158 Matching Annotations
  1. May 2017
    1. seeing the world in terms that the computer can understand. By far the most pervasive form of database is the relational, which has almost entirely replaced the older hierarchical, tree, and network models and continues to hold sway over the newer object oriented model

      This reminds me of when Boyle mentioned how we see a different view of the world through technology like drones and trains. Here, we see how we also change ways we organize our thoughts in order to correspond to technological capabilities.

  2. Apr 2017
    1. Further, not only does writing offer the false appearance of life, but it is also surprisingly promiscuous.

      So the problem with writing is that the author has less agency than the speaker, because the writer isn't in the room to explain himself/herself to the reader, and all sorts of things can be said/written about a piece after the writer dies.

    1. To affirm and embrace rhetoric’s “lack of an object,” I choose to not focus on a stable object of analysis for the essay. Instead, I marshal an abundance of sources that perform similar work without being reflective on one another

      So for her, posthumanist rhetoric means refusing to focus on a single/stable object but on works with similarities key to her argument. Other readings for this week seem to do something similar, such as Muckelbauer and Hawhee writing about eXistenZ and Foucault.

    2. The sight offered by a train does not offered privileged insight but does offer a different way of being in the world, one that continues to be exercised even after the ride ends. In a related example, we might be exercising a similar posthuman practice with the rise of aerial photography drones, tuning into a “landscape vision” that contributes another materially informed way of seeing (theoria) or another way of being in the world

      I like the idea of how technology very literally changes what we see/how we see it, but I also think the train and the drone are interesting choices. I tend to think of the train most frequently as representing concerns of the industrial age. And of course with drones, there's creepy voyeurism and warfare. I don't know where I'm going with this other than its surprising to use these two examples (train and drones) to describe how they provide different ways of seeing when their impact extends far beyond that.

    3. practice

      So openness is sort of like being open to new ways of thinking/being within constraints which, in the process, are also reshaped. I enjoy how postmodern and posthuman thinking plays with dichotomies (openness/constraints) and shows how they work together in interesting ways.

    1. Uploading

      I like the playing with language in the piece, which shows how technology and our interactions with it create/expand language (upload, memory, hacking).

    1. connects

      The description of iLife seems to echo the point made by Charles Taylor (as qtd. by Rickert): "Webs and networks can no more exist without me than can I without them."

    2. we need to accommodate things more than they need to accommodate us

      This idea is often stressed in disability studies, with the social model more in favor of technology accommodating people. Also, this idea comes up in Colson Whitehead's Intuitionist which is about elevators.

    3. modus vivend

      definition: a feasible arrangement or practical compromise; especially one that bypasses difficulties; manner of living https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/modus%20vivendi

    1. Dis-course is not what is said; it is that which constrains and enables whatcan be said. Discursive practices define what counts as meaningful state-ments.

      This definition sounds pretty similar to definitions of kairos that I've seen. Even as authors, such as Barad, continue to offer definitions of their terminology, I wonder if it becomes harder to actually make these definitions with the increasing realization of the instability of meaning and haziness of boundaries.

    2. Dis-course is not what is said; it is that which constrains and enables whatcan be said. Discursive practices define what counts as meaningful state-ments.

      This definition sounds pretty similar to definitions of kairos that I've seen. Even as authors, such as Barad, continue to offer definitions of their terminology, I wonder if it becomes harder to actually make these definitions with the increasing realization of the instability of meaning and haziness of boundaries.

    3. practices

      This sounds a lot like Edbauer--everything bleeds into each other to create an ever-expanding, active rhetorical situation.

    4. subaltern

      A subaltern is basically someone in a subordinate position/social status, but not so basically, it's also used in postcolonial studies, including by Spivak, who merges feminism and postcolonial studies in "Can the Subaltern Speak?"

    1. eliberatelyandunavoidablystagestheincision,thecut,theintro-ductionofadifferencingzone,astructureofdifferancethatinbeingdividedmakesmeaningpossible

      More violent language, and the violent division which allows for creativity/meaning, as described by Anzaldua.

    1. usinghisartoftopicstomakesenseofwhatwouldotherwiseremainsimplyabsurd.

      Couldn't the art of topics also be used to make something absurd?

    2. herhetormustbeabletoenterintoanindeterminatesitua-tionanddiscloseorformulateproblemstherein;hemustalsopresenttheproblemsinsuchawayastofacilitatetheirresolu-tionbytheaudienceengagedwithhimintherhetoricalprocess

      Does rhetoric necessarily mean always presenting problems? That seems a bit restrictive, or maybe my idea of problem is restrictive. I would think that presenting something as noble or as having absolutely no problems would also be a rhetorical task.

    3. oublesomedisorder

      What would some of the people we've read, like Cixous and Anzaldua, think of this idea of "troublesome disorder"? Anzaldua and Cixous seem to embrace disorder and instead counter rigidity of social orders/traditions.

    1. sine qua non

      definition: something absolutely indispensable or essential

      https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sine%20qua%20non

    2. them

      This paragraph really indicates how the arguments by both Vatz and Bitzer are easy to combat. They are taking one position in these either/or dichotomies, and basically the rest of the readings are taking some sort of middle position.

    1. Indeed,neitherrequiresanaudienceinordertoproduceitsend;thescientistcanproduceadiscourseexpressiveorgenerativeofknowledgewithoutengaginganothermind,andthepoet'screativepurposeisaccomplishedwhentheworkiscomposed.

      This seems like a very rigid understanding of the audience. Can't the poet/scientist be his/her own audience?

    2. Rhetoricaldiscourseiscalledintoinstancesofrhetoricalspeakingand'writingarestronglyinvited

      Hypothesis was not cooperating with me, but I was trying to highlight "perceives" because I think this word complicates his idea of rhetorical situations. The criticism from Vatz is that he denies the rhetor's agency and gives the situation too much power over rhetoric, but this instance does seem to suggest some sort of agency on the part of the rhetor.

    3. Anyex~~isanimperfectionmarkedbyurgency;itisadefect,anobstacle,something~",aitiIIgtobedone,atlringwlrichisotherthanitshouldbe

      "Other than it should be," "imperfection," "defect": I'm not sure how I feel about this word choice, since it is also the words used to describe minority groups.

    1. ambience

      Related to my other note on violence/parasitic imagery, it's so interesting that ambient music is his metaphor. I think language/rhetoric/rhetorical situations have for the most part been associated with ruptures, conflicts, lava. Now we have ambient music which doesn't really have major musical shifts or discordant sounds and seems completely different.

    2. Complexitytheorists

      Based on my extremely in-depth Wikipedia-ing, complexity theory not only proposes that systems are unpredictable but also that these systems are still constrained by rules. That seems like an interesting tension.

    3. AndTaylornowtellsus:writingishaunted,foritiscomprisedofthe"spectralinterplayofparasitesandhosts"

      This idea of writing/language as sinister, parasitic or violent is in several of our readings for this week.

    4. allwritingishauntedbyinnumerablespecters-thoughts,writings,images,events,feelingsofothersofwhichImayormaynotbeawar

      And haunted by prejudice/expectations, as we see with Woolf's Angel of the House who seems to represent the looming patriarchal expectations of gender.

    1. structures

      This seems radical; Montaigne and Gates are arguing that figurative language doesn't come from fancy, educated poets but from the lower classes and people of color.

    2. meaning

      Signifyin' definitely differs from the Enlightenment concerns for uniformity and simplicity. Style and indirectness are virtues.

    3. rhetoric's practical purpose: to win, to persuade.

      This is different than what we have been reading from Corder and others the past few weeks, who have been trying to advocate against rhetoric as a contest and more as a formative experience and something that should come from a place of love.

    4. paideia

      definition: "system of broad cultural education" origin: ancient Greece https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/paideia

    5. making poetry in the streets

      One of the cool things about signifyin' is how much it blurs boundaries between everyday speech/language practices and things like writing and speeches which have traditionally been the modes of communication that rhetoric scholars have concerned themselves with. High and low culture is very interconnected, which is something we see not just here but I think also in literature of the Harlem renaissance and of modernist literature (might be worth noting that the Harlem renaissance was during modernism).

    6. Dictionary definitions give us an idea of how unstable the concepts are that can be signified by Signifyin(g).

      I imagine this instability results from signifyin as being a living rhetorical mode, something that is constantly evolving as it is practiced; I think it also suggests how oral and everyday it is--signifyin' and its different forms are in practice in everyday conversations among African Americans. It's difficult to capture something so oral and performative in something as rigid as definitions.

    7. antiphonal

      definition: "(of music, especially church music, or a section of a church liturgy) sung, recited, or played alternately by two groups" https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/antiphonal

    8. as

      Throughout, Gates and many of the people he mentions seem to argue that signifyin is the product of a collective/Pan-African black soul (compare to Anzaldua with her idea of "Mexican as a state of soul."

    9. catechresis

      "use of a word in an incorrect way, for example the use of mitigate for militate" https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/catachresis

    1. o say you've split yourself from minority groups, that you disown us, that your dual consciousness splits off parts of your-self, transferring the "negative" parts onto us

      Like Fanon who describes colonizers as also being somehow split, Anzaldua recognizes the split of white people. Dual consciousness manifests itself in different ways depending on positions of power.

    2. I write the myths in me, the myths I am, the myths I want to become

      This seems a lot like Woolf. Women have to kill mythologies of women (like the Angel of the House) by writing their myths.

    3. joy

      Her description of the writing process reminds of Douglass' recounting of when he first learned to read. Reading was painful for him at first, because he realized the extent of his oppression, but it becomes a tool for liberation.

    4. The ability of story (prose and poetry) to trans-form the storyteller and the listener into some-thing or someone else is shamanistic

      I think this section is interesting in merging tradition and change. She celebrates language as offering the potential for liberation from a tradition of silence, but language is also a means of preserving her cultural heritage, such as the traditional figure of the nahual. This interest in both change and preserving tradition seems to result from the intersections of her sexuality, gender and ethnicity. There's a similar interest in tradition and change in Nervous Conditions, so I wonder if this is a common theme in postcolonial literature and theory. I don't think we've seen this shared interest in tradition and change in our previous readings.

    5. This voluntary (yet forced) alienation makes for psychological conflict, a kind of dual identity

      Dual identity seems to be a common theme in race and postcolonial studies. DuBois has double consciousness, the condition of African Americans viewing themselves as American but being viewed by white America as black and as a problem. Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth describes the split subjectivity of the colonized. Nervous Conditions is a novel by Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga which extends Fanon's split subjectivity to describe how her two protagonists are split between their desire for a Western education, independence and feminism and their Rhodesian culture.

    6. Being Mexican is a state of soul -not one of mind, not one of citizenship.

      This sounds similar to Pan-Africanism.

  3. Mar 2017
    1. we discuss our doubt together, therefore we are.

      I was trying to think of a better way to tie this in with kpolizzi's comment, but I'll just say I enjoy this as a twist on Descartes' "I think therefore I am." "We doubt together" indicates a shift to thinking about our existence as a community rather than as individuals.

    1. all speech is socially situ-ated, there will always be some "of course" limits.

      Speech is limited by our standpoints.

    2. interpretive community

      Community is a common thread in this week's readings.

    1. When we speak, we stand somewhere, and our standing place makes both known and silent claims upon us

      This seems like an interesting contribution to standpoint theory. I think of standpoint theory as being about the political/social circumstances that form our perspectives, but this is almost a reversal--when we speak our perspectives, we create our standpoint.

    2. orego one identity for a startling new one

      This seems to continue the theme that I commented on from readings last week about invention. In rhetoric, invention becomes much more than finding a topic; it's about how rhetoric invents us. And again, a contrast with Cixous. If bodies and writing are multiple, then you don't forego one identity but sort of add on to identity, or realize all of the identities which make up each person.

    3. Any narrative exists in time; any narrative is made of the past, the present, and the futu

      Another contrast with Cixous who advocates leaving the past behind.

    4. Each of us is a narrativ

      It seems that the writers are increasingly collapsing boundaries and challenging notions of Truth. Rhetoric is less about seeking absolute truth and more about how we construct ourselves and the world around us. This also connects with Foucault.

    5. Language enforces a closure: we must say one thing or the other; we choose, and make our narrativ

      So this counters Cixous--the female body is multiple, always expanding, encompassing everything, and language should do the same. But Corder says language just can't do that. The limits of language seems to be the theme of our readings this week.

    1. State

      The footnotes are strange. There seems to be something symbolic here in placing men in the footnotes when they have traditionally been the primary text. But it also shows Cixous interest in multiple viewpoints.

    2. she cannot fail to make of it the chaosmos of the "personal" -in her pronouns, her nouns, and her clique of referents.

      This seems to be a departure from Woolf, who thinks the best women's writing isn't personal/individual

    3. She doesn't "speak," she throws her trembling body forward; she lets go of herself, she flies; all of her passes into her voice, and it's with her body that she vi-tally supports the "logic" of her speech.

      This is very different from the choreographed gestures of Austin. The body is spontaneous. In addition, she seems to expand what logic is. Logic is traditionally an intellectual capacity, one which has been considered men's strong point and women's weakness. She flips this conception by challenging the mind/body binary of traditional rhetoric and claiming that the body is a site of logic.

    4. matrix

      This is a very loaded word. So for procreation, Aristotle thought that the man actively imprinted on the passive woman, and one of the definitions for matrix is a "mould in which something, such as a record or printing type, is cast or shaped." (It's also the "cultural, social, or political environment in which something develops.") https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/matrix

      Reading Cixous reminds me of cyberfeminism, which is often about "writing the feminine" through technology. I think VNS Matrix (their manifesto is below) is often considered a pioneer of cyberfeminism.

    5. in-vention

      Even though this was originally French, I think use of the word "invention" is interesting. In rhetoric, invention is more along the lines of coming up with a topic, but the type of invention here is creating a new type of writing which would in turn disrupt hierarchies.

    1. ontexts without any center

      This again seems to be a contrast with Cixous, who considers the body as the center.

    2. xtending enormously, if not infinitely, the domain of oral or gestural communication.

      I wonder what the role of the body is in rhetoric and writing for Derrida. I, and I imagine most people, tend to think of speaking as more related to the body than writing--you can't use the same gestures/inflections when writing. I wonder if Derrida thinks of writing as transcending the body, or does writing extend the body, which would be very different? And this also brings me back to Cixous since for her the body and writing are interconnected.

    1. in every society the pro-duction of discourse is at once controlled, se-lected, organized, and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to ward off its powers and dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to evade its ponderous, formi-dable materiality.

      We've read before about discourse as democratic, and this seems to challenge that.

    2. The statement is always given through some material medium

      Sounds like Foucault was influenced by Marxism and historical materialism

    1. apodictic

      def: clearly established, beyond dispute (as opposed to dialectic) etymology: from Greek "apodeiknunai," to show off or demonstrate https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/apodictic

    2. sons

      Perelman's arguments remind me a lot of Thomas Kuhn (summarized on page 1196 in the overview of modern and postmodern rhetoric). Kuhn challenged the binary between communal argument and science, which seems to also be what Perelman is doing.

    3. cleansing

      I think this was actually touched on a bit in an annotation of one of our earlier readings, but "cleansing" becomes a very loaded term at this time, especially considering Perelman's experience in WWII.

    4. licenciee

      I think this is the French equivalent of a BA?

    1. neuter language

      This week is offering new ways of thinking about the interconnection of language and gender, with this idea of a neuter language which is unbiased and has no passion and the idea of ambiguous language which is what Woolf argues is the best. In terms of gender, language and terminology are not just masculine or feminine.

    2. If it is a weakness to harbor feel-ings, and if furthermore it is a weakness to be caught up in historical situations, then rhetoric is construable as a dealer in weaknesses

      This sounds like the reasoning behind the frequent characterization of rhetoric as feminine.

    3. f science deals with the abstract and the universal, rhetoric is near the other end, dealing in significant part with the particular and the con-crete.

      I was surprised by this distinction; I tend to think of science as dealing with the concrete and rhetoric as dealing more often with the abstract. I wonder if Weaver's distinction was more common in his time than now.

    4. Jons et origo
    5. vivid

      He's right! etymology: from vivere, "to live" https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/vivid

    1. elasticity

      Is this elasticity similar to the ambiguity championed by Burke?

    2. telling the truth about my own experiences as a body

      Woolf is so difficult because of her contradictions.She often seems to advocate that there is some essence in women which they haven't been able to discover; but here she seems to suggest a lower-case "truth," in which truth is confined to individual experience. I wonder if the contradictions of her text are part of her mission for "elasticity."

    3. I killed her

      This reminds me of a lot of feminists reclaiming "nasty women" or the riot grrrl movement: this idea that the myth of the pure, well-behaved woman must go, and going against this myth (misbehaving) is forwarding women's liberation. Killing this myth is an act of defiance.

    4. bought a cat-

      The best use of money.

    5. reason

      This is quite a departure from the praise of reason we've encountered from many of the Enlightenment writers. For Woolf, reason stifles imagination, especially women's imagination. Is reason stifling because it has often been defined/used by men, including in their defense of the "phantom" of gender roles?

    6. Had I not killed her she would have killed me. She would have plucked the heart out of my writing.

      Woolf is equating her writing with her body.

    7. oolf develops a metaphor in which literary art is a horse and "propa-ganda" is a donkey-attempting to mingle the two can produce only sterile off-spring

      Around this time, W.E.B. Du Bois was writing that all art is propaganda and advocated for African American literature that offered favorable depictions of black people. It's interesting that both Du Bois and Woolf were thinking about liberation through writing but had different ideas about the connection between art and propaganda.

    8. carica-ture of the Victorian gentleman

      This is an interesting description of George, considering that A Room of One's Own includes a caricature of Professor X, who is what she imagines as the type of man who writes myths about women. Is the author of the intro trying to draw a connection between Woolf's life and work here?

      On a related note, we've had a few annotations about these intros, particularly weird claims about women (perhaps overstating the importance of Willard, for example). In our readings, its been interesting to think of the rhetorical moves of whoever wrote the intros and time period overviews.

    1. fabric of conventions,

      The metaphors are getting better with each week. Here, we see Richards basically saying the same thing as Nietzsche, only using fabric instead of a web as a metaphor.

    2. We are especially arbitrary in picking out the cause from among the whole group, or context, of conditions-of prior and subsequent events which hang together

      A pretty common theme in our readings is the arbitrariness of language, particularly the arbitrariness of naming objects. I like how Richards extends the arbitrariness of language in describing how we determine cause from effect. Especially considering how Richards and Ogden, as well as Burke, emphasize ambiguity and how parts of rhetoric are interconnected, I wonder if this is also a suggestion that to some extent any attempt to draw distinctions is arbitrary?

    3. The old Rhetoric was an offspring of dis-pute; it developed as the rationale of pleadings and persuadings; it was the theory of the battle of words and has always been itself dominated by the combative impulse.

      I guess "old Rhetoric" is still alive, because especially on cable news or in arguments with friends, discussions are not "expositions" but "battles of words."

    1. Accordingly, what we want is not terms that avoid ambiguity, but terms that clearly reveal the strategic spots at which ambiguities necessarily arise.

      Especially in regards to ambiguity, I read most of this article as stretching the ideas of Richards and Ogden further.

    2. The very scientific ideals of an "imper-!;CUJ,\~ sonal'' terminology can contribute ironically to ~tv., such disaster: for it is but a step from treating I · o· ,~. inanimate nature as mere "things" to treating ani-(.M,"J" t4"'\~ mals, and then enemy peoples, as mere things

      This also reminds me of common appeals to the humanities: we need the humanities because we don't want science to get out of control and forget the very human consequences of advancements and experiments, such as war technology.

    3. peripety

      definition: "fortune or change in circumstance" https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/peripeteia

  4. Feb 2017
    1. For the newer departments of learning (most of them departments of science), writing was more important than speaking, both as a pedagogical tool and as the practical expression of knowledge.

      One of the recurring themes in our readings: science's influence on rhetoric

    2. Hill

    3. Bain

      Not to be confused with the inventor of the electric clock.

    4. A composition should be "a body, not a mere collection of members,"9 but it should be a living body.

      This reminds me of Lessing's The Golden Notebook. The issue of writing and ownership is something that is playing out as the protagonist (a writer) discusses her published work as something which doesn't even feel like it belongs to her; she thinks of it more as the property of her readers, and is ashamed of her work and confused as to why critics like it. Hill seems to almost think of composition as a separate body with a life of its own, and the author is something of a parent who brings the composition into being. Where does this position the audience, and what makes a written work a "living body"? Of rhetoric doesn't make a work "alive," what does?

    5. ut Rheloric, being the art of co1111111111icatio11 by language, implies the pres-ence, in fact or in imagination, of at least two persons,-thc speaker or the writer, and the per-son spoken 10 or written to

      Can't help but think of Foucault's journals, especially considering that the intro to Bain and Hill mention a growing interest in private discourse because of higher literacy rates. What is the place of private or personal writing in rhetoric? How is the writer his/her own audience?

    6. or the purposes of lhis treatis

      Nice qualification: there isn't a stable definition of rhetoric, so Hill's using the definition that suits his purpose.

    1. Willard was a dynamic platform speaker, not flamboyant but utterly sincere and able to convince her hear· crs that she cared deeply about them even when the audience was large

      I think we see here how she was thoughtful and successful in creating her public persona, just as Douglass was.

    2. places of worship, in the age of the Apostles, were not built a.o; they are with us, but that the Wl''llen had a cor-ner of their own, railed off by a close fence reach-ing above their heads. It was thus made difficult for them lo hear, and in their eager, untutored slate, wholly unaccustomed to public audiences, they "chattered" and asked questions

      This an is interesting example of how spaces shape rhetoric and knowledge. The way in which religious spaces where arranged and people were situated reflects and reinforces women's inferior position in religious discourse.

    3. She gives much attention to gauging the audience and avoiding any appearance of superior knowl-edge, along with canny advice on how to deal with obtuse or hostile questioners

      Sound like specific issues that women would have to deal with as speakers: they can't intimidate their audience by seeming too smart, and I imagine that they received harsh opposition from some audiences (though it's interesting that this opposition isn't discussed as much in here as it was in introductions for Grimke and Douglass last week).

    4. soul

      This seems to be an example of her "cushioning her argument"; the kitchen is the traditional domain of women, so she uses this cooking analogy to avoid alienating her audience.

    5. Senator Henry Blair, in which he urgucs for giving women the vote precisely because their role as mothers helps them see what the state needs.

      This sounds like a precursor to the idea of republican motherhood. This became popular in the 20th century and used by feminists to support gaining rights, even as republican motherhood is advocating for women to stay home and raise children. The idea is women are valuable because they instill/protect American values in their children and husbands. It seems that Willard and the women we read last week are making similar moves: motherhood is often used against women, but women counter that motherhood is the very reason they need education, literacy, suffrage--so they can become better mothers and protect, not just national, but religious values.

    6. Senator Henry Blair, in which he urgucs for giving women the vote precisely because their role as mothers helps them see what the state needs.

      This sounds like a precursor to the idea of republican motherhood. This became popular in the 20th century and used by feminists to support gaining rights, even as republican motherhood is advocating for women to stay home and raise children. The idea is women are valuable because they instill/protect American values in their children and husbands. It seems that Willard and the women we read last week are making similar moves: motherhood is often used against women, but women counter that motherhood is the very reason they need education, literacy, suffrage--so they can become better mothers and protect, not just national, but religious values.

    1. She

      Nietzsche mentions later that we arbitrarily separate things according to gender, but we see him doing that very practice here as he assigns masculine pronouns to individual people and feminine pronouns to nature--which is also something we've seen in a lot of other readings for this class.

    2. officiousness
    3. he entire universe as the infinitely multiplied copy of one original pic-ture-man.

      I'm trying to remember Baudrillard's treatise on simulacra, because it sounds like Nietzsche's describing something very similar.

      simulacrum definition: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/simulacrum

    4. dogmatic

      definition: principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true etymolgy: Greek--dokein (seem good, think) https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/dogma

    5. We

      What's up with his pronouns? Earlier he mostly says "they," but he starts to use "we" as he talks more specifically about language. Why does he make a separation between himself and the rest of mankind earlier and then start to use first person plural?

    1. word which in itself embodies the most important part of the idea lo be conveyed, especially when that idea is an emotional one, may often with advantage be a polysyllabic word. Thus it seems more forcible to say, "h is magnificent," than "It is grand."

      I think we're getting the intricate connection between writing and speaking here and how important the sound of the words, including the number of syllables, influences our reading and hence the impact of the writing.

    2. pleonasms

      definition: using more words than necessary to convey meaning https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/pleonasm

    3. erfectly-endowed man

      awkward phrasing

    1. year

      There's a great drunk history video about this, but for some reason I can't link or embed it.

    2. "with my diploma wri11e11 m, my lwck!"

      Link to my post in Palmer about experience and education: https://hyp.is/CWtgaPQEEeaR_Tf_iC2Cfg/static1.squarespace.com/static/53713bf0e4b0297decd1ab8b/t/586fcf461e5b6c68e05178ec/1483722589377/palmer_the_promise_of_the_father_chapter_1_and_tongue_of_fire_on_the_daughters_of_the_lord.pdf

      Also, it seems that even out of slavery and in his abolition work, he was often reduced to his body; he was more important for the story of his body than his intellect.

    3. Mr. Garrison followed me, taking me as his text

      Body as a text

    4. Tire Co/111111,ian Orator,

      Though this collection was mainly for the purpose of teaching rhetoric, it was also put together by an anti-slavery educator named Bingham who used this manual to proclaim the values of freedom and democracy.

    1. One sign is the intense suffering of women speakers, who are fearful of allracting censure yet even more fearful or dis-obeying God's command

      Compare to Stewart: "I have come forward and made myself a hissing and a reproach among the people" through her public speaking (1039).

    2. if lhe principal content of Methodist spiritual discourse comprised accounts of one's own spiritual progress, then training in biblical scholanihip, theology, and rhetoric, all largely unavailable lo women, was not required for such preuching

      This is the first week we've read about speakers who, not only weren't academics, but were actually in positions where academia wasn't valued or even a possible detriment: experience is most valued in Methodist preaching, and Douglass was used to describe the experience of slavery; sometimes his intelligence even hurt his credibility as an actual former slave. I'm curious how/if Methodist spiritual discourse and Douglass challenge Campbell and Hume's takes on experience.

    3. "I permil not a woman lo spcal,. in the congregation." Yet in cxlraordinary cases he ,mule a lcw exceptions.,

      This still doesn't sound so great; women who preach are exceptional women--the average woman can't participate in a traditionally masculine role.

    1. Most com-mentators, having their minds preoccupied with the prejudices of education, afford little aid; they rnthcr tend 10 darken the text by the multitude of words

      I thought this was interesting in connection with Hume and taste. For Hume, it's important to approach things in an unbiased way in order to properly judge the quality of something. But education is also important for Hume in being able to judge something. Grimke here is pointing out that education itself is biased, as it has privileged white men, meaning that texts will be read through a sexist lens.

    2. woman

      Nice syllogism: Whatever is morally right for man is morally right for women. It is morally right for men to preach. Therefore, it is morally right for women to preach. She's using a classic strategy to defy stereotypes of women's irrationality/intellectual weakness.

    3. He spares her body; but the war he has waged against her mind, her heurt, and her soul, has been no less deslructive 10 her as a moral being

      This seems like an example of the abolitionism movement's influence on her feminist arguments, since bondage of the mind, heart, soul is frequently described as an argument against slavery. This is similar to what Stewart says about the souls kept in chains.

    4. contrite
    1. All that man can say or do can never elevate us, it is a work that must be effected between God and ourselves. And how'! By dropping all political discussions in our behalf, for these, in my opinion, sow the seed of discord, and strengthen the cord of preju-dic

      Oh, so maybe the personal is not political for Stewart. . . .

    2. It was contempt for my moral and religious opinions in private that drove me thus before a public.

      In addition to LoLo's earlier observation, this is another idea (the personal is political) which Stewart is talking about before it blew up in second wave feminism.

    3. scholars

      I'm reading a lot in another class about historiography and about African Americans such as Du Bois reclaiming African American history, pointing out the unique culture, accomplishments and struggles while also revealing how those in privileged positions have constructed myths about blackness which resulted in the silencing of their history and experiences. Stewart is doing something similar in reclaiming the history of women.

    4. pirituality provided a gateway to political thought and often functioned as a springboard for discussions of secular history,"s as can be seen in Stewart's many references (noted also by Richardson) to the African pa

      This description reminds me of the 18th century work of Phillis Wheatley, the first African American poet to publish a book. Wheatley doesn't have the best reputation now, but maybe looking at how Wheatley's work has influenced not just poets but other prominent African American women could renew appreciation for her work.

      Also, in finding this comparison, I think this indicates that rhetoric and poetry are perhaps not so separate. They can have similar motives and techniques. And some of Wheatley's works, if I'm not mistaken, were delivered in public, and I don't think I would consider all of her work as a "soliloquy"; there's definitely an argument being made in her work, even if it's perhaps coded so as not to offend a white audience.

    1. Truth never learned to read or write

      It's awesome enough to read Truth's work in an African American history or feminist context, but I'm struck reading about her in an overview of rhetoric and thinking about how oratory/rhetoric was dominated by highly educated white men, and she wasn't even literate. And she spoke in dialect during a time when standardization was emphasized. We've read about rhetoric as a way to access and convey the truth, and it seems that she does share that interest but expresses herself in a very different way.

    2. parochial
    1. The conspiracy meme can convert a dry scientific issue into a human drama in which malefactors can be exposed and denounced

      Campbell: "If the orator would prove successful, it is necessary that he engage in his service all these different powers of the mind, the imagination, the memory, and the passions" (923).

    2. plausible

      Campbell's definition of plausibility: "consistency of the narration, from its being what is called natural and feasible" (930)

    1. Addison

      That's this guy, most famous for essays, but also wrote plays.

    2. In the course of time, the genuine taste of human nature never fails to disclose itself, and to gain the ascendant over any fantastic and cor-rupted modes of taste which may chance to have been introduced

      So part of the importance of discussing taste, judging works of art, developing standards of taste and individual taste seem to tie into the project of rhetoric as we've read so far this semester: to come closer to the Truth.

    3. employment

      Hume and Blair both value exercising senses/faculties in order to develop taste, and though this seems hard to argue with, long-term employment in using your eyes or your hands can result in things like loss of vision or arthritis. Does this in anyway factor into taste? Individual taste can become refined, but can it develop in other ways, good or bad?

    4. Gothic architec-ture

      Somewhat related text on this point: Ruskin's Stones of Venice describes Gothic architecture as the best architecture because it is the closest to nature.

    5. attending to the feelings of others

      So it sounds like writing, speeches, teaching, other forms of communication are supposed to elevate individual taste or establish some sort of standard in taste.

    1. fact

      So Campbell seems to have a lot of "causal chains," so where are the "bundles of evidence" exactly? I mean, this definitely seems to be moral reasoning, but this looks like more of a chain than a bundle.

    2. hear-ers

      Kind of connecting this section with our microresponse prompt. Taste would be rhetorical in that the taste of the audience would determine how an orator would appeal to an audience and how that audience would respond to the orator.

    3. i11dig11atio11

      By the way an amazing movie that not enough people saw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELKsrUssyQE

    4. despotic sovereign

      I don't know what to make of this at this point, or if it is even worthwhile to think about, but it interests me that Campbell describes abstract truth as a "despotic sovereign" and an orator's power as "superior even to what despotism itself can can bestow" (904).

    5. prosopopa:ia
    6. irresistible power over the thoughts and purposes of his audience. It is this which hath been so justly celebrated as giving one man an ascendant over others, superior even to what despotism itself can bestow; since by the latter the more ignoble part only, the body and its members arc enslave

      Well that's intense. And on the next page, with the thunder and lightening, it seems like oratory has even a godlike power. I guess I'm surprised to read this since he was so influenced by Enlightenment thinkers like Locke, and I tend to associate the Enlightenment with democracy and rhetoric in general with democracy, but at the same time, the idea of words and knowledge as power and the importance of rhetoric for leaders is also a huge thing. So I wonder to what extent Campbell's view of rhetoric was present, not just during the Enlightenment but throughout its history? Has there always been a tension between this "irresistible power" and democracy in terms of rhetoric?

    1. narrow conception which we have of it; and therefore are wholly confined to the knowledge and use of words:

      From what I remember in History of English Language, language has been defined more broadly since Sheridan's day, if language was really strictly defined to words. I think language is now considered as a system of intentional, conventional signs. Unfortunately, animals and the "melancholy mournings of the turtle" (shoutout to kpolizzi and gilmanhernandez) are not considered language within this definition. This reading and the definition of language from the HOEL textbook by Algeo both heavily emphasized oral-aural communication, so I'm curious about the deaf community's perspective on language. Also I was definitely not expecting to bring up disability as much as I have been; I can try to limit my annotations on that subject.

  5. Jan 2017
    1. clear

      Her ideas that "nature is the best teacher of eloquence" and rules only help a little is tricky. It seems that Astell is proclaiming that there are natural characteristics which make women effective rhetorically, but women must also follow rules in order to adhere to their nature and speak eloquently?

    2. Jirst English feminist.

      People today talk as though "feminist" has a simple definition (belief in the equality of men and women), but I think Astell challenges this notion; it's hard not to consider her a feminist considering her work, but at the same time her conservative values are certainly antithetical to feminism. I think this suggests how definitions of words, such as feminist, not only change over time, but also change when we start applying them to figures from different points of history; she certainly wouldn't be considered feminist today.

    1. defects

      For Hume, taste and judgement rely on the senses, and the practice to perfect the senses, to develop a "delicacy of taste." I think it's hard not to agree with this, but how does disability fit in with this? Illness comes up A LOT in this piece, even in calling art that has some sort of problem deformed or defective. But how can understandings of delicate taste and judgement incorporate people with varying degrees of sight, hearing, taste, smell--people who surely have a "delicacy of imagination" but encounter art differently?

    2. To seek the real beauty, or real defor-mity, is as fruitless an enquiry, as to pretend to ascertain the real sweet or real bitte

      Locke pg. 823: "White and sweet . . . carry a very obvious meaning with them, which every one precisely comprehends." So for Locke, the word sweetness is not a mixed mode, but a word likely understood by the listener/reader. But Hume is talking about sweetness as a subjective sense perception, not a simple idea, and perhaps this suggests that the word sweetness, and other so-called simple ideas, is not necessarily obvious? But I am curious when Locke discusses simple modes and simple ideas if he would still agree that something like sweetness is understood clearly in civil usage, but perhaps not in philosophical usage? In that case, the word sweetness would not be used as a term to express an "undoubted truth" and perhaps that makes it a little bit closer to what Hume is saying here.

    1. Common

      Though "standard" English is still important, it seems that there was more anxiety about standardization and prescriptive language/grammar during the Enlightenment than there is now. What accounts for this concern? Does it have anything to do with expansion in education, or leaning more towards the vernacular in school?

    2. philosophy is to improve languag

      From what I've read so far, it seems that for Locke improvement in language means that language would more accurately convey knowledge. But I also wonder about how language changes over time. Language has certainly changed over time; for example, there are many new terms because of computer technology and social media. Language changes because of cultural/technological context, but it seems that no amount of change in language can remove language's distance from reality (language represents ideas which represent the essence of things).

    1. own

      What exactly is Foucault's connection with modernism? Because this process seems like the antithesis of modernism; thought there isn't a single, uniform truth, it seems less skeptical of truth--there is an acknowledgement that there is truth out there. And there's this idea that be reading all these things and writing about them, you'll create a whole, a body, "tissue and blood." This differs from the fragmentation and skepticism of truth in modernism. I can see Foucault's social construction in here, but it seems more positive, not panopticism. Been a while since I've read other Foucault, so I'm not sure how much this is making sense.

    2. transformation of truth

      I've heard of writing being used as a way to get to the truth, but not as a way of transforming truth, so this is an interesting twist.

    3. oneself

      This sounds super Jesuit: intense training, bettering the self, process

    1. What is rhetoric

      I wonder to some extent if it might be good to start out super basic and not to delve into deep, philosophical questions but to just begin with a basic definition of rhetoric as understanding how communication works and how language is used to persuade and appeal to an audience and just go from there. The main reason I say this is because it seems to some extent everyone is working from this basic definition. Everything we're reading this week seems to operate from this definition anyway. All of the different definitions in the first sentence of the introduction to The Rhetorical Tradition are basically more specific variations of this general definition. This agreement on a basic definition is not to deny the really fascinating difficulties within rhetoric and some of the questions about language (or even about what language is), thought and action but to give an answer to your friend at the bar or your parent about what the hell you are doing with your life in this rhetoric class: you're learning about communication, language and persuasion, which is basically everywhere and a huge part of our daily lives and of history and of multiple disciplines.

    1. All human beings do this.

      It's interesting how this piece explores universality as well as context. There's a difficulty in determining biological universality, and it can result in misunderstandings and overgeneralizations, so awareness of the context, such as the location of these caves and their physical environments and shamanistic practices, proves important in understanding "pre-rhetoric." But I also think that there's a breaking down of the binary of science and art by using understandings of human biology and the physical environment of these caves in order to interpret the drawings.

    2. multimodalmachine

      I like how this phrase is used to describe Paleolithic caves; this challenges the separation between nature and technology.

    3. Paleo

      It seems really provocative to study rhetoric before ancient Greece; it's certainly something I had never heard of, not that that is saying much. Also, I've only encountered materiality and rhetoric in regards to modern technology, so it's really interesting to trace this back waaaay before computers and even books. It's also interesting that this is a time when there wasn't a written, standard language. Other articles for this week discussed delivery and body language, but uses of some sort of standard language was always a focus, so going all the way back to the Paleolithic really stretches the boundaries of rhetoric in an exciting way.

    1. language use is constitutive of gender and racial identities

      Toni Morrison writes about this in Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, which is about how white authors have depicted blackness, including the sources of negative imagery of black people and how they have affected the "literary imagination."

    2. memory is a link not just with earthly places but with those heavenly places where ideal fonns and true knowledge reside.

      How exactly was memory so powerful for Plato? This seems to be one of the biggest shifts from ancient rhetoric to modern rhetoric. In academia and rhetoric, it seems that memory isn't considered access to higher knowledge but more of a roadblock, just parroting other ideas rather than becoming truly innovative and a critical thinker.

    3. Arrangement itself is thus a form of nonlogical appeal,

      Oh. . .I though arrangement was part of logos?

    4. affairs

      It's interesting that rhetoric started as this practical system for ancient Greek society, but then comes Bloom and other people Lanham talks about whose interpretation of humanism, rhetoric and the university is super apolitical, with the humanities in the university separate from society.

    1. yBlu

      I thought this was a good piece to start the semester with. Not to oversimplify this chapter, but in a way, it was kind of like an annotative process. It's taking a large scope of writings and responding to/interacting with/comparing them. The annotations is sort of a smaller, beginning stage in interacting with texts in order to sort of trace what rhetoric is.

    2. puremotiveswhichhumanismatthepresentdayisusuallythoughttorequire.Ifyouvoteforthecloister,thenyoucannolongerpretend

      I am curious if in some ways this piece is a little outdated (I think it was published in 93?). Does the university view humanities/humanism in this way? But mostly, the piece refers a lot to separation of the disciplines and separation of rhetoric and action, and I wonder if that has changed recently. For example, WGS departments are on the rise, and they often discuss the world outside of academia or even have an activism/volunteer component to their courses, and of course they are very interdisciplinary. I'm just curious what a super recent response to this piece would look like in light of how interdisciplinary the humanities are.

    3. ixingintothecurric

      I'm surprised the term "praxis" never came up in this piece. I haven't done much research on this term and its origin and usage (though I might return to do that), but its basically an ancient Greek term which means enacting ideas. I wonder if writings on praxis, both old and new, could somehow contribute to the Q question, since the Q question, for Lanham, also involves mixing thought and action and challenging the Ramist agenda.