Listening to our own rhetoric

The readings from Gloria Anzaldua and Kenneth Burke really made me consider the effect of our own rhetoric on ourselves. Traditional rhetoric is so focused on the audience, meaning others or outsiders. Yet these two rhetoricians instead look inward to see the power of persuasion – for good and for bad.

Anzaldua describes the nature of the world with her term of Borderlands, or a state within a person whenever cultural differences exist. With its “constant disorientation” and “psychic restlessness,” (FRT, 106) the Borderlands is an experience of life on the margins. One of the great difficulties for a Borderlands person is she might have many identities, which often cause conflict for those around her. Anzaldua believes the Borderlands can be transcended when “a new mestiza consciousness” is developed (FRT, 109). “It comes from a continual creative motion that keeps breaking down the unitary aspect of each paradigm of culture and identity” (FRT, 109). She recognizes that this is a difficult and painful process, but it is liberating and healing for the self and society. Anzaldua believes that words, specifically metaphors, have the power to make this transformation happen. Because we see ourselves through metaphors, we must cast away the old, dead metaphors and shift to these new perspectives of ourselves.

Burke points out that a key term in rhetoric is “identification,” as the rhetor typically wants the audience to identify with him and his values as he tries to persuade them. Unfortunately, he notes that identification cannot exist without division. “If men were not apart from one another, there would be no need for the rhetorician to proclaim their unity. If men were wholly and truly of one substance, absolute communication would be of man’s very essence.” (B & H, 1326). This situation is personified by Anzaldua in her Borderlands persona, where divisions are causing conflict within herself and with others around her.

Burke goes on to discuss the dangers in rhetoric addressed to the individual soul. “A man can be his own audience, insofar as he, even in his secret thoughts, cultivates certain ideas or images for the effect he hopes they may have upon him… an ‘I’ addressing its ‘me’ ” (B & H, 1335). But he warns that there is a danger there, just as a danger always exists of a rhetor attempting some sort of manipulation of his public audience. In this rhetoric directed to the self, there are aspects of socialization, moralizing or trying to match what society is teaching. I think Anzaldua would caution us to be particularly critical and questioning of that which we tell ourselves, especially because it can create the painful situation of the Borderlands persona.

At times I am taken aback by Anzaldua’s writings because she is so harsh. I see now this might be her way of critically engaging in that discourse with the self. For her, allowing the opposite to occur would be the worst of crimes. Burke explains “this aspect of identification, whereby one can protect an interest merely by using terms not incisive enough to criticize it properly, often brings rhetoric to the edge of cunning” (B & H, 1334). Although Anzaldua doesn’t describe the situation in those terms, this is exactly the situation she is trying to transform.

I think Burke provides us with a thought-provoking definition of rhetoric when he writes: “Only those voices from without are effective which can speak in the language of a voice within” ( B & H, 1336).