Foucault and #BlackDisabledLivesMatter

 Amongst many other things, and stated much more eloquently, Foucault proposes the following two ideas in his body of work:

1.  Institutionalizing the mentally ill is not social progress; it is society’s inhumane and selfish method of coping with our discomfort with mental illness. The “medicalization” of mental illness in the 1700s resulted in the birth of the mental institution, which removed mentally ill and disabled people from their homes and families, out of the view of society, and allowed them to be confined, tortured, and experimented on by the state. In Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, Foucault states, “Modern man no longer communicates with the madman...there is no common language: or rather, it no longer exists; the constitution of madness as mental illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, bears witness to a rupture in a dialogue, gives the separation as already enacted, and expels from the memory all those imperfect words, of no fixed syntax, spoken falteringly, in which the exchange between madness and reason was carried out. The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue by reason about madness, could only have come into existence in such a silence.” Society no longer wishes to understand mental illness, or to see the mentally ill. The result of this practice is total dehumanization.
2. Prisons are less humane than public executions because they obscure the mechanisms of state control and abuse which are common to the criminal justice system. In a public execution, at least we are forced to bear witness to the violence—and at least it’s over quickly. In prison, every moment is designed to inflict pain. In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Foucault states, “But a punishment like forced labour or even imprisonment – mere loss of liberty – has never functioned without a certain additional element of punishment that certainly concerns the body itself: rationing of food, sexual deprivation, corporal punishment, solitary confinement … There remains, therefore, a trace of ‘torture’ in the modern mechanisms of criminal justice – a trace that has not been entirely overcome, but which is enveloped, increasingly, by the non-corporal nature of the penal system.”

A Foucauldian analysis of the state-sponsored executions of Ricardo Muñoz, Walter Wallace, and Osaze Osagie might argue that the only reason we are able to understand and condemn these abuses of power by the state is because they were recorded, because they happened in the middle of the street rather than behind the walls of an institution. These deaths are atrocities, and they illustrate a pattern of abuses of power by the police against disabled people of color. However, that pattern is part of a pattern of more systemic injustices, which include the mistreatment of the mentally ill and prisoners within our institutions. Disabled people are tortured and die in institutions. Prisoners are killed by law enforcement in police custody every day. We know this. The difference in this situation is that we had to see it. Is that why we condemn it?

I hope this hasn’t come across as flippant—I’m gutted and horrified. Ricardo Muñoz, Walter Wallace, and Osaze Osagie did not have to die. Police should have employed de-escalation techniques at the minimum, and non-lethal force at the most, to protect these people in crisis, as well as their communities. What bothers me is what might still have happened if they had lived. How would Walter Wallace have been treated in state custody? I cannot imagine a scenario under our current system in which he would be treated compassionately, as a complete person, with a valuable life.

Should these deaths be part of a larger cultural conversation about how we as a society would rather hide, neutralize, and mute the mentally ill, rather than seek to understand them? Or about the subtle but undeniable mechanisms of torture inherent in our criminal justice system?

The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth?

We've spent quite a bit of time in this class talking about the nature of the public sphere. The good news is that in doing so, I can confidently say that I have a stronger grasp on the nature of people and how we argue than ever before. I feel like my grasp of these "spheres" has allowed me to see beyond the simple desire to argue, and to really dig into the complexities of both people and arguments in general. The bad news is that, also generally speaking, we are trying to communicate our idea of "truth."

While reading Brummett's "Three Meanings of Epistemic Rhetoric," I was taken aback by the number "three" more than anything else. I guess in some sense, I had thought of an argument as this binary, singular event, and that each party involved has their own understanding of said "truth," and it was as simple as that. The problem is that this is an oversimplification (go figure), at least as Brummet explains it. In this post, I am not going to dig into all three sections, but instead I want to focus on the first, or the "methodological" meaning. I simply want to focus on the fact that what makes all of this so damn complicated is that we often argue with the intention of making people see, as Brummet says, our own "objective and unitary reality." This is where the cluster begins for me.

It's like our class last week. I'm blanking on the term/name, but it is much like the dictionary example and trying to define a single word. You then need to use the dictionary to define those words used to define the first word, and so on and so forth. That should have woken me up more than it did I guesss, but if confusion is a sign of learning....Anyway, I see the idea here. We argue with forced, creative, perspective, and not one that allows or invites "discovery." 

Or do we? At this point, I strangely feel like I have a much better understanding of how people argue, yet I find myself in this odd position where I feel like because of that knowledge, I have no idea how to act in the moment. I suppose that if I can communicate to my opposition that I am not trying to persuade them to my truth, but just to understand that I do have a different truth all together, is that an actionable and persuasive enough to work? Or are people really THAT sure about everything deep down in their soul?

Is it this method "discovery" then that is the best option for those who live with a different "truth" than me? Off the top of my head, I can't think of a meaningful argument where I, in the moment, actually changed somebody's mind, or vice versa. Sure, I or my adversary might of changed my/their opinion later on, but pride is one hell of a powerful force. I think in those moments, speaking only for myself here, and only when I had escaped my pride, is where I often went on a massive "search for truth," as stated by Cherwitz and Hikin's. Reflecting on an argument, I needed to prove to myself that I was right, so I starting digging deeper and deeper. It seems like in those moments, I always end up learning something, and my idea of truth changes, at least a little bit. Quite frankly, as I pull in some of the rest of the text, I just don't know if I discovered it or it somebody created it for me. 

It's also past midnight, so maybe this was just a bad time to write in general....

Amy Coney Barrett Confirmation (Spoiler--this is a sad one)

     Last night, Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed as the new Supreme Court justice who will be filling the seat of the late and iconic Ruth Bater Ginsburg. Today, she will be sworn in. I am utterly disgusted by this and incredibly saddened that this is even happening. It feels like Barrett taking a seat on the Supreme Court is the end of many basic rights for myself and my loved ones, as she and her party have made it abundantly clear that they aim to target the Affordable Care Act, Roe v. Wade, LGBTQIA rights, and many others. It feels like nothing and no one is safe unless you're a straight white Republican man, and I fully mean that.

    This semester has been so hard. It feels like we are constantly faced with one political turmoil after another. Add grad school, a pandemic, and attempts at a personal life on top of that, and things are pretty rough right now. This shit sucks. It feels like a constant struggle to stay afloat. It's like I'm in a constant state of mourning, but there's never enough time to fully process things before the next bad thing happens.

    The confirmation and swearing in of Barrett is terrifying and I'm afraid. I'm afraid of what will happen, particularly what her appointment will mean for the election next week, as it has been made clear that she was rushed in just in case Trump needs the Supreme Court to override the election results in some way. Then, there's the impending idea that healthcare will be taken away from individuals through the ACA, during a literal pandemic. The Republican party has expressed that they want to make it to where upon turning 18, people are kicked off of their parents' insurance and forced to find their own plan. I don't know about you, but I don't know many 18 year olds that can afford their own health insurance, especially at a time when 1) there's a pandemic, 2) jobs are harder to find as a result of that pandemic, 3) not many companies want to hire 18 year olds for decent wages on the notion that they don't have "experience" and it is unlikely they could afford insurance at this age. 

    I'm also afraid for what this confirmation means for women's rights and LGBTQIA rights. This can't be good in any way, as again, Barrett and her party have made it clear that they want to set back progress by at least 40 years, if not more, to directly set back these groups of people and limit their rights. It's terrifying and I am just so tired.

    It feels like the one remaining hope I can hold onto is that Biden might win the election, but after the shit show of 2016, I am incredibly cautious with my optimism. So now, I guess we just sit and wait, praying that things could possibly turn out okay.

Writing Through the Madness

 Something I have noticed and found to be increasingly fascinating this semester would have to be how my students are engaging with the contemporary rhetorics that are occurring in their everyday lives. I’m currently teaching ENG 103 and in my courses, I will give specific restrictions on papers for topics, but generally try to have students choose their own specific scope to help maintain their interest. 

Currently, we are starting an argumentative paper in which they must examine a policy that is in place (or one that is not in place but needs to exist) and create an argument around that policy (should it be revised, stay the same? why? etc.). I have been fascinated at how many students have chosen to address things related to either COVID-19 or the upcoming election. This has been surprising to me, in that I figured the last thing students would want to choose to engage with would be more of the chaos around them. The last time I taught this assignment, there were a few political arguments, but many were about sports and campus related things. This shift in topic choice for my students has made me reevaluate how students write and understand rhetoric.

This shift in the amount of students who are engaging with current issues and the rhetoric surrounding them also had me thinking just show much we use writing as a way to process the world around us and the various issues that we face in day-to-day life. Writing in all forms provides a different outlet in which we can process our thoughts and feelings on things like a global pandemic and an upcoming election in a time of political unrest. We write to share, to feel, and to make our way through the madness that often surrounds us. Writing provides us with a voice, especially in times where we feel unseen and unheard.

It's no secret that this semester has been and continues to be hard--academically, mentally, and just in general a rough time. I'm not saying that for my students writing about these topics will suddenly solve all their problems, but if it provides them with a small way to cope and process their feelings, why not give them that space?

Derrida for Dummies

Confiscate my cool kid card. I knew almost nothing about Derrida before I encountered him in our reading this week. I knew the word deconstructionism, and I knew he was important, but that was pretty much it. I needed more background on Derrida to feel comfortable approaching the Biesecker text, so I looked him up. If you find yourself in a similar position, this video was a sort of charming and helpful primer:

In case you don't have ten minutes to spare for Derrida, here's my breakdown of some key words (with the caveat that I'm new to Derridean philosophy and therefore might be wrong):

• Deconstruction – "dismantling our excessive loyalty to any idea and learning to see the aspects of the truth that might lie opposite." Of Grammatology argues that speech is privileged over writing, reason over passion, words over pictures… we are always assigning value arbitrarily. Deconstructionism examines binaries and value statements. “To deconstruct an idea is to show that it’s confused and riddled with logical defects and that we must keep its messiness constantly in mind.”
• Aporia – "impasse, or puzzlement, a state we should be proud to know and experience regularly." How you feel when you successfully deconstruct an idea. If you’re confused, it just means you’re finally thinking hard enough.
• Logocentrism – "over hasty, naïve devotion to reason, logic, and clear definition, underpinned by a faith in language as the natural and best way to communicate." A bad thing, it seems. Privileging language and reason over music and feeling, for example. 
• Binary opposition - term coined by structuralists and argues that words should be examined in terms of opposites. Hot/cold, bad/good, man/woman. Each of these binaries is hierarchical, which means that one is always perceived as being better than the other. 

BONUS: This video is only three minutes long and explains the idea of diffërance fairly well, but the narrator does a bad French accent which I find annoying, so I'm not recommending it.

• Diffèrance – the idea that "a word’s meaning can never be absolutely pinned down". You can’t define one word without using other words, which in turn would have to be defined by other words. Meaning is messy and subjective. 
• Essentialism – philosophy which asserts that there is an absolute essence of things.

This exercise helped me prepare for the Biesecker reading and made me feel a little less like a dummy. I thought I'd pass along my notes in case they could help someone else. :)

Healthcare and the Impending Election + Supreme Court Nomination

Recently, while scrolling through TikTok, I came across this video: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMJaFfQrt/

    In the video, the woman discusses how the impending confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett and the upcoming election could impact how young people (between 18-26 years old) are receiving and have access to healthcare. As someone who relies upon their parents' insurance plan, as they are not in a position where they can afford one or have one offered through their employer, this is terrifying.

    This year has been difficult. The pandemic imposes constant health risks, and with the impending doom of Amy Coney Barrett, the risks for women's healthcare to be set back is also on the line. With all of this in the air, the idea that healthcare coverage and access could be taken away from or limited to thousands of young people is nothing less than a reckless abuse of power.

    Something that frustrates me about this issue is that older generations (aka the boomers) seem to fault the younger generations for wanting affordable healthcare. What do you think about this? Why does it feel like we are in a constant struggle to maintain basic rights?

Make Politics Boring Again

 I had a difficult time coming up with a topic for this blog post. I blame a few things: the election, covid, the overall hustle of midterm. It is no doubt a combination of these three that have attacked the invention area of my brain. But, just as I began losing hope, something dislodged and a thought materialized. I'll pose it here as a statement: Make Politics Boring Again! I long for the day when I don't have to worry about the President ending the world over a tweet. 

Though I'm careful not to speak for everyone, or overgeneralize, many of us would agree that much of our time spent on social media is plagued with news about Trump; all of it is bad, absolutely all of it. Though I could spend time discussing how this election is perhaps the most important to our country's history, I'd like to instead focus on the public. It seems the public has had enough. I'll qualify and say that those voting for Trump obviously don't fit this discussion. To them, Trump is winning bigly. If they thought rationally, they'd see Trump for the fraud that he is. That said, the energy surrounding Biden seems different than the energy surrounding Clinton in 2016. The public seems a bit more engaged this time around. 

They're ready to move on. But, as I alluded to above, it isn't folks like me (far left in his leanings) or your MAGA hat-wearing folks, all of whom consume regularly political news, that I'm referring to. In relation to a discussion we had in class, I'm talking about the moderates. What of the moderates who voted for Trump in 2016 because Clinton didn't jive with them? What of those who sat out in 2016? Polls are indicating that the election might break records in terms of voter turnout. For those who didn't vote in 2016, are they sick enough of Trump now? Newsweek says "yes".  

Trump's presidency should (hopefully "will") go down in history as "The Disinformation Presidency." As we've seen, many fall for Trump's conspiracy theories. Many of those who consider themselves moderates fell for them. However, is there a limit to how much disinformation the public is willing to accept? And which disinformation campaign was it that set many against Trump? If I were a betting man, I'd bet on his attack on science in the face of a global pandemic. Trump was able to hide behind his lies and fake news, using Fox News in particular as a propaganda machine, but when countries like New Zealand have successfully eliminated Covid with science, Trump's attack on science has left a bad taste in most sane people's mouths.

Unfortunately, his most loyal followers still believe the conspiracy theories but the seams are starting to really show. Between the Presidental debate, the town hall meetings, etc., Trump seems unhinged, weak, and scared. So much is clear: we must vote! We must persuade our friends and family who don't typically vote to go to the polls. The only way to rid us of the tweeting tangerine is Biden winning by a landslide. I realized one thing while watching Biden's town hall meeting: it was incredibly uneventful. I dare say, it was boring! 

Vote!

Make politics boring again!

Flies and Facial Expressions: The VP Debate

I hope all of you were able to watch the VP debate that took place last week. While personally I was leery of watching another mess of a debate, I'm glad I was able to tune in and see the difference between the presidential debate and this one. There were two main things that really stuck out to me, and since the debate took place, have come up on Twitter and other social media in full force.

Firstly, the fly that flew into Mike Pence's hair became quite the odd celebrity. Maybe it's just a sign of our generation to make jokes out of everything, but the jokes about that fly had quite the range. While some jokes were hilarious, such as the ones saying the fly proves that Pence is a husk of a human being rotting from the inside out, others were offensive, and even racist. One viral tweet I saw called the fly "Mike Pence's only black friend." Even Biden attempted to capitalize on it. It's a bit disappointing that during one of the most chaotic and truly depressing times in our nation with the COVID pandemic that we lose focus on the issues of the debate on focus on something like this. Are we all just so mentally and emotionally exhausted that jokes are our only coping mechanism? Should there be a balance between the two in order to keep some semblance of seriousness in our politics? 

Secondly, can we all applaud Kamala Harris's incredible job at the debate? Woman are constantly talked over in almost every single profession, and she was not standing for any of that. (I'm sure the women in this class can relate since higher ed is also notorious for this.) Between her "I'm speaking" and Maxine Waters's "reclaiming my time," women in politics seem to be standing up for themselves and not letting the usual suspects run right over them. While it's incredible for women to see, the backlash of Kamala standing up for herself on social media was disheartening. There were some who were quick to criticize her for not being able to conceal her facial expressions and discontent, blaming her womanhood for her inability to control herself. It seems that no matter what women do, their actions will be looked at under a microscope and scrutinized by those who do not see the rhetorical power in being authentic. 

While I could rant about the debates for numerous blog posts, I'd love to know your thoughts. 

Lizzo & the Proud Boys: Reclaiming and Renaming Words for Social Action

 In I. A. Richard’s Philosophy of Rhetoric lecture, he discusses how words derive their meaning from their contexts, “the stability of the meaning of a word comes from the constancy of the contexts that gives it its meaning” (p. 5).  

What happens when words have their meanings appropriated or a word no longer means what it was intended to mean? I see two possible options in the media today. 

1. Reclaim the word. 

I have two seemingly innocuous words for you: Proud Boys. During the first presidential debate, a nation watched as President Trump not only failed to denounce white supremacy but instructed the far-right extremist group the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”  

But have no fear. Gay Twitter is here. Thousands of gay Americans across the country took to twitter to showcase their love for their partners and families using the hashtag #ProudBoys. Those who paired the Proud Boys hashtag with images of love successfully provided a new context for the words overnight. The words can no longer be used to suppress them. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.  

2. Create a new word.  

Grammy-winning queen Lizzo has long been a soldier for the body positivity movement. She uses her platform to help millions of people around the world feel good about their bodies, especially if they do not fit into the traditional mold that the media promulgates. She asks her followers to love themselves exactly as they are, “if you can love me, you can love yourself.”  

However, she has spoken out about the appropriation of the body positive movement by women who do fit the traditional media mold. The words body positive are “no longer benefitting” the population it was created for. In an attempt to continue her mission of helping people feel good about the space they occupy, Lizzo has coined a new term, “body normative.” She wants to normalize all bodies. She felt that she could no longer do so using the term body positive because of the flood of contexts that the word has been used in, which she believes has fundamentally reconstructed the meaning of the word. Instead of reclaiming it, she’s renaming it.  

Anybody Want a Trump Conspiracy?

 The recent report of President Trump contracting COVID-19 has me thinking. From his rally crowds to "freedom fighters" who believe that wearing a mask encroaches upon their individual rights, Trump's diagnosis presents an incredible opportunity of switching the narrative. Trump's reaction to the virus, both physically and through his communicative tactics, could create an entirely new "wave" of reaction. 

Maybe you've already heard the conspiracy rumors? The one where Trump (or his advisors) realize the potential that exists in a televised moment where Trump, a symbol of the far right's strength and fighter mentality, "contracts" the virus, fights it off despite his age and often ridiculed body, and comes out even stronger, like an odd, cocooned orange butterfly. This then takes anyone on the voting fringe, where I do believe more people reside than we realize, and has them ride the wave to hopeful reelection.

Or, pending advisement and some mesh of reality and sophistry, let's say Trump really did catch the virus and has "aha" moment. From there, he comes to realize the severity of the virus as it ravages his body and subsequently comes out with a more moderate and cautious attitude towards the pandemic, once again offering that little bit of "umph" needed to buy in some undecided voters. 

I'm not here to argue any of this as true or plausible, but as I think back to Postman and others, and as I compare Trump to previous presidents, the current state of the media's coverage of politics at least allows the possibility of a very scary, Orwellian moment. I would imagine that thanks to TV and social media, Trump backers could hear very different message from him post virus contraction and believe it has always been that way, like the chocolate rations in 1984. I'm probably too far down the rabbit hole here, but I am deeply worried about the saturation level we are approaching and its subsequent influence on the nearing election.

Feminism and RhetComp

Intersectional feminism has been a prominent conversation blooming in rhet comp as of late. This is particularly prominent in the current race discussion and tensions that are happening at the national level, begging the question as to where rhetoric and composition researchers fit into this ongoing discussion of representation, inclusion, and recognition. Speaking in broad strokes, it appears that there are steps being taken in research and curriculum to be more cognizant of inclusivity, or at least on paper. However, is this true in practice within higher education? 

Generally speaking, academia comes off (at least to me) as a bit performative: we all want to be practicing intersectional feminism and being inclusive for all communities, but at the end of the day, we are still operating within a system that was built upon and operates within problematic foundations and principles. As a field, researchers, faculty. and staff may be making efforts to counteract the problems within our system. There’s been more conversation about indigenous groups, people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, and how we as academics can be more respectful of other cultures and identities. 

In spite of this effort, are we doing enough? In what ways are we still lacking in this area of inclusivity?