A Moment

There are many points of discussion that have emerged from our blog conversations so far. The following quotes drawn from posts indicate three that seem to me significant: 1, a distinction between rhetorical and other history; 2, an investigation of the relationship between rhetorical history and storytelling; 3, a fluidity of relationship between historical context (past present and future) and rhetorical history.


They all emerge from what seems to be our first ‘fact’: the fact that rhetorical history differs from historical history in fundamental ways. Most notably Christopher, drawing on Roland Barthes’s work, reminds us that this rhetoric we investigate has always posited itself as somehow outside of time, outside of any possibility of historical progress. My first instinct is that Kennedy, for instance, does posit a narrative of development and progress around rhetoric—but on reflection I realize that despite the sweep of their narratives, they are just that: around rhetoric, not of rhetoric. For Kennedy and Howell, who I posit here as two scholars who created for lack of a better term ‘magisterial’ or ‘grand’ narratives, rhetoric is a fairly fixed object—it’s there or it isn’t, gains or loses significance, gets discussed in different ways—but it resists in a sense change at its essential level. We can counter this, Christopher suggests, through ourselves resisting the possibility of a single historiography of rhetoric:

Christopher—“In order that a history of rhetoric not partake of the ahistoricism against which it was intended, we would also have to pursue several histories and historiographies of rhetoric.”

This works as a useful starting point for what seem to be further central issues that arise here. So that one way multiple historiographies and histories are possible is, of course, by looking in new places for the possibility of rhetoric. I see this as one of the valuable points Whitney makes in discussing her work at the Albuquerque Indian School. Here the material itself, and the act of working with that material, determine a historiography. We might call it, as Whitney does, a revisionist history—but here it seems that the uniqueness of the situation leads to a unique approach.

Whitney—“revisionist histories that not only take a risk by claiming a stake in History but often act as the first, or the only representative of that type of history.”

Whitney, who cites Hayden White and Cheryl Glenn as the texts to which her entries respond, thereby raises the question of history’s relationship to narrative. This was present in a number of the posts, the idea that rhetorical history somehow pushes the storytelling aspects of historical work to their limits. These limits emerge in two ways. From Brandon, via Arendt, we see the possibility that rhetorical history is efficacious because its concern with structure leads to the possibility that we can see

“all knowledge as storytelling!”—Brandon

And while Brandon does not push this point, it implies as well that the work we are doing historiographically is often of an epistemological nature. And yet genres have laws of their own, and possibilities of their own, as Alex reminds us in looking at Mary Austin’s historical fiction and trying to decide how to situate that fiction in a rhetorical analysis.

Alex—“The rhetorical potential of the novel lies in its ability to position itself ideologically and to explore competing systems of values from within the text.”

Here fiction takes on certain qualities of tension and unveiling (is there some Bakhtin in Alex’s claim?) within itself by virtue of its self-bracketing function—the genre carves out a space in which something cultural can be revealed. I see this as engaged in a distinct dialogue with Brandon’s work with Arendt—bearing in mind also that he sees his reflection as a response to Dinasen, and to Arendt’s response to Dinasen. Taken together I believe Alex and Brandon’s posts explore the complexities of claiming that history as storytelling in any simple way.

Another, related thread emerges from Paul, Liz Kimball, and Liz Kalbfleisch. Discussing Badiou as well as his own work with the ways Harvard has shaped rhetoric beyond the oft-told disciplinary boundaries of English B, Paul’s post makes us keenly aware of the ways that both the discipline itself and the “reality” of events form crucial contexts for our investigations of rhetoric.

Paul—“by writing histories of rhetoric we are all, in a sense, declaring our fidelity to certain events that have happened within our discipline and outside of it.”

And so, as Liz Kalbfleisch’s post points towards as well, we have to take both these poles in consideration as we move through the process of trying to find new paths of investigation—paths that perhaps offer us some of the alternative historiographies we all seem to be looking for, that

Liz Kalbfleisch—“really interesting, innovative, interdisciplinary work that *could be* germane to more contexually situated conceptions of rhetoric.”

Finally bring to bear the Liz Kimball’s claim of the fact those we are writing about, and to, in many ways write back to us, which gives us still another alternative path to pursue—so that generically we find ways to move from the narrative to the dramatic, from one controlling voice to the interplay of multiple voices, as it is

Liz Kimball—“the way in which we have a dialogue with our subjects in history is what matters.”

In opening I suggested three threads that have emerged thus far from our conversations; I rephrase them slightly now: One, that rhetorical history is distinct from other historical work; two, that it is concerned with structure of its approach and its presentation, and three, that that structuring can allow for communion between the historical material and the disciplinary moment in which that material is structured.

What’s telling perhaps about my summing up is first of all how much is left out. I have posited these posts as fitting into a harmonious whole—but I suspect there are as many if not more points of tension in these posts—and in keeping with my starting point, via Christopher, what can we find in these posts to help break up the object “rhetoric” and its resistance to history—what are the multiple approaches on offer here?