This weekend I met Hank. Hank is from Taiwan.
It’d probably be more accurate to say that I met “Hank” because, as you might guess, that’s not the Taiwanese name he was given at birth, but rather the name of a white man sewn on his back, so to speak.
Gladish Community Center was the site of the local Taiwanese New Year celebration this weekend, and as I had my palm read, drank bubble tea, and wandered around the room, I met other Taiwanese students who introduced themselves as “Emma,” “Mike,” and “Anna.” It felt a bit odd, but I decided to simply liken it to how we chose Spanish names in ninth grade Spanish class (I was “Amada”). The only difference in this scenario is that this isn’t a classroom where they spend 50 minutes a day – this is their life! We’re messing with history and identities here! Who forced that old guy's name on this young man! This is assimilation and appropriation at its worst, I thought.
Suddenly, I had an urge to go around the room and ask everyone their “real” names (don’t worry, I didn’t). Sure, I might butcher some pronunciations on the first, second, and fifth attempts, but at least we’ll be working within their contexts and respecting their traditions, I thought. And, yes, I realize that we’re in Small Town America, but if they should feel free to bust out their birth names anywhere, shouldn’t it be at the local Taiwanese New Year celebration?? To my mind, I was witnessing what Lyon’s (quoting David Wallace Adams) described as “yet another deplorable episode in the long and tragic history of [insert your non-Euro-American culture of choice here] white relations” (449). It was another example of “the eradication of all traces of tribal identity and culture, replacing them with the commonplace knowledge and values of white civilization” (449).
And then, thanks to Lyons, I chilled out a bit. As he dug into his meaning of rhetorical sovereignty, he showed me that it is entirely wrapped up in the idea that the people have the power. That’s the whole point. What they do with that power is their “pursuit of self-determination” (449). So, I realized that my modern-day example of Taiwanese graduate students in the U.S. differs greatly from Luther Standing Bear’s account of American Indian children being forced to choose a white man’s name from the blackboard. On a basic level, the power dynamics are vastly different. Additionally, I know next to nothing about these Taiwanese grad students, and here I was, assuming that someone forced these names down their throats, as happened in Standing Bear’s story. I mean, for all I know, “Hank” chose “Hank” on his own accord, with no prodding from anyone, as a way of creating a new layer to his identity and practicing counter-/cross-appropriation. Though it looked to me like he was doing anything but reviving his past, perhaps that’s exactly what he’d say he was doing, as well as reviving his possibilities (449). Maybe choosing “Hank” was a way of determining his communicative needs in this new place because he didn’t want to hear dumbos like me (i.e. well-intentioned white liberals) butcher his birth name... again. Maybe this was his way of claiming rhetorical sovereignty in his “public pursuit of recognition” (465).
As Lyons asserts, rhetorical sovereignty is “the beacon by which we seek the paths to agency and power and community renewal” (449), and if someone feels more powerful appropriating a traditionally white guy’s name, then he should feel free to do so… without my impositions, assumptions, and simplifications. Let "Hank" be Hank.
Lyons (beautifully) ends his piece by painting the complexity that answers the question “Is it right for me to take a white man’s name?” His reply: “a No over there can sometimes enable a Yes over here. The ability to speak both—indeed at all—is the right and the theory and the practice and the poetry of rhetorical sovereignty”… “I speak. I speak like the people with whom I live” (211).
I still have plenty of questions about the power dynamics wrapped up in this naming game, but for now I’ll just let them simmer…
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Sunday, February 11, 2007
barcelona meets pullman
Bizzell's Rationality as Rhetorical Strategy
“The more we understand situations like this [the Barcelona disputation], the more we should be cautioned against teaching argument in a simplistic pro-con sort of way” (146).
I recently asked my 101 students to try an exercise where they were to find two articles that covered the same (or a similar) social issue, but from different angles. When it was time to dissect the arguments at hand, the students seem frustrated as hell that 1) they couldn’t separate the two writers’ claims into a tidy list of pro versus con, and 2) the writers appeared to be contradicting themselves within their own texts. When I asked them, “What do you think that says, then, about argumentation itself?” one student responded, “That it’s way more complicated than rational rights and wrongs!” The rational, cautions Bizzell, certainly does have its limits.
From a religious debate in 13th century Spain to the composition classrooms of today’s U.S. universities, Bizzell moves with ease and grace as she draws connections to, and promotes the modeling of, hybrid discourses and rhetorical complexities. Her advice to me, as a new college writing instructor, is a breath of fresh -- and incredibly relevant -- air. I was hoping we would land on an article that specifically addressed 101 methodology by offering an “escape route” from the binary argumentation trap, and… Voila! Bizzell delivers in style.
Her most poignant assertion, I believe, is that the materials we need to begin teaching things like mixed discourses and rhetorical complexities are already at our fingertips. Referring to Nahmanides and Charles Langston as models, Bizzell says, “resourceful rhetoricians make use of the materials at hand, however flawed, to do something, however limited, on behalf of their causes” (146). Thank goodness. That gives me hope in the possibility of translating theory into practice because of its mere suggestion that the smallest victories are not to be overlooked.
What do I mean? When we (and by that I mostly mean I) consider a concept like social justice, we have a tendency to think in a polarized, sweeping, win/lose sort of way. If the “side” with less power falls short of accomplishing a full-blown social revolution, we tend to hang our heads and call it defeat. It’s hopeless. The Man wins again. But if we reprogram ourselves to notice the glimpses of change in human power dynamics as we saw in the Barcelona disputation, for example, we can be much more encouraged that some feathers are being ruffled, some balance is shifting, and cultural mixing is already brewing in our midst.
While Nahmanides’ rhetorical boldness may not have won justice for all Jews, it certainly started the process of prying open the gates of cross-cultural dialogue. As oppressive and unmoving as the Christians were, their spokesman (King James) still praised Nahmanides for his savvy rhetorical skills. He said, “I have never seen a man who is not right argue his case so well” (145). But if the case had never been argued in the first place, it wouldn’t have received such praise. Granted, KJ’s statement surely packs a harsh punch by claiming that Nahmanides is ultimately wrong, but it still shows a newfound realization within the King that despite ultimate discord in ideologies, the Jews can play as equals in the intellectual exchange game. A small victory, of course, but still worthy of celebrating. Or, as Bizzell says of Nahmanides’ success: “Limited, yes, but quite remarkable under the circumstances” (146). I might even use this in 101.
Romano's Tlaltelolco: The Grammatical-Rhetorical Indios of Colonial Mexico
“Tlaltelolco was a composition-rhetoric site designed for those perceived as needing instruction in the dominant culture’s uses of language” (118). My first thought: Sounds an awful lot like U.S. academia!
Overall, Romano’s piece offered me an historical “case study,” of sorts, that exposed blatant links between power relations and education. Most disturbing to me was the “create and control” mindset that so obviously steered the Friars’ leadership. Not only did an aggressive push for Christian doctrine drive the schooling system, but so did a condescending, fear-based misrepresentation that worked to maintain the existing hegemonic structure. When the Dominicans realized that they were empowering the very group they intended to subjugate, they pulled a 180, as if to say, “Oh shit, they’re gaining on us! Quick, call them monkeys, parrots and magpies, and claim that they’re full of vice!” In other words, “We are the appropriators in the house. Don’t you dare let them steal our authority.” I love that Romano refers to the basis of this behavior as “class anxieties” (123) because I think that’s exactly what’s behind the modern-day resistance to code-meshing and inviting home languages into U.S. classrooms. Just demonize the immigrant students and we’ll retain our power-seat. Juan Baptista’s influence of (mis)representing people in the image that best suits the colonizer’s needs is, tragically, still among us. Just open the newspaper: Our president’s stance on the U.S.-Mexico border dispute says it all. Something tells me Bush and the Dominican friars would’ve formed a pretty solid Old Boys’ Club.
Mao's Rhetorical Borderlands
(Warning: stream of consciousness writing style ahead)
“Indirectness and directness, like ‘yin’ and ‘yang,’ are never not fluid and fluctuating, and the value of one is always parasitic upon that of the other, and vice versa” (175).
We’re again being called to check ourselves when it comes to western tendencies toward polarized thinking… as we should be… the obsessive need to define things and people in terms of difference, otherness, you over there vs. us over here… The ethnographer gone wrong… the scholar and the subject… Does he like coffee? Isn’t he Chinese? Wow, I didn’t know the Chinese liked coffee! We insist on the “this-ness” versus “that-ness” when often, as Mao asserts, reality resides in the both/and “entangled encounters,” the yi moments that reveal subtle cultural fusions, enriching rhetorical encounters, complications, and discoveries… “the third space” that allows an opening of eyes and minds and rules of language and borders… the lava lamp, the fortune cookie, the Nez Perce student’s rap video. Am I romanticizing the togetherness-in-difference concept? It doesn’t feel that way to me, but then again, I’m just one little human graduate student with social filters, imperfect constructions, and subjective truths of my own that inevitably are seeping out onto this very page… Right? (I'm trying t segue into Holliday, can you tell?)
Quick note on the Holliday crew:
The authors kept referring to Stuart Hall’s work in mass media analysis stereotyping, yet they didn't provide a very expansive picture of Hall’s writing. Maybe a little snippet was all they intended to give us, and I'll just look up his work on my own time, but I do think it would've strengthened their assertions (on 125) to offer more context. That's my biggest challenge with this book (and with most general ed, all-encompassing text books) - that it tries to cover everything under the sun about cross-cultural language exchange within 200 pages. I'd rather go in-depth on one, or a few, aspects than attempt to "know it all."
“The more we understand situations like this [the Barcelona disputation], the more we should be cautioned against teaching argument in a simplistic pro-con sort of way” (146).
I recently asked my 101 students to try an exercise where they were to find two articles that covered the same (or a similar) social issue, but from different angles. When it was time to dissect the arguments at hand, the students seem frustrated as hell that 1) they couldn’t separate the two writers’ claims into a tidy list of pro versus con, and 2) the writers appeared to be contradicting themselves within their own texts. When I asked them, “What do you think that says, then, about argumentation itself?” one student responded, “That it’s way more complicated than rational rights and wrongs!” The rational, cautions Bizzell, certainly does have its limits.
From a religious debate in 13th century Spain to the composition classrooms of today’s U.S. universities, Bizzell moves with ease and grace as she draws connections to, and promotes the modeling of, hybrid discourses and rhetorical complexities. Her advice to me, as a new college writing instructor, is a breath of fresh -- and incredibly relevant -- air. I was hoping we would land on an article that specifically addressed 101 methodology by offering an “escape route” from the binary argumentation trap, and… Voila! Bizzell delivers in style.
Her most poignant assertion, I believe, is that the materials we need to begin teaching things like mixed discourses and rhetorical complexities are already at our fingertips. Referring to Nahmanides and Charles Langston as models, Bizzell says, “resourceful rhetoricians make use of the materials at hand, however flawed, to do something, however limited, on behalf of their causes” (146). Thank goodness. That gives me hope in the possibility of translating theory into practice because of its mere suggestion that the smallest victories are not to be overlooked.
What do I mean? When we (and by that I mostly mean I) consider a concept like social justice, we have a tendency to think in a polarized, sweeping, win/lose sort of way. If the “side” with less power falls short of accomplishing a full-blown social revolution, we tend to hang our heads and call it defeat. It’s hopeless. The Man wins again. But if we reprogram ourselves to notice the glimpses of change in human power dynamics as we saw in the Barcelona disputation, for example, we can be much more encouraged that some feathers are being ruffled, some balance is shifting, and cultural mixing is already brewing in our midst.
While Nahmanides’ rhetorical boldness may not have won justice for all Jews, it certainly started the process of prying open the gates of cross-cultural dialogue. As oppressive and unmoving as the Christians were, their spokesman (King James) still praised Nahmanides for his savvy rhetorical skills. He said, “I have never seen a man who is not right argue his case so well” (145). But if the case had never been argued in the first place, it wouldn’t have received such praise. Granted, KJ’s statement surely packs a harsh punch by claiming that Nahmanides is ultimately wrong, but it still shows a newfound realization within the King that despite ultimate discord in ideologies, the Jews can play as equals in the intellectual exchange game. A small victory, of course, but still worthy of celebrating. Or, as Bizzell says of Nahmanides’ success: “Limited, yes, but quite remarkable under the circumstances” (146). I might even use this in 101.
Romano's Tlaltelolco: The Grammatical-Rhetorical Indios of Colonial Mexico
“Tlaltelolco was a composition-rhetoric site designed for those perceived as needing instruction in the dominant culture’s uses of language” (118). My first thought: Sounds an awful lot like U.S. academia!
Overall, Romano’s piece offered me an historical “case study,” of sorts, that exposed blatant links between power relations and education. Most disturbing to me was the “create and control” mindset that so obviously steered the Friars’ leadership. Not only did an aggressive push for Christian doctrine drive the schooling system, but so did a condescending, fear-based misrepresentation that worked to maintain the existing hegemonic structure. When the Dominicans realized that they were empowering the very group they intended to subjugate, they pulled a 180, as if to say, “Oh shit, they’re gaining on us! Quick, call them monkeys, parrots and magpies, and claim that they’re full of vice!” In other words, “We are the appropriators in the house. Don’t you dare let them steal our authority.” I love that Romano refers to the basis of this behavior as “class anxieties” (123) because I think that’s exactly what’s behind the modern-day resistance to code-meshing and inviting home languages into U.S. classrooms. Just demonize the immigrant students and we’ll retain our power-seat. Juan Baptista’s influence of (mis)representing people in the image that best suits the colonizer’s needs is, tragically, still among us. Just open the newspaper: Our president’s stance on the U.S.-Mexico border dispute says it all. Something tells me Bush and the Dominican friars would’ve formed a pretty solid Old Boys’ Club.
Mao's Rhetorical Borderlands
(Warning: stream of consciousness writing style ahead)
“Indirectness and directness, like ‘yin’ and ‘yang,’ are never not fluid and fluctuating, and the value of one is always parasitic upon that of the other, and vice versa” (175).
We’re again being called to check ourselves when it comes to western tendencies toward polarized thinking… as we should be… the obsessive need to define things and people in terms of difference, otherness, you over there vs. us over here… The ethnographer gone wrong… the scholar and the subject… Does he like coffee? Isn’t he Chinese? Wow, I didn’t know the Chinese liked coffee! We insist on the “this-ness” versus “that-ness” when often, as Mao asserts, reality resides in the both/and “entangled encounters,” the yi moments that reveal subtle cultural fusions, enriching rhetorical encounters, complications, and discoveries… “the third space” that allows an opening of eyes and minds and rules of language and borders… the lava lamp, the fortune cookie, the Nez Perce student’s rap video. Am I romanticizing the togetherness-in-difference concept? It doesn’t feel that way to me, but then again, I’m just one little human graduate student with social filters, imperfect constructions, and subjective truths of my own that inevitably are seeping out onto this very page… Right? (I'm trying t segue into Holliday, can you tell?)
Quick note on the Holliday crew:
The authors kept referring to Stuart Hall’s work in mass media analysis stereotyping, yet they didn't provide a very expansive picture of Hall’s writing. Maybe a little snippet was all they intended to give us, and I'll just look up his work on my own time, but I do think it would've strengthened their assertions (on 125) to offer more context. That's my biggest challenge with this book (and with most general ed, all-encompassing text books) - that it tries to cover everything under the sun about cross-cultural language exchange within 200 pages. I'd rather go in-depth on one, or a few, aspects than attempt to "know it all."
Sunday, February 4, 2007
divided i/we stand
Anzaldua doesn’t tell, she shows. While reading her interview with Lunsford, I felt like she was grabbing me by the hand and pouring me the same potion she must’ve guzzled to reach what she described as her “heightened state” (55) before sitting down to write. In other words, she truly put me there.
Consider her rich use of imagery: The us/them nosostras concept, the compustura seamstress idea, and the metaphor of the Trojan burra within the university walls. Through this symbolism, Anzaldua exposed the “both/and” realities of multiplicity that our traditional social constructions don’t allow us to see.
But I think what I appreciate most about Anzaldua is that she lived in the otherness, she was the colonized, and her internal response to such painful realities marches on her pages like an activist in an anti-war protest. I read somewhere that she used to tell her students to "get their shit out” on paper (sounds kinda like “putting one’s business on Front Street”). She pushed for academic writing to break out of its tidy, formulaic structure and into the dangerous, the personal, the transformative.
But, as usual, I rave on and on about a theory, and then find myself stumped when faced with its application. I might become a broken record on this one, but how in the world can such liberatory pedagogy be lived out in the classroom? Lately, I’ve been feeling a huge contradiction - a disconnect - between the theory I’m reading and how I’m “supposed to” teach. I even see contradictions within my own head about the possibilities of gate keeping vs. gate opening. In many ways, I think our role is to be gatekeeper -- to prepare students for the performance aspect they’ll need to endure as humans within a system that maintains its clench-fisted dogma regarding traditional language usage.
While my idealistic self gets swept away by Anzaldua’s notions of writing as an emancipatory project, as a way of “freeing yourself up” (70), I can’t begin to fathom how that looks within a university writing program that requires every ‘i’ to be dotted and ‘t’ to be crossed.
Is there a model in existence that shows more than one revolutionary teacher pushing for systemic change? What kind of savvy rhetoric would it take to convince a resistant Detroit school administration that street culture can and should be “productively appropriated in the English classroom” (Monroe 65)? How can we allow our students “permission to demonstrate linguistic competencies of their home languages” in our classes when other WSU departments hold us responsible for supplying the by-the-book, “standard,” MLA-style foundation?
I don't wanna play gatekeeper anymore! But is that even the job we’ve been given? Some say "of course!" Others say "no way!" Whatever the case, it sure feels like too much pressure to me today. The gate looks massive, and instead of skillfully scaling it with my students at my side, I feel like tearing it down altogether. Revolucion, anyone?
Consider her rich use of imagery: The us/them nosostras concept, the compustura seamstress idea, and the metaphor of the Trojan burra within the university walls. Through this symbolism, Anzaldua exposed the “both/and” realities of multiplicity that our traditional social constructions don’t allow us to see.
But I think what I appreciate most about Anzaldua is that she lived in the otherness, she was the colonized, and her internal response to such painful realities marches on her pages like an activist in an anti-war protest. I read somewhere that she used to tell her students to "get their shit out” on paper (sounds kinda like “putting one’s business on Front Street”). She pushed for academic writing to break out of its tidy, formulaic structure and into the dangerous, the personal, the transformative.
But, as usual, I rave on and on about a theory, and then find myself stumped when faced with its application. I might become a broken record on this one, but how in the world can such liberatory pedagogy be lived out in the classroom? Lately, I’ve been feeling a huge contradiction - a disconnect - between the theory I’m reading and how I’m “supposed to” teach. I even see contradictions within my own head about the possibilities of gate keeping vs. gate opening. In many ways, I think our role is to be gatekeeper -- to prepare students for the performance aspect they’ll need to endure as humans within a system that maintains its clench-fisted dogma regarding traditional language usage.
While my idealistic self gets swept away by Anzaldua’s notions of writing as an emancipatory project, as a way of “freeing yourself up” (70), I can’t begin to fathom how that looks within a university writing program that requires every ‘i’ to be dotted and ‘t’ to be crossed.
Is there a model in existence that shows more than one revolutionary teacher pushing for systemic change? What kind of savvy rhetoric would it take to convince a resistant Detroit school administration that street culture can and should be “productively appropriated in the English classroom” (Monroe 65)? How can we allow our students “permission to demonstrate linguistic competencies of their home languages” in our classes when other WSU departments hold us responsible for supplying the by-the-book, “standard,” MLA-style foundation?
I don't wanna play gatekeeper anymore! But is that even the job we’ve been given? Some say "of course!" Others say "no way!" Whatever the case, it sure feels like too much pressure to me today. The gate looks massive, and instead of skillfully scaling it with my students at my side, I feel like tearing it down altogether. Revolucion, anyone?
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