Binaries, Bodies, and Ambiguity

LAUREN TERBROCK
MAY 12. 2017
 It is no coincidence that a great deal of writings on pain include a section titled What is Pain? The
questions of pain what causes it, what it means, what it does, what gets rid of it are mysterious
endeavors. Seeking evidence from the evolutions of pre-medical thought to the scientific revolution, a
superficial investigation might appear to show a direct progression from mental and emotional theories of
pain (e.g. pain is an evil spirit, pain is sin, pain is the precursor to heavenly pleasure) to physical theories
of pain (e.g. pain has a rational explanation, pain is a symptom, pain can be eradicated). However,
Roselyne Rey, a scholar in the history of medicine and the life sciences, argues that the history of pain is
characterised by discontinuity and circuitous developments rather than by a more linear, cumulative
evolution (8). Even historically proximate theories of pain seem to vacillate between the emotional and
physical. Ancient theories, such as those from Aristotle and Hippocrates in the 4th century BC, seem to be
at odds with each other in conceptualizing the meaning of pain. Aristotle posited that pain is the result of
an emotional suffering it is evil spirits[entering] the body through injury (Linton 11). Meanwhile,
Hippocrates argued that pain was a result in the imbalance of bodily fluids, or humors; this, of course, was
further theorized by Galen in the 2nd century BC (Linton 11). So, while pain has been superficially defined
dualistically throughout history, there is quite a bit of ambiguity in both contemporaneous and
asynchronous theoretical, scientific, and medical studies of pain.

In his book, The Politics of Pain Medicine: A Rhetorical-Ontological Inquiry, S. Scott Graham
concurs that contemporary pain medicine should no longer be looking to dismantle dualisms, as those
efforts merely reverse the binaries: That is, where modernism privileges the real object over the
perceiving object, postmodernism recasts the object as an extension of the subjects perception, and the
object becomes an epiphenomenon of the subject (19). Instead look toward a rhetorical-ontological
inquiry that will not only help us better understand contemporary practices of pain science and medicine;
it will also contribute to the refinement of our own methods and theories (7). In short, Graham aims to
intersect the rhetorical tradition, especially as it is currently working through new materialist and
ontological inquiries, with scientific and medical theories about and treatment of pain.

Front and center in Rhetorical Ontology, or, How to Do Things With Things (Barnett and Boyle) is
this rhetorical-ontological approach: ...what is called for, they argue, are new theoretical orientations that,
though recognizably rhetorical, enable us to begin our inquiries from different places, with different
attunements and different assumptions about what it means to be to be rhetorically in the world (2).
Too often, we forget that Scientific practice and clinical performances involve doing things poking,
prodding, cutting, scanning, drugging things that have real impacts on real patients, things that cannot
be so easily (or ethically) reduced to discourse (Graham 8). So, to apply rhetorical ontology to pain
studies, Graham intends to bring rhetoric to bear on the economical and political investments that
surround the material realities of pain.
What, then, makes pain rhetorical through the lens of the rhetorical tradition? David B. Morris, an
influential writer in pain theory and history, is helpful in thinking through that question. He writes
that pain interrupts experience, propelling exploration and deliberation:

To be in pain is often to be in a state of crisis...Pain has not simply interrupted

our normal feeling of health. It has opened a huge fault or fissure in our world.
We need answers. We want to know what all this torment in our bonesthe
disarrangement of our personal cosmosadds up to. What does it mean?
(Morris 31)

That ambiguous it is crucial here; what is it? At a quick glance, it can mean many things.
While impossible to gather a comprehensive list, some examples could range from the pain itself,
particularly as we try to separate it from our own bodies (it hurts, I want it to go away); to the the
subjective feeling (it burns, it aches, it is not that bad, it is the worst pain Ive ever felt); to the
objective source of pain (what is causing it, it is a large incision, it is a dark bruise).

This ambiguity, I think, is one of the other ways that pain is rhetorical. As we have read
through the rhetorical tradition (in many cases, literally, The Rhetorical Tradition), ambiguity is
constantly worked through, around, against, and with from thinkers like Locke, who attempts to
police subjectivity to eliminate ambiguity, to Burke, who celebrates ambiguity as the ultimate
rhetorical resource, to Anzalda, whose life in and on borderlands embodies ambiguity in both
dangerous and liberating ways.
The database is organized in a (deceptively) simple way:

The sections are marked by three annotations, respectively What is the

consequence of splitting these things up?; This is a fantastic revelation: his
physical presence changes rhetoric; and Black boxes unpacked (all from
sophist_monster). Throughout the semester, we as a class have explored the
concepts of binaries, bodies, and ambiguity while trying to establish some
understanding of not only what rhetoric is, but also what rhetoric does. So, I
have gathered quotes from readings, annotations, MicroResponses, and parts
of Elaborations that I think mull over those three categories.

While the database teases out these threads, though, they are neither stable
nor complete. There will be moments of overlap when text might be repeated
from earlier pages or maybe even earlier sections (as Elaborations are made
from MicroResponses and MicroResponses are made from annotations). This
is one of the ways that the database attempts to see ambiguity as a
resource (Burke).

Just as pain defies categorization (Graham 23), binaries, bodies, and

ambiguity come together in this database in productive (albeit sometimes
productively chaotic) ways. At the same time, there will be moments that feel
incomplete, or lacking a conclusion. It is precisely because of that resistance
that rhetoric becomes useful. It might be ambiguous, but the rhetorical
tradition gives us countless ways to think through it. In other words, while
Graham wants to bring contemporary rhetoric to bear on pain science and
medicine, I want this database to provide directions and intersections of
those three threads (binaries, bodies, and ambiguity) that could help explain
how one might get there historically and conceptually. In no way does this
database attempt to answer the questions What does it mean? or what is
it? (much like Muckelbauers divergent approaches to the question What is
rhetoric?). Instead, this database attempts to show how the rhetorical
tradition might engage with those questions.
 What is the consequence

of splitting these things up?

(sophist_monster)
 Words having naturally no signification, the idea which each
stands for must be learned and retained, by those who would
exchange thoughts, and hold intelligible discourse with others,
in any language. But this is the hardest to be done where,
First, The ideas they stand for are very complex, and made up
of a great number of ideas put together. Secondly, Where the
ideas they stand for have no certain connection in nature; and
so no settled standard anywhere in nature existing, to rectify
and adjust them by. Thirdly, When the signification of the
word is referred to a standard, which standard is not easy to
be know. (Locke 818)

What Lemos might identify as norms?

(sophist_monster)

An interesting concept that emphasizes the total

subjectivity of language; a word's meaning is rooted
in a common agreement reached in society. This is
not a revolutionary idea now, but still a simple fact
that I believe is often forgot (kplynch).
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Among a thousand different opinions which different men
may entertain of the same subject, there is one, and but
one, that is just and true; and the only difficulty is to fix
and ascertain it. On the contrary, a thousand different
sentiments, excited by the same object, are all right:
Because no sentiment represents what is really in the
object... (Hume 832)
Here, up until halfway through page 833, Hume
seems to be playing up subjectivity (well, giving it
some room to breathe, anyway) (LoLo).

Some particular forms or qualities, from the

original structure of the internal fabric, are
calculated to please, and others to
displease; and if they fail of their effect in
any particular instance, it is from some
apparent defect or imperfection in the
organ. A man in a fever would not insist on
his palate as able to decide concerning
flavours. (833)
And now here he's switching over to
objectivity. If you don't appreciate the
Here's the difficulty we run into classics, there's something wrong with you.
in using the subject/object split to (LoLo)
read Hume. Could it be that
what shows up to use as an
oscillation between the two is in
fact an end-around the binary
itself. (sophist_monster) Hume is actually trying to find a way of defining
taste outside of the subjective/objective binary. He
lands of what we might describe as
a relational understanding of taste. In this way,
Hume could prove helpful in mediating Bitzer and
Vatz (sophist_monster).
 But this binary itself
comes in for work, for
unpacking (marginal
note from
sophist_monster's
book)

With the marginal note from Nathaniel in mind, this binary is really interesting
(and necessary) to unpack. I've had to read a lot of Foucault lately, so I'm
thinking with him through a lot of my other readings right now. But his use of
episteme, in some ways, breaks down that binary. By treating an episteme as
the "epistemological unconscious" of an era (meaning that some knowledge
and some assumptions are so inherent at a specific time and place that no
one even knows it's happening), Foucault seems to suggest that opinion and
knowledge can uniquely shift and intertwine in each epoch (again, within a
culture that doesn't even know it's happening). (LoLo)
 In Norm, Measure of All Things, Sofia Lemos uncovers the
process of bodily normalization as it determines architectural
dimensions. The standards by which the human body has been
conceptualized are always working toward the average the
normal. So, throughout history, the anomaly is thus a mere
difference in degree for which the norm will serve as metric
(Lemos). This centering of normal calls upon the statement that
man is the measure of all things: Throughout history man used
his own body as metric for the instruments of service to him and
his built forms (Lemos). But, even though man used his own body
as the metric, that body is defined by metric standards. Bodies
thus fit in or out of the metrics of normality, creating a normal
against which an abnormal can be judged.

This discernment applies to how we conceptualize

something like rhetoric, too. From the Enlightenment to the
nineteenth century, thoughts on rhetoric seem to revolve around
the concept of an objective norm. For some, such as Locke and
Hume, deviations in language and knowledge can either be
corrected or disregarded. For others, particularly Nietzsche and
Willard in the nineteenth century, the objective norm or natural
never existed to begin with. At the end of Nietzsche's On Truth and
Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, he breaks down two options, the rational
man and the intuitive man: ...the one in fear of intuition, the other
with scorn for abstraction... (1178). However, this classification, and
the dichotomous nature of it, is critically unreliable. One cannot
choose between being rational or intuitive; to believe there is a
choice is to chose rationality. Instead, there is only ambiguous
maneuvering.
(Elaboration 2)
 This speaks to the
pervasive power of
rhetoric to shape
subjectivity. Rhetoric
that moves inside us
(sophist_monster).

Cixous's thought has been strongly influenced by Jacques Derrida -- like her, a
Jew from Algeria -- and by other poststructuralists. She analyzes Western culture
in terms of binaries, such as France and colonial Algeria, or men and women, in
which the dominant term defines itself by putting the other in a subordinate
position. To attack these oppressive binaries, Cixous takes a two-pronged
approach. She deconstructs them as she encounters them in literature, calling
their seeming inevitability into question, and she also attempts to develop a
nonhierarchical writing practice, which she calls "feminine," that offers a way out
of binary thinking (1521).

The binary nature of her worldview is something that I've

heard her critiqued for before, as it is a pretty restrictive way
to view the complex gears of oppression (kpolizzi).
 Thus conceived, discourse is not
the majestically unfolding
manifestation of a thinking,
knowing, speaking subject, but, on
the contrary, a totality, in which the
dispersion of the subject and his
discontinuity with himself may be
determined. It is a space of
exteriority in which a network of
distinct sites is deployed
(Foucault 1444).
But all this attention to the speech of
madness does not prove that the old
division is no longer operative. You
have only to think of the whole
framework of knowledge through
which we decipher that speech, and
of the whole network of institutions
which permit someone - a doctor or a
psychoanalyst - to listen to it, and
which at the same time permit the
patient to bring along his poor words
or, in desperation, to withhold them.
You have only to think of all this to
become suspicious that the division,
far from being effaced, is working
differently along other lines, through
new institutions, and with effects that
are not at all the same (1462).
Foucault argues that
rhetorical objects are
contingent upon many
conditions in order to enter
the historical discussion. He
also mentions that the time in
history that a rhetorical object
is being discussed influences
what is said about it, because
the cultural practices vary
throughout time and influence
those living in that time
period and the way they think
(hellemad44).
Jay Dolmage's Disability
Rhetoric has a great
interchapter, "Archive and
Anatomy of Disability
Myths," in which he breaks
down some
"representational systems"
of disability. The division
Foucault describes here,
suppressed vs praised
disability, are just two
among Dolmage's much
more complicated network
of cultural discourses that
create an object out of the
disabled body (LoLo).
"I have lingered so long over this passage because we can extrapolate from it
almost all of the binary oppositions in relation to which rhetoric has received its
(largely negative) definition: inner/ outer, deep/ surface, essential/ peripheral,
unmediated/ mediated, clear/ colored, necessary/ contingent, straightforward/
angled, abiding/ fleeting, reason/ passion, things/ words, realities/ illusions, fact/
opinion, neutral/ partisan. Underlying this list, which is by no means exhaustive,
are three basic oppositions..." (Fish 1610-1).

Similar to Woolf's idea that

the sentence is a male
construct of rhetoric,
Anzalda takes the
argument a step further by
suggesting that language
itself is masculine. It takes
us back to the question
throughout history of "who
can do rhetoric?"; the
answer was primarily rich
white males for thousands
of years, which stifled the
development of language.
I think this is, in part, why
Anzalda argues that
language is inherently
male (hellemad44).
I think you raise a good point here,
but also keep in mind that it's
not just white-male centric rhetoric.
Latino people view society through a
very gendered (as in everything is
either masculine or feminine) lens,
and the masculine aspect is amplified
through the culture's embrace
of machismo, aka men being manly
to a fault. In Latino culture, women
are arguably expected to just fall in
line more than in the Anglosphere.
Speaking out and elaborating on the
Latina perspective is fraught with
challenge, perhaps more so than
what American women face
(kingreardon).
this is a fantastic revelation:
his physical presence changes rhetoric

(sophist_monster)
This deviation shifts Lockes epistemological argument into an ontological investigation, but
not without carrying the baggage of sensory perception. Lockes logical process of
knowledge discernment starts with the objective world, which is then understood through
nerve stimuli, which is then used to create an idea, which is then arbitrarily assigned a
word. Nietzsches On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense disrupts this logical process:
What is a word? It is the copy in sound of a nerve stimulus...To begin with, a nerve
stimulus is transferred into an image; first metaphor. The image, in turn, is imitated
in a sound; second metaphor. And each time there is a complete overleaping of one
sphere, right into the middle of an entirely new and different one. (Nietzsche 1173)
Here, the process Nietzsche suggests leaves the world out altogether, instead jumping from
metaphor (sensory perception (image)) to metaphor (sensory perception (sound)) and
landing somewhere in the middle of a word. And this word, which is a metaphor of a
metaphor of a nerve stimulus (which is a metaphor) in no way represents the thing it
attempts to describe. While Locke says this is because the word is subject to natural
causes of imperfection, Nietzsche says this is because the thing itself was never an
objective reality to begin with. There was never an ideal a normal or a natural to measure
the word against. The very first nerve stimulus was already subject to the metaphors
previously assigned to it.

The absence of an objective reality here is not merely skepticism. It is in fact the acceptance
of truth, but only on the condition that truth is understood as a lie built upon metaphors of
metaphors of metaphors. There is no deciding between one word or another to describe
more adequately the essence of a thing; there is only deciding which fiction more
appropriately serves the social processes of knowledge and language creation. We do more
harm, then, in assuming that we are never subject to metaphors (lies):
At bottom, what the investigator of such truths is seeking is only the
metamorphosis of the world into man...His method is to treat man as the measure of all
things, but in doing so he again proceeds from the error of believing he has these
things [which he intends to measure] immediately before him as mere objects (1175-6).
The belief that the world is a set of discoverable truths makes the dangerous assumption
that we, as human minds and bodies, are any stable guideline to discover them. Nietzsche,
like Locke, presumes a certain disembodiment through his metaphorical spiral. This is not
necessarily because the body is not important, or because it bears no weight on the
meanings we create, but rather because it is unknowable:

What does man actually know about himself? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive
himself completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case? Does nature not conceal
most things from him even concerning his own body in order to confine and lock him
within a proud, deceptive consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid
flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers! (1172)

The anonymous and autonomous functions of the body keep us from a comprehensive
understanding of what is real. So, just as we should be wary of using our ideas, values, and
truths to determine what is natural, we should also be skeptical of using our bodily
operations as a measure for what is normal. (Elaboration 1)
I trembled in every limb.
I am not sure that my
embarrassment was not
the most effective part of
my speech, if speech it
could be called (1076).
Again, the body is always
crucial here in ways even
beyond the elocutionists
we read earlier.
(sophist_monster)
"She at first lacked the
depravity indispensable lo
shutting me up in mental
darkness. It was at least
necessary for her to have
some training in the
exercise of irresponsible
power, to make her equal
to the task of treating me
as though I were a brute"
(1072).
I attracted the fury of
the mob, which laid
me prostrate on the
ground under a
torrent of blows.
Leaving me thus, with
my right hand
broken, and in a state
of
unconsciousness...
(Douglass 1081)

Here opened upon me a

By his very presence at
the podium, Douglass
increased the
possibilities for
rhetoric, and his composed rhetorical: that is, peculiar institution,"
autobiography (1063).
This is even more true
now. As our readings late
in the semester will
perform, rhetoric is
increasingly renewing its
interest in the material
alongside its
longstanding interest in
the body. Douglass
speaks to these.
(sophist_monster)
new life - a life for
Douglass is attuning us to which I had had no
the way that bodies and preparation. I was a
hearts and minds are "graduate from the
socially through Mr. Collins used to say,
practice...The province of when introducing me,
rhetoric is being expanded "with my diploma
here (sophist_monster). written on my back!"
(1076)
What a phrase. To think
of this as writing ought to
inform our thinking on
composition and its
rhetoric
(sophist_monster).
 In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, he describes learning to
read and write, first from his mistress: She at first lacked the depravity
indispensable to shutting me up in mental darkness (1072). This really is
an incredible passage. The whole category of nature, the body, and
attitude are thrown open (sophist_monster). What is considered natural,
bodily and socially, is represented in both Douglass and his mistress
(one more violently than the other).

Another way we see rhetoric emerging as a bodily and social process is

through Douglass accounts of public speaking. As Douglass became a
public speaker, the physicality of his body meant he struggled to find not
only spaces to speak, but also an audience to speak to. Moreover, when
he did find a space and an audience, he was often reduced to his body
(ahagedo2). Audiences either wanted just the details (he was more
important for the story of his body than his intellect (ahagedo2)), or they
acted violently against his body. A speech in Indiana resulted in a mob
breaking his right hand, an injury from which he never fully recovered
(1081).

While this is still sort of messy, I think Douglass accounts of bodily

experience can tell us something about how values and truths are
constructed and shared. Douglass is attuning us to the way that bodies
and hearts and minds are composed rhetorically: that is, socially through
practiceThe province of rhetoric is being expanded (sophist_monster).
Here we can see how constructed truths about rhetoric what is
considered persuasive comes up against constructed truths about the
body what is perceived as natural. (MircoResponse)
 Listen to a woman speak at a public gathering
(if she hasn't painfully lost her wind). She doesn't
"speak," she throws her trembling body forward;
she lets go of herself, she flies; all of her passes
into her voice, and it's with her body that she vitally
supports the "logic" of her speech. Her flesh
speaks true. She lays herself bare. In fact, she
physically materializes what she's thinking; she
signifies it with her body.
(Cixous 1528)

This is very different from the choreographed

gestures of Austin. The body is spontaneous.
In addition, she seems to expand what logic
is. Logic is traditionally an intellectual
capacity, one which has been considered
men's strong point and women's weakness.
She flips this conception by challenging the
mind/body binary of traditional rhetoric and
claiming that the body is a site of logic
(ahagedo2).
 "We're going to have to control your tongue," the dentist
says, pulling out all the metal from my mouth. Silver bits
plop and tinkle into the basin. My mouth is a motherlode.

The dentist is cleaning out my roots. I get a whiff of the

stench when I gasp. "I can't cap that tooth yet, you're still
draining," he says.

"We're going to have to do something about your tongue,"

I hear the anger rising in his voice. My tongue keeps
pushing out the wads of cotton, pushing back the drills, the
long thin needles. "I've never seen anything as strong or as
stubborn," he says. And I think, how do you tame a wild
tongue, train it to be quiet, how do you bridle and saddle it?
How do you make it lie down?
(Anzalda 1585)

I really like that this section,

that is very much concerned
with location and identity,
starts with identifying the
mouth and tongue as a
location for rhetoric. It also
identifies it with a metaphor of
wealth, that there's an internal
Play that off
treasure that is being pulled
with Douglass whose
from her (gilmanhernandez).
body was a text and his
text was compromised
from his body, here,
Anzalda parallels
insulting her language
with suffering physical
harm (gilmanhernandez).
 This section, that is very much concerned with location and identity, starts
with identifying the mouth and tongue as a location for rhetoric. It also
identifies it with a metaphor of wealth, that theres an internal treasure that is
being pulled from her. (Byron) This is also a [good] metaphor for silencing
women to deny them any kind of power. (Get Schwifty) Of course, its
significant that she refuses to directly translate her mothers words, here.
Although Anzaldua is speaking to a predominantly white audience, she
refuses to relieve the burden of language that is not for the audience.
(Kathryn) In this way, the dentists attempts to tame her wild tongue are
refuted by the persistence of non-English (and therefore non-compliant)
words.

Regarding her use of ever-evolving and non-compliant language, Byron

shared For as difficult as it was making sense of the postmodern writers,
Anzalduas patois raises some really interesting and unique issues for my
reading. I have two semesters of Spanish from half a decade ago, plus google,
but also talking with my San Antonian wife, and the difference (or differance)
between the results with these words is interesting. (Byron) Byron also makes
the connection between Anzalduas language and Douglass whose body was a
text and his text was compromised from his body[.] Here, Anzaldua parallels
insulting her language with suffering physical harm. (Byron) Her description
of the writing process reminds [Amanda] of Douglass recounting of when he
first learned to read. Reading was painful for him at first, because he realized
the extent of his oppression, but it becomes a tool for liberation. (Amanda)

This is a really interesting new spin on embodiment and the connections

between language and imagination. (Kathryn) [Anzaldua] celebrates language
as offering the potential for liberation from a tradition of silence, but language
is also a means of preserving her cultural heritage, such as the traditional
figure of the nahual. This interest in both change and preserving tradition
seems to result from the intersections of her sexuality, gender and
ethnicity (Amanda).

(kpolizzi)
 Up until just now, every time you've used the word "black
box," I've been thinking "the recording device that survives
plane crashes," and not "opaque intermediary between
input and output" (gilmanhernandez)
 Before the end of the seventeenth century, however,
traditional rhetoric came under attack by adherents of the
new science, who claimed that rhetoric obscured the truth
by encouraging the use of ornamental rather than plain,
direct languageThe call for a plain style, taken up by
church leaders and influential writers, made perspicuity, or
clarity, a watchword in discussions of ideal style during the
ensuing centuries (Enlightenment Rhetoric" 792).

At least they interpose

themselves so much between our understandings,
and the truth which it would contemplate and apprehend,
that, like the medium through which
visible objects pass, the obscurity and disorder do
not seldom cast a mist before our eyes, and impose
upon our understandings (Locke 824).

What other prepositions could

we (re)place here?
(sophist_monster)
We take it for granted I read most of [Burkes] article as stretching the ideas of
that, insofar as men Richards and Ogden further. Richards and Ogden and
cannot themselves create Burke embrace ambiguity and recognize it as unavoidable
in describing language. They even compare languages
the universe, there must
ambiguity to the Earths formation. Richards and Ogdens
remain something
theorem of meaning holds that we begin with the general
essentially enigmatic abstract anything, split it, as the world makes us, into sorts
about the problem of and then arrive at concrete particulars by the overlapping
motives, and that this or common membership of these sorts. Burke similarly
underlying enigma will remarks, Distinctions, we might say, arise out of a great
manifest itself in central moltenness, where all is merged. They have been
inevitable ambiguities and thrown from a liquid center to the surface, where they have
inconsistencies among congealed. With these metaphors of the Earths formation,
Richards and Ogden and Burke still seem to think there is
the terms for motives.
some sort of, grounding, the scene, but its often mutable,
Accordingly, what we
unstable, and ambiguous.
want is not terms that
avoid ambiguity, but But they also consider the dangers of ambiguity. Richards
terms that clearly reveal and Ogden consider this exploration of ambiguity as
the strategic spots at revealing that our beliefs are a veil and an artificial veil
which ambiguities between ourselves and something that otherwise than
necessarily arise through a veil we cannot know. Burkes understanding of
the danger of ambiguity is even more disturbing. Burke
calls attention to the ways we use universal truths to act out
Hence, instead of
discriminatory practices. In doing so, theres an
considering it our task to inconsistency between the name we give something and
"dispose of" any the function it serves. The truth of the thing doesnt equal
ambiguity by merely the way it operates in the world.
disclosing the fact that it
is an ambiguity, we rather Burke also takes Richards and Ogdens understanding of
consider it our task to the importance of context in meaning further. Richards and
study and clarify the Ogden look at interpretation as deriving from particular
contexts, but Burke complicates contexts role in
resources of ambiguity.
interpretation and language. He thinks of the scene
(Burke 1300)
[context] as containing the act [literature] and the agent
[speaker], but the act and agent do not merely arise from
the scene but are interdependent. (Amanda)
 Woolf is so difficult because of her contradictions.She
often seems to advocate that there is some essence in
women which they haven't been able to discover; but here
she seems to suggest a lower-case "truth," in which truth
is confined to individual experience. I wonder if the
contradictions of her text are part of her mission for
"elasticity" (ahagedo2).

Is this elasticity similar

to the ambiguity
championed by Burke?
(ahagedo2)
 This doesn't mean that she's an undifferentiated magma, but that
she doesn't lord it over her body or her desire. Though masculine
sexuality gravitates around the penis, engendering that centralized
body (in political anatomy) under the dictatorship of its parts,
woman does not bring about the same regionalization which serves
the couple head/genitals and which is inscribed only within
boundaries. Her libido is cosmic, just as her unconscious is
worldwide. (Cixous 1531)
 Gloss: a doctor gets their
authority from context +
space + experience +
materiality, etc. It is the "+"
that makes the doctor--
the relationship between
all of the factors that
surround their
"doctorness" (kpolizzi).

I noticed there's no "=" in

your formula here. I'm
wondering if this might
suggest that all of these
things don't add up to how
we might define a "doctor"
Yes, from what I can
as some object waiting to
understand of what he's saying
be identified. Instead, we
here, I think we are supposed
can only understand
to understand "doctorness" as
"doctorness" as it resides
it resides in the "+." The doctor
in the "+"? (lolo)
himself is not the result of the
equation, because "doctorness"
exists in the relationship
between various factors, and
not the factors themselves. If
any of that makes sense???
(kpolizzi)
 Values are created
through a
community's
discourse. But, as
we've discussed
before, that's a messy
process. We don't
come to know
"common sense" as
easily as scientism
would have us believe
(LoLo).

Rhetoric's
consubstantiality
means that you just
might move a little
over to the other side.
This
is real compromise
(not compromise
based upon the
"what's the bare
minimum I can give
up to get what I
want?")
(LoLo).
 Here is another connection I think we can make
back to Cixous, and her insistence that a woman is
not simply "undifferentiated magma," a "zero,
nothing, no one" waiting to be molded or formed
into Burke's A or non-A. Here, Anzalda strains that
Of course, it's significant that metaphor a bit more, challenging the process of
she refuses to directly translate assimilation as it pertains to the US "melting pot"
her mother's words, here. mentality. We can't just "melt down" our identities
Although Anzalda is speaking to be reformed as part of the dominating culture
to a predominantly white (LoLo).
audience, she refuses to relieve
the burden of language that is
not for the audience (kpolizzi)

"Mestiza" is translated as "A woman of mixed race, especially the offspring of a

Spaniard and an American Indian." This is different from a term later used,
"mestizaje" ("mestizaje criture") which is translated as "Interbreeding and
cultural intermixing of Spanish and American Indian people (originally in Mexico,
and subsequently also in other parts of Latin America); miscegenation, racial and
cultural intermixing" (LoLo).
Nietzsche suggests that one cannot choose between being rational or intuitive...Instead, there is
only ambiguous maneuvering.

The rational man, then, does not actually have a norm to measure deviations against. At the
same time, the intuitive man cannot arrive at a norm out of pure invention. Or, put differently, the
rational man's assumedly-objective norms do not exist outside of subjectivity, and the intuitive
man's subjectivity can escape objective truths as they are shared amongst others. This
ambiguity follows through into the twentieth century, too. In A Grammar of Motives, Kenneth
Burke argues that We take it for granted that, insofar as men cannot themselves create the
universe, there must remain something essentially enigmatic about the problem of motives...what
we want is not terms that avoid ambiguity, but terms that clearly reveal the strategic spots at
which ambiguities necessarily arise (1300). This positions ambiguity as a multivalent resource
rather than an obstruction of truth, which is in stark contrast to previous rhetorical treatises that
have attempted to eradicate ambiguity for the sake of clarity, such as Lockes An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding. Locke was concerned with how language corresponded with
an objective reality how words describe the world. In contrast, twentieth century thinkers, like
Burke, were more concerned with how language works to create dangerous notions of an
objective reality how our interactions with the world are filtered through words.

The deceptive choice between rationality and intuition had more obvious consequences in the
twentieth century. Or, the consequences were written about more explicitly. Moving on from
Burke, other writers also make it clear that ambiguity as resource is the key claim for some 20th
century rhetorical theorists (sophist_monster). Virginia Woolf, Hlne Cixous, and Gloria
Anzalda were critically aware of how norms and standards create tools for subordination and
even eradication. They were also aware of how language plays a vital role in such acts. Although
these three writers came from different places England, France, and the American Southwest,
respectively and worked in (mostly) varied times throughout the twentieth century, all three
share one thing: they enact new embodied rhetorics of divergence and multiplicity.

Women, and the female body, inhabit a particularly ambiguous space, historically set up against
the male as norm. Thus, Woolf describes women as both exploited in fiction and belittled as
writers of fiction; Cixous challenges historical notions of the female body as the deformed male;
and Anzalda takes on a socially marginalized culture as a place of power. Thus, all three share
Burkes emphasis on ambiguity as a resource adding sex and gender as components that bear
upon conceptions of rhetoric.

In the twentieth century, as in the Enlightenment and the nineteenth century, rhetorics of
normalcy are manifesting as the body in chaos. Historically, women and the female body are the
supposed deviation from the norm; however, that deviation becomes a positive for rhetoric.
Ambiguity, then, becomes the source of rhetorical power. In other words in the cases of Woolf,
Cixous, and Anzalda rhetorical power comes from the chaotic ambiguous body.
(Elaboration 2)
 In short, eXistenZ does not
render the human as an
object that connects to other
objects, but as an effect or
moment of multiple inhuman
connectionsconnections
that are always on their way
elsewhere (Muckelbauer and
Hawhee 768).

Is it really so easy, for example,

to distinguish between a speaker,
an audience, a message, and a
context? Most readers will
undoubtedly acknowledge that
these concepts are quite slippery
in practice, but that one tries to
do the best one can in each
situationassuming, of course,
that a situation can be
circumscribed (768).

Indeed, through posthumanism,

rhetoric becomes an art of
connectivity and thereby asks
for new considerations from
multiple angles...The
posthuman thus offers a style of
theorizing or weapon invention
in which disciplinary boundaries
become sites of connection
rather than enclosures of
autonomous interiorities (770).
 Im thinking here a few weeks back to our class conversation about Burke
and Perelman, and how we discussed that various interpretations and sources of
language (although different and perhaps conflicting) can become entangled
and form a kind of stable fabric or network, or spider web. A strong case was
made for the ambiguous as being, somewhat paradoxically, a central reciprocal
place (and act) of modification. That is, Burkes understanding of ambiguity
isnt that it is a problem itself, but rather it is a space, or a resource, where
problems are hashed out; where definitions are recycled, transformed, and
untangled. As Burke says, Distinctions, we might say, arise out of a great
central moltenness, where all is mergedin this alchemic center it may be
remade, again becoming molten liquid, and may enter into new
combinationsTheir participation in a common ground makes for
transformability (1300). And so ambiguity is both how, and also where,
standards and definitions compete (to echo sophist_monster), or where the
violent tension of various perspectives is released and then compromised.

The discussion surrounding networks, moltenness, and ambiguity was

renewed when we delved into the rhetorical situation, and even further when
Rickert introduced his concept of ambience: I prefer the metaphor of the
ambient [over the metaphor of the network]. What is ambient is immersive,
osmotic, post-conscious. Ambience is not so link driven, being suggestive of
many other forms of connection besides contact between two or more
pointsThe richly osmotic character of ambience suggests numerous forms of
engagement and interaction beyond the link (916). Rickerts ambience model
suggests that language is not only entangled with itself and other external
factors, but that is it enmeshed with its environment completely: The ambient
brings together language and kairos [circumstances], making a duplex of the
Houses of Being and Doing (916). The network model, he argues, neglects to
contemplate immersion by only addressing connection. The social does not
reside in fixed sites but rather in a networked space of flows and connections.
Again, though, I would emphasize the word flows over connections
(kpolizzi)as would Rickert.
(Emily's Elaboration 2)
 Could make a connection
Rhetoric (sophist_monster) to Booth's move to "cast
some doubt on doubt".
We've gone so far in one
direction, we've forgotten
that we were headed in a
direction in the first place
(gilmanhernandez).

There's something really

interesting about her use of the
word "contestation" ("the action or
process of disputing or arguing"). It
seems to add to the
"performance as a process" idea. Recall Burke's paradox of substance
This word seems to imply (sophist_monster)
something more
active and continuous rather than
just saying "I'm against language
determining what is real (LoLo).
Muckelbauer and Hawhee describe the film eXistenZ through a Posthuman
theoretical lens. And, much like the film, a Posthuman Rhetoric does not
render the human as an object that connects to other objects, but as an
effect or moment of multiple inhuman connectionsconnections that are
always on their way elsewhere (768). This seems to align with Rickert's and
Edbauer's takes on the "rhetorical situation" as not just about an autonomous
human agent engaging with finite "situations." Instead, there are
interconnected humans, environments, publics, etc., which are never totally
in control, but always calibrating/attuning in certain (if brief) moments on their
way toward something else.

Karen Barad questions the same humanist notions by calling us to

understand how matter matters (803). And not just "matter" in a subjective
relation to humans. In other words, matter only matters as long as humans
can describe it, own it, etc.... But Barad demands that we not only decenter
the human, but we also decenter language as the representational power.
We can do this through performativity, which she describes as a
contestation of the unexamined habits of mind that grant language...more
power in determining our ontologies than they deserve (802). There's
something really interesting about her use of the word "contestation" ("the
action or process of disputing or arguing"). It seems to add to the
"performance as a process" idea. This word seems to imply something more
active and continuous rather than just saying "I'm against language
determining what is real. This adds to Muckelbauer and Hawhees point that
the human is not an autonomous agent that works on the world, but rather
exists in the world through a series of (inter)connections and processes.

(MircoReponse)
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