Our reading for this upcoming week reminded me of the Cultural
Rhetorics class I took with Dr. Allison Hitt last semester. In the class, we
talked a lot about storytelling—particularly in the context of indigenous people
and other groups impacted by colonialism—as a valid rhetorical practice.
As Americans, we may think of stories as
moral lessons for young children. On the contrary, in Language and Literature from a
Pueblo Indian Perspective, Leslie Marmon Silko clarifies that stories are
not just for children, but defines them as “something that comes out of an
experience and an understanding of that original view of creation—that we are
all part of a whole” (3). Though Western ideology loves to disregard personal
anecdotes and feelings in favor of logic and facts, this Silko quote
illustrates the truth of stories: they implicate more than the individual. As
history repeats itself, so do stories. They are universal.
Storytelling is also “decolonial” in that legitimizes
a practice which colonialism—with its emphasis on logic and other Eurocentric
ideologies—has historically delegitimized. Through storytelling, indigenous people
(and other colonized groups) claim their rightful sovereignty over their
languages and cultural/rhetorical practices.
For white people like myself, I think stories have a different function. As West Chester University of Pennsylvania instructor Timothy Dougherty explains in Knowing Y(Our) Story: Practicing Decolonial Rhetorical History, “we must learn our own people’s stories of how they’ve come to be in a place, and of how they’ve lived in that place, in order to walk a path of accountability and solidarity”. In other words, we cannot be good, progressive allies without knowing the “meaner events” in our family histories. Dougherty’s piece details how he sought out the unsavory history of his Irish heritage, which eventually revealed that—though Irish people were once subject to racist, anti-immigrant sentiment in America—they “became white” by aligning themselves with white supremacist, genocidal Manifest Destiny ideology. He stresses that this is important because willful ignorance and “collective silence” from white people is a rhetoric of its own, and one which is complicit in colonialism and white supremacy. He states, “even the ugliest stories are instructive for us”.
I think this aligns with Silko’s
assertion that “it is very important that one keep track of all these
stories -both positive and not so positive about one's own family and other
families” (4). The purpose of knowing and sharing these ugly stories is not “malicious”,
but so that we can be better, more accountable people and allies.
I really liked reading this post because if the acknowledgement of how different races and cultures view stories. I liked that you spoke about how Irish immigrants were once victims of racist attacks, but then they turned to be the predator instead of the prey one more immigrants began to come to America. In today's society, I think it is very hard for some people to remember what actually made America. After all, the immigrants were the ones who came in and destroyed the land that belonged to the Native Americans. I think the idea of story-telling and respecting cultures is very lost in today's society. I hate it when I hear very white Americans telling people to "speak American" if they catch someone speaking a different language. American is not a language, and America is made up of so many different cultures, it shocks me to see how many people have the audacity to discriminate against different cultures. It is almost as if Americans have formed this idea of trying to be the elite, but we are so far from that. I think an example of that can be seen by your post, about how the Irish immigrants changed their status by changing who they ally with. I enjoyed your post because of how it acknowledged how different cultures treat story-telling, and I hope more people in the future are able to respect different cultures.
ReplyDeleteIt is really interesting to identify the cultural differences in how we view stories. The usage of stories as rhetoric by the Pueblo people, as explained by Silko, is a really refreshing take on the validity of cultural rhetorics. I really like that you pointed out how important it is to tell both the good and bad stories, even outside of Native American culture. The Dougherty quote regarding ugly stories reminds me of the idea that forgotten history is deemed to be repeated. If societies didn't reflect upon (but not glorify) their worst moments in stories, it would be very difficult to prevent these mistakes in the future.
ReplyDeleteBrynn, I thought a lot about Dr. Allison's class, too! A class like Cultural Rhetorics really broadens our view of rhetoric, and it is so helpful in contributing to discussions of comparative rhetorics, like we talked about last week. I keep thinking about something we discuss a lot in my Intro to Black History course: silences are rhetorical, too, and there is so much history lost in the silences of certain groups of people. Storytelling among generations is one way to combat that, and that storytelling can come in so many different forms. It can be oral, or it can be through dance, paintings, or other forms of art (like tapestries, quilting, etc.). All of which we also discussed in Dr. Allison's class!
ReplyDeleteWhat an interesting contrast between the proliferation of stories in indigenous cultures and colonists' purposeful ignorance towards the most ugly of stories. I hadn't made that connection, but it's so true. Colonists go as far as to rewrite their story--their history--to hide from their wrongdoings and avoid accountability. I think I remember Silko saying sometimes the stories will change over time, or at least lose some of their details. However, colonists don't change details in their stories to make them more relatable or current, but because it fits their agenda to paint themselves as the heroes. There's no edification in colonists' stories--only self congratulations. Then they turn around and belittle native cultures! Unbelievable. (Sorry this comments turned more into a rant than anything else, but this comparison reveals so much about the problems with colonists and their mindset.)
ReplyDeleteI also thought of Dr. Hitt's class when reading this article! I love how you phrased stories not needing to be entirely accurate for them to be truthful--the inaccuracies in retelling them might even make them more truthful. Not every rhetoric needs to consist of cold, hard fact in order for it to be legitimate. This feels a little contradictory to our earlier notions about "post-truth" and how fact being disregarded is a bad thing, but I think there's a clear difference in story-telling rhetoric and misinformative rhetoric.
ReplyDeleteYour source that talks about "white silence" reminded me of the Egyptian view on silence as rhetoric. While in ancient Egypt silence was revered as a strategy to show your credibility, here it takes on a more sinister meaning in that silence can be a rhetorical tool used (intentionally or not) to undermine the voices of marginalized people. It's interesting to see how silence can be used in different ways for honorable or dishonorable purposes, just like most/every type of rhetoric can.
I love how you characterized stories as "universal," and repetitious, and human nature causes history to be. It reminded me of the concept of the Collective Unconscious, coined by Carl Jung, that recognizes the common symbols and archetypes that all cultures use in their stories, dreams, and social structure. It is an incredibly unifying concept, that, though our stories are different, they teach the same truths and feature the same "characters." In one of my Honors humanities classes, we compared the flood anecdote in The Epic of Gilgamesh to the story of Noah in the Bible and the South American myth of Makunaima. It was interesting to see the reaction of some students who were perhaps more attached to the Judeo-Christian tradition to the universality of a story they held quite dear. There was a sense of wanting to "own" the story in a way, which is very much reminiscent of the Euro American rejection of Indigenous storytelling, the rejection of a non-white perspectives in historical writing, and the resistance to accept how other cultures have shaped our own.
ReplyDeleteYou know the post is good when the Dr. Hitt squad rolls up. Native American rhetoric's mere existence is decolonial, talk about a spicy connection to make. Well, it sounds obvious when I write it out, but I'm sure you get what I mean.
ReplyDeletei took that same class with Dr. Hitt, she is one of my favorite professors, I feel like a lot of us have taken the same classes and been in the same courses with each other for a few semesters now, it is fun to grow in our major with each other! i love reading comparitive rhetorics, and taking Dr. Rutter's Af. Am. Lit. class this year has taught me so much about decolonizing the syllabus and rhetoric
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