47 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2019
    1. hat always entails constitutive exclusions and there-fore requisite questions of accountability

      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.

    2. dif-fraction

      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.

    1. feministpolitics of locations

      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.

    2. These in-between state

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

    3. Foucault’s seminal work onthe politics of living and dying

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

    4. multiple and collective

      Knowledge is social.

    5. Anthropocene as a multi-layered posthuman predicament that includesthe environmental, socio-economic, and affective and psychic dimensionsof our ecologies of belonging
    6. discursive inflation

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

    7. eo-Spinozist monistic ontology

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

    8. anthropocentrism
    1. You have to play t h e g a m e t o f i n d o u t w h y y o u ’ r eplaying the game

    2. Trainspotting
    3. capitalis

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

    4. ve hermeneu-tic
    5. isanyone who asks a lot of questions, refuses to accept simplistic dead-endanswers, is willing to bend rules to attain knowledge, and has a real senseof adventur

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

    6. kairos
    7. “It seems like everything used to be something else, yes?”

      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.

    8. JeanBaudrillard).

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

    9. n short, it may very well be the case that the rhetoricaltriangle is about as useful as a joystick in eXistenZ—in other words, it mayoffer us the sense that we are in control of the game, but we will miss outon all the action as a result

      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.

    10. etoricaltriangle

    11. “bioports

    1. female sexuality.

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

    2. As white women and women and men of color have increasingly participated in public forums, they have begun to theorize lhc differ-ences race and gender make in language use.

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

    3. For rhetorical theory now, language is ulways persuasive in intent, always imbued with elhics and ideology

      Noting

    4. Kenneth Burke

      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."

    5. there is no guarantee that the generality signified by a word will convey the same idea to all users of the language

      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.

    6. Deli11er

      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).

    7. common knowledge

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

    8. moral assumptions

      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?

    9. Rhetoric has a number or overlapping meanings:

    10. Rhetoric categorizes

    1. Seneca stresses the point: the practice of the self involves reading, for one could not draw everything from ones own stock or arm oneself by oneself with the principles of reason that are indispensable for self-conduct: guide or example, the help of others is necessary

      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

    2. However personal they may be, these hupomnemata ought not to be understood as intimate journals or as those accounts of spiritual experience (temptations, struggles, downfalls, and victories) that will be found in later Christian literature. They do not constitute a “narrative of oneself”; they do not have the aim of bringing to the light of day the arcana conscientiae, the oral or written confession of which has a purificatory value. The movement they seek to bring about is the reverse of that: the intent is not to pursue the unspeakable, nor to reveal the hidden, nor to say the unsaid, but on the contrary to capture the already-said, to collect what one has managed to hear or read, and for a purpose that is nothing less than the shaping of the self.

      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.

    3. gumnazein
    1. heroes rhey have people in them.

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

    2. It is the story that hid my humanity from me

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

    3. f to do thatis human, if that's what it tak§, tnen I am a human being after all. 'Fully, freely, gladly, for tneficst time.

      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.

    4. The society, the civilization they were talking about, these theoreti-cians, was evidently theirs; they owned it, they liked it; they were human, fully human, bashing, sticking, thrusting, killing. Wanting to be human too, I sought for evidence that I was; but if that's what it took, to make a weapon and kill with it, then evidently I was either extremely defective as a human being, or not human at all. That's right, they said. What you are is a woman. Possibly not human at all, certainly defective. Now be quiet while we go on telling the Story of the Ascent of Man the Hero

      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.

    1. an opening of alterity

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

    2. the rhetorical tradition
    3. "The art of never finally answering that question."

      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.

    4. first-year writing

      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.

    5. when this question is put to us, it's entirely understandable that we mighthesitate. Maybe we aren't quite sure which idiom is offering us the question (isthe question curious or obligatory, dismissive or confused?). Or maybe we justhaven't come up with an answer that is pithy enough yet

      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.

    1. humanities humanize

      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

    2. paiaeia
    3. Peter Ramus
    4. persuasive explanation of what the humanities are and do

      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?