This part about accountability, tying back to the talk of feminism reminds me of feminist writer, Diane Purkiss's "A Holocaust of one's own." She talks a bit about these exclusions in that males (particularly scholars who talk about women/witchcraft) are doing women an injustice and adding to the oppression because they're not talking about it enough or aren't outraged enough. Bob Gummer, 2nd generation Holocaust survivor, said something similar in a speech he gave at UMSL this week. During the Holocaust, those who remained quiet about the atrocities of the death camps, were doing a great disservice to humanity, even if not directly involved. Exclusion happens in language and writing in all kinds of ways that we don't normally think about.

Diffraction refers to various phenomena which occur when a wave encounters an obstacle or a slit. It is defined as the bending of light around the corners of an obstacle or aperture into the region of geometrical shadow of the obstacle. In classical physics, the diffraction phenomenon is described as the interference of waves according to the Huygens–Fresnel principle.

This reminds me of an article I read on a feminist reading of Jekyll and Hyde where the buildings and doors were described as either feminine or masculine. "The baize red door" that stood between Hyde and the outside world was described as menstruation, therefore feminine. The male character taking an ax to it was seen as violence against a woman. That was the last time I had seen feminism and locations being grouped together, so this particular phrasing struck me.

This is the "problematic" gray area that I try to revel in, in regards to rhetoric.

I haven't read this specific work by Foucault, but I can see it underlying in his article "on the aesthetics of existence."

Knowledge is social.

If this isn't already happening then I'm in big trouble for the rest of the article. #Lost

The dictionary is already my closest friend while tackling this article...

(https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anthropocentric)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trainspotting_(film)

mholder, I take it back. It's about both.

https://www.bing.com/search?FORM=SLBRDF&pc=SL11&q=hermeneutic

Me, at every Sunday school before I realized that was not where I'd find any answers and stopped going....

http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/layers/etymology.html

Everything used to be something else, just like everything that is to come will have been something else first. This is one of the biggest proponents to knowledge being a social act. Every idea you have was sparked by something that you observed outside of yourself.

I wanted to use this earlier, and now feel comfortable doing so :)

This is going back to the typical "problem" of not being able to define rhetoric. On one hand, it seems like we have a handle on what rhetoric can be(triangle, joystick), but if we want to stick to that one solid definition, we will miss out on everything else it can be/not be/do/try to do, etc.

(https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/poem-to-my-uterus/ Author is female and African American

I'm so glad it's come to this head, since I've been making note of these types of differences throughout the piece.

Noting

Another way he attempts to define rhetoric strikes my fancy: the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents."

This goes back to my point that there really is no such thing as common knowledge. It's impossible to expect everyone to recall the same things, just like you can't expect words to mean the same thing to everyone.

Many of the first textbooks on rhetoric showed pages and pages of diagrams like these ^, of ways to position every part of your body during each of the 5 steps. There are even pages that teach the proper way for women to stand (assumedly to watch the delivery).

The term common knowledge has become a slippery slope, especially in situations where socioeconomic backgrounds and country of origin come in to play.

Of the articles covered this week, good morals are mentioned numerous times. I guess I didn't realize rhetoric had anything to do with being virtuous. Why does it matter?

This made me think of David Bartholomae's piece, "Inventing the University." One cannot just know things and be able to write about them unless they are introduced to by some outside force. And, one cannot attempt to find new meaning unless you have prior meaning you can debunk or build upon. https://wac.colostate.edu/jbw/v5n1/bartholomae.pdf

It is easy to think of the hupomnemata as a journal that talks about oneself, but they are actually used to notate what one hears or reads. This not only has the purpose of retention (by writing), but it also serves as a sort of appendix to ones previous thoughts/feelings on what was retained.

lol @ the origin of gumnazein (gymnasium). http://mentalfloss.com/article/535187/innocent-words-with-naughty-origins

Is she saying that heroes are not human (people)?

i.e. one story's version of being human compared to another.Similar to what I was saying in the prior paragraph.

This brings us back to the point that the definition of human is similar to the definition of rhetoric. The more you try to define either, the more confusing and exclusionary each can get. Just like rhetoric, there is no one way to define human, but instead you stack all definitions on top of each other, without one superseding the others. The definitions are also situational, like Le Guin being human by this definition, but not by the previous one about killing.

Le Guin gives a definition of what it means to be human; the idea of theorists that humans must kill. Then, she makes it clear that this isn't the only definition of human, considering she's human and wouldn't/couldn't act in such a way. Then there's this awesome and gross little paragraph about women possibly not being human, but rather, defective and unworthy of having a say. Ouch.

Relates back to my earlier notion of the freedom that comes with not being definitely defined (or boxed in).

https://commstudies.utexas.edu/research/rhetorical-tradition

Ah, but isn't there a beautiful freedom that comes with not having to fit into any certain box? I don't want to be cliche here, but it gives the whole idea of rhetoric a whimsical feel. What it needs to be and do are situational.

https://secure.ncte.org/store/strategies-for-teaching-1st-year-comp This book has great articles on first-year writing courses, but I'm specifically pointing to one entitled "An Honors Course in First-Year Composition: Classical Rhetoric and Contemporary Writing" By Marvin Diogenes, Stanford University.

I have been asked by numerous audiences, "what exactly is rhetoric?" They understand the composition part of my studies, but are perplexed by my inability to explain/define the rhetoric portion. The fact that I can't nail down a definition doesn't make me uncomfortable like it does some. Most definitions I end up giving are to wordy for most... so they stop asking.

These words together truck me for some reason. Should humanities humanize? Then I looked up definition and origin: Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the time. Today, the humanities are more frequently contrasted with natural, and sometimes social, sciences as well as professional training. More etymology found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanities

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paideia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrus_Ramus

Both this and an earlier statement about humanities needing justified (last paragraph on 116) made me think about the lack of understanding of humanities at all levels of education. This piece is specifically aimed at "the university," but even at the secondary level, humanities are the first things threatened by a budget cut. Could a lack of understanding be a main reason public schools, primarily 9-12, aren't overly worried by the idea of cutting humanities courses?