Issues of Marginalization in Rhetoric
Butler, Gates, Glenn, Pratt, Vitanza
Mary Louise Pratt
In “Arts of the Contact Zone,” Pratt explains that the contact zone is where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of asymmetrical relations of power (colonialism, slavery, and/or their aftermaths). She argues that texts produced in the contact zone have disruptive power: if marginalized group of people produces a text from this area of conflict and inserts it into the dominant print culture, they can interrupt the hegemony of the dominant culture. These texts are often parodic in nature (and thus, intertextual), subversively imitating and poking fun at the dominant culture; they are addressed to both the dominant culture and their own community. The distribution of these texts allows them to take some control of how they consume the texts of the dominant culture: they may not be able to control what the dominant culture emanates, but they can decide what they absorb and how they use it. It can also be a way for underprivileged people’s to let off steam and suppress urges for potentially violent outbursts in response to their subjugation.
Henry Louis Gates
A product of a contact zone is the Signifyin’ Monkey. Gates explains that the Signifyin’ Monkey is a way for oppressed Black cultures to safely poke fun at the dominant White culture. Signifyin’ is based on the chaos of “associative relations” that appear as playful puns and figurative (often humorous) substitutions that name a person or situation in a telling manner; it delights in the free play of associated rhetorical and semantic relations. In many ways, Signifyin’ (capital S to distinguish it from “signifying,” which excludes the unconscious associations of a word in which Signifyin’ basks) is like Bakhtin’s double-voicedness because the person who Signifies says two things at once: the literal meaning of the word(s) and its/their figurative, implied meaning(s). Thus, in the Signifyin’ Monkey narratives, Monkey (representing a Black person) can fool Lion (representing a White person) into getting into trouble with Elephant. Monkey Signifies on Lion, and the multiple meanings of Monkey’s words trick the Lion into looking like a fool. These narratives are chiasmatic daydream fantasies of power reversal, and they are only possible because of the double (or triple, or quadruple) meanings of the words Monkey says: slaves could tell these stories to each other right in front of their owners and the White men would take them literally and have no or little idea that they were being made fun of. Thus, these contact zone stories provided (and still can provide) an entire subjugated culture with a way to let off some steam by making fun of their oppressors right in front of them.
Judith Butler
Butler argues that words are also agency; by virtue of thinking something hurtful or threatening, your body physically reacts and prepares to enact that threat. In other words, the body takes on the posture or state of the action it threatens and begins to enact the threat. However, the statement itself is not capable of enacting the threat, and so the threat may never come to fruition if the power dynamic and circumstance behind the performative act are not right. In other words, the situation (encompassing the speaker, the spoken-to, and all their contexts of power relations, cultural backgrounds, etc) must be just perfect for the threat to be enacted. For example, the Signifyin’ Monkey is, at the end of the day, an empty threat when performed by slaves. They can tell threatening stories in which a figurative Black man tricks a figurative White man, making him look like a fool, but the situation prevents the Black slaves from literally tricking the White men in the same manner as Monkey tricks Lion.
Butler also points out that the implication behind the phrase “words wound” is that words are capable of inflicting pain or injury in a physical capacity. She also points out that these words place the listener (the one toward whom the injurious words are aimed) in a subordinate social position, which can result in social trauma if the listener is called by injurious word repeatedly. Bulter questions why such words (such a racial slurs or insults aimed at a person’s sexuality) have such power to inflict pain and marginalization. Legal and political discourse tries to tie the words’ power to contexts, but as Butler points out, efforts to censor such language divorces it from context; in making a document describing why a certain word should not be used, one uses the word in a new context divorced from its offensive nature. Thus, the link between speech act and injury is loosened, which opens up the possibility for a kind of talking back or reclaiming of the injurious word. In other words, this loosened link provides the opportunity for the marginalized groups to reclaim the words that marginalize them.
Butler also examines a tension between regulating injurious language and letting it be used freely: on the one hand, regulation of this language destroys some fundamental aspect of language and subject constitution through language; on the other hand, our dependency on constituting our subjecthood via the ways we are addressed implies that there is a need for some regulations. In other words, we are brought into social position and time through being named, so care should be taken in how we name others; however, regulating how people can be named denies language’s basic function: being an expression of thought.
Finally, Butler notes that speech and conduct are conflated in matters pertaining to sexuality, but not racism. In other words, often a declaration of homosexuality (especially in the military) is taken to mean that the person intends to enact homosexual acts; however, in racist threats, the threat is not taken to mean that the person intends to enact them. Butler argues that homosexual desire should not be conflated with the desire of which it speaks since they are not the same thing; one can be homosexual, she implies, without acting upon that homosexuality, just as one can make a racist threat without enacting it.
Victor Vitanza
Vitanza’s work comes after Glenn’s, but also calls for a broader definition of rhetoric that could recognize more previously marginalized voices as being rhetorically important. He imagines an alternative space where the exiled, silenced, and rejected voices dwell and are given a place from which to speak (perhaps Pratt’s contact zone?). He calls this space the “middle” and argues that it denegates the negated by giving them a voice. Vitanza argues that even though these voices have been systematically silenced and negated (and perhaps, by now, even lost altogether), they can still be profitably read in the History of Rhetoric. Where traditional rhetoricians have attempted to define, obtain, and keep power, these voices (the Third Sophistic) have rethought power altogether by placing it in perpetual displacement.
Cheryl Glenn
Glenn discusses how women have traditionally been excluded from the rhetorical canon, which has replicated the politics of gender that places women subordinately to men. She argues that what we constitute as “rhetoric” should be redefined to include women; such redefinition recognizes that the traditional agonistic patterns were inscribed by males, and recognizes a broader conception of rhetoric as using language in such a way as to make an impression upon a reader/hearer. One aspect of this new constitution involves seeing Aspasia in the same way traditional rhetoric has seen Socrates. No writing remains of Socrates, and we know most of what we know about him through secondary works, notably Plato, yet we do not doubt that there was a Socrates. Aspasia has suffered a similar fate (we have none of her writings and only hear about her through secondary sources), yet her existence is constantly questioned. Under a new conception of rhetoric, Glenn argues, we have to stop doubting Aspsia’s existence and accept her influence on rhetorical theory, just as we do Socrates.
Glenn studies medieval rhetoricians Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe to show how their rhetoric of religious devotion should be included in the expanded conception of rhetoric. Such proclamations were acceptable because they dealt with the only uncontested (at the time) realm of truth: Christian piety. They exploited this as the only commendable road to feminine wisdom and used it to preach through visionary and mystical writings. Remarkably, both women also spoke in the vernacular, analyzed and responded to their audiences, and used experiential knowledge to fuel their teachings to improve the spiritual lives of both men and women. Glen also calls for the redefined rhetoric to pay attention to intentional silence, as in the case of Anne Askew. Askew was prolific in writing and speaking against the Protestant reformation, but when she was arrested and her inquisitor asked her questions, she refused to answer any of them and instead called for him to present his evidence. Such rhetorical silence was powerful in its denial of power to the inquisitor. Her response also shows that Askew was aware of her audience and exigence and knew that she could not use language to change their attitudes, so she denied them any language at all.
Glenn studies several female rhetorical figures from the Renaissance and earlier, but she leaves the investigation open for other scholars to pick up. Under her more broadly defined rhetoric, many subjugated voices, not just women but also perhaps people of other marginalized cultures and ethnicities, can be recognized for their rhetorical contributions, both in the past and present.
How I would answer a question on this theme
I’d start with defining Pratt’s contact zone, then use Gates as an example of how slaves operated in the contact zone in order to through relations of power into question, even if only very slightly. Then, I’d use Butler for an extended conversation of how the contact zone can be a place where marginalized peoples use the language that oppresses them to fight back. She is also fruitful for a discussion of why words hurt the way that they do and what should be done about it. Finally, Vitanza’s Third Sophistic and voices from the “middle” are a useful way to lead into Glenn’s broadening of rhetoric to include more voices that have previously been silenced or ignored.
Exam. Play. 