English 584 Rhetoric Writing and Identity (Fall 2008)
a belated end of term wrap-up
So, after failing to get 15,000 academic words written in November, I created the same goal for December. Beat it early, but never updated my chart: 22,396 / 15,000(149.3%) I thought I’d share some word clouds from my papers this term as well. If you want, you can click on the tiny image to see [...]
584: Weekly Position Paper #14: Performativity and Subversion: Thomas Beatie Televised in a Gay Bar
This is about two weeks old now, but I forgot to post it. In Chapter 7 of Beyond Identity Politics, Moya Lloyd discusses the difference between performance and performativity in order to discuss the potentials for parody as subversion. Performativity, she argues, cannot be reduced to simply performance, in part because performance relies on autonomous [...]
584: Weekly Position Paper #12: Patriarchy: “A Totality in Processâ€
In Chapter 4 of Beyond Identity Politics: Feminism, Power & Politics, Moya Lloyd explores the tensions between poststructuralism and theories of domination the rely on systemic theories, arguing for a “global strategy†understanding of domination that focuses on “women’s multiple and disparate subordinations†(87). She does so by offering an exegesis of Teresa Ebert’s theory [...]
584: Weekly Position Paper #11: Questioning the Private Body
Three essays in Freedman and Holmes’s collection The Teacher’s Body: Embodiment, Authority, and Identity in the Academy center around pregnancy. All three essays call into question dominant narratives and conceptions surrounding pregnant bodies. Noting the dis-ease of others around her pregnancy, Amy Spangle Gerald explores how being pregnant affects her authority as a teacher and [...]
584: Weekly Position Paper #10: Surplus as Epistemic Sites: Resisting the Tidy Essay
In Personally Speaking: Experience as Evidence in Academic Discourse, Candace Spigelman argues persuasively for the use of personal experience in academic writing, both by scholars and by students. She offers many reasons and benefits for incorporating personal experiences. Key among these is personal experience can be used rhetorically, rather than viewed epistemologically, in order to [...]
Lloyd: Beyond Identity Politics (2005)
Beyond Identity Politics: Feminism, Power and Politics by Moya Lloyd My review rating: 5 of 5 starsLloyd’s book is an excellent book for those interested in feminism and post-structuralist theories of identity and politics. Lloyd is able to articulately and clearly convey post-structuralist feminist theories in ways that are accessible, even when the original author [...]
584: Weekly Position Paper #9: The Ethos of GTAs: Credibility Appeals vs. Pedagogical Openness
Ethos is a term that Krista Ratcliffe employs in Rhetorical Listening both in order to understand how whiteness functions in our society and in order to help teachers understand how they can plan for a course that prepares students to listen rhetorically. In order to maintain stasis, whiteness often reduces ethos to a rugged-individualist ethical [...]
584: Weekly Position Paper #8: The Relationships between Rhetorics of Silence and Visual Rhetorics
Drawing on “the widely held assumption that a person cannot not communicate†(15, emphasis in original), Cheryl Glenn makes a strong case for understanding silence as rhetoric in Unspoken: A Rhetoric of Silence. Noting that silence is “undervalued and under-understood†(2, emphasis original), Glenn explores the various uses of rhetorical silence, drawing from a variety [...]
584: Weekly Position Paper #7: Cosmopolitanism in “The Man to Send Rain Cloudsâ€
Leslie Marmon Silko’s “The Man to Send Rain Clouds†(182-186) is the story of how Leon and Ken found Teofilo dead under a cottonwood tree and Teofilo’s subsequent burial. When Leon and Ken first encounter Father Paul in the story, they do not tell him of Teofilo’s death, but later Leon goes to the priest [...]
584: Weekly Position Paper #6: Why Do White People Claim They Have No Culture?
In Chapter 4 of The Ethics of Identity, Appiah notes that while the United States has never been less culturally diverse, there have never been more celebrations of, or demands for, cultural diversity. He questions the values of both culture and diversity as good things, arguing that cultural change is commonplace and that a lack [...]
