readings for the week

I loved Sonia Johnson's "The Bears and Anarchy." Johnson says, "Every living thing must be true to itself, must do what it wants to do, so that all other living things can be free to do the same. This is anarchy, this living in a knowledge of total connectedness, and it is perfect order" (RFRT 305). She made a great point of showing how nature governs itself and any disorder in nature caused by humans will cause nature to turn against them. I think it's like an ecosystem that has been sustaining itself for years and years. Anytime there's a disruption to the system, it can be problematic. I relate this to Johnson's ideas of patriarchical systems and how shocked she was to hear their attitudes toward the Equal Rights Amendment. For her, Mormons are known for their big families (as well as polygamy, but I won't go into that). Therefore, sometimes they would consider women's purposes to be breeding machines. Johnson says, "How can I have any respect for them? Men who cannot accept that women are anything but childbearers and caretakers..." (RFRT 275). And when women start waking up one day and realizing that they want to be more, it will disrupt the entire system.

However, this is when anarchy can be good. Sometimes whoever is in charge isn't working for the common good of the people, so that's when that someone needs to be booted out of office (not referring to anyone in particular, by the way). If women voters are finding that their male leaders are just not doing what they can for the female population, it's up to women to find their own leaders. Last night I was watching Criminal Minds and it was about women who were raped in Mexico. In the show, it seems to say that rape is not even an issue in Mexico. The women who were raped were hateful, distrustful, and unhappy. They didn't say anything because nobody cared. Perhaps if they had talked, people might have done something. Unfortunately, it was the American team that went to save them (making the US seem superior) and convinced them to speak out, but just like people say, "If you don't vote, you can't complain." If you don't do anything about it, complaining is just fruitless.

I also enjoyed Johnson's reading about being a good mom vs. a bad mom. She says, "So I decided to be a bad mother. Being a bad mother meant that I could be sorry when my kids had sad times, but I wouldn't be sad. Their being sad was already enough sadness. They could be in trouble and suffer, and I would commiserate and help in whatever appropriate way I could, but I would not suffer" (RFRT 300). It's the same analogy as teachers. We can't care too much about our students because we might get hurt or disappointed when they don't reach the bar of expectation that we set. We should do what we can and move on. It will save us a lot of stress in the end.

readings for the week

Something Alzaldúa says in “Speaking of Tongues,” really strikes me: "I have not yet unlearned the esoteric bullshit and pseudo-intellectualizing that school brainwashed into my writing" (RFRT 77). This is so reminiscent of Descartes’ first meditation when he says,

Several years have now elapsed since I first became aware that I had accepted, even from my youth, many false opinions for true, and that consequently what I afterward based on such principles was highly doubtful; and from that time I was convinced of the necessity of undertaking once in my life to rid myself of all the opinions I had adopted, and of commencing anew the work of building from the foundation, if I desired to establish a firm and abiding superstructure in the sciences.

This also reminds me of James’ and Robert’s mentioning of Yoda on Monday, saying we must unlearn what we’ve learned.

Also, I thought it was amusing when Burke was trying to distinguish between rhetoric and primitive magic, and later he says, “…the rhetorician has the tricks of his trade…they are an art” (B&H 1337). And my response was, “Isn’t Anzaldúa’s ‘art’ magical as well?” Anzaldúa’s art lies in the way she uses language and incorporates cultural aspects into the rhetorical tradition. I can really relate to her in “El camino de la mestiza” (RFRT 89):

She strengthens her tolerance (and intolerance) for ambiguity. She is willing to share, to make herself vulnerable to foreign ways of seeing and thinking. She surrenders all notions of safety, of the familiar. Deconstruct, construct…Se hace moldeadora de su alma. Según la concepción que tiene de sí misma, así será.

From my eight years of studying Spanish, I’d loosely translate it as something about one molding the soul and when that is made, it becomes one’s own and there it is and will be. I especially love the way she goes from English to Spanish. These are her two cultures and the way she thinks. (I do this in my poetry as well, using Romanized Chinese words). Sometimes in a language, translation takes away the true meaning, so I noticed that Anzaldúa sometimes leaves the Spanish as is because there’s no other way to say it. It makes the reading so rich and maybe a little esoteric. Anzaldúa is talking to me, also a woman of color (although I shudder at the term), and I can feel her emotion, her frustration, her dissatisfaction with the world—especially in her non-translated Spanish. Hispanic writers are so sensual--I get tingles as I read.

Burke says that “An imagery of killing is but one of many terminologies by which writers can represent the process of change” (B&H 1324). And like Jarrell’s poem, “The Lost Children,” that Robert brought for 780, something that changes can be lost or dead. However, regarding Anzaldúa’s concepts of the need for change, the term “mestiza” might be less useful in our time when diversity makes life more interesting. Instead of a woman of mixed blood, I would rather advocate men and women who are bicultural or multicultural, who can embrace two or more cultures without losing their main culture. I know many people with these characteristics, who are more tolerant, open-minded, and thus enlightened by these cultural experiences.

readings for the week

I was amazed at Trinh T. Min-ha's artistic abilities and how she was able to blend those with ethnic culture, theory, and politics. She's a modern day "Renaissance woman" and we need more of them. By having knowledge or talent in various disciplines, we are able to see from different perspectives and we can teach them to the people in our livesand make the world a more enlightened place. From this, we can as Min-ha did, "seek to question existing framework and boundaries" (RFRT 213).

How fascinated I was to see rhetoric from the point of view of films. I actually didn't even think about how the real and the filmed are actually very different in terms of space, time, and rhetoric. She says that truth is actually "produced, induced, and extended" (RFRT 225). From what I read, I think she says most of us are spectators and prefer to watch passively than take action and inform others about injustices. The role of a filmmaker then is to provide the hidden information to the masses. She compares a filmmaker to "the almight voice-giver" who "desire[s] to service the needs of the silent common people who have never expressed themselves unless they are given the opportunity to voice their thoughts by the one who comes to redeem them" (RFRT 229). I agree with that except for the "redeem" part. It makes them sound like they are sinners or in the wrong for not speaking up by themselves.
I was really surprised when she explains that "Reality is more fabulous, more maddening, more strangely manipulative than fiction" (RFRT 231). It's kind of ironic. I think reality can be manipulated into fiction but not vice versa.

I guess I can try to relate Min-ha's reading to the time we made i-movies in Dr. Blair's computer-mediated writing course. We were to make videos observing a colleague while he/she was teaching. We then, had to manipulate an hour's worth of teaching into a 5 minute summary. It was very difficult! Filmmaking or in our case, "super-amateur" film making consists of constant decision-making. What is the focus? What should we show and what shouldn't we show? How can we make something undesirable become desirable? Another problem was transitions. As we were able to insert our own transitions through i-movie, there were so many types. We had to determine what was acceptable or unacceptable. Although I was drawn to the diverse transitions, fonts, and colors available, I knew my final goal was to present a professional video document. I used clear, easy to read fonts and colors. I broke up the course into how the instructor began the course, how students prepared for group presentations, how students presented, and finally, what students think are the ups and downs of a computer-mediated course. After toiling for hours, I was able to create a document that my colleague used for her own electronic portfolio. Thus, filmmaking is time-consuming, takes energy and effort, but is well worth the experience. :)

readings for the week...

Sorry! I realized my last posting was a draft and not published. Also, I was presenting for Kramarae and Daly with Bethany and forgot to post as well. Bad Ann-Gee. Say it twice. :P

Anyway, Bad Ann-Gee was glad to see that alternative yet radical forms of rhetoric have been accepted into anthologies. In the first semester of the history of rhetoric course with Dr. Carter-Wood, I studied and presented ancient Chinese rhetoric, which was fascinating and fun to read. I find that alternative rhetoric is quite philosophical and spiritual. I feel very "at one" with the world when I read it. :) And Taoism is all about balance between humans and nature, male and female.

For each person or culture, their gods look different. For us in the Western world, we've all grown up with the concept of God as a man. Secretly, I've harbored a preference for God being a woman or woman-like. This may be why my mom and I admire the Chinese goddess Kwan-Yin so much because she represents mercy. The Western form of a male god is one who also engages in mercy, so ironically, Buddhists would consider God to be another buddha, enlightened spirit, instead of the one God.

Starhawk is very radical as not only is she a witch but she believes in the Goddess. For those who do not understand witchcraft, they would immediately consider her anti-Christian. However, her version of witchcraft is magical and has the power to heal. Witches in fact "bend energy and shape consciousness" very much like the Eastern Tai'chi or Chi'gong, methods of physical exercise that involve breathing and channeling energy. Starhawk does mention chi later in “Truth or Dare.”

People fear what they do not understand, stick a label on it, and just stay away from it. Witches have generally been perceived as old women who are jealous and spiteful, have evil motives, and even cannibalistic. Starhawk disiproves these types of myths in the beginning of "Witchcraft as Goddess Religion," when she says, "The mysteries of the absolute can never be explained--only felt or intuited" (RFRT 143). Everyone feels in different ways that are inexplicable. And to understand, one must invest feelings. Later, she says “true social change can only come about when the myths and symbols of our culture are themselves changed” (145).

Starhawk implicitly blames male-dominant religions in which, "Women are not encouraged to explore their own strengths and realizations; they are taught to submit to male authority, to identify masculine perceptions as their spiritual ideals, to deny their bodies and sexuality, to fit their insights into a male mold" (RFRT 144). I can see how many women would prefer to be Wiccan than Christian in that the Goddess’ images “do not define or pin down a set of attributes; they spark inspiration, creation, fertility of mind and spirit” (RFRT 144). And also it encourages women to “see ourselves as divine, our bodies as sacred, the changing phases of our lives as holy, our aggression as healthy, our anger as purifying, and our power to nurture and create, but also to limit and destroy when necessary” (144). With her Goddess, men can also play roles and learn to “experience and integrate the feminine side of their nature” instead of being war-mongers obsessed with conquest, desire, and ego (145). Also with her Goddess, much like Buddhism, we are to treat other living beings equally. Starhawk later affirms, “In the Craft, all people are already seen as manifest gods, and differences in color, race, and customs are welcomed as signs of the myriad beauty of the Goddess” (147)

This makes me wonder: Is the Craft one that has uses effective types of Listening Rhetoric? In “Truth or Dare,” she says the Goddess is not called that just because of gender, but as a “reminder that what we value is life brought into the world” (150). Also, in her roundtable discussion on backlash, she speaks of a world "where those who differ can listen and learn from each other instead of attempting to dominate one another" (178).

Witchcraft is clearly not passive because “if suffering occurs, it is not our task to reconcile ourselves to it, but to work for change” (147). And finally, they envision what they want clear obstacles for creation. Witchcraft also provides security as there is “nothing to be saved from, no struggle of life against the universe, no God outside the world to be feared and obeyed” (148). It is also empowering as there are 3 different types of power: power-over, power-from-within, and power-with (152).

Starhawk’s Goddess seems like a beautiful, spiritual type of philosophy that we should not necessarily drop everything and start practicing, but definitely appreciate. :)

metaphors be with you!

In describing his 4 master tropes, Burke says that “metaphor is a device for seeing something in terms of something else” (503). However, Buck says that the subject of metaphors is problematic and raises the question, "Is this figure a natural product or an artificial?" (32). I heard that metaphors, which are in the figurative language domain, originated from the literal. Therefore, my answer to her question would be that a metaphor is natural because hundreds or thousands of years ago, mankind used to use the old to describe the new. For example, when we look at furniture, chairs and tables have "legs." There is a "head" and "foot" of a bed. I think this is very logical and easier to remember when we refer to objects with terms that relate to the human body. The same goes when we learn other languages.

Buck also asks why metaphors please the readers. Again, there is that sense of novelty. For example, I use many metaphors when I teach writing. We have some pesky "circus introductions" to represent obvious introductions; "grasshoppers" to represent non-cohesive sentences; "jellyfish" to represent essays that start out strong and end up weak; "islands" to represent paragraphs that are not connected to those around them; and finally, the ever common "cuckoo sentence" in which a sentence does not belong in the paragraph in which it's placed. On the handout, I even add graphics that remind them. This helps students because they don't care to know terms like "cohesion" or "unity." Instead, these types of metaphors make writing amusing and keep its sense of novelty. Unfortunately, metaphors can indeed be problematic when students start using these esoteric metaphors in other places, and others are unaware of them.

Metaphors are interesting animals. :) Wouldn’t you agree?

readings for today

I've always been fascinated with Bakhtin ever since I wrote a paper about him relating to heteroglossia and monoglossia in the original Snow White story and the Disney version. Bakhtin says that "any instrument of production may be ideologically decorated," (B&H 1211) and this is very true.

In Dr. Ostler's contrastive rhetoric course she once asked us to tell us the first thing that comes to mind when we think of the word "flower." Each of us had different ideas. Therefore, the images we relate to mean different things to different people. When we looked at the same word, there were different images in our minds. When we looked at the same exact image, we had different words to describe them. Bakhtin's idea may be related to rhetoric. If a piece of writing is the product, then rhetoric must be the decoration employed, right?

Kinneavy described his purpose as "an attempt to show the relevance of some important concepts of classical rhetoric to modern composition" (221). This again brought me back to Villanueva's belief that we should learn about the past to understand the present and possibly the future. I've always wondered whether students would appreciate some rhetoric history in their courses. However, they might be like me: blame the Arabs for inventing math. :P I think it would be valuable for them to see why things are the way they are in composition and see the great minds who have helped us come thus far. In addition to this, I've even contemplated sharing with them the history of the English language because language is something that we tend to take for granted. Most American students know when something does not make sense, but international students can explain the rules. It's very ironic that our native English-speaking students hardly know where their own language comes from.

From Paula Gunn Allen's writings, we can see that she values language and culture. Therefore, ignorance of one's culture can be just as close as losing one's culture.
She also says that native Americans have begun to write so they don't lose record of their existence. Having studied various aspects of second language acquisition, I have been intrigued by oral cultures and I know that native American language and traditions have been primarily oral. Therefore, it's important for them to become literate in their own languages so they can pass on or inform others of their traditions. This proves that a newer tradition, writing, can help them preserve their old ones.

Writing is so important. I wish our students could see this.

late, yes, but still on the same day :P

I breezed through Bitzer, Vatz, Consigny and Mountford, but was kind of swimming through Burke. The concept of space is fascinating to me as I'm a spatial learner and carefully plan my use of space when I teach and also as I write. I don't like to be cramped up in a little room and don't think students are comfortable either. When I write or create a handout, I always make good use of the space so that not too much space is left. I save a lot of trees that way. :)

The questions of whether rhetoric controls the situation or whether the situation controls the rhetoric was also something that intrigued me. In the end, it's like the "Which comes first? The chicken or the egg?" argument as they affect one another.

The idea of pulpits is also interesting. Aren't all educators preachers in some way? Don't we refer to a main text as well? We conduct our classrooms in various ways. Some stand up on a podium; some sit on tables and talk to students that way. I think it has to do with our personalities as well and how much control we want.

I enjoyed Mountford's article because she referred to literary references. For my secret rhetoric research, Dr. Wood once said I could refer to literary references and it seemed kind of vague to me at the time. I can see now from Mountford's article that literary references in research are just as powerful as primary sources. As little has been documented about women's participation in secret coding or cryptography, I think literary sources might be my best bet.