A few weeks after I arrived in Oxford, I had a conversation with a colleague from the literature department about differences between our respective fields of study. Although it’s difficult for me to recalls specifics about the conversation, one thing sticks out: I was told Gloria Anzaldúa doesn’t belong in rhetoric, that we have no business studying her work. Having not read her, I didn’t have much to say. I remembered seeing her name in the Rhetorical Tradition and I had read the Andrea Lunsford interview from a composition studies anthology, but I hadn’t read her work on its own. So, I just kind of said “alright” and moved on…
I think I would have some things to say now, especially given Damian Baca’s treatment of her rhetorical theory.
Most importantly, I think I would challenge my friend to think differently about rhetoric. As Baca notes in his chapter, Anzaldúa can’t be seen as working solely within the tradition of Western (Greco-Roman) rhetoric. She’s also working against it, which may help writing teachers/scholars to think differently about rhetoric. Rhetoric—that seemingly mystical thing we study—is so steeped in traditional European views of rhetoric that, like my colleague expressed, it’s difficult to see a figure like Anzaldúa working within the purview of rhetoric. Baca argues, “Writing departments, from their colonial origin, have long promoted an education embedded in European traditions. Consequently, the accumulation of knowledge about rhetoric is aligned with the linear narrative of Western history” (128). (This is such a brilliant insight. It seems so obvious, but it’s something that I don’t think is discussed much – especially in casual conversations about rhetoric.)
So, yes, under the traditional heading of “rhetoric” it may be difficult to locate Anzaldúa as a theorist of that tradition. However, as Baca notes, this difficulty stems from a longstanding definition and tradition of rhetoric—one that has a Greek and Roman ancestry. Conceiving of Anzaldúa as someone worthy of rhetorical study, though, works to dismantle this near-monolithic conceptualization of rhetoric. It shows how dominant (i.e. the tradition) pedagogical views of rhetoric might fall short in explaining the complex discursive practices of American rhetoric.
I see Anzaldua herself as both a rhetor and writing theorist. Her powerful account makes use of the theory she posits. Using Anzaldua’s words, it meshes cultures, it kneads language varieties, and it mixes identities. Fluid.
Anzaldúa herself has something to say about a poetics and rhetoric divide. “In the ethno-poetics and performance of the shaman, my people, the Indians, did not split the artistic from the functional, the sacred from the secular, art from everyday life” (1592). Although she’s referring to her ancestry here, it seems like she’s suggesting the classic split between rhetoric and poetics is not a Mesoamerican phenomenon, that there’s a powerful—almost mystical—link between the two.
Also, as evidenced by her interview with Andrea Lunsford, she thought herself as a theorist of writing and composition.
In the end, I almost feel like trying parse Anzaldúa into one field or another does her work a disservice. Like the complex borders along which she lived and worked, Anzaldúa works both within and outside “traditions.” Isolating her work—trying to make it one thing over another—misses the point altogether.
I think that’s a cool insight. I think you’re right: she’s simply not participating in the same division of poetics/rhetorics that is common in Western academic discourse. She’s doing something different that, to me, opens up possibilities for rhetoric beyond its typical persuasive focus (or how people tend to categorize it). I think we see strong models of strategies for working and re-working rhetorical *relationships* which is a significant area where rhetoric should be looking.
Have you thought about ways to make these kinds of rhetorical strategies available to students? How would we introduce them and practice them in writing? That may seem a dry, dull, academic appropriation of Anzaldua but I think its important to ask. Perhaps as we’re working it out in classrooms as a rhetorical practice, we’ll also uncover more of the colonial roots of writing instruction. In fact, I’ve read historical sources about movements such as missionaries going out West to teach native americans to read and write English–has that ever been studied from a rhetoric and composition angle?
Another thing I’d add here, directed at “the colleague”: The Western rhetoric tradition isn’t as monolithic or unitary as some seem to think. I hope that we have seen in ENG 733 just how fractious and divided it has been, how it’s been one long wrangle about what rhetoric should be … and that alternate voices have been there all along, have been part of “the tradition” (though we are still doing the historical work necessary to uncover those voices). We didn’t read very much on this particular topic, but there has always been an argument, ongoing, about “standard X language” vs. the vernacular … standard Latin, “book Latin,” versus Standard English, versus student rights to their own language, versus competing ideas of “correctness” and the importance of “linguistic purity.” We didn’t study the Latin grammarians — who would? — but there is a longstanding line of debate about the politics of “correct language,” to which Anzaldua’s work certainly contributes. We saw flashes of it here and there (e.g., Blair).