Feeling Rhetorical Critics
The Pathos Workshop is thrilled to welcome the contributions of Dr. Jamie Landau.
Dr. Jamie Landau is an Assistant Professor of communication in the Department of Communication and Philosophy at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire. In general, her research and teaching explore how visual mediated discourse rhetorically impacts U.S. public policy and social change related to gender/sexuality, family, and healthcare. In addition to engaging Dr. Landau in the comment section on this blog post, feel free to direct correspondence to jlandau@keene.edu
The majority of rhetorical scholars like me who study pathos ignore our emotions, or at least we?re really good at blocking out most of our emotions from our rhetorical criticism. In general, this doesn?t make me feel good, and it?s not positive for the development of the discipline either. In spite of this, I?m both excited and scared to push my colleagues and myself to attend more to our affective engagements with rhetoric. Let me explain some thoughts and feelings that I?ve had lately?
I suspect that Michael McGee, Philip Wander, and Raymie McKerrow felt a wave of emotions like I do now when, in the 1980s, they suggested that rhetorical critics were ?performers,? ?ideological,? and ?inventors,? respectively. In other words, they recognized that contemporary rhetorical scholars like themselves could no longer pretend to be detached observers of their objects of study because critique was a political practice. They really put themselves as individuals, and our discipline as a whole, on the line here. More recently, John Sloop aptly said that we should function not only as critics but also as rhetoricians. I admire and agree with these arguments so I have made solid attempts at enacting them in my research and teaching. Yet when reviewing books and journal articles published by rhetorical scholars in the last few decades (including my own work in print) as well as when reflecting on my time in graduate seminars and as a teacher of rhetorical studies, I noticed that it is rare that our feelings are taken seriously in our scholarship.
Of course we have strong feelings about what we say. And those emotions sometimes come across explicitly when reading (or watching in person at conferences) the ?debates? in the discipline between Lloyd Bitzer and Richard Vatz, Karlyn Campbell and Barbara Biesecker, and Celeste Condit and Dana Cloud, among others over the years. However, I think it is a stretch to suggest that we are rhetoricians in the fullest of senses when our main standard for proper academic writing and speaking is logical argumentation, which often negates pathos entirely or at least relegates our feelings to weaker claims and evidence. It is also telling that when rhetorical scholars dare to position themselves by sharing their feelings in their work, this scholarship is whispered to be ?different? or labeled other than rhetorical criticism (e.g. ?ethnographic?). Illustrating this is Tom Nakayama and Robert Krizek?s 1995 essay on whiteness as a strategic rhetoric that published in our premiere journal, Quarterly Journal of Speech, and which has been cited and taught a lot since then. I find it significant that the concept of reflexivity, which Nakayama and Krizek say is central to their essay and embodied even in the first couple pages when they share highly personal biographical information, received so little uptake from us. Why?
I think there are legitimate logical and emotional reasons for our discipline?s resistance to valuing the feelings of rhetorical scholars themselves. As I noted earlier in reference to McGee et al., putting ourselves in our research makes us personally accountable to society at large, an expansive public sphere where there is a lot of room for failure and reprimand. I don?t know many people, in academia or elsewhere, who find pleasure in being unsuccessful nor who like being chastised, especially in front of a big audience.
As a faculty member who has not yet earned tenure, I also do not have the same level of safety and stability as my more senior colleagues (although, in this day and age of increasing anti-intellectualism, tenured faculty are feeling threatened as well). This means that when we incorporate our emotions in our work, our ability to earn a living is literally at risk. Furthermore, for those of us on deadlines for promotion, the lengthy time it takes for an article or book to get accepted for publication and appear in print presents another obstacle because this process will take even longer for ?different? scholarship. And that?s if we even get an editor or reviewer in rhetorical studies who does not draw rigid disciplinary boundaries at the onset.
In addition, I?m probably not alone in feeling uncomfortable when exposing my inner emotions outside of an intimate interpersonal setting. My obsession with watching talk shows and reality television is definitely not because I want to be like those people who confess in public, as it?s often even a painful experience for me to be on the receiving end of these kinds of confessionals. Relatedly, I chose to continue with this profession over my former one in media in a large part because of the relative anonymity of academics. As a result, it?s even an emotional struggle for me to write a blog post like this that will be circulated among a lot of people whom I may not personally know. Needless to say, I think there is a lot of truth to the stereotype of an academic being an introvert.
Critiques of ethnography as a research method and its common practice of reflexivity resonate with me as well when I parallel them to incorporating my emotions in my rhetorical scholarship. Feminist television scholar Amanda Lotz points out that one criticism of reflexivity is that it shifts the center away from the subject to the researcher, making such work overly self-focused and indulgent. I fear that if this happens in rhetorical criticism, we will fit another stereotype?the professor who is full of him or herself?which is unfair to the students and other communities to whom we serve and/or study.
At the same time, however, it?s exhilarating to think about the possibilities for rhetorical criticism if we didn?t hold back our feelings. For example, we could build on currently popular political perspectives in the discipline such as McKerrow?s ?critical rhetoric? as well as add another layer to the rhetorical tradition?s focus on pathos and audience by analyzing the affective sensations of the critic, too. On a practical level, this might provide us with a more comprehensive text along the same lines that reflexivity has helped other qualitative communication scholars ?thicken? their data. Nakayama and Krizek reiterate this when writing that reflexivity encourages consideration of that which has been silenced or invisible in academic conversations. The aftermath of the shockwaves of Nakayama and Krizek?s essay, such as the attention rhetorical critics now pay to white privilege, proves the potential for previously uncharted streams of scholarship when we adjust our analytical focus.
A particular new development might be alternative writing formats. Thomas Lindlof and Bryan Taylor explain how this has been a unique contribution of reflexivity in the larger field of communication. For instance, Laura Ellingson urges health communication researchers like me to consider writing (whether analytic or narrative) as a deeply embodied process. Poignantly, she says writing is done with fingers and arms and eyes, and we should reflect on that experience of writing our research.
Calls like this to embody the scholar in the humanities and social sciences are also a direct response to the reign (but myth) of objectivity in the academy since the Enlightenment. There is residue of this reign in rhetorical studies specifically that I?m not too happy to admit. As Michaela Meyer similarly identifies and decries, rhetoric has a historical, even cotemporary, preference for disconnecting authors/critics from the subject of texts and their audiences. So if rhetorical scholars acknowledge our affective engagements with rhetoric in our criticism, I think we could sharpen our refusal of this myth and perhaps not run into many of the problems that come with what Donna Haraway describes as the view from above, from nowhere.
Finally, I?m hopeful about feeling rhetorical critics because it might enable much-needed interdisciplinary conversations. A number of theories of persuasion, and our everyday life experiences for that matter, demonstrate that having something in common with another person can create a bond. By taking our emotions more seriously, I imagine us joining hands with our colleagues who approach the study of communication from the standpoints of ethnography and performance as well as making real connections with the anthropologists and sociologists whom inspired them. Additionally, as Jenny Rice recognizes, the recent ?affective turn? in rhetorical studies aligns with how affect and emotion are growing subjects of study across the academy. So we could actually talk with psychologists, too. That said, my goal is not to equate rhetorical critics with other scholars. Rather, I want us to have more chances to contribute the methods and theories that are distinctive to rhetorical criticism toward solving the pressing challenges of the 21st Century.
Embracing our emotions is not going to be easy nor will it always feel good, but it?s about time that rhetorical critics let ourselves go?
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References
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