Preparation for 4/5: Defining Globalization: Symposium on Revisiting "Comparative" Methodologies

Dear All,

As promised, here is a guide to next week's discussion (based on/in RSQ 43.3, 2013, special issue on Comparative Rhetoric):

Reading

• Everyone reads Mao and Swearingen
• Andrew reads Garrett
• Ashley reads Lloyd
• Meghan reads Ashby
• Mikaela reads Ashby
• Sean reads Garrett
• Stephanie reads Lipson
• Travis reads Wang

Preparation

As always, I'll ask you to come to class prepared to speak "on behalf" of each scholar, including what you know -- or can discern -- about:

• the aim (i.e., their main stated claim, as well as what you perceive to the outcome of what they write)
• the evidence (i.e., the key claims or key terms that help to organize the main claim and unfold it, or drive it forward)
• the context in which they write (i.e., audience/readership, time and timeliness)
• and the exigence (i.e., implicit or explicit intertexts pointing to other things they might be writing in response to, or debates they might be reacting to).

In addition, I will ask you to prepare historiographically, and you may remember from our earliest discussions this semester that "historiographic understanding" implies a kind of disciplined investigation of what should raise questions in any given project:

• What kind of history do they tell? What are their sources? What reasons do they give for neglect of the tradition they discuss?
• Who establishes the terms? Should that relationship be reversed? Or changed? How do the terms circulate?
• What standpoints are privileged over others? Are there any representational traps (for us)? What else should we pay attention to?
• Why are you interested in this and in what aspects? What seems too simple? Too complex? Do you find yourself drawn to or repulsed from a particular argument, tradition or cultural overview and why?

And finally, since you will have a good sense of how your particular scholar thinks and works, the final step in preparation asks you to try to speak on their behalf about the work of another:

• for Wang - Lyon (wk 2) and Nordstrom (wk 7)
• for Garrett - Liu/You and Ochieng (wk 5)
• for Ashby - Mao (wk 6) and Young (wk 7)
• for Lipson - Borrowman (wk 2) and Baddar (wk 3)
• for Lloyd - Stroud (wk 3) and Xiao (wk 6)

You may write up the results of this tripartite preparation however you want, so long as you don't mind sharing your results with the class. (I'll arrange to distribute them via Canvas if you send me an electronic copy.) I only ask that you be thorough in your preparation and that you allow yourself sufficient time to read and reflect, so that this does not become a task list for you to check off. In other words, I invite you to prepare this way not to generate a bulleted list of answers, but rather to put yourself in their mindset and begin to articulate the real and necessary tensions between approaches to "comparative" work in rhetoric and composition.  

Looking forward to Tuesday,

-Dr. Graban

Discussion on 3/29: Convergence of Desires

Dear All,

After your discussion of Exploratory 4 and the vagaries of constructing a relational network of concerns, I know you are in the right mindset for our final discussion next week. I strongly encourage you to remind yourselves of some of your best moments of understanding. Each week (or two) we have grappled with a different framework, and you have grappled with them well! Now, near the end of the term, I am looking for you to demonstrate some mastery over materials and methods, and that's difficult considering the speed at which we had to move through the course.

As promised, I'll share two specific discoveries from Tuesday's discussion that may help you to think about next week's discussion as both a synthesis and an opportunity to raise new questions and concerns.

photo credit: S. McCullough [click to enlarge]

At one point, we discovered that Lisa Arnold's broadening of composition's history involves not just adding a historical dimension to translingual discussions, but rather re-historicizing some of the field's dilemmas as emerging from translingual concerns. This requires a more complex historical positioning than any narrative we currently tell -- especially those narratives that are centered in the dilemma of "how to educate globally without denationalizing," since those narratives are based less in diaspora and political evolution, and more in unidirectional assumptions about citizenship and belonging, and about what languages we have been interested in and why. But re-historicization goes beyond just telling a different narrative. For Arnold, in fact, it extends as far back as one region's emergence from the Ottoman Empire, its consequent sense(s) of "nationalism," and the curricular and administrative decisions that were made as a result of that emergence.

A related question for us to consider: What should our institutional archival work look like if we want/ need to be able observe trends beyond our own?

-------

At another point, we discovered that Saba Fatima's uptake of "script" made the concept more malleable for rhetoric and composition study, by offering us a way to think about scripts not only as semantic containers, but as units: collections of concepts or ideas related to a particular discursive event. If we know how to look for them, "scripts" are capable of expressing incongruities between whole theories of language. This means we can usefully complicate the knowledges that we typically associate with global rhetorical work -- i.e., diaspora and standpoint -- so as to do more than just essentialize one group in lieu of another. We can also understand what makes our own projects "political" even if they don't explicitly involve politics. By the end of last class, we weren't sure if Fatima's "epistemological nationalism" necessarily included us, but we were aware that she enabled us to look more critically at the associations we embrace and the practices we love in order to see them as nuanced and complex. For example, we might fill in the blanks differently in the following statement:

"Such incidents reinforce the prevalent notion held by many Muslim-Americans that unless our views are in line with current US foreign policy--that is, performing the undying patriotic script--we cannot expect to have any political influence despite having the monetary means to do so" (Fatima 345).

We might use "rhet/comp theorists, literacy organizations, or national conferences" in the first spot, and "attitudes towards language study, attitudes towards foreign study, or national educational policy" in the second spot.

A related question for us to consider: What determines our notions of "what is possible" in the field?, or What drives our epistemology? 

Until Tuesday,
-Dr. Graban

Privileging Standard American English = Excluding Minorities

Although this week's exploratory assignment noted that “our readings this week cannot be conflated under the same goals,” I still understood this assignment as a connecting assignment; to me, a “network” requires noting how the texts are similar despite the differences.

My understanding of the assignment was also that we should be focusing on the “significant concerns” that the three authors implied regarding the challenge of studying global rhetorics. With my goals of unity and “significant concerns” within the study of global rhetorics in mind, I actually found the three pieces to be very similar regarding the four themes Mikaela and I highlighted in our (very basic)network: identity, privilege, language, and hegemony.

I particularly found intriguing the continued reference to privilege in each of the three articles from this week. Arnold noted the concept of privilege particularly when describing the persistence of monolingualism. (Arnold 290). At SPC, the missionaries originally wanted to teach in Arabic so that the Syrians  could more easily spread their religious beliefs. (Arnold 281). However, instruction at SPC switched to English for a variety of factors noted by Arnold, including the fact that it became challenging to find competent Protestant professors who could speak Arabic and that Arab faculty were informally disallowed from the professorial ranks. (Arnold 289). Thus, instruction switched to English – effectively beginning the resistance to a translingual framework at SPC. (Arnold 290). Arnold goes on to state, “[i]n the refusal of the monolingual paradigm, the question of whether or not we should ‘take’ or ‘not take’ a translingual approach becomes a question of privilege; asking the question implicates us in a monolingual framework that privileges English and our mastery of it” (Arnold 290-91).

                Cooper also touched on this theme of privilege – particularly, the privileging of Standard American English - when he discussed Benjamin Franklin’s unusual attitude in which he associated speakers of languages other than English with speakers who had undesirable traits. (Cooper 96-97). Cooper’s note that “by the end of the twentieth century, the campaign to eradicate Indian languages had succeeded to such an extent that most Indians in the country were not native speakers of their ancestral languages” indicated privilege to me because, as we have discussed in earlier classes, a major goal of imperialism is normally to eradicate the colonized’s native language. (Cooper 97). This eradication allows the colonizer to maintain a sense of superiority, a hierarchy of value within the persons living within the society.

Cooper’s discussion of language as identity reminded me of Young’s similar discussion: “Language becomes a sort of mask that can be useful in our lives, allowing us to enter into conversations and to explore possibilities. But language can also be dangerous if it is used to cover up parts of our lives that play an important role in the shaping of our identities” (Young 133). Privileging one language over another seems to me to be a form of essentialism; in essence, those who privilege Standard American English inappropriately essentialize people who speak other dialects based solely upon their skin color and speech patterns. This forces those of other skin colors to lead a sort of double-life, something most Caucasians don’t seem to understand:  “Contrasting what Doug Millison says about his feelings in learning new languages with what Royster says . . . Millison sees in language a chance to discover ‘a more authentic self,’ or, as Baillif quotes Lanham as saying, ‘a sincere soul,’ whereas instead Royster sees ‘a range of voices’ that allow her to ‘affirm differences, variety’ . . . for Royster . . . languages are a mode of identities” (Cooper 89).

                For Fatima, one of these identities for Muslim-Americans should be the cultivated affective response. To cultivate such an affective response, Fatima notes the importance of empathy. (Fatima 351). Fatima stresses the need, “in cases that involve policies toward nations that are foreign in terms of culture, language, values, and so on, and that are also subordinate within power hierarchies,” to “look at ourselves through their eyes, to explore their world as a comfortable inhabitant” rather than to “simply form policies based on our own master narratives” (Fatima 351).

                However, Fatima quotes Nancy Snow, who argues that “at least some familiarity is needed with the person toward whom one feels empathetic.” (Fatima 350). “‘If we are not sufficiently similar to those with whom we empathize, imaginatively projecting ourselves into their circumstances would not be a reliable guide to how they feel, nor would attempts to simulate their thoughts and feelings be empathetically accurate’” (Fatima 350).

                Throughout her piece, I believe Fatima relates herself to the Muslim-Americans whose scripts she is describing: she continuously uses the adjectives “our” and the subject “we.” (Fatima 343). Though not purposefully, I believe Fatima’s familiarity with her own essence as a minority – a Muslim-American – indicates the continued issue of privilege in the study of global rhetorics. Because of her membership in the culture which she studies, I believe Fatima has the agency to be able to discuss that culture; and Fatima is cognizant of her agency with her selective wording.

                Do others – particularly, white Westerners – have the agency to do similar global rhetorical studies? Even if we are unfamiliar with the cultures? Or, as noted by Shome and numerous other authors we have studied this semester, “having been primarily schooled in Western academic mode . . . the postcolonial critic’s intellectual perspectives cannot wholly be free of the power relations that she or he is out to displace.” (Shome 47).

                Thus, in setting out to complete this assignment, I very much focused on the similarities between the three articles, particularly the similarities I could find in the author’s views of the complications of studying global rhetorics; and I found more similarities than I expected originally reading the titles of the articles. Particularly, I believed that each author discussed privilege, and this tied in with our discussions of the privilege of scholars in studying these global rhetorics.

Networks, Language, and Homogenization

Composing our exploratory for this week made me confront some of my own implicit assumptions about what networks are, and how they function. In my initial sketching of our network, I presented key concepts as hierarchical in nature, proceeding out of a top down understanding of how individuals (and individual terms) function in a larger society. But as we continued to draft our exploratory, I came to see that networks have the capacity to fundamentally destabilize hierarchies, to present an understanding of the world as far more rhizomatic. It reminds me of what Manuel Castells writes, when he refers to a network society as one “constructed around personal and organization networks powered by digital networks and communicated by the internet” (136). This network society creates a culture of autonomy, encouraging individuation on both personal and larger economic organizational levels. Our own networked map shows this to a certain degree—key concepts are represented in their own individual terms, linked by influences or textual elements. While our map shows the connections between the ideas of identity, representation, non-essentialism, and many more terms expressed in the readings, it also shows variation in the relationships between terms through the system of changing arrows.

But what our network doesn’t do as effectively is illustrate differences and gaps between the readings and terms. And because the majority of our connections are the same style of arrow, we can’t represent the differences between certain nodes. Our map moves outwards in many directions, but it lacks a certain depth or layering that the “real” relationships between the terms have. This reminds me of another conception (and critique) of networks: in Actor-Network Theory and After, John Law and John Hassard argue that actor network theory exists as a semiotics of materiality and so applies to the relationships of concepts to all materials, not simply language. Law and Hassard note that actor-network theory imposes a certain perspective on the character of these links and connections—one that homogenizes and limits them. It “wages war on essential differences” (Law and Hassard 7). We are reminded, as so many rhetors have argued, that language is not inherently neutral. While I’m no expert in actor network theory, the idea of war on “essential differences” seems similar to the challenge of globalization of rhetoric and composition to fight essentialism in our scholarship and pedagogy.

Arnold might agree with Law and Hassard’s assessment of language—she argues that “while languages inevitably carry with them the traces of their originating cultures, they are at the same time flexible enough to accommodate new ideas, values, and beliefs” (Arnold 286). Language has the ability to bend to accept new values, but also can act as a force for homogenization. Cooper notes this, writing “the integrity of the nation-state and cultural unity are often equated in arguments for the importance of a common or standard language, perhaps because threats to the nation inspire a more immediate reaction than threats to cultural unity” (Cooper 95). Maintaining a state with “unified” cultural identity often includes the privileging of one specific language over others, as many of our past readings have pointed out. Essentializing gives the mythical “nation-state” power—and this is just what Fatima has experienced in her daily life as a Muslim-American. She argues, “This more complex affective response guards against those who would attempt to essentialize our self into a singular identity, to rally for particular political purposes” (Fatima 354). I’m still wondering how we could truly represent the conflicts between these readings as well as the similarities through a network without eliding differences or assuming equal relationships between nodes. My other readings into networks suggest that they too have power—our representations of the world shape it to some degree.  And ultimately, we’re left to ponder Cooper’s claim: "Is our goal to enable students to write in their own voices or to instill in them common cultural values?" (Cooper 88) To what extent does language instruction facilitate the expression of difference, and to what extent does it encourage homogenization?

Castells, Manuel. The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 

 1996. Print.

Law, John, and John Hassard, eds. Actor Network Theory and After. Oxford: Blackwell,  

1999. Print.

Disadvantages of Humanizing: The Trouble With Empathy

The prospect of creating a “network of concerns” for global rhetorics sounded challenging and ambiguous from the start. The first and most fundamental challenge I faced was how to create the network itself in an online medium. The network I created ended up being structured more closely to that of a grouping of concepts. The center of the grouping had four categories: Identity, Privilege, Hegemony, and Language. These categories were then populated with textual examples from each author to support the assertion that those categories were prevalent in each text. The second part of the network involved three secondary charts, one for each author that contained their central idea and critical dilemma and textual support surrounding the idea.

I approached this project differently because I wanted to see if I could explain relational connection without relying only on convergence and divergence. I wanted to locate these authors’ ideas in relation to the four major concerns I chose. To work from the inside out and come up with a new means of organizing ideas. If I could go back and redo an aspect of the project I more clearly articulate the connection between each author and my guiding categories. This way it would have been easier to show exactly where each authors ideology was on the spectrum and which of the four concerns their work focused on the most.

This assignment gave me the opportunity to consider the arguments of these authors through the Burke-like terministic screens of, Identity, Privilege, Hegemony, and Language. This allowed a more focused understanding of the works as they relate to the field of Global Rhetorics and as they relate to each other. Lisa R. Arnold was largely concerned with the pedagogical implications of language and monolingual bias. Her article read more like a critical case study of the Syrian Protestant College (Beirut). She adds a historical dimension to the translingual issues that exist within rhetoric and composition studies. “The archives suggest that the issue of language- including which language should be taught and why, the effect of language on student identities and the power and cultural value attached to language and education-was of central concern to the colleges founders, ultimately determining the pedagogical approaches taken and curricular decisions made at SPC in its early years” (Arnold 277).  Because of the very clear historical and pedagogical roots of this essay Arnolds interests fall between Language and Privilege in the network of concerns. She is primarily focused on advocating for a de-privileging of monolingualism in the academic community and a more fluid inclusion of language and culture.

Saba Fatima’s essay, though not officially situated within the world of rhetoric and composition, has many of the same themes and concerns as the other readings that accompany it in this analysis. Fatima focuses specifically on Muslim-American Scripts and the importance of “cultivating affective responses” to these scripts (Fatima 353). Fatima works from within the Muslim tradition to create an awareness of scripts and norms of depersonalization. “Our scripts are mediated by our social location within systems of domination. In other words, our scripts as Muslim-Americans differ when we travel abroad, when we speak on terrorism in American public discourse, or when we see the coverage of American wars from within the comfort of our homes” (Fatima 342).  According to Fatima’s logic the scripts that we operate on can affect the way we are situated in society. Her ideology falls between Identity and Hegemony on the network of concerns. This notion of scripts as guiding forces in national discourse was something I had never considered before but really spoke to my interests. She frames her perspective as that of a stranger in their country who is viewed as untrustworthy and overly empathetic.

Marilyn M. Cooper is concerned with the “process of rejecting pure identity” (Cooper 93). She is focused specifically on deconstructing the hegemonic notion of national identity. “A nonessentials notion of identity- often referred to as a power modern identity or self- has been developing in academic discussion in recent years” (Cooper 91). Cooper wants us to move our thinking away from essentialism and toward a more hybrid understanding of identity. I found Coopers ideas the most difficult to connect to the network of concerns because her goal was not immediately clear, however I also found this work the most dynamic because of its ambiguity. The focus on language in this piece locates it more firmly in the academic sphere, and gives the article a slightly more pedagogical tone. However I found that it was possible to separate the academic intentions of the theoretical discussion of national identity. “It is the assumption once again that identity is a matter of control that makes the goal of national identity seem oppressive, to leave us with the equally unsatisfactory options of the melting pot of the tower of babel: either we completely resolve our differences rationally and agree on the values that ground our actions or we are incapable of any productive action or interaction” (Cooper 100). Cooper does a seamless job of incorporating issues of national identity and academic concerns of language and monolingualism.

These three readings strongly informed my understanding of language and the role it plays in nationalism and academia. Looking at language from the perspective of a Muslim-American allowed me to consider the vantage point that they have in the United States. I framed my readings of Arnold and Cooper through the experience of Fatima’s narrative of Muslim-American experience. Each author brought so much of their own experience and individualized vocabulary to that table that it was hard to read them in conversation with one another because they were so dense and intricate on their own.

Discussion on 3/22: Defining "Globalization" in Notions of "Africa"

Folks,

Photo credit: S. McCullough [click to enlarge]

Very nice work last class. That was our first of three days dedicated to "defining 'globalization,'" and you may remember we had a fairly complex justification for trying to understand "globalization" through considerations of African philosophy. What struck me time and again during our discussion was how the readings -- Marback's in particular, but also the texts in which he situated his project -- equipped us to notice new commonplaces from which to characterize African rhetoric. For South Africa, you noted these commonplaces in the kind of participatory agency invited by memorial sites and expressions of vulnerability (i.e., Robben Island, commemorative gestures, etc.). For "Africa" more broadly, you noted these commonplaces in the kind of listening practices required to understand what philosophies have traditionally been silenced (i.e., griot performances, sapiential knowledge, etc.).

From our cluster of guiding questions:  

1. Beyond Salazar's "Athens" metaphor, what are the different conceptions of "Africa" that our writers contend with, or that we are being asked to contend with? 
2. What are they hoping we will notice, embrace, or reject? 
3. How does this help us differentiate between contrastive, comparative, cross-cultural, intercultural, transnational, and/or global approaches to studying rhetoric and composition?

we did not fulfill that final question, but we can try to do so next week. In fact, next week I'll ask you all to open the class by sharing the results of your fourth (and final!) exploratory, before launching into our discussion. From there, it might be easier to consider how "nation," "nationalism," "attitude," and "identity" provide another set of factors through which we can both reflect on what we are learning this semester and articulate the global rhetorical uptake in each of our final projects.

Recap of 3/22

As promised, here is a link to Junge's and Johnson's documentary film from last class:

• "Iron Ladies of Liberia" (Junge and Johnson, Just Media Films, 2007) 

In moving towards praxis, we got as far as devising a set of questions inspired by our discussions of rhetorical sovereignty, and then we noticed how that set of questions resonated with the questions posed by Mao, Hesford, and Tuhiwai Smith at the beginning  of the term.

In turn, I offer those questions back to you as a set of attitudes or considerations, what I'm loosely calling our "Transnational Rhetorical (TNR) Approach":

• enables the study of communications outside of an Aristotelian framework (helps us to rethink framework)
• promotes a kind of self-reflexivity of our own reactions to texts (that are, themselves, tied to triggers, stereotypes, and prejudices) and also to their patterns of circulation 
• promotes linkages between local cultures and global problems
• involves learning how to question “development” and “globalization” as a text, an ideology, a movement
• pays attention to how “trans” means “changing the nature of something” and not just “moving through, across, or between”
• recognizes how globalization is uneven by looking at the multiple powers at work in/on a single location (commercial, ethnic, cultural, corporate, etc.)
• sees social and economic issues as intertwined and builds a critical vocabulary based on those things
• tries to avoid cultural hegemonic interpretation (where “hegemony” means one view is seen as naturally dominant over another)
• considers borders as discourses (i.e., ethnic borders, ideological borders), and assumes that borders change
• encourages us to understand “nation” as a discursive construct, and perhaps help us to know what values or ideals we are currently using to define and understand “nation.”
• involves reading the decolonization of a culture through its colonizing rhetorics
• asks how the local/vernacular can help promote models for transnational rhet/comp that might work from the ground up, where “verna” = relationship between the local and the institutional

Let's see where this takes us in the remaining weeks.

 

Preview of 3/29

Our three readings for next week -- Arnold, Fatima, Cooper -- are intentionally diverse. Each of these writers establishes a "critical program" that occurs at the convergence of two or more desires. What are those desires, and how do they resonate with some of our past class discussions about embodiment, history, national identification, and rhetorical sovereignty? And then, what do they contribute to the conversation that perhaps we haven't yet seen?

I'm genuinely looking forward to this,

-Dr. Graban

Not One of One, One of Many

Twenty-five years after the publication of Donna Haraway’s seminal “A Cyborg Manifesto,” and feminist scholars are still grappling with the concept of the “cyborg” and its predisposition for “coalition-building.” Rebecca Richards, then, elucidates the performance and the function of the cyborg in her reconfiguration of Haraway’s concept for the twenty-first century as feminists continue to heed the call “to actively reclaim cyborg identities through the use of irony and blasphemy for their own political purposes” (4). Language, as a technology, affords women the ability to metaphorically disassemble and reassemble their bodies in their ironic attempts to achieve status in a male-dominated political public sphere. Citing Queen Elizabeth I of England as a prototypical iron lady, Richards demonstrates how the Queen “reconfigures herself from female to male in order to rally the troops,” engaging “in a rhetorical performance that uses the technology of language and naming to create herself into something that she does not embody” (5): A King, a male.

Thus, like all of Richards’s archetypal “iron ladies,” Queen Elizabeth I becomes “both a part of the dominant structure of patriarchy and an active political agent” (6). Through language, she blasphemously reassembles herself into a man, and, if Richards had cited more of the Queen’s famous speech at Tilbury, one could see that the reassembly does not cease with her claiming the crown of the King. In her last line to her subjects, Queen Elizabeth I reclaims her status as Queen and its inscribed gender in her use of the pronoun “We:” “I know already, for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns; and We do assure you on a word of a prince, they shall be duly paid.” Thus, the Queen’s linguistic blasphemy manifests itself not only in her masculinized reassembly of herself, but also in her integration of her newly acquired male “parts” with her extent female “parts.” Acting as both King and Queen, Elizabeth was both complicit with dominant structure and acting against it.

However, as this case and Richards’ reflections signify, “[r]econstructing the feminine body through ironic language in order to become a qualified leader is not a new rhetorical construct” (8). An unfair historical precedent has been set; “women are always already a hybrid identity when they enter into political space” (8) because this space has predominantly been occupied by men. Women, then, must, through language, enter into a transgender discourse of complicity that transmits them through the glass ceiling so that maybe they can attempt to break it from both sides.

The political sphere, though, is plagued with homogenization. The electorate do not want a multifaceted leader. They want a strong leader, but, ironically, they want that strong leader to adhere to a milquetoast, hackneyed archetype: a genderless man. The heterogeneous electorate, then, can imbue this political figure with their own qualities and desires in their pursuit of a fallacious coalition-building.

As Keya Maitra notes, the Feminist struggle for agency has encountered a similar problem. Historically, feminist rhetoric has essentialized struggle and choice, fixing the terms to notions of “women’s consciousness rather than a woman’s consciousness” (368). Solidarity is a great goal, but not when it erases difference. For a time, Haraway’s cyborg operated negatively. It erased difference in that all socialist-feminists technologized their bodies. However, Maitra’s discussion of  “The anatman or no-abiding-self theory” helps one to see how the reclamation of a cyborgian identity can lead to authentic coalition building through “the application of the reasoning about the impermanence of everything to the realm of individual selves” (363). Always in a state of disassembly and reassembly, always in a state of becoming, the cyborg ontology allows feminists to achieve a solidarity in similar struggle, but to build a multifaceted coalition that does not reduce Feminism to the same struggle.

For that is not true coalition-building, the kind for which a cyborgian consciousness allows. However, as Richards concedes, “Haraway’s cyborg identity” has the potential to both “trap women within the real, lived contradictions of identity and also obscure difference” (20). Thus, despite its ability to ameliorate the restrictive double-bind, claiming a cyborg identity can lead to homogenization—of one’s own difference and the differences of others. In line with Jarratt’s thinking, the cyborg does not operate like a metaphor of substitution, one cyborg standing in for the entirety of women; it instead operates metonymically, many cyborgs contributing to the ultimate reality of the socialist-feminist cyborg ontology of every woman.

Maitra and Richards: Reconfiguring Feminist Agency through Rhetorical Performance

In “The Questions of Identity and Agency,” Keya Maitra acknowledges that while her primary aim in this text is to identify implications of a mindful approach to feminism without borders, she hopes that the type of feminist self-consciousness for which she is advocating may be useful for other kinds of feminism as well (362). Thus, it seems useful to test that hope by thinking of Richards’ account of historical and contemporary Iron Ladies in terms of the agency and feminist self-consciousness that may exist as part of this particular rhetorical performance.

The notion that “an iron lady can move herself in and out of complicity with these hegemonic structures” (Richards 5) suggests that the iron lady is a potential site of agency for women leaders. While Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign would fairly certainly fall within the scope of the “mainstream Western feminist discourses” (Maitra 361) with which Mohanty takes issue, Richards’ multiple examples of iron ladies across the world (and in particular, their connectedness and constant comparison to each other) suggests that the iron lady is a subject position through which women leaders can “develop a perspective of self that not only acknowledges its own constitutive dependence on its given intersectionalities, but that is also aware of its own grounding in such” (Maitra 361).

While it seems fairly clear from Richards’ article that the iron lady can be a means of gaining agency and access to the male-dominated political arena, it is less clear whether inhabiting the iron lady moniker necessarily constitutes an act of mindfulness. Richards points to examples of women who very purposefully sought out that trope, but others who utilized it after the nickname had been given (and still others for whom the nickname has only been attributed posthumously). For the women who consciously sought out the iron lady name or embraced it once it was given, there appear to be some connections between this creation of the iron lady self and Maitra’s description of mindfulness. If both the “essential entity of self and the materialist notion of self as nothing but the body are denied” in the mindful approach (Maitra 363), then the cyborg, and the Iron Lady in particular, seem to fulfill, at least in part, both requirements. Even as Richards points out that the cyborg can be homogenizing, she maintains that the cyborg self is fragmented, consisting of partial identities, and resists unification. In addition, Richards’ examples describe ways that Iron Ladies like Queen Elizabeth and Benazir Bhutto transcended their female bodies to present a self that was more than the body. For Elizabeth, this was done through language, by replacing parts of her biologically female body with those of a king in order to become hybrid. For Bhutto, this meant using technology to subvert her own biology by manipulating her childbirth so as not to “encourage any stereotypes that pregnancy interferes with performance” (qtd. in Richards 11).

Maitra claims that “self-consciousness is the location for a woman’s self-reflective, self-altering opportunities” (368); taken this way, the iron lady as enacted by leaders like Clinton may be a source of self-consciousness. As Richards points out, Clinton’s campaign sought out the iron lady name, and Clinton’s actions in response to the claims that she wasn’t iron lady enough could be read as self-altering in the sense that she was engaged in what Richards refers to as a “politics of becoming” (17). With her identity always partial and in flux, Clinton “allowed [her] gendered performances to fluctuate for each temporal situation, in order to confront and attempt to take control of the given rhetorical situation (ibid).

Ultimately, though, I don’t know if the feminist self-consciousness theory entirely holds up in Richards’ examples because, as she rightly points out, some of the iron ladies she identifies are complicit in maintaining patriarchal order and the masculine political status quo. Thus, it becomes unclear whether the iron lady trope can be a source for feminist self-consciousness and an opportunity for agency, or whether (at least as deployed by Clinton et al.) it is merely part of the machine. For me, the most pertinent question remains whether self-consciousness can be attained when one is caught in the double bind Richards describes. Given that Clinton’s attempts to enact her cyborg identity were read as “mere political maneuvering and not the natural fluctuating identity that we all experience,” the potential for true feminist agency and self-consciousness seems less than robust. Does the iron lady trope “result in an empowered sense of agency [and] open up an expanded range of choices,” (Maitra 362), or do female leaders remain limited to two choices: inhabit the iron lady trope (and cease to be a “pleasant” woman) or resist the Iron Lady trope (and be seen as unfit to lead)?

Transcending Feminine Oppression

In her article Cyborgs on the World Stage, Rebecca S. Richards sets up a complex, multifaceted argument for the necessity of using all available means to advance their cause. She uses the example of the nickname “iron lady” used to describe Margaret Thatcher during her term as Prime Minister. The term became ubiquitous with a capable female leader who was able to transcend human weakness. In order to appropriately grapple with this assertion and the implications it carried, I found it necessary to investigate Haraway’s cyborg ontology myself. My reading of this piece allowed me to form a new perspective on femininity in the politics sphere- one that accounted for “cracked glass celling” that Hillary Clinton could never quite break through. Haraway provided me with a uniquely useful set of vocabulary that helped me understand Richards’s complex feminist narrative. The term posthuman, though not expressly named, is coined in Haraway’s piece and is useful in understanding the space that female heads of state attempt to occupy. This location manifests into the “iron lady” nickname, which denotes a mixing of femininity with masculine militarism and capability. Haraway also gives us the term cyborg, defining it as a “cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction. Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction” (Haraway). This term is akin to the posthuman label in that it signifies a border space between two fixed identities.

Keya Maitra struggles with issues of generalizing identity and deferring individuality in favor of the “hegemony of discursive methods” in her article The Question of Identity and Agency in Feminism without Borders (Maitra 362). She also suggests an attractive connection between feminism and Buddhist mindfulness. “My goal here is to develop the notion of feminist agency as fully as possible by using feminism without borders as its most direct location” (Maitra 362). The primary focus here is the construction of identity and agency as they relate to feminism, yet Maitra expresses them through a new reading of Buddhism. Buddhism hinges on viewing oneself in a non-essentialized way that allows the spirit to be liberated from social constraints and singularity of view. Maitra relates the Buddhist sense of mindfulness toward the desired state of being to the plight of feminism- positing a connection between mindful thought and transformative experience. 

 Maitra’s work can be connected to the way Richards attempts to reconfigure the performative nature of gender tropes and the ‘iron lady’ title as it relates to politics and feminism. Richards wants us to understand that this naming tope does not flatten women into a homogenized unit, rather it can be used to “conceal from the public the entrance of women into positions as of heads of state; it functions invisibly through metaphorical flattery, for what could be more gracious and welcoming to a woman leader than to giver her a nickname that ostensibly credits her for, simultaneously, her femininity and for her steely resolve” (Richards 4). By this logic Richards seems to be urging women to embrace the misconceptions of naming and use whatever means available to enter into roles of power. Similarly Maitra advocates for an active approach to dispelling false consciousness and combatting the restraints of a masculine world.

Both women are more concerned with demonstrating that oppression is an inevitability of life and an unfortunate circumstance of femininity. Rather than professing the inhumanity of this condition it is more worthwhile to embrace any means of overcoming it. Maitra invites women to embrace, “the cultivation of a mode of engagement that is non-judging, fully present, open, free of habitual reactivities, and above all compassionate” (Maitra 365). In order to bring about new attitudes in the world it is first necessary to alter our own attitudes, there needs to be a conscious break in the “conditioned patterns of responses before new ranges of response become available and viable” (Strong qtd in Maitra). Both authors advocate for embracing the hybrid nature of the self in order to achieve self-awareness and autonomy.

Reconfigurations & Recontextualizations: Two Different Approaches to Feminist Rhetorical Study

Richards’s reconfigurations work in several ways—she does both an examination of the iron lady nickname and a reconfiguration of Haraway’s cyborg theory. Richards’s process is to “trace historically the emergence and transference of [the iron lady] nickname to various female heads of state” (2). She begins by situating herself as a researcher as “a disappointed Clinton supporter located at a university in the U.S. southwest;” acknowledging her own stance in this way follow traditional feminist research practice (3). Where Richards is arguing about a specific metaphor and its affordances and constraints for female leaders, Kuehl’s work is more of a close reading that recontextualizes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to see how it fulfills global feminist rhetoric. Both authors work within existing feminist paradigms, but where Richards’s work is more of an extension and continuation of Haraway’s theories, Kuehl’s work uses the paradigm as a lens that shapes her reading of the text, revealing the text’s metaphorical alignments with feminist theory.

Richards argues that the “naming trope attempts to conceal from the public the entrance of women into positions as of heads of state; it functions invisibility through metaphorical flattery” (3). Her central thesis examines the difficulties that arise from association with the iron lady nickname; she notes the difficulties of hybridity, claiming that “the rhetorical performance of Clinton’s iron lady identity demonstrates how Haraway’s cyborg identity can both trap women within the real, lived contradictions of identity and also obscure difference” (20). Female leaders can benefit from being perceived as the iron lady, but it is not without its negative externalities. Richards notes that the key difference between Clinton and Bhutto and Thatcher, Charles, and Sirleaf a matter of how “these two women performed their iron lady identities as cyborgs in a politics of becoming” (17). By reading the actions of these leader and their adoption or dismissal of the metaphor as an embodiment of cyborg theory, Richards is able to ground a rhetorical theory in actual events as well provide substantial grounding for her analysis of Clinton.

In contrast, Kuehl is performing a recontextualization of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; she argues that “the social rights have more importance in the text than most global citizenship scholarship has recognized” (168). Her thesis is that “it does privilege social rights through its language which relies on procreation metaphors to build global citizens through human relationshops that warrant the recognition of human rights, suggesting a move toward a feminist rhetorical theory of global citizenship” ( Kuehl 168). Her close reading serves as a reconfiguration of paradigms in that it shows a different interpretation of the UDHR than what it had previously been viewed as—and this interpretation fits within a larger ideology of global feminism. (She is careful not to flatten the text, or global feminism with these claims, however.) Kuehl’s essay concludes by claiming that “the CHR successfully embraced social rights rhetorically, and how they made these rights of linchpin to recognizing all human rights” (177).

I think that Richards work does more to reconfigure feminist paradigms—her use of multiple leaders around the world and the way she extends Haraway’s ideas feels more like a reconfiguration than Kuehl’s rereading of the UHDR as “cultivating a sense of belonging” (177). Putting their work into conversation with each other illustrates different practices for feminist work in addition to illuminating how each reworks existing paradigms.