about 10 years. I haven't looked at them since. They sit, covered with dust, on the bottom shelf, perhaps never to be opened again. What good did all those words do? Nothing.
so much dependsupon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
(Williams, "The Red Wheelbarrow")Why? Why does so much depend on that barrow and the rain and the chickens? Why does so much matter here, but my words don't matter?
Bitzer argues
"In short, rhetoric is a mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action. The rhetor alters reality by bringing into existence a discourse of such a character that the audience, in thought and action, is so engaged that it becomes mediator of change. In this sense rhetoric is always persuasive" ("The Rhetorical Situation," Philosophy & Rhetoric, 1.1 (Jan 1968): 1-14).Perhaps William Carlos Williams felt so much depended on that barrow not because of the rain water and the white chickens, but because of the glazing -- not the nouns, but the verb; not the thing, but the situation. I've always thought I was born out of time, that I would have done well in the 60s (not the clothes, though) -- either the 1960s or perhaps the 1760s (not the clothes, though). Not the 1860s -- those were rough. I presume some English/Colonial/American locale, but if I did have the power to travel to the 60s, I suppose my words would not be strong enough to situate myself in both a more appropriate time and a most appropriate space. More likely I would find myself in Prussia. Or France. Or Vienna. Not sure which would be better; which would be worse. I can imagine walking the Parisian streets of 1762 and missing Voltaire by only un quelque pieds, not knowing who I had almost spoken to (the wigs would not have helped).
 |
| Huquier -- Le Grand Marché de Vienne Gabriel Huquier (French, Orléans 1695–1772 Paris) |
Voltaire -- "Every man is guilty of the good he did not do."
Voltaire -- "We must cultivate our garden."
But Voltaire did not promise a rose garden. He only said we must cultivate it. The Garden of Eden turned out to be ridden with noxious weeds and we're still choked by those weeds today. This is why I doubt the ultimate power of the word. No matter how much we hoe, how much we till, how much we dig and dung, the weeds will return. They always do. Whatever future our civilization holds, weeds will always be there, the tares choking the wheat. Writing won't stop that.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+BruceJMartin Twitter @comstone
