I once again found myself surprised on the aspect of the human body being viewed as rhetoric. With the Introduction to “Rhetorical Bodies” as well as the Afterword, I had many different thoughts come into mind surrounding how much emphasis society has placed on the “perfect” body and the extremes that people put themselves through to get to that point; this “perfect” view, is entirely unrealistic, but people become blind sighted by what appears to be obtainable. Before going into the downside of the representation of the human body, I have always known certain aspects of the body to be art, such as tattoos and piercings, but the excerpt about the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven describing how “she literally prepared a ‘body’ of poetry by inscribing original verses on her torso…she favored unusual colors and habiliments, sported an inverted coal scuttle on her head, and shaved and shellacked her head and painted its two halves in contrasting colors” (4) really captures how a person can evoke deeper meanings through their bodies. It’s similar with tattoos nowadays and piercings and how people have the freedom of expression through their bodies. Most of the time, tattoos have deeper meanings than just the representation. Leads to the question of Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus’ intentions, is this art, or just looking for attention? But I digress…
In terms of the section of baseball mascots being real people, I was shocked by some of the descriptions that went on approximately 100 years ago. The fact that baseball hitters would rub a black man’s head for good luck, or a hunchback for similar reasons, is disgusting. However, while some things have changed in baseball and other sports, many of the team names are still degrading. While it is not particularly the body as the focus of the debate today, but rather a group of people actually being made fun of, it is something that needs to be changed in matters of respecting and treating all people as equals.
In the Afterword, I was struck by the accurate description of how people are grouped today according to their bodies as being “sexed, raced, gendered, abled or disabled, whole or fragmented, aged or young, fat, thin, or anorexic” (361). I feel that society has created certain ideals, as mentioned above, as to what makes someone ideal or normal, and others not normal. My question is: who decided what is the “correct” form of body? Of sexual orientation? Of gender? In a world where social media, magazines, advertisements, television shows, among others are constantly in young adults eyes, these are the stereotypes we are enforcing on children. These teenagers and young adults already have a hard enough time as their bodies are changing, but to have labels such as the ones above inflict serious pressure on people to change the way they look. Then, teenagers and adults feel pressure to obtain and maintain that “perfect” body resulting to extremes with plastic surgeries, eating disorders, and more. These labels need to go, and all body types need to be embraced. The main focus for body type should be a healthy body and mind (which leads into the thinking between the two terms of body and mind). As with the Introduction, the body should be a way to artistically express ourselves and to be confident in who and what we look like to reach full inner beauty and peace within ourselves.
The poems with the speaker as the imagined black man in the Susan Smith case was extremely thought-provoking and disgusting at the same time (the story itself). I was intrigued to find out more about Susan Smith and this whole case. In terms of the poems, I focused on how the speaker is the black man that Susan Smith created. The grouping of Susan Smith and the imagined black man as one became the main focus for me. With “Rhetorical Bodies,” there is mention of how what matters is what is between the body and the mind and I found this topic related to these poems in particular. Susan Smith created this black man to take the blame for the evil act that she had done. The fact that the speaker of this poem unites himself and Smith together is profound. From my interpretation, Smith found this act that she committed to be evil, and to put a face to evil, she chose a black person as representation. This is how I found the speaker united with Smith; she is the evil she chose to depict (uniting the body and mind?). Was this because this would be easily believed to put the blame on? I found myself pondering this. It is said sometimes that if a person believes in a lie so much, that lie eventually becomes the truth for that person. Was this the case? I can’t fathom how a woman could kill her children, but the fact that she created this imagined person as the one responsible, and then other people claimed to have seen this man is disgusting. People c
Emily VanLeuvan-Reflections on Readings for July 16, 2014
Prior to taking this course, my nature inclination was to associate the term “rhetoric” with traditional persuasive speeches. So far, taking Cultural Rhetorics has really caused me to think more critically about the pervasiveness of rhetoric in our society. I was very interested in considering the ways in which we practice rhetoric through our bodies.
As I read Daisy Levy’s piece, “This Book Called My Body: An Embodied Rhetoric”, I found myself becoming more aware of my own body as I sat on my living room couch. The article caused me to consider how powerful one’s physical body is as a means of communication. So much is interpreted through one’s body language and how a person uses the body as a means of self-expression. However, it is also important to also consider the components of one’s identity that extend beyond physicality.
In the introduction to Rhetorical Bodies, Jack Seltzer examines the role of language in today’s culture and notes, “In history, textualized accounts of historical events have come to count as much as the history themselves” (4). Seltzer’s sentiments allowed me to recall the conversation we had in class on Monday about the role of social media in the modern world. We discussed how a large majority of students don’t hesitate to take a picture or a video to document an experience. One of my classmates commented, “It is almost as though if they don’t take a picture of it, it didn’t happen”. The same principle could apply to posting something to Facebook or Twitter. If the experience is not converted into a text, whether that text is an image on an iPhone, a Facebook post, or a Twitter post, does it still have value? As Seltzer asserted, “Words have been mattering more than matter” (4). What are the pros and cons involved in the prevalence of converting experiences into text? In what ways is this type of rhetoric important? Are people truly “living in the moment” if there is such a strong emphasis on documenting experiences via social media? How authentic is social media as a means of communication?
The afterward of Rhetorical Bodies concludes with some thoughts on the relationship between females and their bodies that I found to be particularly thought-provoking. Sharon Crowley observes, “Women’s worth has been measured through and by their bodies” Are these virginal or not? Impregnable or not? “Attractive” or not? Negatively charged cultural constructions of women’s bodies as both dangerous and fragile have forced women to become highly conscious of their bodies…”(358). I am interested in the dichotomy of women’s bodies being viewed as somewhat paradoxically both dangerous and fragile. What relevance does this perception of females maintain in the 21st century?
The structure and tone of Cornelius Eady’s poem, “Brutal Imagination” reminded me of Margaret Atwood’s poem “Half Hanged Mary”. In “Half Hanged Mary”, the speaker of the poem is a woman named Mary Webster. Mary Webster was accused of witchcraft during the Salem trials, and the poem conveys Mary’s though process as she hangs from a noose overnight. When leaders of the community go to cut her down in the morning, she is still alive. Both poems use the point of view of the speaker to humanize the victim and offer a criticism of society’s tendency to scapegoat those who do not have specific privileges.
“Language and rhetoric have a persistent material aspect that demands acknowledgement, and material realities often (if not always) contain a rhetorical dimension that deserves attention: for language is not the only medium or material that speaks” (8). This was the first line in Jack Selzer’s introduction to Rhetorical Bodies to spark my interest. It is interesting to consider that material realities contain a rhetorical dimension. He goes on to state that the body has more recently become the focus of rhetorical inquiry. Some contributors have insisted, “that material, nonliterate practices and realities – most notably, the body, flesh, blood, and bones, and how all the material trappings of the physical are fashioned by literate practices – should come under rhetorical scrutiny” (10). It is true. If you think about it, the brain controls our ability to think, speak, and write. These are all components of rhetoric and if the brain controls it (and the brain is part of our body), then yes, the body should be given rhetorical consideration. Altogether, it is an interesting concept to contemplate.
Sharon Crowley’s afterword of the same text, Rhetorical Bodies, is just as fascinating. Crowley begins by focusing on the role of women and their bodies. She explains that feminists were first to give attention to the body in this regard. I found it particularly interesting when she states, “Women’s worth has been measured through and by their bodies: Are these virginal or not? Impregnable or not? “Attractive” or not? Negatively charged cultural constructions of women’s bodies as both dangerous and fragile have forced women to become highly conscious of their bodies – the space they occupy in a room, on the street, in a crowd” (358). Unfortunately, this appears to be accurate. The worth of the female gender has been measured in various ways, but it is through the body that seems to be the norm. Why must it be our bodies that define us? A better way, in a rhetorical dimension, to measure our worth would be through our intellect or our ability to effectively communicate. Only in a perfect world…
Another appealing concept Crowley discusses is that of “inside and outside.” The questions Freud’s analysis of the embodiment of perception breeds are thought-provoking. Crowley writes, “How do we mark ‘the inside’ of the human body as opposed to its ‘outside’? Where, for example, does the ‘outside’ of the human eye end or begin? At the eyeball? The iris? The retina? But then where does the retina begin and end? Female genitalia raise further interesting questions about the confidence with which we can distinguish between bodily insides and outsides, as Luce Irigaray has convincingly demonstrated. And, to elaborate on Freud’s example, when I place two parts of my body together, say touching thumb to index finger, both digits experience the touch as both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’” (360). I have pondered over this for quite some time and still am unable to produce an answer. Is Freud correct or incorrect? Perhaps I misunderstood parts of the reading?
Daisy Levy also considers the body in her piece, This Book Called My Body: An Embodied Rhetoric. This composition is cleverly constructed. Not only is Levy informing us about embodied rhetorics, but she is informing us through rhetoric; through persuasion. At the close of her composition, Levy states, “Embodied Rhetorics asks us to reorient our relation to our bodies, to gravity, to the forces around us – other chairs underneath, other floors and ceilings, other bodies and their own orientations to gravity around us. I ask you to remember the feel of the chair underneath you as you breathed in and out, your lungs like balloons, swelling against the bones of your ribcage” (4). Levy is appealing to her audience through rhetorical means. Additionally, she ends her closing with a quote that acts as a call to action. I would love to view a live delivery of this piece in order to acquire the full effect of her rhetoric.
Lastly, Cornelius Eady’s poems from Brutal Imaginations are fantastic. The poems are creative and told from quite an interesting perspective. “Birthing” in particular is the most riveting. In describing how Susan Smith created her story, Eady uses quotes from Smith’s handwritten confession. The lines are strategically placed within the text and create a dual perspective. We are shown both the real story and the process her mind went through while fabricating the phony story. Furthermore, the last line, “She only has me/After she removes our hands/From our ears” (57), unites the two perspectives. Eady’s skillful approach is impactful as I found myself incredibly intrigued by
Once again, a plethora of possibilities bombards my brain…yet, despite the inclination to ignore the magnetic draw to respond to the most obvious choice for me, I choose to be drawn in by the magnetic pull. I am compelled by the inherent argument for differentiation and art integration of Daisy Levy’s presentation on her project, “This Book Called My Body: An Embodied Rhetoric.” (What would Jonah Lehrer contribute regarding, How I (We) Decide?) Despite the irony of my choice in relation to Levy’s position, as she posits, such a choice “maintains a standard relation or an accustomed relation in any case,” I do decide to explore her work in relation to my life, and more specifically my teaching praxis. Subsequently by choosing to respond to her work, I may not be ‘challenging my nervous system,’ and “Without challenging the nervous system, without new different confusions, our bodies and our resulting scholarship practices the same patterns, already well-rehearsed, well substantiated at the level of our cells and tissue.” Yet it is because the work she presents resonates at a cellular and tissue level I must go here.
In an age driven by standardized tests and long-standing achievement gaps, despite the drive to accountability determined primarily by these standardizes tests, our nation’s students are in desperate need of arts integrated instruction. Our national efforts as evidenced by the establishing of national common core standards in order to ensure our nation’s students and our future generations are college and career ready and globally competitive, inherently support the need for addressing independence and creative thinking and problem solving. Nonetheless, the shift to the common core has not completely eradicated the long-held practices and standard orientations. Mandated to include more and more non-fiction texts, we remain ensconced in the standard orientations – we are not ‘re-orientating our relation to gravity as much as changing the manner in which we maintain the standard orientation.” As a start, and only a start, we need to “ask our students to stand on one leg, instead of two.” We need to steer away from “encouraging the already strong muscles to stay strong, ignoring the underutilized ones, and allowing them to stay slack, facile.” Echoes of Garner’s theorizing and attempts to consider students’ Multiple Intelligences’ and their implorations to begin with the strengths, capitalize on them to open portholes and build efficacy, and then move to developing the weaknesses.
Enter dance or movement…”5, 6, 7, 8.”
A few years ago, I began a search for short stories to include in my Sophomore UBD unit Identity: Individuality versus Conformity. Unit. Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 45 is the major work of this unity, and the Essential Questions focus on the development of identity, the benefits and consequences of both conformity and non-conformity, and the placement and assignment of responsibility in relation to the battle against and eradication and oppression. My search for a short story, with which I could introduce and dig deeply into dystopias unearthed Harlan Ellison’s “Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman.”
Extolling the value of this work and the infinite uses, would usurp all the space allotted for this exercise, and more time than I have currently. Instead, I will focus on the correlation of one lesson I rely upon, when I use this work to teach allusions, and the related topics of author’s diction as it pertains to purpose and audience. The work is replete with allusions, but most are not recognized by my students, except for the presence of capital letters. Research focused on uncovering the meaning of these allusions eventually becomes a component of the analysis, but at the early stages, we uncover the meaning of two of the allusions together, my students, and me.
The first is a comparison of the aerial view of the dystopian setting to a Mondrian painting. We explore Mondrian, and my students ultimately defend their choice as to which particular Mondrian painting best aligns with the dystopian setting of the short story.
The second allusion we explore is Ellison’s description of the factory-worker citizens of this dystopian society enter and exit the factory. Ellison writes, “With practiced motion and an absolute conservation of movement, they sidestepped up onto the slow-strip and (in a chorus line reminiscent of a Busby Berkeley film of the antediluvian 1930s) advance across the strips ostrich-walking till they were lined up on the express-strip.” First, we actively view a video clip of Busby Berkeley’s choreographic splendor, which I chose carefully, ensuring my students would ‘see’ the facial expressions of the dancers, which they recognize as being ‘plas
(the rest of it...) ‘plastic,’ and ‘cyborg-like.’ Next, I get them out of their seat, which is met with sighs, moans, and groans inevitably and predictably. I have not yet, asked them to stand on one leg, simply to ‘stand up’ before the bell, in my efforts to “teach them how to find a relationship with gravity in the simplest way possible, through their body.” From this point on the magic and re-orientation begins, as I instruct and drill them on an extremely simplistic choreographed sequence of steps, which involves “rehearsing and practicing the same patterns over and over again.” Ultimately, the ‘community’ of learners experience frustration, with themselves and with one another. Teamwork is essential, although it is the responsibility of the individual, and their neurological focus to perform the basic simple movement in order to mimic the uniformity of the Busby Berkeley chorus line. The participants slowly begin to comprehend the difficulty of ‘unison’ and the role and responsibility of the individual when attempting to achieve ‘uniformity.’ We remain standing, the desks cleared away, and discuss the experiment, and then they return to a seat, any seat, anywhere in the classroom and write about their feelings, and how those feeling relate to the dystopian setting of Ellison’s dystopia. Next, we view a clip from Fritz Lang’s 1928 science-fiction film, “Metropolis,” depicting factory workers entering a factory. These workers are clad in dismal attire, and exude dejection, oppression, and hopelessness. I ask my students, “Why did Ellison choose the Busby Berkeley allusion, and not this Metropolis allusion?” They respond, “The citizens in Ellison’s “Repent” do not know they are miserable. They do not realize they are being controlled, oppressed.” I propose, not only “…in order to change our movement patterns we must change our neurological activity,” as Levy posits, we must change movement patterns to change neurological activity.”
Critical Response – Readings for July 16, 2014
In the foreword to Rhetorical Bodies, Jack Selzer makes an interesting point about the contributors to the anthology: they “insist that material, non-literate practices and realities, most notably the body, flesh, blood and bones, and how all the material trappings of the physical are fashioned by literate practices – should come under rhetorical scrutiny” (10). The body caries such meaning in culture that it has become in many ways symbolic of values, norms and expectations. In the afterword to the same text, Sharon Crowley explains that it is increasingly important to look at the body as rhetorical because “Women’s worth has been measured by and through their bodies” (358). Women in the past were valued for their ability to bear children, and for the physical indicators that they would be able to do so. Although cultural ideas have certainly changed and evolved in America over time, one need not look any further than current print or television advertisements.
The depiction of women in mainstream American media indicates that women are still valued for their ability to conform to a certain standard of beauty. The appeal of ads selling makeup, clothing, or even food products seems to be that by looking a certain way, women can attain happiness of fulfillment. Ads are increasingly photoshopped, and the decisions photo editors make are rhetorical choices as well.
Daisy Levy begin describing her project, “This Book Called My Body,” by encouraging her audience to engage in breathing exercises. This made me think of my own yoga practice and how our bodies and minds are so connected. The idea that the body could be “language” was also very interesting to me. Our patterns of movement, according to Daisy, are both conscious and purposeful. When we focus on generally unconscious actions, like breathing, we become more aware of these other actions and the implications they might have.
Cornelius Eady’s poem series, “Brutal Imagination,” looks at how Susan Smith invented an African American man to blame her murder of her children on. The speaker in the poem refers to himself and Smith as “We” as if this imaginary man is part of her (5). Ironically, the speaker states, “Everything she says about me is true” (6). This “man” is part of her mind, her hatred. Since she imagined him, she has the power to bestow upon his the qualities she chooses, her own qualities. The poem series also further explores the idea of memory and the (subconscious?) racism that made so many people believe Smith without hesitation. The speaker looks at Smith’s actions through his own eyes, but also the eyes of others. The speaker recalls arriving at the hotel: “I signed or didn’t sign the register/ He looked or forgot to look/ As I pulled up to park in front/ Of one of the rooms at the back” (8). The idea that Smith could have projected her own actions on to the imagined man and received, at first, support shows how the body described carries weight. That she was able to fool people initially tells a dark story of the meanings assigned to certain “bodies.”
Selzer’s Introduction and Afterward to Rhetorical Bodies sincerely resonated with me. In the Introduction, he stresses the validation of the material world and our physical bodies within rhetorical scholarship: “Language and rhetoric have a persistent material aspect that demands acknowledgement, and material realities often (if not always) contain a rhetorical dimension that deserves attention: for language is not the only medium or material that speaks.” Here, his allusions to phenomenology and the biological universe in which we live once again reminded me of my course work studying Bachelard and Merleau-Ponty; however, the most personal connection that I could make is to my favorite poet, Walt Whitman. Two years ago, I had a tattoo placed on my right thigh that has two vines with leaves and the words, “… and your very flesh shall be a great poem…” The quote is a partial line from the following passage from Walt Whitman’s Preface to Leaves of Grass:
Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is lost. This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body…
When I first read Leaves of Grass in my junior year of undergrad, I fell in love with the way that Whitman blends poetry and the body: his rhythm becoming excited, relaxing, climaxing with the patterns of human breathing; his directing his readers to see the beauty in everyday bodies and actions (those of steel workers pounding away, of mothers and their children, of young men jumping in a pool); and his love of the “universe” and the power of the poet as a way of living in the both the reality of life and the metaphysical realm of literature. And, although he praises the poet, he “waits” for his readers to “walk” with him. He places his readers in the world with him, and he acknowledges the messy nature of “being” human, the dialectics of being: “Do I contradict myself? Very well. Then I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.” This blending of the body and poetry is essentially what I have built my life upon: I am an English teacher who loves to escape into the imagined worlds of literature and language, and I am also a personal trainer, fitness instructor, and dancer. Whitman’s words are so powerful, to me, that it wasn’t enough to leave them on paper, but had them placed on my body. They are now part of my body.
Rhetorically, my tattoo serves many different purposes in response to different contexts. I placed the tattoo on my upper thigh, in a spot that is both sensuous and practical (I joke that I “always have Whitman in my pocket”). I choose who is allowed to see the tattoo. I would never show it to my students in my classroom; yet, I allow it to be seen when wearing athletic shorts to the gym or a bikini to the beach. In a way, my tattoo is a material play on the spaces of “inside and outside” and of “private and public.” Through it, I comment on my sexual and physical confidence and presence. I provide a “fragment” of one idea of who I am, yet I hold the rest of the quote and my experiences behind it, hidden away. My particular tattoo is merely one example of a way in which the body is rhetorical, but I think that everyone is compelled to reconcile the experience of existing within a physical being (i.e. we cannot experience the world in any other way except through our body, so we make meaning through the body). My heart smiled when I read these sections.
In Selzer’s afterward, the “everyday material practices that are saturated with politics,” brought to mind my best friend’s experience in the Army National Guard. As a female officer, she continually faces “everyday” rhetoric that remind her that she is the other, that female is supplement to the male army. For instance, just last year, the first patent for female Kevlar (bullet proof armor) was approved and put into production. For the last four years, my roommate, who is 4-foot 11-inches tall, was forced to wear literally ill-fitting protective armor. She was not safe. I
This blog is designed for us to share responses to readings and to engage in conversations about Cultural Rhetorics.