St. Augustine and How Humans are Inherently Flawed

         Ok so, Christianity is super old, right? So is rhetoric, and the church has been using rhetoric for a very long time. Look at the Bible for example. All rhetoric used to persuade people into acting a certain way that they deem proper and most Godly. Rhetoric became important to the functioning of the church sometime between 450 and 1000 CE. They used it for teaching and debating with opponents and evangelism. One such rhetorician of the church was St. Augustine of Hippo (353-430 CE). also can we talk about how we have writings from people millenniums ago? whack.

        Anyway, Augustine was born to a devout Christian mother who sent him to Carthage in 370 CE to study rhetoric. After he finished his studies he relocated to Rome. He became a professor of rhetoric in Milan and was considered a well-known orator and teacher of rhetoric. His teachings were based off of Cicero and were influenced by Sophism. While teaching in Milan, he met a Christian leader and famed orator named Ambrose who impressed Augustine with his rhetorical skill. Ambrose eventually converted Augustine to Christianity and baptized him in 387 CE. Augustine went on to be a priest in 391 and offered the office of Bishop of Hippo. During his time as Bishop, he published many books like Confessions, where he describes his early life and conversion to Christianity.

        Augustine described his early life, living, and teaching to be very Sophistic. He attacked rhetoric in Confessions like a Sophist would, saying he only "rejects the abuses of the Second Sophistic." He came to understand that rhetoric was very important to the church and Christian society and so was rhetorical tradition. He sought a rhetoric that "could aid in the pursuit of truth... the Christian scriptures." He believed that even though rhetoric had pagan origins, the church needed it to discover and teach the contents of scripture as well as "defend scriptural truth." But Augustine had trouble. God transcended spoken and written language, and rhetoric was finite. How could they make an adequate description of God with such limited signs?

        I remember hearing a sermon on this topic as a young child whose parents forced her to attend church even though I hated it and they did not like it either. Humans are so small and insignificant compared to his Holiness, so there was no way we could adequately describe and worship God the way he deserved. However, we had to try and God would forgive us for our inadequacy. 

        Augustine writes how even though humans are finite and limited in their ability to describe God, rhetoric is still important. Priests use rhetoric in sermons to spread positive messages on how to maintain the health of the parishioners souls. It assists preachers in understanding the divine truth in scriptures, and teach them to the congregation. It can be used to debate heretics and nonbelievers, but it could also be dangerous. we can't have parishioners and regular people thinking and creating valid arguments against christianity now can we?

        His major work on rhetoric and guide to preaching was De Doctrina Christiana (On Christian Doctrine). It has similarities to Cicero's De Oratore and Orator. He begins with saying that the "means of finding material for understanding scripture (modus inveniendi) is different from expressing the ideas found (modus proferendi). Augustine urged the church to study and teach human discourse. While classical rhetorical practices were not well accepted in the church, Augustine convinced them to use what was useful in the classical rhetorical treatises. With all his writings and time in the church, he was able to get the church to study rhetoric and teach it like other subjects, and because of him Christians began understanding the principles of rhetoric. 

Disciplining Gender and the Trans Experience

 Sloop starts the work talking about how in the 90s people were redefining gender, poking and prodding and repoking and reprodding what sexual and gender norms were and the underlying "morals" of these norms. However, Sloop clarifies that during this time there was still reinforcing bi-gender normativity, not even touching on the concept of non-binary identities or transgender individuals, what they called at the time "transvestites" or "transsexuals." These are not the terms used today, but at the time period were the way that people addressed transgender individuals. Gender is a spectrum just like sexuality and enforcing this "pick one of these two options" concept can be damaging to people who do not feel that the terms "girl" or "boy," "female" or "male" can adequately express their gender identity.

Brandan Teena was a trans man living in Falls City, Nebraska. The publications at the time would call him a "young woman who was living as a man." This language already dismisses Brandan's identity and calling his time presenting as a man and more masculine as a phase. Brandon was arrested for check fraud and identified as a woman by the police. Once Brandon was outted. I am not going into detail what happened to Brandon because it can be triggering for some people, but eventually he and two of his housemates were murdered. This brought about a conversation about the "disciplinary power of rhetoric and gender norms."

This is not the only example of this gender discipline in the article. Country singer K.D. Lang came out as a lesbian in the mid to late 1980s. Subsequently, the way that she and her music was marketed changed and the discourse around the way she presented herself, more masculine, changed. It was no longer weird for her to dress more masculine because she was a lesbian, because apparently it is not ok for women to just want to dress masculine. Janet Reto's sexuality and masculine appearance was a topic of discussion while she was the attorney general of the United States. She never expressed her sexual or gender identity but she was either made to be a dyke behind the scenes or frigid and asexual. This is another example of how "gender trouble" and sexuality being up for public debate. Private Barry Winchell was murdered in 1999 at Fort Campbell in Tennessee because two of his fellow soldiers thought he was gay. Winchell was also dating who they called "female impersonator" Calpernia Addams, a transgender woman who said she had not transitioned yet. This couple was either simplified and called a heterosexual couple or both of them were gay men. Coverage of this case focused on "overt gender behavior and the supposed internal motivations of both victims and perpetrators of the crime."

Judith Butler wrote in Gender Trouble that gender is performative, something we do rather than what we are. Individuals perform gender without thinking because it has been ingrained in our heads since we were infants. I think back to toddler clothes with boys' onesies saying "chick magnet" or "i like trucks." I think of parents who admonish their kids for going to the wrong area of the toy aisle, or that the aisle is divided into "boy" and "girl" toys. Society has a certain way that you are allowed gender based on your sex at birth and assign you "proper" gender behaviors. This serves as a problem for children who are born intersex, or with both female and male sex organs. Parents are pressured into choosing a sex for their child, effectly choosing what gender they want their child to perform. This can cause a lot of problems for children who have had surgery to choose one sex over the other. Children whose parents did not choose a sex often grow up with some anxieties and insecurities, but they still grow up healthy and figure out their gender identity on their own. What we call being a "real woman" is just "cultural fiction" according to Sloop. 

Society tells you what gender you are based on your sex organs, on your body, and tells you how you should act based on that identification. It can be so unconsciously performed and ingrained in our brain we do not even know we are doing it. When people "step out of line," like transgender folks or people who fall outside of the binary, we discipline them socially, and sometimes physically.

Rhetoric and Memes

 Are memes rhetorical texts?

I’ve heard some people say no—which makes some sense if you view rhetoric from a perspective like Aristotle’s. Usually, memes aren’t explicitly trying to persuade you of anything, so there’s no need for that “all the available means of persuasion” stuff. Others might say no if they view rhetoric as a wholly active process, meaning, you can’t do rhetoric accidentally or subconsciously. Memes seem pretty passive—creation is a bit more active, but sharing them is quick and often thoughtless. So, if you think rhetoric has to be a conscious decision, then sure, you may not recognize memes to be rhetorical.

That being said, I want to make an argument that they are--even by popular measures of what rhetoric is!

A meme that is frequently rhetorical even by Aristotle's framework. This meme usually has a political or philosophical message written in the second frame, so it asserts an actual argument, or at least a claim. 

I’m going to mostly focus on meme creation; I think sharing memes is also rhetorical, but that’s not what I want to consider here. Instead, let’s think only about the act of documenting—whether that be via text, image, audio, or video—an idea, usually a joke, which is then posted online.

My first observation is that memes always have an audience. Even if you make a meme just for yourself and you never post it online, that meme has been created for someone—just, in this case, it’s only you. Similarly, memes always have an author. Authorship is complicated, of course, for the whole point of a meme is that it references or copies something else. But, each individual file is created by someone. Also, memes have a message. There’s always something being communicated, even if it is nonsensical, humorous, or irrelevant.

Next, memes do not exist within a vacuum; memes always have context. In fact, for a meme to be a meme, it has to build on something previous. Or, to become a meme, like the Joker meme below, people must take something original and give it a new meaning or purpose. For example, the “Kilroy was here” joke—one of the first memes—started somewhere. I don’t know for certain (it appears no one does, based on its Wikipedia page), but I assume someone, somewhere drew the first cartoon. And from there, it became a meme. Even if the first meme was completely original, however, with no reference to popular culture, it was still contextual; the concept of graffiti, for example, guided its conception. Similarly, the image which frequently appears with the Kilroy memes, was created based upon the original author’s understanding of humor.

 

An example of a meme which took an original concept and altered it to create something new. This was originally an image from the Joker (2019) film; someone then edited the image to make the Joker much shorter. This image was used as a reaction image on Twitter quite a lot in 2019/early 2020. 

So, we now have a message, an audience, and author and a context… that sounds like the rhetorical situation to me! We can even observe the rhetorical condition if we consider the power dynamics seen in how memes are distributed. People with more followers can create memes which are seen by more people, creating a power differential. Further, companies can appropriate memes, which gives them a new meaning and can expose memes to a new audience. Further, they can steal memes created by specific internet communities—which are frequently Black internet users—and remove important context from them. (This is especially common with AAVE; brands using words like “bae” and “period” to try to appeal to younger internet users is a timely example of this cultural theft. Here is an article that goes into more detail about this common occurrence.) Another example of a power differential is access to meme creation software; for example, if someone cannot pay or does not know how to use video editing software, they lose access to an entire medium for meme creation, and thus cannot contribute to meme culture in this way.

One more concept I want to apply is the idea of identification. When we create and share memes—even if we do not seek to persuade—we try to find identification with others. There is a reason people share memes; sure, we find them funny, but we also find them relatable. Memes are a way, then, to relate to and find unity with one another. To do this, we have to make inferences about who our audiences are. We have to assume what our audience knows, what values they have, and what things they like or don’t like to create a useful or popular meme. So, sure, when I make a meme I may not be persuading my audience to do something in particular, but I am using assumptions about my audience to communicate and find identification with them. I think that’s rhetoric!

Good luck with finals everyone! 

Rhetorical Silences as Arguments

 

    The canons of Egyptian rhetoric have really stuck with me this semester, and I wanted to think about them some more as I wrote my final paper for this class. Silence, the first canon, is especially interesting. My final paper looks at how racism is implicitly passed through our laws, court decisions, and other legislation, but part of that is rhetorical silence. It's something that we see a lot in political discussions, as well as day-to-day discussions of policies, programs, and productions. Who is being included, and who is being excluded?

    While the Fox reading on Egyptian rhetoric claims that this "moral posture" is excluded in classical rhetoric, as it is better for handling individuals rather than arguments, I would argue that silence can, and does, act as an argument. In my paper, I use the example of the Social Security Act back in the 1930s. There was a purposeful silence in that: agricultural and domestic service jobs were excluded from the act, which disproportionately affected black Americans, who primarily held those jobs.

    We see more modern examples of silence on behalf of politicians, on both sides of the aisle. Donald Trump is metaphorically silent when it comes to denouncing and condemning white supremacist groups. In one of the Presidential debates, when asked, he avoided the question at first, claiming that most of the destruction he saw came from the left side. Then, he demands a specific group to condemn, and after naming the Proud Boys, he said "Stand by." You can rewatch the video from the debate.

His silence on these kinds of hateful, racist groups, speaks to the explicit racist, hateful things he has said.

He's not the only one using rhetorical silences, though. While Joe Biden released a video earlier this year asserting the fact that Black Lives Matter, the Instagram page for BLM recently called him and Kamala Harris out for not responding to their requests for a meeting.

They are both making arguments by not addressing the issues being asked. We see it from more than politicians, too. Think about when you read about a scandal or a crime that has occurred, and someone chooses not to comment to a news outlet. The immediate assumption is guilt: if they aren't guilty, then why are they refusing to say anything? Why are they not proclaiming their innocence? We're given this Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate ourselves, but sometimes the silence can be more telling than an actual relaying of events.

We hear about silences in terms of civil rights, too. Desmond Tutu has the famous quote stating that, "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." We hear it when people point out that "White silence is violence." Silence is again and again seen as a purposeful, political choice.

So how do we balance our silences with our voices? Are we looking for purposeful silences and their meanings when we elect new public servants? How can we better pick up on the silences from public figures, when the point of silence is to stay out of the limelight?

Margaret Price on Disability, Inclusivity, and Accessibility

 In our class reading Embodied Rhetorics: Disability in Language and Culture, James C. Wilson and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson state the following:

The walls preventing Americans with disabilities from realizing their civil rights have proved more difficult to dismantle than ones built of concrete and steel. These barriers of separation are not only physical but sociopolitical--exclusions, with a long history, codified in institutional discourses, embodied in social spaces, enacted in social practices, and deeply embedded… in global capitalist economic structures

In her lecture On Inclusivity and Mental Health: Reconsidering Space and Time in Higher Education, Margaret Price talked at length about how disability is “embodied in social spaces” and “enacted in social practice”, and how this creates barriers to accessibility. 

Price began her lecture by stating that “enacting inclusion is one of the most difficult challenges that faces education at all levels”. Despite our emphasis on it, inclusion is one of many vague, “floating good” terms (like engagement, productivity, and excellence) that typically do not accomplish much. Inclusion implies that an outsider is being “welcomed”, while the space still belongs to the “welcomer”. 

Before I go on, I should define a couple important terms. The first is excludable type: someone who is “[signified] as an always-absent presence”. In other words, we assume excludable types aren’t present until we are explicitly told otherwise. For example, wheelchair users are an excludable type in that we install ramps and make other efforts to include them only after they show up, but not before.

Next, kairotic space refers to any spontaneous, informal situation with a high professional or academic impact. The criteria for a kairotic space is as follows:

•  Events are synchronous: unfold in "real-time"

• Impromptu communication is required or encouraged

• Participants are tele/present, either in person or through a digital interface such as video

• Involves a strong social element (social spontaneity)

• Stakes are high, meaning there is a noticeable power imbalance present (between teacher/student, boss/employee, etc.)

Kairotic spaces in academia encompass everything from classroom discussions to running into your professor in an elevator; our professional reputation often hinges on these small, informal encounters, but because they are spontaneous, we cannot prepare for them in advance like we would, for example, a presentation. This is what makes them tricky. Often, disabilities must be accommodated in kairotic spaces--in real-time--but this is not how the current system of academic accommodations work. Instead, our current system places the onus on people with disabilities to anticipate their own needs ahead of time, even though these needs can be spontaneous and unpredictable.

As a solution, Price proposed the theory of crip spacetime, which focuses on “the spacial, the relational, the non-human animal, the object, and the group” rather than individuals. We can apply the theory of crip spacetime when considering what truly inclusive academic spaces look like, and how we can build them. What resources do we have for mental disability on campus, and are they easy to find for everyone? Where are our kairotic spaces, and how can we adjust them so that accommodations are not just welcome, but expected? While these questions aren’t easy to answer, they can help us to imagine what accessibility and inclusivity look like in academic spaces. 

Aristotle's Ableism, Sexism, and Xenophobia, and What To Do With It

One day in class, we questioned how to approach Aristotle within our rhetoric education. He believed in natural slavery, the idea that certain people and groups are wired to be subservient to others. He notoriously advocated to silence and exclude women, referred to non-Hellenistic foreigners as “barbarians”, and recommended that “deformed” children not be raised. But he also was among the first to frame rhetoric as a legitimate field of study, fathered the rhetorical proofs, and contributed myriad other ideas that inform the field of rhetoric today. What do we do with that?

I’m of the mindset that ideas and other creations are inextricably linked to their creators. We cannot “separate the art from the artist”, so to speak, because an artist’s cultural background and beliefs inform their art. The same goes for all fields. As Steven Combs states in Challenging Greco-Roman Argumentation Trajectories: Argument Norms and Cultural Traditions: 

“Argumentation is a manifestation of particular patterns of human interaction drawn from diverse assumptions regarding everything from the nature of reality to the most preferable ways for humans to live. In short, cultural patterns and traditions form an environmental field that conditions the precepts, principles, and trajectories of argumentation”

In the same vein, Aristotle’s beliefs about natural slavery and distaste for women, foreigners, and people with disabilities informed his rhetorical theory. 

Take for example his idea of meritocracy: a political system built on exclusion. In a meritocracy, a person’s status depends on their achievements. While this may sound fair in theory—we were raised nursing that “anyone can make it with hard work” myth, after all—we need only remember the historical and historiographical exclusion of women and people of color in all fields of study to see the holes in it. Are high-achieving, pioneering people belonging to minority groups appropriately recognized for their merits, historically? Certainly not. Furthermore, barriers like wealth and power limit the opportunity for achievement to the already-privileged. 

Aristotle’s philosophy of natural slavery ties into this too: he argued that some people were intrinsically incapable of critical, rational thought, and were thusly better suited to serving those who were. Once again, this privileges wealthy white men, with some additional ableist seasoning.

Of course, the meritocracy is just one example of how Aristotle’s beliefs shaped his theories. As all rhetoric is culturally and traditionally-bound, all of his ideas were similarly shaped.  

As for what we can do with this, I think Luming Mao got it right in Thinking Beyond Aristotle. We should consider that there is no common essence or usage, no “exclusive set of objects”, which accurately applies to all rhetorics. We should aim to detach from the historical White Greek Guy framework when studying rhetorics from other cultures and time periods as much as is possible, as well as work on “[reinstating]” instances of erasure” and “[resurrecting] knowledge that has been buried, disqualified, or ruled out of order”. Who is left out of the picture, and what are their cultural and traditional values? How did this shape what they say and think? How do our judgments honor those values? 

To me, this is not an imperative to stop teaching Aristotle. Instead, it is a call to acknowledge his beliefs as we teach his theories. I don’t feel right dismissing Aristotle as a product of his time and culture, shrugging, and saying, “Well, his ideas still hold up!” Not only because he had some hilariously inaccurate ideas—the guy believed men had more teeth than women—but because his ideas were very much rooted in his beliefs, as all ideas are. 

The Rhetoric of Positivity

Happiness is often equated to goodness in our culture. It's understandable how we got to this sentiment; in general, we try to sculpt our lives in a way that will maximize our feelings of satisfaction and pleasure. Anything that seemingly goes against the common desire of happiness is thus labeled negatively and disregarded as something bad. This goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks; in Aristotle's "On Happiness" section of his book of Rhetoric, he makes the argument that whatever diminishes happiness, we ought not to do. This has lead to a present culture that tries its best to sweep unhappy feelings or thoughts under the rug--but this can turn into toxic positivity (AKA the cult of positivity) that ends up delegitimizing the plights of oppressed people and keeping the privileged in power.

Perhaps the most well-known example of toxic positivity is that of the happy housewife. Often, the rhetoric used against feminism brings up how unhappy the feminist is. Look at her, demanding her rights and not smiling in a kitchen making me food--if being a feminist means you look that unhappy all the time, why would you ever willingly become one? (If you'd like to see how this looks in modern times while also enjoying some commentary making fun of it, I suggest this Kurtis Conner video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1oHnA_Slto) This is also where we see the term "feminazi" being used; all of this is a way to take the pressure off the real issue and make the oppressors appear as if they have everyone's best intentions at heart because they just want us to be happy.

The issue of over-positive rhetoric extends beyond feminist discourse; we see this in practically every sphere that features discourse. The climate change "debate" is especially an example that comes to mind. Scientifically-backed arguments are ignored often because they're believed to be pessimistic--take Trump's tweet about Greta Thunberg after she gave a passionate speech about her worries for the planet, for example. 

She seems like a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future. So nice to see!

This tweet was directly feeding into toxic positivity. Its condescending tone is used to mock Thunberg's righteous anger and make the issues she brings up seem overexaggerated and unnecessarily negative. It's often the people who are in power that bring up the issue of happiness--there is an understanding that to disturb the status quo, which is masked in an illusionary veil of general happiness, is wrong. We've seen this today and throughout history in the form of civil disobedience and even legal protests for rights--people tend to turn their heads when something makes them uncomfortable, which helps keep unjust policies in place.

Protestors and activists, the leaders of what you might call "unhappy" agendas, are seen as killjoys. The article Multiculturalism and the Promise of Happiness by Sara Ahmed talks about this idea in depth, using the stereotypical "angry black woman" as an example of how our insistence upon happiness morphs into very real consequences for marginalized people. 

In American society, happiness and patriotism are linked. If one is unhappy with the way things are in America, it is seen as a direct assault on the country and they are told they can "get out" if they don't like it. This, and the general rhetoric surrounding happiness, works to close down conversation that could lead to better lives for everyone.

According to the Declaration of Independence, Americans are endowed with certain unalienable rights, among them being Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. But happiness is not a solid experience that is felt by everyone unbiasedly, just as the rights of life and liberty have largely not been in American history. In one's "pursuit" of happiness, they should keep in mind that other people are attempting to pursue their own happiness as well. Someone else striving for happiness should not be considered a personal attack or major upset on your personal life, and if it feels like it is, perhaps it's time to reevaluate what it is you are happy about. :)