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 a full page one. For my paper for Emancipatory Composition:

And for Rhetoric, Writing, and Identity:

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 agency with a “will” before the act. A performative, as Lloyd describes it, is akin to a speech act: it is a citation of a previous discursive act that puts effects into action. Because gender is a discourse that precedes the subject, one “does” gender. According to performative theory, one is not essentially a man or woman, but is only recognized as man or woman. Their gender is an effect of performativity.

Lloyd’s articulation of Judith Butler’s theory of performativity is useful as we consider the potential for transgender identities to offer subversion to the gender regime. Much like the gay man Lloyd discusses, who is gender normative and passes as straight, trans people who pass for cisgendered do not, in most cases, offer subversion. A theory of performativity allows us, instead of seeing gender as something someone has, to see gender as something read, because it is created by discursive practices.

Let me offer an example of possible subversion, but I’d like to preface this example by stating that I agree with Lloyd and Bulter that subversion cannot be easily calculated. This means I’d rather see this example as possible subversion rather than necessarily subversive. I was sitting in a gay bar a few weeks ago while Thomas Beatie, the transman who is now pregnant with his second child, was being interviewed on television by Barbara Walters. Some of the men in the bar were completely confused — confused by Beatie’s biological “plumbing,” by his ability to get pregnant, by his gender. At first, I was annoyed, because all too often I see gay men who refuse to study up on trans issues. However, I soon began to revel in the confusion. Here was an interview, attempting to make Beatie’s gender stable and understandable — but the interview was failing at this attempt because of the disruptions of a loud bar that distracts viewers from the framing of the interview. While Beatie was attempting to assert that essentially he is a man, the performatives of gender (a beard, a voice coded as male, but a pregnancy!) disrupted gender to the viewers at the bar. Of course, there is still a voyeuristic impulse in viewers (what is he?), but there is also confusion (how can he be both a man and pregnant?). It seems that the performatives (the reiteration of gendered practices) offered by Beatie, at least in this one context, offer some subversion to the regime of gender.

While I agree with Lloyd that we must understand domination as localized and multiple, and that Ebert’s theory is problematic, I am concerned that Lloyd might also too quickly dismiss Ebert’s understanding of patriarchy—though my understanding of Ebert comes solely from Lloyd’s exegesis and critique. Ebert’s theory of resistance postmodernism sees patriarchy as a systemic economic system that subjugates and exploits women and “is ‘necessary’ to the very existence and prosperity of the majority of socio-economic systems in the world and is fundamental to the global expansion and colonization of capitalism” (Ebert, qtd. in 80). Ebert’s theory, as Lloyd conveys it, admits itself to differences throughout time and location, meaning that patriarchy is not the same in every context. While all women are oppressed under patriarchy, they experience that subordination in various ways (80-81).

Lloyd claims that Ebert is working under some “questionable assumptions,” including the possibility for objective critique, the conflation of the economic with the material, and the belief that the cultural is not material and not as important as the economic (81-82). These critiques seem valid to me. However, unlike Lloyd and in line with Ebert, I do see patriarchy as a part of “the majority of socio-economic systems in the world” (80). For example, I see those “instances” cited on page 87 (legislation preventing women from entering certain occupations, compulsory sterilization of African-American women, etc.) as “necessarily originat[ing] as part of a system organized to subordinate women” (87). Of course, I am not saying they solely originate from that system, for other systems are at play as well. My point is that I do think we need to understand patriarchy as “a totality in process” that plays out differently in different contexts (Ebert, qtd. in 80).

Griffon’s discussion in particular helps us to understand the ways in which privacy, including the privacy of our bodies, is publicly mediated. She questions her own complacency in the narrative that women can be successful despite pregnancy (203) as well as the normative heterosexual narratives that she works in. Citing Robyn Wiegman’s “On Being Married to the Institution,” she notes that public enactments of family-making, such as pregnancy, exclude certain kinds of experience and have a certain privilege of being legitimate in public (205). This is a nuance missed by Wallace-Sanders, who rightfully sees pregnancy as disrupting the norms of the public/private distinction but overlooks the ways in which her body is already public. She writes that “My body threatened to reveal my secret and make my private life public” (190) and that she, her husband, and their expected baby “were becoming a family—in public” (189). These statements imply that our bodies and families are a priori private until a woman becomes pregnant. What Wallace-Sanders misses that she was already becoming a family in public: dates, engagement, marriage are all public in many ways. The ability to have a family in public is predicated on the heterosexual privilege to claim that your family is a private matter—a privilege that Griffon understands is not available to many in society.

My point here isn’t to simply point out Wallace-Sanders’s heterosexist assumptions about privacy, but rather to call into question the humanist notion of a private body altogether. Other essays in this collection give us hints that privacy is publicly mediated: certain diseases is disabilities are private because of public shaming, while others are forced to be public because of visibility; students interact with teacher’s bodies differently, respecting bodily boundaries differently based on perceived sexuality, for example.

Spigelman’s discussion of surplus reminds us that writing can be messy and untidy. I believe that too often we avoid these moments of surplus in students writing by directing them toward more internally cohesive documents. I should probably rephrase that, and put it terms of my own experience. I can recall moments where I have seen these “points of excess” in students’ papers and pointed out that they are contradicting themselves in their writing. I like Spigelman’s take when she sees this surplus in Michelle’s paper: She asks Michelle to write more. I think too often I have not asked students to keep writing, to develop this surplus and see where it leads them.

Instead of viewing surplus in student writing as opportunities for more thinking through writing, I have often viewed them as problems in logic, something to be ironed out. As Spigelman notes, “such points of excess are epistemic sites: places where our knowledge is re-viewed and reconstituted to account for (but not necessarily to integrate) inherent contradictions” (93). Spigelman’s use of personal experience as evidence and as rhetorical is helpful in creating these points of surplus, especially as students think through commonplace assumptions and notice that various lived experiences contradict those assumptions. By bringing this up, I don’t mean to say that I don’t ever help students develop more complicated meanings through the surplus in their writing. Rather, I want to note how easy it is to help them iron out this surplus in ways that create cohesive and tidy essays rather than complicate their own thinking and writing.

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Lloyd’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 (e.g., Judith Butler) can be convoluted at times. Identity politics generally functions on the premise that identity precedes politics, but Lloyd sees politics/discourse as constituting the subject; thus, politics leads to identity. She also takes a postmodern stance on identity, understanding it as multiple/shifting/fluid — that is, as in process. Perhaps my favorite part of the book is her understanding of the essentialist/anti-essentialist debate, seeing it not as an either/or debate, but rather as an agonistic space where politics is contested. Ultimately, Lloyd is interested in a deep democracy with affiliations and coalitions of subjects (her examples are women of color and queer movements, both of which eschew universal understanding of an identity and are oppositional in make-up).



Again, great book, and if read carefully, can serve as an excellent introduction to post-structuralist feminism.


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It seems that Ratcliffe’s conceptualization of a teacher’s ethos is useful for graduate teaching assistants to consider. The reason I bring this up is because, with the stress of teaching for the first time, GTAs are often encouraged to think about their teaching ethos mostly in regards to their performance, rather than in regards to promoting student learning. New GTAs are often concerned about dress, titles, appearing knowledgeable, and a myriad of other things that can build their ethos in the classroom. These are all understandable and important concerns that need to be thought through. However, I wonder if the stress on these concerns primarily, at the expense of other aspects of ethos, might rely on the authorial agency that Ratcliffe argues is “[put] on a pedestal” above readerly agency, discursive agency, and cultural agency (131). These “other aspects” of ethos I mention include, but aren’t limited to, fostering an openness to being wrong and to new ideas, and the potentials for greater “readerly agency” and “authorial agency” in our students. An example of the problem of this focus on individual ethos is a GTA claiming he is older and has more experience than he actually does, because of his concern that his credibility will be harmed if he admits to being a 21-year-old recent graduate of college.

I’d like to resist a cultural logic of blame here and instead employ Ratcliffe’s tactic of eavesdropping, which she describes as “purposely positioning oneself on the edge of one’s knowing so as to overhear and learn from others and [...] from oneself” (105). I wonder if we position ourselves on the outside of GTA training to listen to GTAs and professors, what would we hear? I wonder what we would understand and what cultural logics would emerge when we analyzed claims.

Unspoken opens up opportunities for us to think productively about other rhetorics that are often given less value than speech. Much like silence, visual rhetoric and bodies are often ignored and speech is privileged above all. Although it is outside the scope of Unspoken to relate visual rhetoric and the rhetoric of silence at much length, the book is not silent about the visual or bodies. Glenn discusses stylized silence, which involves “bodily signals, facial expressions, and nonverbal postures” in order to distance oneself from someone who shames (39). Bodies are ever-present in the book, even if not explicitly discussed: they are in the Clinton sex scandal, in the gendered and raced rhetors Glenn discusses.

The book’s focus on and problematization of the speech/silence dichotomy leaves open for exploration the relationships between silence and bodies or visuals. We might ask such questions as: How do body language and silence interact and work with or against each other? Or, how does silence evoke or make invisible the presence of bodies? Or, how does the delivery of silence help to constitute or change the bodies of rhetors or audiences? When I am silent, it is often in part a bodily reaction: I might feel physically unsafe; I might be so overcome with anger my body is shaking and I do not know how to react with speech in a civil manner; I might have laryngitis that makes talking difficult (though this last example is perhaps less rhetorical—it depends on the situation). An example of the interaction of visual or bodily rhetoric and silence that comes to mind is the silent protests against violence by women at Oregon State; a group of women stand in the Memorial Union, silently, once a week, as a statement against violence. Their act involves not only their rhetorical use of silence, but also their bodies and visual presence.

How does silence, as a rhetorical act, works in coordination with other non-verbal rhetoric(s)?

This particular story exemplifies, I believe, Appiah’s ideal of cosmopolitan agreement on particulars. In our reading last week, Appiah claims that “we often don’t need robust theoretical agreement in order to secure shared practices” (256), but instead find common ground through narratives and particulars (257). Appiah writes that principles or theories aren’t what bring a missionary doctor and a distressed mother together at the bedside of a sick child; instead, they are both brought there by their common care or concern for this particular child (256). I believe we see a similar situation in “The Man to Send Rain Clouds.” Leon’s family and Father Paul have quite different principles in regards to death. Paul believes that one must be given Last Rites and a proper Mass in order to ascend to Heaven as a Christian. Leon and his family, however, believe that Teofilo’s face should be painted and he should be buried with water in order to bring them rain. Unlike Leon, Father Paul would probably never agree that these rites would bring them rain. At the level of principle, these two parties are in complete disagreement.

However, they are brought to common ground by the particulars of the situation. It is apparent in the story that Father Paul cares for Teofilo—he asks for Leon to bring him to church on Sunday. While Paul’s motivations for attending to Teofilo’s body with the holy water aren’t made apparent in the story, I speculate that he does so not necessarily because he believes it is the proper Christian thing to do, but because he cares for and respects Teofilo. The use of holy water in this instance has two vastly different significations and values in the story, yet it is the particulars that bring Leon’s family and the priest together.

Where else in Silko’s text do we see this sort of potential for connections across difference?

I want to argue (though tentatively) that perhaps when white middle class people proclaim they “have no culture,” what they are really lamenting is a lack of autonomy. (I also want to make clear that “culture” is also often a codeword for race, and the claim is part of making whiteness invisible.) I have heard a number of white middle class people complain that they have no culture and express their envy of Others who are “more diverse.”¹ This proclamation that “I have no culture,” cannot be true, for surely white people have “knowledge, belief, arts, morals, law, customs, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (Tyler, qtd. in Appiah 119-120).

I think this look toward a “diverse” other (such as African-American culture or Jewish culture) as a model of culture is a concern about homogeneity — that white people fear seeing themselves as being the same as one another. Appiah writes that “often when we worry about homogeneity [...] it’s because we take it to be evidence of a previous crime against autonomy” (153). If my suspicion about white homogeneity is correct, then the claim that “I have no culture” might actually be a claim about autonomy — that white folks are lamenting their autonomy having been taken away. Here’s my reasoning: the culture industry has eliminated many choices, and I think white people (as a generality), who probably most identify with the cultural industry, have lost their autonomy (at least partially) to the domination of the cultural industry, to draw on T.W. Adorno’s critique. Perhaps this “lack of culture” also has to do with an alienation from others that leaves one without a “community.”²

What is your take on why some white people claim “I have no culture”?

¹ I put “more diverse” in scare quotes because I doubt the ability of an individual to be “more diverse” than another individual; I think “more diverse” is code here for “not mainstream,” “other,” or “exotic.”

²I want to admit my limits epistemologically: I am assuming that this is a phenomenon of white people because I have never heard a person of color make the claim that he or she has no culture.