What Is A Text?

Dear All Good People, I think we finished last week's discussion of authorship and witnessing on the importance of our raising questions about inclusions and exclusions: In conversations about "humans," "rights," "nation," "circulation," "rhetoric," and even "history," among other things, who/what gets included or excluded, and what determines those in/exclusions? In a way, discussing authorship and witnessing as constructs that deserve to be looked at more carefully echoes Roland Barthes's expectations of "text" and Kenneth Burke's expectations of "symbol-using," so it seems you are keenly aware that even "universal" concepts do have to be circulated and embraced in order to have authority and meaning.  When we meet on Thursday, I'll ask us to try to map Mao onto this conversation :  What does Mao get at with the  Zhuangzhi's parable of the fish ? In ...

Dear All Good People, This is placeholder post (to become real text soon) with questions that may guide our discussion today, as well as a link to the workspace we started last week and will bring to culmination on Tuesday (Jan. 30): Lyon and Olson: What are all the ways they define (implicitly or explicitly) “human rights rhetoric”? All the ways they justify its importance as a discourse? Lyon and Olson: what’s the relationship between human rights and symbols (symbolic representations, a la Burke)? Between witnessing and symbolic representation?  Lyon and Olson: What are some risks and limits of a rhetorical approach to human rights? Relationship between HR rhetoric and notions of “power” (207)?  Foucault: What’s the relationship between authorship and symbols (symbolic representations, a la Burke)? Between authorship and witnessing?  Foucault: What are some problems with authorship? Some risks and limits of authorial identification?  Foucault: Rel...

In Foucault's "What is an Author," he states that writing has been linked death. I found this interesting when he wrote that an author gains recognition and popularity after he is dead and his work has already been published (905). This is interesting because we see this a lot today, usually with famous celebrities. Think about it, we continue to talk about the works of people like Aristotle and Shakespeare and they have been dead for centuries. When someone states their name, many of us can easily think of the things that they have written. They are more popular and known dead than they every were alive. Examples of this happening today would be when singer/ songwriters die. Michael Jackson was and still is the King of Pop. Before his death in 2009, Jackson sold lots of albums but after his death, he gained more popularity. I remember the day that he died, the google site crashed because so many people were searching up articles related to Michael Jackson. His music...

While reading Micki McElya's Clinging to Mammy, I discovered the origins of the Aunt Jemima brand and the overplayed faithful slave trope. The excerpt that I read shed light on the creation of the faithful slave symbol, a tactic used by white southerners to disguise the atrocities involved with slavery. Following the Emancipation Proclamation, many freed slaves began to share their stories with the world by writing their own personal narratives regarding their former lives. White men from the south were shocked and angered to see that they had been painted as monsters who abused and raped many of their slaves. They rejected any attack on their character and decided to create a new narrative to protect their honor and white identity. They did this by creating the "Mammy" figure, an old woman who enjoyed serving her white masters. They described this mammy as a joyous, sassy woman who loved the family she worked for as her own. It was imperative to paint black people as fa...

The two readings required for this blog post, Lyon and Olson’s Special Issue on Human Rights Rhetoric: Traditions of Testifying and Witnessing , and Foucault’s What is an Author? There is a set forth idea about the international rhetorical stance on what Human Rights are, and there is a focus on removing the author from the work after composition in order for the bias of the reader to not be placed on the creator, but for the words in which that composer has written will be illuminated for what they are on the page. It is important to add Foucault’s idea of a far off author into the idea’s of what Human Rights are to come across one Internationally valid definition.             In Special Issue on Human Rights Rhetoric: Traditions of Testifying and Witnessing , it is stated that “In providing a collection of original essays by accomplished rhetoric scholars from a variety of backgrounds, the special issue will promot...

  “Thus, Rich’s concern about the inheritance of oppressive language informs even milestones in the history of human rights (e.g., provisions in the Magna Charta concerning the use of testimony by a woman or, in UN’s Universal Declaration, language that by today’s standards is sexist in the usage of the generic ‘‘he’’).” (205-206) “After discussing Burke’s work in depth last class, it became clear to me that when it comes to human rights rhetoric, his identification theory directly relate to how an audience may view a human rights text. After reading Lyon and Olson’s essay Human Rights Rhetoric: Traditions of Testifying and Witnessing , I immediately questioned their premise on how rhetoric and open discourse serves as the best way to improve, understand, and expand our knowledge on what constitutes a ‘human right’. Discussing Burke’s work in class provided me insight into how people discuss human rights in an open, intellectual discourse, and the pitfalls that accompany i...

While reading What Is an author by Michel Foucalt and Special Issue on Human Rights Rhetoric: Traditions of Testifying and Witnessing by Arabella Lyon and Lester C. Olson, I found myself very interested in the arguments pertaining to rhetoric as well as basic human rights in both articles. I found myself especially resonating with Lyon and Olson’s article the most, for a couple of different reasons. My whole life I have looked at human rights to be very linear and concrete. I put human rights in the same category as laws and how they should be enforced no matter what with little room for alterations or change. It has not been until recent discussions within class and after reading these articles, where I have begun to question this thought as well as human rights more than ever. This question within Lyon and Olson’s argument really made me think, “ Does this ostensibly ‘‘universal’’ character of human rights mean that certain human rights principles can never be compromised and, i...