Thursday, January 21, 2010
Rhetorical Darkness
Was there rhetoric in America before Columbus?
Seems like a stupid question, but what strikes me about the timeline of the study of rhetoric is the eurocentric nature of the entire thing. I understand that we are in a world where Western culture and thought is the dominant power, but if rhetoric is such a key element of human social interaction, it follows that people from the dark continents of Africa, Asia, and the Americas also practice and utilize those same elements of rhetoric subscribed to by the towers of the art we are learn from and are taught in the American university.
When our whirlwind tour of the history of the world swept through the Middle Ages (previously called the Dark Ages) of European history, I was reminded of the fact that that era coincided with the rise and spread of Islam. Religion has always been a practical and very serious forum where the arts of the rhetor prove to be especially useful and valuable.
All religions make appeals to the those people who would be true believers (or even sometime subscribers). Islam is not the only major religion of the world in the rhetorical (and often very real) war for the souls of men; Oriental religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism also offer powerful appeals to the ethos, pathos, and logos of the human masses.
Furthermore, in all the corners of the world that humankind has called home indigenous peoples established levels of law and order that sufficed through history. The soil of Africa, Asia, and the Americas has supported empires which practiced advanced forms of government.
In this light, American academic rhetorical studies seem a bit neglectful in sticking to the rhetorical guns of the West.
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I had the same wave of realization about Islam, when wevtalked about the Middle Ages on Tuesday night. It feels lopsided to study rhetoric and the evolution of writing only through the lens of Western culture. My son, 10 yrs old, is learning the history of theater at school right now. He told me that "the first play ever performed was in Greece." This "fact" seems highly unlikely, at least unprovable. We seem cognizant of the fact that the study of history and humanity should encompass the entire globe, yet that doesn't translate into practice.
ReplyDeleteThat's an excellent observation. I didn't take notice of that absence, which is a bit shameful. In this period of educational upheaval when we're trying to accommodate so many ethnic and cultural minorities, it should be a glaring omission. Good post!
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ReplyDeleteThis is not only an argument in terms of tracking the development of rhetoric in the West and the American West, but it is also an argument for the development and exact origin of modernity. Enrique Dussel is of two minds on modernity: there is a planetary paradigm in which the world was responsible for modernity and that localized histories played, and still play, an integral part in its formation. The other paradigm is the Eurocentric, the one that holds European events solely responsible for cultural development in the modern period. The Eurocentric paradigm totally ignores global history and is, like you're saying Rey, keeping Europe as the center of all things in world history. Rhetoric plays no small role in that perception. I think if one were to look deeply into the Socratic idea that rhetoric is inherent in all humans, those localized narratives of the planetary paradigm could be recognized.
ReplyDeleteHa! I feel better now. I have pointed out a few times (mostly on internet forums) that during the European Middle Ages, it was also the "Golden Age" of Islam. Unfortunately I don't know what kind of rhetorical studies were going on in the Islamic world at that time. There was a lot of advancement in art, science, and math (like the invention of Algebra), but I don't know about literary scholarship. There are some things that are unique to a culture. For example, in the far east, meditation and the combination of fighting skills with mental skills are not things you will find directly paralleled in the western world. So I wonder if, or what, disciplines from other continents might parallel or compete with the Classic ideas of oratory and rhetoric?
ReplyDeleteI agree that eurocentric ways of looking at rhetoric are leaving out the different cultures from around the world and because of this we are not getting a complete history of rhetoric. I think it's safe to say that some form of rhetoric has existed in all cultures. Perhaps if we look at post-colonial theory, it could explain this tendency to look at the history of rhetoric in ways that are too Western and help us to broaden our minds so as not to think of these non-Western cultures as less significant in the conversation about rhetoric.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is foolish to assume that Rhetoric began solely with the Greeks. I'm certain that different cultures from around the world, all the way back to the earliest civilizations, had rhetoric in one form or another. When man first crawled out of his cave and discovered his voice, he undoubtedly discovered also how to use it effectively to his advantage. There are Mesopotamian, Chinese, Indian and even Egyptian examples of rhetoric that coincide with, and sometimes predate, the Greeks. The Greeks simply coined the term. I believe it is important to study the rhetoric of all ancient societies simply because it shaped them to be what they are today, and in learning where those societies come from, we can develop more tolerance for beliefs radically different than our own.
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