Tag Archives: identity

Updating the Oldsmobile in the Digital Landscape

Porter’s article seems to matter now more than ever, as communication is heavily mediated by digital codes and the technological conventions of social networks. In “Recovering Delivery for Digital Rhetoric,” he argues that delivery, one of the five canons of Greek rhetoric that pertains to the way that we convey our discourse, in speech or in writing, is increasingly becoming the most important element of the rhetorical act. Throughout the article, Porter attempts to revive the concept of delivery within the current digital landscape as techne, a form of knowledge, and develops a theoretical framework that covers five main topics: body/identity, distribution/circulation, access/accessibility, interaction and economics.

Porter starts out with an overview of delivery as a rhetorical component from the classical period to its disappearance with the advent of the printing press. He compares Aristotle’s notion of delivery as a public speech that did not require “artistic labors,” such as, for instance, invention and style, to Cicero’s valorization as an important emotional and persuasive tool (3). He mentions the effect that the printing press had on the concept of knowledge itself, but also on how delivery came to be perceived as a result of mass written production of texts (4-5), as the emphasis on writing made delivery a secondary, or even useless, technique. Porter then goes on to explore the role of delivery in technologically mediated communication.

I found the body/identity relationship particularly interesting (my MA thesis will actually focus on this subject), as Porter emphasizes the importance of both physical and virtual representation, defining the body as a sort of “performance” or “text” through which we communicate and persuade (8). In this context, a change in the bodily representation means a change in the way the message is conveyed. Better yet, the body becomes, in a sense, the message, the information. Discourse becomes, then, it seems, deeply ingrained in bodily identity. Even in the virtual spaces – cyberspaces, as scholars used to call them in the 80s – one is never completely free from some sort of bodily identity, or from issues of gender, race, sexual preference and age (8-9). Although digital spaces have opened up a set of possibilities for identity formation and representation, users are still limited by real, physical issues that influence the way they choose to present themselves.

Porter also brings up the issue of audience and how to tailor delivery to achieve the strongest impact. This will depend on a negotiation between the writer and audience of the four other elements that compose the act of delivery: distribution – how you choose to “package” the message, – access and accessibility – who you make it available to by the media you choose, – interaction and interactivity – how you engage with others and the technology you use, – and economics – the value we/others attribute to the rhetorical product.

Porter raises very interesting issues about delivery. The most important one has to do, I think, with the level of accessibility and availability of the technology and of digital spaces of communication. He points out that, despite common belief, digital media/rhetorics are still very much limited to what can be considered a “privileged minority” that has access, the physical ability or even the skills to use them. This leaves a vast majority of people out of what are now becoming the prevalent modes of communication. This leads me to ask, then: can this shift in the way we produce and deliver discourse (from the physical act of writing to the codes and multimodality of the digital environments) actually make rhetorical composition more of an exclusionary activity? Or is there a way to gradually increase access/accessibility to integrate and reach those who are outside the digital landscape?

That Other Place

In “Re-Composing Space,” Binkley and Smith argue that Composition Studies has become a biased and exclusionary field, by privileging Western discourse as the preferred rhetorical mode, against which all other rhetorical traditions are compared and often found lacking in some aspects. The authors see this problem as a result of a geopolitical dominance of Ancient Greek rhetorics, itself also a prejudiced and exclusionary system, in the West that leaves out everyone who does not share this common historical, social and ideological frame of reference (2006: 1). Adopting a postmodernist stance, Binkley and Smith set out to deconstruct Composition Studies as a “spatially specific and time constrained” field that tends to follow the Western rhetorical framework and, under an appearance of democracy, excludes those who do not fit into the dominant discourse (2006: 2).

According to the authors, instead of focusing on an equalizing analysis and discussion of/between different rhetorical modes, Composition Studies still seems to function under the pretense that Western discourse is in some ways superior to other cultural discourses. This guiding pretense comes, Binkley and Smith argue, from the “origin narrative” of rhetoric and composition, Athenian rhetoric, which was in itself politically, socially and culturally prejudiced, as only a small group of citizens met the requirements necessary for their voices to be heard and valued (2006: 4), and also failed to recognize the existence of previous rhetorical modes such as those of the Sophists and of civilizations like China and Egypt – dubbed as pre/proto-rhetorical (2006: 3). The suspicion with which those who did not fit into the political, social and rhetorical requisites of the Athenian agora were regarded has been redirected nowadays, according to the authors, towards every type of cultural discourse that presents alternatives to the dominant framework (2006: 3).

However, the problem does not seem to be the predominance of Western discourse so much as it is its unproblematic and unquestioned acceptance by the academic community, that tends to regard rhetoric as a natural, static concept instead of seeing it as a social construct and, therefore, “a flawed and partial world view” that is permeable to social and political change and must, then, be examined within and across a specific time and place (2006: 4). This becomes even more complicated when we put it in the context of higher education, as students are forced into an either/or paradigm where they must conform to the dominant discourse or be barred from further education (2006: 4), a paradigm that is never explicitly acknowledged but is implicit in the pedagogical approaches to composition taken by most American university professors.

Appropriating Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, Binkley and Smith see Composition Studies as an extension of Greek rhetoric and politics, a “dual illusion” of democracy that “masks the Eurocentric, alphabetic dependent, gendered, and ethnocentric basis of its formation” (2006: 5). Although the authors explain in some detail what a heterotopia can be and make a good case for the underlying problems of Composition Studies, I was not entirely convinced with their appropriation of the term, as they seem to convey a negativity that is not present in the original concept. Foucault’s heterotopia is essentially a place of difference – another place, a “counterspace,” – not a place of bad difference or attempt to mask difference. In fact, according to his explanation in “Of Other Spaces” (1986), a heterotopia functions as a sort of a mirror that reflects and inverts reality, thus allowing us to perceive it more critically. The concept of heterotopia is complex and rather messy, but it allows for all sorts of variations, which can be positive or negative, isolating or interactional, and always different and fragmentary. If anything, I believe this uncomplicated and equalizing, yet deeply exclusionary visage of Composition Studies resembles more a utopian, or even dystopian, discourse than a heterotopia.

As it stands now, Composition Studies does not appear to be a suitable medium for the study of non-Western rhetorical practices, as it remains a “regional-spatial interpretation of knowledge” that does not seem to acknowledge and is, therefore, not applicable to spaces outside this specific discourse. Not only is there no acknowledgement of their unique discourse, there seems to be also no acknowledgement of their existence, as these other spaces often stay on the margin of the main discourse, and lack the means to promote their own discussions and participate outside their own rhetorical sphere (2006: 5). Adding to the classical rhetorical tradition is what the authors call an implied ethical superiority of alphabetic cultures and the monolingualism of American composition, which further promote the exclusion of non-conforming discourses (2006: 6). In face of this situation, how can we go about integrating these different spaces/rhetorics within Western discourse (is it even desirable)? How can we change Composition Studies so that it really becomes the democratic system it appears to be? Can these other rhetorical spaces be the heterotopias Binkley and Smith were talking about?

Through the Postcolonial Glass and What Bronwyn Found There

In his essay, Bronwyn T. Williams examines his experience teaching in a multicultural class and the problems in dealing with the diversity of social, cultural and rhetorical practices. He attributes the difficulty of reconciling different ideologies and practices to the predominance of a postcolonial mentality, equating himself, the professor and symbol of authority, with the oppressive force of Western tradition, and the students with the colonial minorities who must adopt and adapt to the dominant framework, often losing their authorial voices and consequently undermining the agency, authenticity and comprehensibility of their texts (595). Later on, Williams refers to these students/colonial subjects as treading “hybrid spaces,” places where the colonial Other can develop his/her own cultural-rhetorical voice without having to be subjugated to the dominant discourse of the West (604).

An individual’s discourse is largely shaped by the culture they are born into and the cultures with which they come into contact throughout their lives. For this reason, it is impossible to speak of identity without a study of the way they perceive and express themselves, their culture and the cultures around them. The problem seems to be, however, that ideological assumptions of superiority tend to establish comparative power relationships where one group is always better than the other and its identity worthier of preservation and dissemination. Williams represents this conflict very well by inserting it into the academic environment, one which tends to become more and more diverse, as educational and economic endeavors allow students from all over the world to gather together in the same classroom with the same purpose: to learn. But even here one sees the beginning of the cultural conflict. Does learning have the same meaning in every culture? Is it performed in the same way? Hardly. And when faced with a multiplicity of unfulfilled expectations – the professor’s, who will try to enforce the system he was schooled in, the one he knows best, and the students’, who are faced with completely new interpretations of concepts such as knowledge, discourse, rhetoric, ownership – communication tends to crumble under the limitations of each one’s differing realities (589). In this context, there is an attempt to assimilate – or indoctrinate, as Williams puts it (590) – the students, i.e. the cultural minority, into the dominant discourse, i.e. the Western cultural-rhetorical tradition (588). This often leads to either/both mimicry or/and resistance to the imposing rhetoric, that is an attempt to comply with the “new rules” of the discursive game that falls short of being an accurate imitation due to the permanence of, conscious or unconscious, signs of struggle to maintain one’s original framework of reference (591-592). Drawing on Bhabha’s work, Williams refers to these presences as “partial,” as they do not fit into the traditional mold and become, thus, a potentially subversive threat (592).

I found Williams’s pedagogic approach of having students draw from their personal experiences to write at the academic level rather interesting, as I expected that this would have a positive effect on the students’ rhetorical development. Much like the author, I believed, as I read the essay, that drawing from one’s own experience would make the students feel empowered as valuable cultural agents whose voices were being heard (592). But, like the author, I realized that I was being led down a rabbit hole by my own biased Western assumption that the writer’s personal background gives authority and credibility to his/her work, which is not the reality for every culture, as Chakrit and Neka’s examples show (593-594; 596). Having students write about their experiences actually seemed to do more harm than good, as they were being forced to conform to a rhetorical framework they were not familiar with and, for this reason, their texts portrayed none of the agency and authenticity Williams had aimed for (595). They became, therefore, “Others” on the margin of the dominant culture (603).

My perception was constrained by the ideological framework in which I was raised. I was wrong. But I was not alone, as Williams admits to taking an incorrect approach with his students and not being fully able to create the sort of educational and rhetorical environment needed to generate a fruitful discourse among different practices (599). Williams does not try to justify his mistake, nor does he apologize for it. Instead, he uses it as fuel for change, calling, not just for a deeper analysis and understanding of postcolonial minorities as hybrid and fluid constructs, whose identities and practices are shaped by their attempts to either/both appropriate or/and resist the dominant tradition of the West, but, above all, for a reconsideration of his own role, and every other professor’s role for that matter, as an educator and consequently a figure of power and authority (604-605). By emphasizing the need for self-interrogation and self-examination, Williams, it seems to me, is asking for a reassessment of Western discourse and ideology and their self-assumed superiority. Indeed, this essay seems to stress out the need for an equalizing discourse, a place for the discussion of difference that does not rely on the binaries of colonizer/colonized, superior/inferior, and instead attempts to engage and negotiate one’s place in the global discourse (605).

Williams ends his essay with an analysis of his students/colonial subjects as hybrid individuals whose identities are formed by the confluence of multiple cultural spaces, thus challenging discursive boundaries (603). As someone whose academic interests often veer into the Science Fiction genre, I am used to the term “hybridity” meaning a question about self-identification that is mostly left unanswered, individuals whose identity is frequently equated with fragmentation and isolation. In this case, however, the hybrid is pictured as both a question and an answer, a space where fragmentation and instability do not equal an identity crisis, but instead propel discussion and self-affirmation (604). In the context of Williams’s classroom experiment, hybridity appears to be a positive thing. And yet, it seems that there is still a void between the recognition of such hybridity and actually embracing its discourse as valid. A framework of thought that bridges the gap between the dominant tradition and the hybrid minorities has yet to be proposed. How can we go about doing this? Can these hybrid discourses ever truly flourish on their own terms, without outside manipulation of their concepts and ideas? Or should the majority adapt to accommodate these fluid rhetorics?

Movement Across Boundaries

In their essay, Levitt and Khagram attempt to give the reader a general perspective of how the field of Transnational Studies is organized. They begin by explaining the importance of analyzing social dynamics as cross-cultural, cross-borders phenomena (2007: 2) and then go on to describe the several different approaches pursued by the scholars within Transnationalism. For each one of these approaches, or foundational pillars, the authors give examples to better illustrate their specificities.

Levitt and Khagram begin the essay with the following sentence: “Social life crosses, transcends and sometimes transforms borders and boundaries in many different ways” (2007: 1). Indeed, not just social, but also political, economic and religious dynamics, to name a few, have been increasingly breaking physical boundaries, reaching far outside national spheres of influence and involving seemingly disparate groups and identities. The authors mention the events of 9/11 as a complex example of this phenomenon, as it simultaneously involved transnationally-acting institutions and reasserted the prevalence of the nation-state and nationalist discourses (2007: 1). Similarly, Hesford points out the danger of what she calls a reification of “nationalist fantasies of self-reliance and unifying notions of citizenship” that lead to cultural homogeneity and monolingualism (2006: 789). Transnationalism seems to reject this sort of national supremacy and attempts to open up a dialog between and across nations.

However, in order to fully understand Transnationalism, I believe it is important to know what exactly “transnational” means, as opposed to “international,” “supranational,” or even “multinational.” For, whereas the latter concepts all involve nations/countries as physical spaces with borders that separate them from each other, “transnational” points towards contact between and across the physical boundaries, thus focusing on the nation/nation-state not as the preferred paradigm of social and political organization, but as a construct which changes with these trans-border relationships (Levitt & Khagram 2007: 7). It is important to note that Transnationalism goes beyond matters of nationality and geographical location, to study the development and effects of non-territorial or trans-territorial subjects such as religion, economy, justice and human rights (Levitt & Khagram 2007: 5). The world appears, then, in a transnational perspective, as an intricate tapestry, where the national, historical, religious, political, economic, cultural, intersect and intertwine, the boundaries merging and eventually disappearing (Levitt & Khagram 2007: 8). Another important distinction, made clear by the authors, is that between Transnationalism and Globalization, the latter implying homogenization and constraint to move beyond the predominant systems of social organization, while the former appears to question those constraints and allow for the permanence of local individuality (2007: 6).

Levitt and Khagram then provide a description of the several branches of Transnationalism, explaining how each contributes to the whole. Interestingly, much like its study subject, Transnationalism seems like an interweaving of different paths – Empirical, Methodological, Theoretical, Philosophical and Public – that merge into one complete and complex field of research, that joins spatiotemporal analysis, procedural strategies, theoretical approaches, ontological and epistemological discussions, and practical solutions for dealing with current situations. Transnationalism aims, then, at developing viable policies for real-world use, thus emphasizing the need for agency and action (2007: 18-20).

One of the aspects that interested me the most in this essay was the way Transnationalism appears to question, challenge and reshape concepts such as citizenship and national identity (2007: 7), often taken for granted, as the authors say. They are indeed organic constructs that change in relation to the inter/transnational conjuncture, but also as a reaction to inner, that is national, transformations. Transnationalism seems to stress the importance of such a change, calling into question the validity of nation-state systems as organizational structures and, I would venture to add, as identity markers, for they eventually become, to use Hesford’s expression, “imagined geographies,” mental borders that may not match the physical ones (Hesford 2006: 790).  As a consequence, power dynamics become more fluid, as they are no longer limited to the national borders (Levitt & Khagram 2007: 15), and spatiality can no longer be seen as an essential trait of one’s sense of self, rather as the place where different identities converse (Hesford 2006: 790). On the other hand, one should also consider the implications of such a power shift, as it may determine the loss of the nations’ authority and possibly undermine their sense of national selves, as the “personalized life-spaces” lose ground to the “broader social processes” (Levitt & Khagram 2007: 6-7). The European Union is an example of a transnational institution that has gradually been gaining power over the countries it encompasses, holding exclusive competence on affairs such as commercial policy, customs union and international agreements.[1] How can nations respond to this new authority effectively? How can they maintain their own sense of authority and identity in relation to this transnational institution?

Levitt and Khagram make a very good argument for Transnational Studies. Indeed, there seems to be little doubt that we are living in a transnational world, where national borders appear to collapse under the weight of ever expanding and globally reaching policies and strategies. Therefore, there needs to be a careful study of social and political dynamics and of the way they influence national and international policies. However, we should keep in mind the implications that this transnational world may have on the nations as constitutive of collective and individual identities. Saskia Sassen mentions that nation-states become transformed by transnational relationships (Levitt & Khagram 2007: 15). But how much of that transformation is too much transformation? And under what circumstances? Levitt and Khagram do not seem to provide an answer for these questions. Although they defend Transnationalism as an all-encompassing field of research, it seems that transnational dynamics win over the national element in their essay. It seems to me that there is the need for what Hesford calls “intertextuality of local and global cultures” (2006: 792), a way to connect the national and the transnational in an organic exchange that does not impose one on the other. The question is: could it be done?


[1] See Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (2007): http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:12012E/TXT.