Some Thoughts on Contemporary Rhetoric

Throughout the semester, we have been able to witness contemporary rhetoric on a grand scale and in real time. From talk around the election and political unrest, to discourse on the coronavirus pandemic, it’s no revelation that contemporary rhetoric is having a moment in the majority of news outlets. However, in Brynn’s latest post, she made some points that seemed to capture and verbalize thoughts I had been having, but was unsure how to describe.

It is as though everything we have studied this semester has demonstrated that while there is more information access than ever before, there are so few who are truly taking advantage of this access to its full potential and utilizing said access to learn and growth in  their understanding of the world around them. That being said, if anything, I feel the last four years have made me so critical and skeptical of anything I read or hear that I have to really do some digging before I will take anything as having much value. This is not normal, but since when are people in grad school normal?

As grad students, we are taught to challenge ourselves and our thinking almost daily. It’s what is expected of us, and often what is necessary to be successful in our field; but this is not the normal, everyday mindset of those outside of programs, or really even the general public. Often times, this can be forgotten, as I know I can get tunnel vision since I am usually surrounded by people in my field who thinks the same things, or challenge the information they are presented with, but I was reminded over our break how this is in no way a common practice.

My in-laws are major Trump supporters. It’s unfortunate and annoying, but that’s another issue entirely. They re avid Fox News consumers and will believe just about anything the right wing media tells them to be true. It’s disturbing, but fascinating to watch—kind of like a true crime documentary or a train wreck in real time. It’s a disaster and you know what happens will be horrific, but you just can’t turn away because it is utterly fascinating.

Their latest soap box is two-fold: the election is fraudulent, but still ongoing since Trump hasn’t won yet, and COVID-19 is a hoax Biden is pushing in an effort to make a more controlled society and begin the end of the world. Yes, you read correctly. I could get into the whys behind those beliefs, but that would take a while, so let’s just focus on the rhetoric surrounding these ideas at the moment, for our own sake.

Whatever strand of Fox News they consume continues to put out the notion that the election is not over, we do not have a president elect, and that Donald Trump is trying to “save us” from an evil, corrupt government that the left is trying to “push on the people to control them.” Now, I’m not saying the left is perfect either, but let’s try and ground ourselves in some facts. While that isn;t Fox news or the right’s strong suit, it is disturbing how effective their rhetoric is on their viewers. It’s cult-like. It’s terrifying. And it is precisely why Trump was able to win and maintain such a huge following, in spite of being a human piece of garbage.

Now, I’m not saying Fox News is the only one to blame; however, they are the most infamous. Trump’s rhetoric is masterful—I’m not saying he is intelligent by any means, but he knows how to work a crowd in his favor. I continue to see this rhetoric make moves every time I hear my family talk about the latest and greatest move Trump is making to “make america great again.” It’s disgusting. But I think it is evidence as to why it is so important to study contemporary rhetoric, or even just rhetoric and composition more broadly.

Our studies impact the world around us, in ways people may not even notice, but rhetoric is constantly making moves that can impact our daily lives.So, what do you think? In what ways is rhetoric emerging into the public eye again, in more obvious ways?

Has Ignorance Overcome Knowledge?

 Background for this blog: I work with my high school’s We the People team. It’s an AP government class with a competition component. Students are broken into teams, each with a different emphasis on the constitution/American government. They have to write papers answering 3 multi-tiered questions and prepare for a round of impromptu questioning. 

At virtual practice this week, my unit included a quote from James Madison in their paper, “knowledge will forever govern ignorance and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” 

Boy, some quotes do not hold up. When they finished reading the paper, my first question was “in today’s post-truth society, do you think knowledge really does govern over ignorance?” 

What followed was a conversation that they were not ready for, so it turned into an opportunity for me to rant. Here are the cliffnotes: 

One student argued that citizens today are more civically educated because they have more access to information. We then had a conversation about how we may have more access to information, but we also have more access to misinformation and disinformation. She continued to argue that any time you go on Twitter, there’s information about the presidential candidates’ political platform. I asked what platforms each president ran on. She did not have an answer. We as a society have become so used to information access that we do not realize that it’s not the same as being informed. The age of the screen rose to power so quickly, we as a society could not develop the critical thinking skills to cope with this new technology. We consume content, but we are not informed. 

Another student argued that we don’t have any means of fact checking and this contributes to the spread of false information. I disagreed here too. (I will always agree with an all or nothing answer) Though we are still waaaaaay behind in curbing post-truth and mis/disinformation, we are finally getting somewhere (with only two months left in Trump’s presidency). Twitter now has the “this claim is disputed” denotation on any tweet that may be spreading false information. Major television networks have started to stop airing coverage of President Trump as a way to curb the spread of post-truth. To these attempts at curbing misinformation, I say:

 

FINALLY, and here’s where I want you guys to weigh  in specifically - we had a serious conversation about the role hyperbole can play in political discourse. Hyperbole is an exaggeration that is not meant to be taken literally. One of my students argues that hyperbole is a good way to elicit pathos to spur a population into action. I think hyperbole is too damaging to our current society because I believe ignorance has overcome knowledge. People don’t know fact from fiction anymore. I don’t trust them to be able to tell that an exaggeration wasn’t meant to be taken literally. Maybe I’m just too jaded. Thoughts?

Troy Is Missing Out

 This is a video from my favorite Twitter satirist, Blaire Erskine, entitled "Woman stranded at MAGA rally in Omaha says Trump wanted to teach them a lesson." This video made Michael Moore "eat the onion."

A Question of Originality

While reading the Porter text last night (yes, I'm late and yes, I've been sick!), a number of different statements got a rise out of me. Part of me, specifically the part that taught high school for 10 years with hundreds of students coming in and out of my room each day, had a reaction to the conversation about writing instruction still being "mainly a matter of...arrangement (syntax and diction, grammatical competency...)" and the like (175). With the focus almost always being exclusive to what we can do to bring up test scores, this was inescapable, and I time traveled back to a place I did not want to be. But that's a conversation for another day...

Reading on, I found that I had a curious reaction to the idea that "The chief advantage of a folksonomic approach is that it allows you to "see what people are thinking," to find out what people are reading, and to see what tags others use to organize content" (181). This quote was in reference to the Time magazine "You" selection for 2006's "Person of the Year," and while I get the idea, and while I understand the point, I find myself a little perplexed by it. 

I cannot recall the author here, but I know there is a quote out there somewhere that suggests nothing is "original." That everything is based on something else. Movies, books, songs, fashion, etc...all of it is built from a previous iteration of sorts. It is for this reason that I sometimes feel like the word "inspiration" is troubling. Might there be a difference between true inspiration and simple adaptation/theft for "economic" purposes? I suppose maybe that has something to do with a more monetary version of economics, but there is still a "supply and demand" style event happening here (did I get enough "likes?". My question is about the nature of that "demand."

I would also argue then that the word "advantage" in the quote above might be most important to my concern here. The presentation of that folksonomic argument isn't that it is empirical or exclusive, but that it might have something to do with my ideas on inspiration versus adaptation, mindless or purposeful inclined. Maybe I'm just bothered by the word "wisdom" as it sits next to social media. 

I guess I tend to be overly critical of social media in just about every aspect, even if I say that as a hypocrite who uses Twitter because he loves sports. Still though, that in and of itself is part of what confounded me. My Twitter realm is very sports specific. My timeline is legitimately 90% sports oriented. If it dabbles into politics or other topics, it does so through the lens of sports and sports media. It is here where I think the conversation matters. I'm intrigued by the "power of the collective group," but only so when that "group" is literally "collective" in some unified sense. As referenced in the text, an online support group for people who deal with a similar medical condition sounds exactly like something that I feel would indeed provide (potential) wisdom, or at least different ideas and perspective you could address with a doctor (though this class has given me some concern with that if you're a women. Not something I'd really thought of before). 

What I have concern about is the "collective power" of a group of people who are not unified in any sense, and it becomes a cesspool of toxic and endlessly abrasive "debate." Now I am also sure that in this open environment some wonderful things happen, yet I feel like whenever I open myself to a more broad version of Twitter or Facebook, my reaction is one of a desperate need to run away. As Porter says, "many cooks are good for brainstorming," but that "too many cooks can spoil" things (182). 

I realize I've taken some of this out of context a bit, but it really has me thinking about how people get information, and who they get it from. What is original? What are we "thinking" about that is important, based on who said it and how frequently is it said online? How many of our friends retweeted it? Did I see something on Facebook that "got me thinking," and if it did, and "I" really thinking? This discussion on original thought has me a bit bothered, I must admit. I also realize that in some sense, this is not different than other times, such as going to a public square and listening to debate, yet the simple amount of information available now seems to be able to act as an entirely different economic engine. All of it has me just a little foggy.

But it could also just be the codeine in the cough medicine. Who knows.

It's Not Cool Once Corporate Does It

Just as when the nerds or your parents start to adopt a fashion trend it’s no longer cool, so it follows that once companies start blogging, it’s no longer cool. Companies ruin a lot of things. Blogging and social media is on the top of the list. 

For two years, I ran a law firm’s social media accounts as well as wrote blogs. A blog from a law firm or a tweet from a law firm is about as cool as it sounds. (In this post, I blend blogging/social media because I think Miller and Shepherd’s analysis reveals some truths about many yet-to-emerge social media platforms)

The genre of our blog posts were almost identical to our press release format. The difference between whether we wrote a blog or a press release depended on the content. Most notably, did we think ANY of our media relations would be remotely interested in the “story” we had to tell? If yes, we sent them a press release. If not, we wrote a blog about it and posted it on our website.

Most of the time, the blogs I wrote were “So-and-So spoke at this event. The event happened three weeks ago but the attorney complained that we didn’t post about it so write a blog or something.” Or So-and-So won an award but it wasn’t covered in the Indy Star so they want us to publicize it.” Sensing a trend? More often than not, our blogs were a last-ditch effort to show attorneys we were doing something about a particular thing they cared about, but we as marketing professionals knew no one else would. 

When companies create their own format for a genre, it can lead to the degradation of that genre. Writing a blog for the sake of writing a blog is not a good enough reason to do so. 

Miller and Shepherd’s “Blogging as Social Action,” though in need of an update as the genre of blogs has evolved, still rings true regarding the need to pair content with personality. 

Think of the companies that have succeeded in creating blogs or social media accounts that people actually follow? 

Wendy’s is the first that comes to mind. Wendy’s rejects corporate America’s largely sweeping decision to play it safe and not offend anyone. Wendy’s has a personality of making fun of people, joking about other fast food chains. They have personality, a point of view. 

What are some other corporations that have successful blogs and social media accounts in your opinion? Why do you think they’re successful? How do they comply with or defy traditional blog genre conventions?

Apparently I Had a Lot to Say About This: A Few Requests from Your Friendly Neighborhood Spoonie

Because positionality is important for this essay, I have to say I know better than most how it feels to have a body “colonized through the discursive practices of the natural sciences, particularly the discourses of biology and medicine” (7). It’s a hard thing to explain if you haven’t experienced it. (If you have, I'm sorry.) Two weeks ago, instead of being in class with all of you discussing Foucault (and crying because he broke my brain), I was laying on a table having tubes and wires removed from and inserted into my body, without anesthesia or pain relief (so still crying, but probably less than I assume y'all were, honestly). The radiologist braced his hand on my chest to stabilize himself while he worked. He moved it when he realized what he was doing. It wasn’t a malicious or intentional grope; at that moment, to him, I was just a body. A wrong body. He forgot there was a person in there. That happens sometimes—they’ll lift your gown in a crowded room, poke something that hurts you because it looks weird and they want to know what it is, withhold pain medication or anesthesia because it saves them time, ask your husband about your symptoms because you’re crying and they don’t want to deal with it. These might not sound like discursive practices, but they happen to us because of how doctors think about us and talk about us. 

“Disability studies sets aside the 'natural' and medical model of disability as accidental disease, trauma, deficit, or defect, using and extending the insights of feminist, postmodern, and postcolonial theory and social and rhetorical studies of science to analyze disability as a sociopolitical construct” (10). I’d like to provide an example of that. The natural, medical, or deficit models of disability say that I am disabled because I am neurologically abnormal, my stomach is paralyzed, and my blood is never where it’s supposed to be. The social model of disability says that I am disabled because I can’t participate in the sacred American tradition of overeating on holidays (or any other day, but Thanksgiving specifically sucks), can’t drive or travel normally, can’t stay upright for more than a few hours at a time or adhere to standard dress codes and attendance policies, and thus, can’t work outside my house. I've been excluded from polite society for so long that I sometimes feel feral, like a burden to my spouse and a disappointment to my family, and socially, capitalistically, I know I am less valuable, less person, to some people because I produce and contribute less to society. That's sociopolitical disability. (Is this TMI? If so, my bad. My disability is pretty invisible unless I lift my shirt or throw up/pass out in public, so I sometimes feel weird claiming it and go overboard proving it.)

Could you guess I had a hard time choosing what to talk about this week? I was really torn. Medical misogyny almost won out, because doctors really hate women (especially women of color) and people should know that. Femininity is, after all, the first deformity, right, Aristotle? I also thought it would be really fun and timely to review Authoring Autism: On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness, which is a book written by autistic rhetorician Melanie Yergeau, who developed a theory called neurological queerness, situated at the intersection of queer theory and disability studies. She’s unbelievably brilliant and cool and I’m mild-to-moderately obsessed with her.  

But I wanted to be useful (don't analyze that). I didn’t want to bitch or fangirl (too much). So, I decided to share tips and resources to help us all be better allies to our disabled colleagues and students in higher education. Obviously, disabled people are not a monolith. I can’t pretend to speak for everyone. But the primary principle of disability advocacy rhetoric is “nothing about us without us,” so I have come as an emissary of the disabled academics community to share some of my extremely limited wisdom.

1.  BELIEVE US. When we say we’re tired, we’re tired. When we say we need a minute, an extension, an accommodation, we mean it. We’re not lazy. We do not want your attention. We're not taking advantage of the system or any of that other gross shit people say. We’re exhausted, we’re busy, we’ve got brain fog, or stress has exacerbated our symptoms. Cut us a break. When we say we’re fine, we mean that, too. Here’s an autoethnographic account of ableism in higher education by four disabled graduate students. They have a lot to say about this. I cosign pretty much all of it.
2. Advocate for us, but INCLUDE US in our own advocacy. Disabled self-advocacy is a thing, and it’s great, and you should listen. Parents and families of disabled people are also often good advocates, but they are not substitutes for self-advocacy, and it’s dangerous to position them that way. Protect the agency of disabled people. Attend diversity training for disability advocacy and accessibility, and if it isn't offered to you, ask for it.
3. Traveling for conferences is out of the realm of possibility for some disabled students and scholars. Include disabled people on your planning committees when you plan conferences. Ask about accessibility when you attend them. Provide opportunities to participate remotely, and very importantly, to network remotely. We are missing out on opportunities because we are stuck at home. And abled academics are missing our perspectives.
4. Accommodate disability in your writing classroom. Intellectual or social/communicative disability is an important consideration here, and those accommodations are within your control. Autistic students have cognitive differences that mean they sometimes don’t respond well to process-based writing pedagogy. Learning disabled students sometimes require “student-centered instruction, orality as an alternative form of learning, and peer tutoring” (9). Adjust accordingly.
5. Being disabled is expensive. So, so, so expensive. Accessibility is affected not only by disability, but by the intersection of class and disability. Don’t place undue financial burdens on your students, and make sure your disabled students are being provided with accessibility resources.

Anyway. Disability also means that sometimes just being a person is exhausting. I know that's true for everyone sometimes, but it's true for disabled people most of the time. Be cool. And don't vote for Republicans. They're terrible.

The Pulse of the Nation

Keith nails it when it comes to his emotions and the election, especially when it comes to an inability to fully understand certain actions. His "father/son/Trump" example demonstrates this well enough. For me though, I want to stop for a second and just think about "emotions" a little more deeply. These emotions are more than just simple feelings. They can have actual influence and effect on our physical bodies. For example, when I feel anxious, my heartbeat takes on a life of its own. This "feeling" isn't particularly dangerous, at least according to my doctors, but it is real, it has an effect on me, and I think it actually ties in with what we're doing here recently.

It started when I was in early college. I developed this weird electrical issue in my heart that sometimes causes my regularity to get a little funky. It's not a true murmur, and structurally my heart is sound, but the beat itself takes on a number of different qualities pending the day and level of anxiety. I've had it slow down to the point of hospitalization, which is exceedingly rare, but more regularly it just feels like my heart stops beating in my chest for a second before getting back to its job. When this happen, a massive heavy feeling sits on my chest, making it hard to breathe and focus. If you're ever watching me on Zoom and you see me shake my head, that's why I'm doing it. Habermas and Foucault can be stressful! Yet to the exact same point, this stress is kind of "fun" stress to me. I'm learning, growing, and in a way, I am trying to "feel" or at least open my feelings to new possibilities every time I read. I can tell you right now that I know we do not all share the exact same values or ideas. I don't think anybody truly does. Yet in this class, and my life in general, I tend to adore moments of conflict where I can just hear others out who are willing to do the same with me. These moments give me hope, while others feel like they are slowly killing me.

This is why I get so damn frustrated when it comes to Trump and a number of other figures. Sure, some of their positions in general I find offensive and worrisome, but far more commonly it is their mocking attitude and clear and intentional dismissal of certain issues as irrelevant or not worth consideration that pushes me to my limit. This stuff simply rages at my anxiety, and here lately, it has literally caused a physical reaction in my body. My emotions, something I cannot perfectly place into words or rhetoric, matter so very much that as I watch election results or listen to people talk on TV or social media, I just have to clutch my chest and hope for the best. Literally.

So, trying to get a pulse on things, what I'm struggling with right now societally is that when we mock emotions as a form of meaningful rhetorical action, we potentially create a barrier between a situation and authentic reactions that simply cannot exist in alphabetic terms. Mocking this therefore eats me alive. What's more problematic then is that we seem to thrive on this, or at least some of us do. I can't tell you how many times I've seen Tweets or signs from people say things like "cry again, liberals" or something similar. We are actually seeking out and welcoming the destruction of feelings that do not align with our own. I don't know about you, but when I see somebody else cry, that's when my emotions kick into the highest of gears. 

I very rarely cry due to my own circumstances. I have other reactions, like my aforementioned heartbeat, but for me to cry, it usually depends on me seeing the pain of another person before my own waterworks engage. If something terrible happens, I will not cry for myself, but I will absolutely cry for you. It is here, with this lack of recognizing the power of emotions, that I find myself truly worried for our nation's future. I'm not asking you to cry for me, but I am asking everybody to maybe just pause for a second when they see pain and fear in another human being and try to process what got that person there, even if you do not agree. 

I'm not pushing an argument that we all need to agree. I guess I just want people to effing care about each other for once.

The Election Has Me Down

 I find it difficult to focus today. And before I go on and on about how important this election is to me, to people of color, to the LGBTQIA+ folx, etc., I'll stop myself. The readings for today ask for a more critical rhetoric and, from it, we get scholars like hooks and Asante. hooks especially effortlessly ties racism and sexism. At points, I had to stop and really consider her words. For instance, and she's quite persuasive here, that black males, though oppressed, follow the greasy shadow of their oppressors by emulating the exact same patriarchal moves that white men have made on minorities for centuries. It is without criticism and critical thinking that hooks would never form such thought provoking claims. 

At an instance I'm filled with passion. For our field. For academia. But then I realize how many fucking people voted for Trump. AGAIN! Even after Covid, which has killed over 200,000 Americans wasn't enough. In fact, this dad is still voting for Trump despite losing his son to Covid. What's interesting here, if we rhetorically analyze this statement a bit, which is "My son died from Covid-19 and I'm still voting for Trump." The word still rings a bit odd here. This person appears to admit, in some way, that not only is Covid-19 to blame for his son's death but, in some way, Trump is to blame too. Despite that, they claim to still pledge allegiance to Trump. 

I don't get it. I mean, I do, but I'll try to incorporate a bit of the readings here, no matter how vague. 

The readings today have me wondering where we've failed our citizens so hard that they'd still vote for the one that's actively working against their best wishes. All of the promises he made to them, have gone unanswered. The wall? Didn't get finished. Job growth? The worst it's been in years. Unemployment? The same. 

The answer here is racism. It's always will be racism. I'm just incredibly disappointed, again, in this country. I'm not sure what the answer is here but a lot of folks are missing critical thinking in their lives and it shows. How you can't see an orange turd for what it is is beyond me. 

Sorry it's so short this week. I tried. Perhaps you might use this space to vent, offer advice, and/or support for each other. 

Shameless Authenticity

While reading sections from Asante's The Afrocentric Idea, I recalled a story arc in season 10 of the television show Shameless. 

Liam Gallagher is a biological member of a white Irish family in the south of Chicago, yet his skin is black. The show plays on this concept as a joke, that a distant relative was a slave and that's how Liam received his black genes. As Liam gets older, he meets more black people and wants to discover more about his background. He seeks to examine blackness not in its biological form but in its philosophical one, as articulated by Asante. 

Liam starts to dress in dashikis, even getting beat up by classmates for it. He dresses as a different black historical figure each day - from Frederick Douglass to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Jimi Hendrix. His next-door neighbor, V, is also seeking to take back her heritage. Though she is a black woman raised by black parents, the show emphasizes her loss of black culture through her assimilation into the white dominant ideology because of her marriage to a white man, job working with predominantly white people, and lack of friendship with individuals of her race. For breakfast every morning with Liam, V cooks a recipe from a slave's cookbook. Liam skips Lucky Charms for broiled ochre.

Asante describes authenticity as "triumph in allowing people to realize themselves through their own history" (137). Liam had the opportunity to examine his Irish side and his black side. He chose to explore the history of the black part of his heritage, one that was foreign to many of his white family members. A history that often put him at the butt of the joke. His authenticity is exemplified by the various black figures he seeks to resemble. By dressing as prominent black figures, he may be able to learn more about the history of his own blackness, a history to which he has no other people in his personal life to turn.

In a similar vein, V finds herself invited to "the cookout" after not having attended one in quite sometime. She finds herself surrounded by black people, people who she identifies as her peers. Yet, as she spends more time at the cookout, she overhears people making fun of how she talks, the dish she brings to the potluck, and realizes she can't follow along with the dances that everyone performs at the barbecue. She comes home, crying to her mother, exclaiming "Mama, I forgot the electric slide," to which her mother welcomes her home with open arms. V has abandoned her blackness and has not come to terms with that loss. The loss of her artistic history explores briefly her negritude. Though we may not consider the electric slide as "the literary and artistic sensibilities of African intellectuals in the field of creative motifs and ethos," it still exists as a part of her history. It still exists as a part of the contemporary black social group (137). In this way, it still contributes to Asante's concept of negritude. 

While V and Liam do not touch on afrocentricity, they do contribute to the examination of authenticity and negritude, suggesting blackness does not exist solely in biological terms, but in philosophical ones as well. In particular, because Liam, though black, belongs to an entirely white biological family.